Moonlight Sonata

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "

• There is an especially heavy and effective German attack on Coventry (Operation Moonlight Sonata) involving 449 planes. Thirteen He-111s guided by X-Gerät radio navigation beams that the British cannot yet disrupt lay down pathfinder flares and incendiaries, providing visual targeting for the hundreds of bombers following. They drop 450 tons of high explosive bombs, 50 parachute mines, and 36,000 incendiary bombs. 6,000 buildings and homes are destroyed or damaged and 568 civilians are killed.

- 121 sorties are flown by RAF night-fighters but they are only able to damage one bomber. Exhaust glow from Hurricanes and Defiants are alerting the Germans to their presence and lack of radar makes interception difficult. One bomber is downed by AA fire.

 

- This raid will later become infamous due to a debunked 1970s claim that Ultra revealed the mission and target and that Churchill declined to act on it to protect Ultra. Messages were in fact broken about the raid but no target was indicated and it was believed that London was to be the target. It will also be claimed that Coventry had been left alone until this large raid, but Coventry has been bombed seventeen times between August and the end of October, 1940.

- King George VI will tour the city on the 15th and the Mayor will remark, “We’ve always wanted a site for a new civic centre and now we have it.” "