Iv'e visited both Coventry Cathedral and Cologne Cathedral,both buildings have that aura given out by Historic buildings.
I will defer to your better understanding on this one, then. Luckily it came down to 'might is right' in the end.
Martin Middlebrook's book "The Hamburg Raids" is well worth reading. There are some parallels with Coventry in view of the technology used. The Luftwaffe were in 41 well ahead of the RAF in terms of navigational and targeting aids and they could concentrate their effort better. In 43 the RAF used "Window" for the first time , that and H2S which allowed them to accurately find and mark the docks which stood out clearly on the radar screens - it was now the RAF who could concentrate and deliver their payloads. The difference , the RAF had four engined heavies carrying a greater payload , backed up by the 8th Airforce who bombed the following day. The firestorm was something which weather conditions brought on , terrible as it was Hamburg was not a war crime and for me a Paul R sums up the situation pretty well.
Was Hamburg attacked because of the war industry or because of the Douhet thery (Harris wanting to win the war on his own ) ?
LJ, I know its wiki but here is what they have to say about it: Bombing of Hamburg in World War II - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rightly or Wrongly I always think that Coventry is thrown up when the blitz is mentioned because they (Churchill and his government) knew Coventry was going to be bombed but they did nothing because they didn't want the Germans to realise they had cracked a code or intercepted a signal that it was going to be bombed. The official line, FWIW. From Hinsley's British Intelligence in The Second World War, Volume 1
The first and Last.....Adolf Galland Published by EYRE METHUEN. Coventry Raid. Approach and attack were made from between 9,000 and 18,000feet.Navigation was done by radio from coastal stations,and by a beam directed from the coast on to the target. We flew singly and not in formation.The English defence was fairly powerless at the beginning against the German night raiders.The R.A.F. night fighters were still being developed,and,in spite of feverish efforts,achieved no results worth mentioning. Most dreaded were the A.A guns,especially in the belt around London.On the other hand,the exploding A.A. shells were a great help in locating the target in bad weather.Taken all in all the German losses during the night raids remained within reasonable limits.Losses through weather conditions and errors of navigation were equal to those caused by defence. The best results of the night raids were achieved during periods of full moon,with good weather and a clear view of the ground. Such a night was November 14th-15th 1940.The German squadrons had a particularly important target for the night in Coventry,an industrial town in Warwickshire where,in addition to essential war factories,there were important works of the vital aircraft industry. The first waves managed to cause fires in the target areas which could be seen from a great distance.The squadrons which took part with about 800 aircraft made up to three sorties that night against Coventry,the total load of bombs released being 1,000 tons,and as regards execution and effect was the optimum of a concentrated night raid. The German Luftwaffe never again repeated this success in this form,and the British only produced something similar much later with quite different recources. Coventry was an accidental success.With insufficient aid in navigation and location of targets,the night raiders over England,who were dependent on the weather during this time of the year,could not achieve any shattering effect,despite their moderate losses. Slowly the German night raids faded out.In April 1941,they were almost entirely stopped. Without fanfares or fuss,the Battle of Britain came to an end.
An uncle of mine from the Netherlands was taken as forced labour and was in Hamburg from 1941 until he was liberated. He experienced the bombings as badly as the Germans, perhaps more so as they were not allowed down the air raid shelters. Although the experience had a profound and traumatising effect on him, he would never say a bad word against the allies. As far as he was concerned the sooner the enemy were defeated, the sooner he could go home. If he lost his life in the process, that so be it. He was well treated by the people he was billeted with and had nothing against ordinary Germans and on retirement sold his business in America, to a German.
Gotthard I do understand your curiosity and I do appreciate the care in which you have phrased your initial question to avoid giving offence to others but in all honesty I think you will never have complete answers to your initial thread title Coventry v Hamburg. The first point I would make is that I firmly believe that it is a basic facet of human nature to view things from ones own "mindset" and so my answer is, and will always be, based on the fact that I lived in the times of which we speak. To get an alternative viewpoint you will have to leave this thread open so that the "subsequent generations" can agree or disagree about whether or not it was right to bomb certain targets. I, and others on this forum of a similar age group, lived in a world that had seen with horror the birth of the Third Reich and it's eventual rise to complete and utter domination of Europe. As a Londoner I witnessed and lived through the initial Blitz and when eventually I was posted abroad I avidly read the news from home that spoke of the sufferings of the civilian population. The British public of that era were heartened, there is no other word for it, at the thought and the knowledge that the Germans were getting a taste of their own medicine and all bombing targets were treated as being equitable if they were considered as being of value to the German war machine. I was proud that one of my brothers was in Bomber Command and grieved with the rest of my family when he was killed over Nuremberg. At the time in question it was considered a must to end the war that Hitler had started. Bombing Germany was one of our major means of procuring that end. That's my personal viewpoint. Ron
Harry Hinsley's account of the work undertaken by the TRE in identifing and commissioning electronic counter measures against the radio bombing beams is technically accurate.The premature use of the various bombing beams by the Germans from June 1940 compromised their secrecy and their use in mass bombing gave TRE increasingly the opportunity to use ECM against them.It has been recorded that there was a fear that the Luftwaffe would finally realise that the beam technology had been compromised.This is understandable, but as far as I know,officially,no one has acknowledged that Coventry was sacrificed to maintain the secret after knowing that intelligence on the beams had revealed the most probable target to be Coventry. I think this has been debated many times and there has been no official statement, ie from a government source to support the theory either way.
