Coventry & Warwickshire in WWII

As for the bombing of the canal, I have no doubt that Kaga is correct and the canal was hit near Sutton Stop. What I questioned was that it was a deliberate target and I was/am unable to understand how such a small target could be targeted from perhaps four miles away in the dark.

I have read that wartime bomber crews could find their way at night by following a railway track or river/canal by the shine of the tracks or the water. Therefore a canal basin may well have shown up clearly enough to have been targeted, particularly within an industrial area as this was where significant damage could be caused.

25,000 ft high is almost 5 miles up. Although I have good eyesight I doubt that I could see a railway line from that distance even in daylight. Reflected light? There was no light except at times a full moon without cloud. There were many, many hits on objects that were not targeted, my pet rabbit for one. Bombs fell on Tom Taylor's farm that just annoyed some cattle and that's all. During the war it was calculated that in London about 15% of the city was open parkland and other unoccupied areas such as swimming baths etc and so those areas would absorb 15% of bombs dropped. This was true to a certain extent because those areas did take a lot of bombs. London has a very big river that did guide aircraft to London Docks. Examine the value of targets. Draining a section of a canal would be little more than a hindrance during a war. As Kaga said, the War Hag took months to repair what would have been possibly 20 yards of canal bank. Why did it take that long? The canal at that point is easily accessible. At more or less the same time half a mile of Stoney Stanton Rd was bombed, it took less than a week to get the traffic flowing again. I have no doubt whatsoever that the canal was damaged at that point. It is not an industrial area and never was. Examine facts, a bomb or bombs fell close to the cooling towers, the canal was a very short distance away. The Electricity Works was by far the more important target, and they missed that. If the area was targetted it would have been the Electricity Works, closing that down would have had a huge impact on war material production in Coventry. I remember bombs dropping in Wyken Slough (and they are still there). The slough wasn't the target - if anything it would, again, have been the power station.

Norman Conquest, I really don't follow your reasoning,mthere is no comparison between Stoney Stanton Road and the canal, Coventry Highways Dept had hundreds of men at their disposal, Coventry Canal had just one repair man. Stoney Stanton Road you could get a sherman tank down it. The canal towpath? Everything they needed had to come by boat. I believe at that time of day they needed a steam hammer to drive in the iron pylons. By boat, how far did that have to travel. How many men trained for canal repair or rebuilding of locks in 1940, but Coventry Highwys Dept? At the point of the bomb 'hit' the canal had a huge drop at the side of the towpath, hindering rebuild. How can you call the lack of water to a power station a hinderance. There is no question that the cooling towers would take longer to rebuild than any part of the electric works. And we all know about the dams and the time and lives that was given to it. My question was what would the effect have been to Coventry had the power station ceased production because of lack of water at that early time of the war. Do you really believe they just dropped bombs willy-nilly? Once again I have to question your judgement, the 'slough'. What I remember, some dropped a casual remark about a splash in the slough although they did not actually see the splash when questioned. This was dispelled by the ARP wardens and the fire watchers who patrolled the area as gossip. As far as I heard no one of authority believed the story - so could Coventry Council make a boating pool above unexploded bombs?

Just a short note for now. There's 1,000s of unexploded bombs scattered around the country. A bomb dropped from 25,000ft buries about 30ft into soft ground. As you probably know many were never dug up, I know of two. One was found in city centre not all that long ago, ring road was closed.

The strange thing about that particular bomb is that it fell in a courtyard in Bond Street yet none of the tenants seemed to notice there was a hole in the ground that wasn't there the night before? The tenements were demolished before I moved there so any evidence of a hole was covered by mounds of building rubble by then. There used to be ponds on the Bell Green council estate when it was first built which I believe were originally formed by bomb craters. I think they've been filled-in since. Likewise the playing fields at Ullathorne School.

Hello Dutchman. I find it amusing about the bomb in Bond St that no one noticed. The Wood End estate was built on farmland that was farmed by Harry Kay and Tom Taylor. There were many bomb holes on both farms but the nearest that fell to habitation was a string that fell on Tom's land only 100 yards from Hall Green Rd. There were more that I was aware of on Tom's 10 acre field that was near Deedmore Rd. Perhaps there are unexploded bombs beneath Wood End.

Kaga. If you troll back through my posts you will see that it was my sister and her boyfriend that reported the bomb in the Slough. Later two other couples reported the same thing. What courting couples could be doing in a field after dark I have no idea. So, it was at least six people that reported the event. How could three groups of people report the same event if it didn't happen? Authorities explained that to remove the bomb the Slough would have to be drained and the mud and tons of earth would have to be removed for little benefit. I would think that the bomb would be very deep down. I had been fishing the Slough that afternoon and evening with a friend and we heard explosions before we got home. Days later we went to explore and found a number of craters between Lady Lane and the Slough. The police also visited the area. The water meadows were hardly a prime target.

Norman Conquest, we go back and forth with this, but people at the 'lekie' (power station) in 1939 expected it be the prime target, and to get flattened? It never did so, why not? Could it have been they were not supplying enough power to the factories? I was going to describe that night and the raid but it's old hat now so . . .

Hi Kaga. I will have to reply to your post above bit by bit as my typing finger is getting sore. The power station did use canal water but only because it was convenient, they didn't have to. All power stations have a large amount of water on site that's called a hot well. It's this pure water that is first pumped to the boilers. Hawkesbury had two Babcock and Wilcox to drive four turbines, a fifth left on standby. High pressure, superheated, steam is raised and it's this that drives the turbines. At Aldermans Green they had four pass turbines. When the steam has passed the final stage the steam energy is almost spent, but it is still steam. This steam is passed through condensers, and the condensed hot water to cooling towers. It's the condensers that use canal water for cooling. The water from the condensed steam is returned to the hot well while the cooling water is returned to the canal. How do I know this??? A retentive memory and a school trip. My other school trip was to a Birmingham ball bearing factory, and that was how exciting it got.

Hi Kaga. As you say, everything that was required to repair the damage would come by boat. As the Oxford had lost its water this would have been impossible. The Grand Union and Coventry could not have been used for this purpose. The lock was not damaged. Consider the facts as known. I don't think bombs were dropped willy nilly, I do think that pilots would have hit a target if they could. Again examine facts. Raids were after dark, air crew didn't know their exact location within a few hundred yards, wind direction and strength could only be guessed at, aircraft would be about four miles high and often be above clouds. So with the best will in the world I cannot see how a small target could be hit. Other question. The power station supplied not only Coventry but other nearby towns so a shut down of several months would have been a disaster. Last point. On another thread I asked what was unique about the locks on the Oxford at Sutton Stop. Now my typing finger is sore so I finish.

Davey. Yes, very good photo's, thank you. I would assume they were taken late twenty or early thirties, from the way I remember it. The big 3.7 AA gun was in a field a little before where the photo was taken at floor level.