Coventry Blitz: 80th Anniversary

Johnny Mercer Excerpts

Wednesday 11th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Defence People and Veterans (Johnny Mercer)]

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Coventry North East (Colleen Fletcher) for a very moving contribution. I welcome this important debate, and congratulate her on securing it.

Although almost 80 years have passed, as we reflect on what happened that night many people will have in mind the ruins of Coventry cathedral, which the hon. Member mentioned as a poignant reminder of the scars that those raids left on the city. As she will know, Coventry was a major manufacturing centre for the British aircraft industry. It built its reputation, and showed it time and again during the first world war and the second world war, but that manufacturing industry also made it a target. The Luftwaffe raid on the night of 14 November 1940 was designed to stifle that proud city’s history and innovation.

For the Nazi regime, the battle of Britain was not the end of the argument on air power, and, one step ahead of the allies, they had developed a new targeting system to get their bombers on target. Using this very system, on 14 November at just past 7 o’clock in the evening, the first aircraft—KG 100s—flew over Coventry, dropping flares to illuminate the city for the following waves of bombers. As the hon. Member said, for around 11 hours Coventry was shaken by bombs as they fell throughout the night. The last bombs fell at about 5.30 am the following morning of 15 November. The devastation left behind was absolutely unprecedented at the time. Firefighters from across the east midlands raced to Coventry to desperately battle the flames that roared across the city, but their bravery saw some three dozen of their own killed, proving fruitless against the reign of incendiaries. The ruins of the Cathedral Church of St Michael stands in mute testimony to the horrors of that evening.

In the aftermath of the raid, our military leaders’ thoughts turned to how the Germans had been able to operate with impunity to such tragic effect over Coventry. Although it is a persistent and widely published claim that Churchill sacrificed Coventry to keep British code-breaking a secret, this is a myth. Enigma and signals intelligence had some prior understanding that Moonlight Sonata—the general name that the Germans gave the raid—would target a midlands city, but they did not know which one. As the events that night showed, even knowing that crucial information would not have been enough to avoid the onslaught. Sadly, that night Coventry paid the price for defences that had proved to be entirely inadequate. Despite a raid lasting for 10 hours on one target, RAF night fighters did not shoot down a single bomber. This was undoubtedly a heartbreaking and frustrating experience for the Royal Air Force, whose heroics only a few months earlier had secured the daylight skies from German aggression in the battle of Britain.

In the skies at night, it was very different. This was not for lack of endeavour, for though the RAF night fighters had launched over 120 sorties, desperately searching the night skies for German bombers, this was a form of aerial defence very much in its infancy. Air crew were sorely lacking the training and tools for the task; furthermore, they faced an almost impossible task against an enemy that held all the cards, for the onus was on the RAF to find them and intercept them in darkness across the vastness of the night skies. The ground-based radar system was optimised to track bombers approaching the coast, but not inland, and was not accurate enough to allow the RAF fighters close enough for visual contact. Even if they had been able to see them, the night fighter aircraft were little faster than their adversaries—barely able to catch the lumbering German bombers, never mind shoot them down. Only one German bomber was lost that whole evening, and that fell victim to an anti-aircraft gun battery near Loughborough.

However, the tragic events that unfolded that night over Coventry are not the end of the story, for this was to be one of a number of catalysts to drive forward significant developments. Those early systems that had failed in terms of detection and training over Coventry would be refined, tried, tested and improved, over and over again, to provide the capabilities that the Royal Air Force employs today. The modern Royal Air Force systems can trace their roots right back to those years. Through the development of its integrated air surveillance and control system, the Royal Air Force has built on the principles founded by the Chain Home radar system to deliver it on a far grander and more comprehensive scale. Through a complex array of overlapping radar and information built up through military, civilian and our NATO partners’ networks, our air personnel are able to keep a watchful eye on the whole of the UK airspace and beyond.

Through that constant vigilance, threats are now identified and appropriate actions taken, scrambling Typhoon interceptor aircraft where necessary. These are a far cry from their sluggish night fighter forebears: the Typhoons can zero in on aircraft faster than the speed of sound, and are guided to their targets’ locations with unerring precision. These interceptors, which together with our comprehensive air and space surveillance system form part of the United Kingdom’s quick reaction alert, are on duty every hour of every day. They now keep our country safe and prevent unchallenged encroachment of our airspace. Against the backdrop of an uncertain world, we need these skills and this training as much as we ever have.

If the events of Coventry have taught us anything, it is that we cannot take the defence of the United Kingdom for granted. It is telling that what befell the city that night was not due to a lack of human spirit or effort, which the people of Great Britain have shown time and again—that night and since—but was the consequence of an enemy operating its technological advances. It is therefore right that we continue to support our armed forces: recognise their efforts, reward their bravery, and give them the tools and technologies to succeed. In doing so, we should continue to strive to ensure that we can defend them against the threats we face today, through our determination that we will never again see an attack like the blitz on Coventry 80 years ago. We learned the lessons, and as I said earlier today, if we are to truly honour and remember those who sacrificed, we have to learn and change what we do to make sure it can never happen again.

From a city that suffered a similar blitz—Plymouth—the city the I represent, I pay tribute to the hon. Lady. What is extraordinary about these cities is their ability to regenerate and to never give up, and that extraordinary spirit saw that generation through the war. I am sure that her relatives, whom she spoke of tonight, would be very proud of her for having secured this really important debate about a terrible tragedy that we must redouble our efforts to ensure never happens on this nation’s soil again.

Question put and agreed to.