Ron appreciate the response and thanks for answering it in the spirit for which the discussion was intended. I too believe that Bomber Command did exactly what it had to do and that Britain was right to launch a Strategic Bomber Offensive. It was the only way to strike at the heart of the enemy and was proved ultimately to have played a key role in helping to win the war. Albert Speer makes that plain in his interviews in "The World at War". Unfortunately the war was imposed upon the Democracies, they didnt ask for it to happen but as a consequence, when pushed into a corner, they used every means at their disposal and a key element of that was Bomber Command. My own point to this thread, Ron, was that IMHO the bombing of Coventry, which I had heard before described as an "atrocity" was no worse than the bombing of Hamburg. And I'm not criticising Bomber Command for its bombing of Hamburg. These cities were important targets and were key to disrupting industries. I'm not really looking for answers asuch, merely putting out a school of thought about what could be a sensitive issue and yet again the members of this forum have shown that reasoned discussion about historically sensitive issues can be achieved if approached in the correct way.
Dear All as an example map below shows bomb damage during raid on London 24-24 - 25 /8/40 assumptions made attack of the docks area in East London and reservoirs on West London To my mind this is far from accurate bombing and spreads over a vast area to hit targets.Plus bombers would also drop bombs to lighten the load with the aim to get back to base.Again as you know navigational aids were not that accurate and land marks would be used . Just my thoughts but agree with Ron we will never really get an answer. Page 45: September 18th 1940 this gives a day by day view on the BOB and shows not only military info but the flavour of random bombing attacks upto the end of Sept 1940.
Guys - take a look here Axis History Forum • View topic - Dresden verses Coventry A bit hot and heavy at times...Ger, I hope you're not related to "TonyH" but it answers nearly ALL the questions raised in this thread - the legal status of aerial bombing, the status of Coventry, Hamburg and Desden vs the Hague Conventions...even the industrial value of the Hamburg blitz and the number of factories etc. that were destroyed
Phylo, me and TonyH have nothing in common. Ah jaysus is that what you think of my opinion?? The guy is just stirring it!! I want proper debate. I really should make an effort to get over there more often - you need help!!
LOL I was just making sure he wasn't a third cousin twice removed and living round the corner or something! That boy deserved a good slapping! I don't think he's had the nerve to show his face since...
Ger - I agree with Drew. I was born in Coventry (1950) and my family lived through the raid. It is popularly thought that Churchill knew in advance of the raid, without informing the residents in order to protect the Enigma code which revealed it.. Coventry and Hamburg would always be targets due to their heavy industry and war production, but the bombing of civilans had been set a precedent at Guernica and other targets during the Spanish Civil War. Growing up in 'Cov' in the 1950's provided concilation visits between residents and schoolchildren of Hamburg, Dresden, and Coventry ... which were really good - we all had hopes for the future regardless of our national backgrounds... I have some stories which my parents told me regarding Coventry during this time and I'll always treasure them ...
Ger - since I qualify as having lived ( Lavender Ave.,) and worked in Coventry shortly after the main bombing of November - 1940 - and seen some of the mass graves there - I recall at that time that the British Government knew about the "Beam" navigation employed on Coventry - but two things hampered them - 1) it might compromise their knowlege via ultra - 2) they didn't have the ability to bend those beams elsewhere......as they did later .. It still didn't prevent the Luftwaffe from persistent raids on that City as for too many nights part of each nightshift 7p.m.-7a.m. was spent in cold damp miserable shelters with subsequent loss of production and piecework earnings of Pegagsus Aero Engines at Daimler #2 factory - so I moved to Birmingham -to build Tanks (sic) into yet another Blitz - so I was glad to be called up to get some peace .....in places like Bury St. Edmunds and Barnard Castle Cheers
I don't know if anyone has yet mentioned it, but if you want to win a war, you have to fight, and you have to fight to win. The perfect example of what happens when you only fight half-heartedly is Vietnam. The US could have bombed North Vietnam back into the stone age (to quote Curtis LeMay), but didn't have the political will to do so. And it cost them the war. If the Allies had not bombed military targets inside German cities, trying to avoid civilian casualties, I believe it probable that the Nazis would have won the war. And without the atom bomb, the war in the Pacific might have gone on for another 2-3 years, with millions more casualties. Marc
This thread is quite interesting, it shows some of the commonly accepted views along with facts, which is one of the reasons I'm interested in history and WW2. I don't think the raid on Coventry is actually viewed as a war crime, obviously some see it as such but on the whole it was in keeping with the times. It has been mentioned that the government knew about the raid before it happened, and this again is partially true, however what were they to do about it? One theory I came across not so long ago was the German X- beams were centred over the major factory area so were " bent " a bit to aim the bomber stream at a harmless area of fields, this however failed and the beams moved over Coventry. After a fair bit of research I haven't been able to corroborate this but there are documented cases of the beams being " bent " later in the war. Going a bit deeper into the defence of Coventry and the fact the raid was expected, RAF night fighter technology was in its infancy, plus there were very few of them anyway so at best ( and they did ) they would just harass the stream rather than cause significant disruption. Anti-aircraft guns were in use but not to the extent they were used around London, as you would expect, again, it was down to the finite resources available at the time, remember, a massive amount of equipment had been lost at Dunkirk so was in the process of being replaced in case of the expected invasion. It is incredibly easy to sit at a computer 71 years later and say " oh yes, why didn't they do this " but at the time they didn't have the luxury of information available now. Total war is as it says, total war.. everyone was involved in some way, either in munitions production, farming and food production, transport.. the list is endless so to win, those resources had to be removed from the equation, in theory there were no civilians in ww2, just non-combatants, as everyone " did their bit ". I don't mean to cause offence with any of the above, I don't think any of it is contentious but some is my opinion and I know it isn't shared by all.
is there a specific point in time when the Cov raid became regarded as a 'war crime'? I might be a cynic, but the term almost smacks of some type of late 1980's historical revision...
