Enigma foretold coventry bombing raid

Hello,
I was always interested in world war 2 history. When i was in school in my history class 42 years ago I was taught by a superb History teacher who taught me all about the History of world war 2. I will never forgot a story he said about the enigma machine. He said that the british had decoded a message on the machine. The message they decoded was that the germans were going to do a massive bombing raid by the lufftwaffe on coventry on a certain night. He said the british knew about this raid and there was going to be massive casualties. What the teacher told me was that it was going to be kept quiet. They had advance warning of this raid but instead of evacuating the city they did nothing. I said why did they do that . He said for the simple reason that if they had evacuated the city the germans would have wondered why the city was evacuated on the night of the bombing raid and they would have figured out that the british must have cracked the messages from the enigma machine. The teacher just told me that those people were sacrificed and it was better to sacrifice a few hundred people in order to know much more important plans that the enigma machine had to offer in the future. I can understand that made perfect scence but after all these years i dont see any information on the internet about this incident. Do any of you experts know anything about it.

 

The story is fake.


In the 1970s, after information about some of our wartime secrets had been released, some writers used this new found knowledge to sell books based upon a conspiracy theory. They alleged that certain authorities knew in advance that Coventry was to be targeted for a heavy raid, but in order to protect ULTRA (our deciphering of German codes using the captured 'Enigma' machine or other methods) our city was left to burn. Put simply, the conspiracy theorists tried to have us believe that if the citizens of Coventry had been given advance warning, then the Germans would have suspected that we'd broken their secret radio codes.
...
Surprisingly, one of the people directly involved in message decryption, Group Captain F. W. Winterbotham, was also one of those who helped to spread the conspiracy that Coventry was 'left to burn'. In the 1970s he wrote an account purely from memory, stating that the name 'Coventry' actually came through in clear type from a German message at 3 o'clock on the afternoon of the 14th. Not only is it unlikely in the extreme that the Germans would be so lax with their coding, but R. V. Jones, the head of Scientific Intelligence, and through whom all messages had to pass, states categorically that no message whatsoever was received that hinted at Coventry as the target.

Wolverhampton and Birmingham had been deduced from the intelligence received, but rather than Coventry as the third target, some sources actually believed that London was the other possible raid target for that night of the full moon in mid-November.
ULTRA, in fact, had been of extremely limited value in this particular case.

The Prime Minister certainly believed London to be that night's target, and to back this up, his movements on the afternoon of the 14th were recorded in the diary of a friend and close colleague at Number 10, Sir John Colville. That afternoon, Churchill set off for his country house in Ditchley, Oxfordshire, where he regularly stayed instead of Chequers on moonlit nights. During the journey he opened his yellow 'Ultra' box and quickly learned that the heaviest bombing raid yet was about to be launched, but on a target as yet unspecified. The additional information about the detecting of the X-Gerat radio signal being aligned on Coventry was not yet available to him. Convinced that the raid was to be on London, he ordered his driver to return him to Downing Street, whereby he ordered his two colleagues into the deep air-raid shelter. Their young lives, he told them, were too valuable to our country's future. He then went up onto the Air Ministry roof with one older colleague to await the raiders arrival.
Those, to me, are not the actions of a Prime Minister who suspected that there was going to be a raid on Coventry.

 

Thanks very much for that information. Very interesting

 

This article is even better. It wasn't like they did nothing, they actually did a lot:

The moment that German radio beams made it clear that Coventry was the target, the Air Ministry ordered eight British bombers to bomb the aerodromes—south of Cherbourg—from which the attackers were expected to take off. A continuous fighter patrol was maintained over Coventry itself, and the “Cold Water” defence preparations were activated. These brought fire engines and civil defence personnel unto Coventry from a wide area around.

The defences of Coventry had recently been strengthened. Following a German air raid on 2 November—the sixteenth on Coventry in a month—Ernest Bevin, the Minister of Labour responsible for factory production, had complained to Churchill about the poor state of the city’s protection.
In response, Churchill had given instructions on November 7 to strengthen Coventry’s anti-aircraft defences. These instructions had been carried out. Around Coventry on the night of 14 November were five times as many anti-aircraft guns per head of the population as there were around London, and one hundred British fighters were airborne. But that could not save the city from the firestorm created by the incendiary bombs.

 

This would be "putting the best face on"/"sugarcoating" the situation. "Five times as many AA guns per head sounds impressive...Till you look at the numbers. 232 AA guns defended London, while 36-40 defended Coventry. It should also be mentioned that roughly 1/3rd of the guns were 40mm Bofors - Not that great against high flying bombers.

100 aircraft were airborne...Sounds impressive too. Till you realize that this was a night raid, and there probably were not 100 night-fighters in the whole of the UK. And any day-fighters used as night fighters were practically useless. Not to mention that night fighters this early in the war were only slightly less useless.

The Myth likely comes from the damage done compared to the above Churchillian "sugarcoating" of the pitifully weak defenses 5X AA guns & 100 fighters airborne.

 

Although they did what was possible, it wasn't a computer game with an unlimited ammo hack. There were dozens or so such targets in Britain - the available resources couldn't be concentrated in all of them.

Actually Coventry was unremarkable in comparison, the Germans achieved nothing there, their next attacks were more devastating, killed more people.
Coventry is only famous thanks to unwarranted Goebbels boasting and fake history peddled by Mr. Winterbotham.

