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My World War Two memories in Coventry.

Being a keen cyclist before the war, I arranged to take my holiday in 1939 with a friend, Norman Hughes, on a cycling trip to Cheshire and N. Wales. I chose Wallasey, on the Wirral, as I had an aunt living there who agreed to give us lodgings at her house.
After two weeks ignoring the threat of oncoming war, I returned to Coventry and my studies at college starting the third year of my apprenticeship with R.O.Wright and Co. Structural Engineers.
Our office was in Hertford Street, but now the commercial work was drying up, with no new work on the horizon, other than for the Ministry of Defence. Therefore in 1940, around May or June, Reg Wright decided to close the Coventry office, leaving me out on a limb since I could not afford to pay for lodgings in Banbury, out of an apprentice’s pay, neither could my father subsidise me. The contract for my apprenticeship seemed to count for nought, and I was offered a place in the drawing office of the works engineers department, at ARMSTRONG WHITWORTH’S factory at Baginton near Coventry. Now I was classed as a trainee, with no prospect of attaining the structural engineers degree or as a civil engineer, my great opportunity had gone out of the window.
This was to be a new phase, leading to a major turning point in my career, and a change in fortunes for many in the city. The works was centred at Whitley for design, with machining and small part details and sub assembly manufacture. The main assembly, flight-testing and dispatch flying, took place from at Baginton. As the crow flies the two sites were only a mile apart, maybe two, and a prime target for the German bombers, which were now making sorties over Coventry and the neighbouring cities. With some of the senior draughtsmen, architects and engineers we began two lengthy tasks, one to disperse as much sub-assembly work, to other factories not yet on munitions or military equipment manufacture, plus much of the low skill, detail parts manufacturing.
We appropriated the workshops of motor showrooms, occasionally the whole site, and put in bench and pillar drills as required together with workstations. The sheet metal benders needed their location and power supplies, and even in some cases we installed rows of capstan lathes, to disperse even further the vital output of components instead of relying on the Whitley site alone. I quickly was involved in layout work and my earlier training in site surveying came into its rightful place. There were machine layouts, piping layouts for air lines, steam, water whatever passed through pipes had to be planned for, other guys were on electrical details for the running of the machinery. We went as far afield from the works, as Rugby, Nuneaton, Warwick, Lutterworth, anywhere, where it was possible to house our much needed expanded production services, in whatever suitable building could be commandeered, and our job was to get it up and running, with all the services to run it. A major re-siting of machines at the Whitley plant was required; it was not possible to be so generous with space. We set out to realign the machine shop to accommodate fifty or more lathes in the same space. In the wood working shop it was a must to reduce the reliance on a single motor and the ancient line shafting with the dangerous belt drives. We designed a layout and marked out the foundations for each machine, circular saw, planer, router or whatever, to have its own individual motor and controls.
We worked long hours late into the night, on occasions it was all through the night. On these late shifts Norman, another engineer, with whom I was a trainee, would ferry me home in his tiny Morris Minor saloon. This was pressed into service, whenever we went off site on company business; it was also a ruse to obtain petrol coupons, to supplement the ration, which was restricted to essential road users only. There was a company bus running regularly between the sites at Baginton and Whitley, which we often used, but with our survey pads and equipment etc. it was easier in the car, small as it was. As a final exercise we Norman and I, followed by the others on piping electric’s etc, had to build up a master plan of the whole site at both Whitley and Baginton. We had two huge tables made about 20 feet by 8 feet and stretched over them, from a massive roll the drawing paper on which to make the plans. This great sheet was stapled down then taped along the edges, finally it was dampened to cause it to shrink and tighten. When dry, we produced our masterpiece using a baseline along two adjacent edges ads the datum lines.
The worth of all this activity, together with the re-planning of the two main Coventry works, was paid off, in that no enemy action delayed the manufacture of the essential Whitley bombers coming off the assembly lines. The later production of Lancaster bombers at such high rates was no doubt attributed to our earlier planning efforts. Although other factories suffered their disruptions through the German November blitz on Coventry, we continued with production uninterrupted.
