Three-quarters of the city centre - including the ancient cathedral - was ablaze. A report said that "pressure on the mortuary service was so heavy that at one point, they were seeing 60 bodies in one hour.
Some 40 to 50 were unidentifiable, owing to mutilation". The city's defences were overwhelmed and those fighting fires were themselves being killed or severely injured - the head warden at Alan Hartley's Air Raid Precautions post among them. Mr Hartley said: "We tried to phone for an ambulance but the lines were down. There was nobody else. The teenager hurried through the streets, dodging pieces of searing shrapnel.
As he neared the centre, he found a city ablaze. He said: "The houses on both sides of the street were burning. It is believed people died in the bombings, with a further 1, injured.
Yet, within weeks of the raid - and contrary to all expectations - the city revived. Factories were soon turning out aircraft parts that would be used to avenge the attack.
Arthur Alfred Fennell, a factory worker, recalled: "I remember there was a feeling among some that we wanted revenge. Ivy Cumberlidge, whose home was destroyed, said: "We lost a lot of family friends and it took a while to get over it. My dad didn't like me doing it but it felt important to be helping with the war effort. How had Coventry's deeply traumatised residents been able to recover? Prof Edgar Jones believes it took just a few days for the Blitz spirit to come to the fore.
He said: "The Blitz spirit was not a myth. People recovered and got their nerve back and returned to a semblance of normality. For those who had lost loved ones, Coventry's close-knit community helped them get through this very worst of times.
Miss Batten said: "It was like a trench, one big long grave, with the bodies wrapped up next to each other. But everybody used to pull together in those days and I think that was what got us through. People would swap things like tea and butter with their neighbours.
People rallied round. Mrs Bees said: "People made a very big thing about that. When you are homeless and you have nothing to eat, you have more important things on your mind.
Prof Jones points out that, even in the face of a devastating assault of the nature experienced in Coventry, communities find ways to rebound.
He said: "Communal living helps people to recover - I believe it's in our biology. Yet a few years later, the Allies were working to "Coventrate" German cities like Hamburg and Dresden. Mr Taylor said: "There was no direct "revenge" motive as people often think - it happened, after all, four years later. In four raids between 13 and 15 February , the British and Americans dropped more than 3, tonnes of bombs on Dresden, killing an estimated 25, people.
But Prof Jones argues that just as the Blitz spirit in Coventry meant civilians did not capitulate to the enemy, so too did that hold true in Dresden and also in Hamburg - where more than 40, people were killed in a single week of Allied bombing.
He said: "The British and the Americans had done a lot of careful calculations, based on battlefield figures, about the number of people required to be killed or wounded in order to prompt psychological breakdown among the rest - in other words, the level of attack you need to provoke a surrender. Yet, he added, the German surrender was prompted by the arrival of troops on the ground - not airstrikes. He said: "The popular view is that civilians were inherently weak - they did not wear uniforms, they had no training, they would fall apart under pressure.
They work in communities and are actually very resourceful. After the war, the communities of the two cities that became symbolic of the devastation - Coventry and Dresden - were twinned. Today, in the grounds of Coventry's ruined cathedral stands a sculpture presented to the city by Dresden's Frauenkirche - its landmark church that was destroyed in the war and later rebuilt.
Mr Taylor said: "The relationship between Coventry and Dresden is a fine thing, one that allows a little faith that human nature can sometimes change and get better. Image source, Getty Images. The raid sent the people of Coventry into a state of shock.
The most notable building to be destroyed in the raid was Coventry's medieval cathedral, St Michael's. People "didn't know where they were or where they were going", eyewitnesses recall. This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.
The Luftwaffe even had time to film the bombing. Map shows key factories, as well as local gasworks, targeted by the German Luftwaffe on 14 November Image source, Coventry History Centre. The map is an excerpt of one produced after the 14 November raid showing buildings damaged in the city centre.
Image source, Imperial War Museum. Image source, Historic Coventry. A mass grave was dug for Coventry's dead. Food was scarce and people were panicking. That Dresden has been preserved but Coventry forgotten is something which is hard to explain, except the cost of winning the war was so high that Britain wanted to remove its bomb sites and move on. Why Hitler sent bombs to Coventry. Jackie Litherland Durham. Topics Second world war Adolf Hitler Coventry letters. Pre-planned retaliatory raids by Bomber Command against Berlin and other German cities were also under way even as the Luftwaffe sowed destruction on Coventry.
Fighter Command was ordered into action. But the British night-fighters, most still lacking onboard radar, could not find the enemy bombers, and the local anti-aircraft artillery likewise proved ineffectual.
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. Mr Charman says it is significant that Mr Martin, the only witness to Mr Churchill opening the red box, believed the prime minister "genuinely didn't know that Coventry was to be attacked - he thought London was the target".
The fact that a small air raid did in fact occur in London that night, Mr Charman adds, gives credence to the suggestion that the box really did predict a raid in the capital - and suggests Mr Churchill's haste to return to the city was founded on a genuine desire to be where the action was. Mr Charman says the RAF did indeed detect the the navigation signals over Coventry, but tried to intercept and then jam them; one theory suggests this failed because the wrong frequency was chosen.
Plus, he argues, there would have been very little the British authorities could have done to protect the people of the city even if they had been forewarned. Key events of World War II. Beyond the Blitz: 70 stories for 70 years. Conspiracies and Myths - the Coventry Blitz.
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