And it was written by the British historian Sir Martin Gilbert, not by Churchill. Not his words, not his sugarcoating. This is what Churchill wrote about it:

The invasion of Britain had been temporarily abandoned, and the attack upon Russia had not yet been mounted, nor was expected outside Hitler's intimate circle. The remaining winter months were therefore to be for the German Air Force a period of experiment, both in technical devices in night-bombing and in attacks upon British sea-borne trade, together with an attempt to break down our production, military and civil.
They would have done much better to have stuck to one thing at a time and pressed it to a conclusion. But they were already baffled and for the time being unsure of themselves.

These new bombing tactics began with the blitz on Coventry on the night of November 14.
London seemed too large and vague a target for decisive results, but Goering hoped that provincial cities or munitions centres might be effectively obliterated.
...
The centre of Coventry was shattered, and its life for a spell completely disrupted. Four hundred people were killed and many more seriously injured.
The German radio proclaimed that our other cities would be similarly "Coventrated". Nevertheless the all-important aero-engine and machine-tool factories were not brought to a standstill; nor was the population, hitherto untried in the ordeal of bombing, put out of action. In less than a week an emergency reconstruction committee did wonderful work in restoring the life of the city.

On November 15 the enemy switched back to London with a very heavy raid in full moonlight. Much damage was done, especially to churches and other monuments. The next target was Birmingham, and three successive raids from the 19th to the 22nd of November inflicted much destruction and loss of life. Nearly eight hundred people were killed and over two thousand injured.

During the last week of November and the beginning of December the weight of the attack shifted to the ports. Bristol, Southampton, and above all Liverpool, were heavily bombed. Later on Plymouth, Sheffield, Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow, and other munitions centres passed through the fire undaunted.

 

They did not need an unlimited ammo hack, as the had plenty of ammunition.
What they needed was better guns & fire control.

You, yourself, are trying to show with your quotes that available resources were concentrated for the defense of Conventry. However, the quotes grossly misrepresent this concentration. Further, it would be worthy noting ineffectiveness of the defenses...The 5XAA guns per head downed 1 German bomber, while the 100 fighters airborne downed 0 German aircraft.

Actually, the raid was the most devastating one carried out against Coventry. There would be another raid against Coventry in 1941, some what less people. Then the final major raid against Coventry in 1942, killed even less than the one in 1941.

It is used by winstonchurchill.org to sugarcoat/misrepresent the defenses arrayed against the German raid on Coventry...Hence my use of Churchillian sugarcoating.

 

The Churchill war ministry started just six months earlier. It wasn't his fault British night fighters weren't up to the task, it wasn't his fault there weren't enough anti-aircraft guns.
Especially that at that time no country had good night fighters and no country had enough anti-aircraft guns.

 

[QUOTE="

100 aircraft were airborne...Sounds impressive too. Till you realize that this was a night raid, and there probably were not 100 night-fighters in the whole of the UK. And any day-fighters used as night fighters were practically useless. Not to mention that night fighters this early in the war were only slightly less useless.[/QUOTE]

I don't really want to get into this kerfuffle but I find it interesting that the Brits didn't come up with a something similar as the German "wilde sau" tactic. Using the burning cities to find the bombers was a very useful stopgap measure for the Germans until they came up with radar that couldn't be corrupted so easily. Hurris, flown by pilots skilled in blind flying could have significanly increase the German losses!

 

It's never leadership's fault when their best laid plans tank...Is it.

From "Coventry: Thursday, 14 November 1940" by Frederick Taylor

Equally irate was the Air Ministry. Which sent to Fighter Command the next day AIR 2/7415

 

The German "wilde sau" was an act of desperation. After all, if your city is burning they've already (at least partially) won.
And the "wilde sau" had to fly directly into your own anti-aircraft fire that was defending the city, that wasn't fun at all.

The proper answer was radar-equipped night-fighters but that was a cutting edge technology in 1940 - that still worked poorly.

 

This is far from a kerfluffle...

Anywho, the British fighters were operating at roughly the same altitude as the German bombers. I believe, at the time, they were relying more on ground observers to find German aircraft.

The Germans were also afraid that the British would have fighters flying along the beams shooting down German bombers.

 

Airborne radar is only half of the equation. A whole new GCI setup was needed, but that was still some months away.

 

While there are no claims and no engagements by Fighter Command over Coventry on 14 November, Anti-Aircraft Command did claim three E/A destroyed at 2122 hours, which crashed in the vicinity of Loughborough.

 

That was the claim first filed. When the War Diary of Unit HQ, 34th AA Brigade, for November, 1940, was written up it had dropped to 2 claimed destroyed.

Timing pretty much clinches the fact that the Coventry batteries were not responsible for the loss. The Do-17 was supposed to bomb Coventry at 2115 hours, and Loughborough is about 40 miles from Coventry. Impossible for a Do-17 to cover this distance in 7 minutes. Thus, the local batteries around Loughborough are responsible for downing the bomber.

 

AA fire in Wilde Sau areas of operation was limited to 5000 meters. So, there was little problem concerning flying into defensive AA, provided the pilot stayed above the 5000 meter hard deck. Of course, if the pilot chose to follow a target below 5000 meters and take the risk, the decision was the pilot's to make.

 

It may have been an act of desperation, but it worked. It worked so well that Goering ordered whole geswaders of wilde sau" They used bomber, transport and destroyer pilots, as well as regular night fighters pilots, all who had a background in night/instrument flying. They kept up the pressure on Bomber Commmand until new Radars came on line.

 

Yep, just quoting from AIR 41/15.

Not necessarily. The claim was from the Coventry batteries engaging at 2122, with the aircraft claimed supposedly crashing at Loughborough, there were no claims by batteries at Loughborough. I might have the crash reports, but most of what we pulled was just through September.