I made a number of friends on site at Baginton, and in the hot summer of 1940 we spent our lunchtime in the swimming pool at the Coventry Knight Hotel, on the main London road, beside the river Sowe. It was a popular haunt of the younger ones, both the lads in the offices, and the girls from the typing pool or other offices, we just cycled down Siskin drive to the pool and after a swim, ate our lunches and wished life could stay like this forever. Many times we would face reprimands for late returns to the office.
I had a friend, who was in the Rover Scouts with myself and others at St. George’s church, the 16th Coventry Scout Troop was based there, Bill Reah was his name and during the summer of 1940 we set up a camp on a farm, at Corley Moor. We would ride out from work each night the five or six miles, plus in my case the five miles from the works, at Baginton. The hard part was getting up in the mornings with the ride ahead of us, and cooking our meals on Primus stoves. I would visit home at the weekend to see mother and the family.
During that summer the Rover Scouts acted as messengers for the ARP Service, for which service to the community the rover scouts were awarded the Silver Star by the Scout organisation. One friend, since he owned a motorcycle was a messenger for the Fire Service, that motorbike was to cost him his life. During the big blitz on Coventry in November 1940 he was riding along the Foleshill road, when a bomb exploded in front of him and he died of his injuries. A full military style funeral was held in his honour, the Scout troop marching to the church, in Allesley village, where the service took place, and to the cemetery behind the church where he was buried.
Those Rover Scouts from St George’s group, who served in the Messenger service, were later awarded jointly by the Boy Scout’s Association, the Silver Cross for Gallantry during air raids on the city.
We received our certificates signed by the Chief Scout Lord Somers in June 1941.
On the night of November 14th, the German bombers arrived over Coventry in force, shortly after seven p.m. The warning sirens had sounded and everyone had rushed for the shelters. The November raid was entirely different to earlier raids, as wave after wave of aircraft came over to dump their deadly cargo on the almost unprotected city. There were anti-aircraft guns around the city, of course, but they didn’t seem that effective in deterring the bombers. Also a smoke screen was lit, but the fires in the city centre were so strong that the screen was insufficient to have any impact on the outcome.
In this area of Coundon, we were very lucky, in that there were not so many stray bombs, although we had our few moments, when we were scared more than we needed to be. Opposite where Haynestone road and Hollyfast road meet, were the large playing fields of Bablake School, and in the glare of the searchlights and fire, we spotted what appeared to be a parachute with a figure hanging from it. I, with a mate from the Home Guard, grabbed our rifles and chased across to capture what we thought was a German airman with a view to arresting him. This was a typical experience of many people that night. However as we got nearer to the boundary fence, we were able to see a cylindrical canister, where we expected to see the man. It was a parachute bomb; we dropped behind a garden wall to shelter from the imminent blast. It was soon forthcoming. We were hardly down to the ground, when an almighty crash sounded, deafening us for minutes. The sports pavilion of the school, which had been housing an Auxiliary Fire Service unit, of volunteer firemen, had been destroyed; there were several casualties, including at least one death, a neighbour from Barkers Butts Lane. Luckily most were out on a call at the time. Almost all the front windows and doors of the houses in Hollyfast road, had the glass blown out, but to my knowledge there were no serious casualties, maybe a few cuts and bruises and the shock that always accompanies the horror of the fear of death.
The raid continued for some ten or eleven hours, as after each lull in the attack, when we thought, ‘it’s over at last,’ a new wave of aircraft arrived to plaster the badly mauled city. From our high vantage point, looking out over the city we were able to see the fires raging in the centre, and out across toward Foleshill and the industrial area of Coventry, but it was not until the next daylight hours before the true effects of the damage would be seen. Needless to say, I did not get out to my safe camping site that night, I presume that we had given up a couple of months earlier, as the shorter and colder nights arrived in the latter part of the autumn.
