Our annual act of remembrance to those who lost their lives, were injured, suffered or fought to save our city following the Coventry Blitz
Although Coventry suffered 43 bombing raids during World War 2, the worst came on the evening of November 14th 1940.
The attack, code-named Operation Mondscheinsonate (Moonlight Sonata), was designed to destroy as much of Coventry’s factories and businesses as possible.
Reports say that marker flares were dropped at 7.20pm by Heinkel He 111’s before the opening wave of bombers unleashed high explosives upon the city, knocking out the electricity, gas and water supplies and making craters in the roads so that fire engines struggled to get to fires.
More and more bombs fell on the city reaching it’s climax around midnight. This included 500 tonnes of high explosives, 50 parachute air-mines, 20 incendiary petroleum mines and 36,000 incendiary bombs before the all clear sounded at 6.15am.
Around six hundred Coventry folk lost their life that night, although estimates put it well over the thousand mark. Another one thousand more Coventrians were injured and 4,000 homes plus three quarters of the city’s factories were destroyed in what was the worst night in the long history of our historic city.
To all those who lost their lives, or were injured, suffered, helped others or fought to save our city - WE WILL REMEMBER YOU