Search on street names to quickly identify casualties in particular areas of the City. Cross-reference fatalities with data held by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. All record sets. Learn more Search tips Useful links. Who First name s Name variants. Last name Name variants. All fields are optional. So, given these weaknesses, should the government have attempted to evacuate Coventry at short notice? Panic and chaos would likely have resulted.
Frederick Taylor is the author of a number of books on the Second World War, including the bombing of Coventry and Dresden. Coventry is recognised as a city of peace and reconciliation. Sign in.
Back to Main menu Virtual events Masterclasses. Why was Coventry targeted? Every aspect of the campaign against Coventry was calculated to maximise destruction and inspire terror. When dawn broke over the shattered, still-burning city of Coventry, of its inhabitants were dead. In the aftermath of the bombing, more than half of the city's population fled the city, streaming out into the countryside to stay with friends or relatives or - in some cases - to sleep in fields.
Ivy Cumberlidge, who was 19 at the time, said: "There were so many houses destroyed that people used to walk out into the countryside at night, then come back into the city to work during the day,". The authorities estimated there were 2, homeless people. Alan Hartley, a teenager at the time, remembers feeling betrayed at the streams of cars and people on foot leaving Coventry.
He said: "We felt a bit peeved, I remember. It was as if they were leaving us to defend it. Amid this crisis, what had become of the "Blitz spirit" that in Britain has become a defining national story of World War Two?
Other cities, such as London, Liverpool, Birmingham and Bristol, had been bombed but did not suffer the same degree of social collapse. He said: "We do not see these examples of panic in other cities.
He believes the civilian population in Coventry displayed far more symptoms of "inappropriate, anxiety-driven behaviour" than shown by people in other bombed British cities. There is no warning. Such was the intensity of the raid that two-thirds of the buildings in the centre of Coventry were destroyed. So what was it about the Coventry raid that made its effects so much more mentally dislocating than attacks on other British cities? Historian Frederick Taylor says there was a feeling of betrayal among Coventry's residents at "perceived council negligence".
He said that a failure by the authorities to prepare for the war meant there was a lack of emergency water supplies. This thwarted firefighting efforts and led to considerable extra destruction, most notoriously in the case of the cathedral.
And while cities like Dresden would lose many thousands, rather than hundreds, of civilians to bombing raids, Mr Taylor believes the destruction in Coventry was very personal.
But early on the evening of 14 November , the horrors that were soon to befall the people of Coventry were still unimaginable. If you had visited Coventry that day, you would have experienced a city that was fairly typical of s Britain.
In the medieval city centre - its winding, half-timbered streets among the best-preserved in England - young couples were heading to dance halls. Crowds were flocking to the cinemas. The city had expanded dramatically in the s, with big factories such as Armstrong Siddeley, Daimler and Humber - which nestled cheek by jowl with the city's shops and houses - producing first motor cars and then, with the onset of war, aircraft parts.
Workers were on their way home to the newly-built s semis that spanned out to the suburbs. Alan Hartley, who was 16 at the time, said: "They were so loud, they enveloped the whole city.
He said: "We were set up to fight incendiary bombs and look after people during an air raid. The Luftwaffe's attack on Coventry was one of the heaviest and best-targeted raids up until that point. British intelligence had discovered days earlier a raid - codenamed Moonlight Sonata - was planned for the night of the next full moon, 14 November. But they did not know the target. The Germans had adopted a new communication system that the Allies could not read or jam.
This left Coventry reliant on Britain's "completely inadequate" anti-aircraft defences. There were no aircraft or guns equipped with radar to combat a night-time raid. Prof Neil Forbes, of Coventry University, said: "Everything was in an appalling state as far as Britain was concerned. All of that would be dramatically improved by but in , Britain was simply not prepared.
Unteroffizier Gunter Unger, who took part in the raid, said: "I have never come across such a concentration of fire during a raid, not even in London. At first, the raid was only a purple warning - meaning aircraft were in the vicinity.
But then, the warning turned red. Aircraft were overhead. One of Mr Hartley's friends shouted at him to look up at the sky. The boys could see a parachute flare [launched by the Luftwaffe to provide light] in the sky over Radford, a suburb about two miles north of the city centre. Mr Hartley said: "Then I saw another and another until the whole city of Coventry was circled by these flares.
Occasionally, as they were swinging around, suddenly you might see a little silver dot and you would know it had picked up one of the planes. Then it would vanish. It was strange, seeing these little glimpses of the people who were bombing us.
The Coventry raid was one of the first to use Pathfinders, a squadron of 13 planes, named Kampfgruppe , that flew in advance of the main fleet. The Pathfinders would drop incendiary explosives to start fires that would guide the bombers to the city. German historian Jens Wehner said: "The Nazi strategy was to make terror. Gunter Unger recalled that the bombers set off from an airbase at Abbeville, in northern France.
He told the BBC in a interview: "As we were flying over the Channel, we could clearly see Coventry burning, so the use of radio aids was practically unnecessary. There was very little flak and no night-fighters and, when we reached the target, there was a huge sea of flames.
Once the city was blazing, crews sought areas that were not already alight to drop their bombs. Mr Wehner said: "The first raid dropped high explosives - bombs that made big explosions intended to destroy the roofs of buildings and knock out utility services such as gas, electricity and water.
On the ground, the people of Coventry were fleeing for cover, including children, most of whom had not been evacuated from the city. These Coventry Blitz resources are available free of charge as a service to the general public. I dread to think how many hundreds of hours I have voluntarily worked in order to make this site a reality. If you are able to support this Coventry Blitz project, whether by donating your family stories or photos, or by making a financial donation to help with my ongoing costs of researching and publishing these resources online, then you would be most welcome.
Please contact me if you wish to share your family recollections of the Coventry Blitz, or provide details about family members who lost their lives in the air raids. If you are able to make a financial donation you can do so by clicking the Donate button. Thanks, as always, go to the generous people who have already supported this site. A detailed collection of facts and figures about the Coventry Blitz compiled by Maurice Rattigan, and reproduced here by kind permission of the author.
Includes some sketches produced by Maurice as a teenager, depicting what he saw of the bomb damage, and a plan of where many bombs landed. Currie, telling the story of his father's memories of the Coventry blitzes of and Information I have collated on those members of the local Home Guard companies who were killed in the Blitz. In memory of the firemen who gave their lives during the Coventry Blitz.
Includes a list of victims. This is a new section of the website, to publish poetry about the Coventry Blitz. Rattigan, written in November when he came home to Coventry after the Blitz, whilst on leave from the army.
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