Meanwhile, the roads were overwhelmed with craters, inhibiting the work of the firemen. Almost two hundred fires burnt against the city skyline. Ten minutes later, the anti-aircraft guns were launching their first response. Within no time at all Coventry Cathedral was ablaze. Volunteers desperately tried to douse the flames, successfully at first, but soon new fires broke out; there was no hope. A wall of flames quickly grew out of control and the volunteers and firemen were defeated by the inferno.
The valiant people of Coventry fought against the ensuing chaos, using every appliance available to extinguish the fires that were reducing their city to dust. Some people, aware that the cathedral was unsalvageable, desperately attempted to remove any heritage items that could be saved during this attempt at destroying not just the people but the buildings, history and morale of the city.
The fires throughout Coventry continued to burn throughout the night. The German attack reached its climax at midnight; the all-clear was only declared around six the next morning. One night of destruction. The city had almost five thousand houses destroyed. Infrastructure was severed, almost one third of factories damaged or destroyed. Those who lost their lives that night amounted to almost six hundred, with many hundreds more injured.
Many of those who had survived had fled to neighbouring areas outside of the city or sheltered with their families in air raid shelters, waiting out the death and destruction just outside their door.
The raid had been so successful for the Nazis that the term Koventrieren entered the vocabulary back in Germany, a phrase used to refer to a city razed to the ground and destroyed. The stunning medieval city was altered forever, the blueprint of Coventry demolished. The physical destruction was further compounded by the social impact of pain, suffering and morale. The Blitz spirit had taken a hit. King George VI was said to have wept at the sight of the ruined Cathedral. The entire framework of the city was obliterated in an instant.
The libraries, the market hall, public buildings and also the sixteenth century Palace Yard, the setting of the court of James II. When dawn broke over the shattered, still-burning city, of its inhabitants were dead. Local historians have recorded the names of almost all the casualties and where they perished. Entire families died together, often in rudimentary neighbourhood shelters.
Hundreds more civilians were gravely injured. The Luftwaffe could celebrate and did so unashamedly. However, while morale in Coventry and elsewhere in Britain wavered, it did not break. Abroad, the raid soon came to exemplify German barbarism. Wire reports, including shocking pictures of the ravaged cathedral though less often of the wrecked factories and of civilian corpses being lowered into mass graves, spread around the world, especially to the still-neutral USA.
Certainly, American public opinion, hitherto still predominantly isolationist, had by the end of shifted sufficiently for President Roosevelt to gain congressional support for the supply of desperately needed aircraft and ships to Britain. The conspiracy theorists argue that Sir Winston chose to sacrifice the city to keep secret Britain's decoding of the Germans' Enigma machine.
Their position initially gained credence during the s with the publishing of several books about the cracking of Enigma. In his book The Ultra Secret, the former World War II intelligence officer FW Winterbotham recalled how he passed intelligence on to Churchill that Coventry would be the target of the bombing raid a few hours before it took place. His account has been questioned since by several historians.
He says an RAF report reveals that by on the day of the raid - several hours before the bombing began - enemy navigation signals were intersecting over Coventry, indicating an imminent raid. Pollock also notes that Sir Winston's private secretary, John Martin, subsequently recorded that Churchill received a red box containing details of the raid shortly after Churchill apparently told Martin a heavy raid on London was predicted, and headed for the capital.
Bespoke Services. The Battle of Britain After the fall of France in July German attempts to gain air superiority, vital for the planned invasion of Britain, were initially focussed on Channel ports and coastal towns and then on airfields, radar stations and factories. At this point, German tactics changed and from 7 September the bombing of London began.
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