The aftermath of that night’s treachery, was to be a legacy the citizens would have to bear for years to come, lack of services, water electricity, gas and housing damage to repair or even to rebuild, transport services not running, roads in many areas impassable. The dead to bury, the injured to nurse, the distraught comforted, the lost to be guided, and the relatives assisted whenever needed. For the country at large the need now, was to get the working population back into activity, as soon as possible and producing the equipment of war. So to avenge this atrocity, of fifteen hundred dead and thousands wounded. Little did we know, of the really horrifying retribution, which was to be wrought in the name of winning a war, which was as senseless as any previous conflict?
On the following day we made attempts to get to our workplaces, I personally walked most of the five miles to AWA’s factory at Baginton, with my bike over my shoulder, riding where I could. The factory had escaped the raid, which had been concentrated on the engine works of Daimler and Armstrong Siddeley, the bombers had lost a golden opportunity to wreck havoc on the production lines of the Whitleys we were building. In my office we did not have a full complement of staff and stood around in groups, relating our experiences, and listening to the news of the fate of colleagues as it came through. One draughtsman had died in the bombing; he had lived in Cambridge St. Some days later I went to see if any relatives were there still, but alas, those who had survived had gone, their house and many of their neighbours also, were completely flattened and unrecognisable, among the rubble that was the street. It was several months before the repair gangs drafted in by the Government were able to give us a sample of reasonable conditions. As part of the need to house the troops who came in, released for repair work, based on their trades, were two Scottish soldiers who earlier in the year had been in the retreat from Dunkirk, they were lodgers in my mother’s house. Their trades were tilers, and it must have been pretty dreadful on the roofs that winter, they stayed until Easter 1941, working in all parts of the city, I remember names like Jock and Roger for them, but am not sure.
I was now becoming disillusioned with working in factories, and was in a so-called reserved occupation, meaning that the work I was employed to do, was important to the war effort, which I strongly denied since I was only a junior and a trainee to boot. So I had to find some subterfuge to get out of the place, but if I moved I would be returned AWA or at worst called into the Army, as a conscript. This I did not fancy and resolved to volunteer to join the RAF as aircrew, which was exempt from the reserved occupation, or conscription rules as far as I was aware.
I finally made up my mind to enlist in the RAF, and to this end went to the Sibree Hall in Warwick road, where the Recruiting offices for all three services were located. At the RAF desk, I was interviewed by a Sergeant, who was keener to tell me about the Royal Air Force than to enquire as to my reasons for volunteering. Eventually, we came to the question of my present employers and upon hearing the name Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft, he said ‘No go, you are in a reserved occupation.’ After my pleas for discretion, on the grounds that all I did was fetch and carry for the senior draughtsmen, make tea, run errands and take prints from the drawings, he relented. I had to explain to my boss that the RAF had accepted me for flying training. Thus after a successful medical, and the traditional payment of HM the King’s two shillings as expenses, I had passed the first hurdle and was sent home with the treasured RAFVR button hole badge, to await the call to report.
The explaining to Jack Mellor, the works engineer, wasn’t easy but as I said at the time, I was to train as a pilot, whereas his son-in-law was only an Air gunner. He relented and wished me well, as did Mr. Hammond the senior draughtsman. In the not too distant future, I was to regret the slur I had cast on air gunners, I was friends with many failed pilots, who were pleased enough to be allowed to continue flying, when they opted for gunnery training. The die was now cast, I would wait until October for the call to come, then I hoped I would be free from the shackles of the daily grind, and feel the air on my cheeks in the wide blue of the heavens. The Armed Forces have a way of putting one down, and breaking the high-minded principles we often choose for our futures, I would find out soon enough.
Leaving home in October 1941, I was not to return to Coventry, other than few days leave occasionally, until December 1945.

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