The bombing of Coventry, Ultra intercepts, truth and myth.

Hi there,

I've been reading an old copy of 'Ultra Goes To War' by Ronald Lewin. In it he describes how Enigma decrypts were made prior to the bombing of Coventry listing three cities earmarked for bombing. Birmingham, and Wolverhampton were successfully identified as targets, but the third city was not identified until after Coventry was bombed.

Now, I know there are stories out there about how Coventry was somehow offered up as a sacrifice, by not evacuating civillians, or bolstering anti aircraft defences etc. in order to protect the secret of the allies having cracked enigma. So, I tried to see if there was any credible source for such stories.

A few books came up in my search for answers, Bodyguard Of Lies by Anthony Cave-Brown, The Ultra Secret by FW Winterbottom.

I just wondered if anyone here had read these books, and what their opinion on the matter is, was Coventry left to the Luftwaffe to protect the code, or were the enigma intercepts not understood well enough to be of any use?

Thanks.

S.

 

Here´s the "official" version, I think...

Winston Churchill and the Bombing of Coventry - The Churchill Centre

 

Haven't read either of the books you mention, but RV Jones devotes a few pages to the subject in Most Secret War.

Jones was head of technical intelligence, he led the efforts to counter the German bombing aids. He says on the night of the Coventry raid he knew a large attack was in the offing, but that they didn't know what the target was, apart from the fact it was probably somewhere in the Midlands.

 

I know in peace time Coventry was a Car manufacturing city during the war did they produce tanks ?

 

Thank you all for the replies.

The more I read about this the more I believe the 'Coventry Sacrifice' to be a widespread myth. I might have to chase down a couple of those books though in any case.

As Hop says, they knew there would be an attack in the Midlands, but the Luftwaffe codeword for Coventry, Korn, was not understood.

As for Coventrys war production, it seems both Blenheims and Mosquitos were made there, and a range of engines in use by the armed forces. Manufacturers included Dunlop, GEC, and Armstrong Whitworth.

Thanks again for the replies.

 

If you think about it, the claim that Coventry was 'scarificed' is total nonsense. Because how does that fact that they might have known Coventry was due to be bombed change anything.
British towns and cities had been under constant attack for months when this attack took place, the news that Coventry was due to be bombed, would have led to nothing more than the local civil defense units being placed on high alert, because there was little else to be done, evacuation was not an option.

 

Another myth that has grown since the Ultra/Enigma secrets were revealed in the 1970s is that the British were reading all the Enigma traffic as soon as it was sent. In 1940 this was possible for a very limited number of intercepted messages. First the message had to identified as of suffcient priority, using analysis of the probable transmitting station & other minor non Enigma dependant charateristics. If it was identified as high priority then it went into the cue to be run though the decoding process. If the Engima key for the day, for that particular group of German transmitters had been already cracked, the message could be decoded and sent to the appropriate HQ within a hour or two. If the key had not yet been identified then the message had to wait until the Bombe machine assigned that key identified it. Some times that happened quickly, other times it took all day, some times it took much longer.

In 1940 the British were a long way from automaticlly decoding even a portion of the Enigma encrypted messages. Many days the key was never found at all and the messages had to wait until later, creating a backlog. The various branches of the German military had their own schedules and key books for establishing daily Engima keys. So, the Luftwaffes key for its operationalHQ radios were not the same as those of the Wehrmacht. And different operatonal groups would have different key schedules. Thus when one of the Bombe analytical machines matched the key for one set of messages there were still a dozen other encryption keys for the same day to be found for other message groups.

At the time of the BoB more traditional methods of signal intellegence were just as valuable as the Ultra system. Analyzing the direction & power of the transmissions, number of messages, characteristics of the radio operators hand on the transmitter, length of messages, characteristics of the transmitter such as the frequency used... all allow the analyst to tease a picture out of the enemy radio transmission, without decrypting any message. The German pilots also used low grade security and berevity codes for their voice transmissions. By September 1940 the Brits had a fair ammount of sucess at understanding those voice transmissions.

 

Another 'Sacrifice' theory that has appeared is connected to operation Jubilee, the Dieppe raid. The basic idea is the Germans were informed of the raid in advance through several doubled spys operating in Britian. The Brits had complete control over these spys, and wished to establish the credibility of them with the Germans.

 

Many short films were made during WWII by the RAF Film Production Unit.
These pieces were known as GENs or GAFs and showed various aspects of the RAF at war - including 'on location' footage to send home, and home-life footage to send out to those serving.

This 5 minute Imperial War Museum clip, GEN No. 16, is from July 1945, and shows how life was carrying on in Coventry shortly after hostilities had ended, with the specific message to "Get the thing over chaps, and come back and help us"!

It contains wonderful footage of a recently blitzed but cleaned up and recovering Coventry, with a look towards a bright future with some hard work ahead. A gem of a film for anyone with a Coventry connection.

For a related webpage discussing my views about Churchill's prior knowledge, or otherwise, of Coventry's Blitz, please see....
http://www.historiccoventry.co.uk/blitz/myths.php#churchill

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9m9corOXjmo