November 14th, 1940 (THURSDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM:RAF Bomber Command: 2 Group. Aircraft of Nos. 101, 105 and 110 Squadrons attack Cambrai and Beauvais, home of KG 76 and KG 53. Also airfields at Etaples, Knocke, Rennes and Amiens/Glisy are bombed.
Coventry:
Special Constable Brandon Moss (b. 1909) saved four people trapped under the dangerously unstable debris of two bombed buildings. (George Cross)
London:
The Air Ministry announced:
Today the German Luftwaffe made several unsuccessful attempts to penetrate to London. British fighters put up vigorous resistance enabling them to repel each of the attack waves. Not one bomb fell on London.
In another announcement the Air Ministry said:
On the night before Thursday, the Italian naval port of Taranto was again bombed.
London: Neville Chamberlain's funeral is held at Westminster Abbey.
Prime Minister to General Wavell: General situation makes it very desirable to undertake operation (Operation Compass) of which you spoke to Eden. It is unlikely that Germany will leave her flagging ally unsupported indefinitely. ...now is the time to take risks and strike the Italians ...
Corvettes HMS Auricula and Wallflower launched.
Operation Moonlight Sonata.
Coventry: Last night 449 Luftwaffe bombers, led by the specialised pathfinders of KG 100, bombed the city of Coventry. The 14th-century St. Michael's Cathedral was turned into smoking rubble and many factories making munitions, engines for tanks and aircraft and other war supplies were badly damaged. 568 people were killed and 863 seriously injured. "Coventry is finished" said one survivor.
Many have fled, the army wants to impose martial law until essential services are restored. There is no water supply or transport and the telephone system has been disrupted. The air is still warm from the fire which raged through the city centre and daylight is obscured by a pall of sooty fog. The raid arrived in three streams over Lincolnshire, Portland and Dungeness. The first bombs, 10,224 incendiaries and 48 small high-explosive devices were dropped by 13 He-111s of KG 100 at 7.20 pm. They started fires which acted as beacons for the main force. Land mines, high explosive and incendiary bombs came crashing down. Groups of bombers were assigned to particular factories:
Lehrgeschwader I: The Standard Motor Company and Coventry Radiator and Press Company.
KG 27: The Alvis aero-engine works.
KG 51: The British Piston Ring Company.
KG 55: The Daimler Works.
KG 606: The gasholders in Hill Street.
The factories are situated amongst residential areas though and ordinary homes took the brunt of the bombing. It is estimated that 60,000 out of the city's 75,000 buildings have been damaged, among them 111 factories, 600 shops, 28 hotels, 121 offices and all the city's railway lines.
The city's defences consisted 24 3.7 inch anti-aircraft guns, plus the 12 Bofors of 157/53 Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, a figure acknowledges as inadequate by General Pile of AA Command on the 4th of November. The balloon barrage consisted of 56 balloons of No. 916 and 917 Squadrons, RAF. 121 sorties were flown by RAF night fighters. These consisted of 10 A.I. Beaufighters, 39 A.I. Blenheims, 22 Defiants, 45 Hurricanes, 4 Gladiators and 1 Spitfire. The fighter operations resulted in 11 A.I. detections, culminating in one enemy sighting; one sighting assisted by searchlights and 9 unassisted sightings. 2 engagements resulted from these sightings and one enemy aircraft was damaged. The disappointing number of combats which followed on the 21 interceptions or enemy detections is attributed, inter alia, to the exhaust glow from Hurricanes and Defiants and the poor vision through the perspex screens of Blenheims and Hurricanes. The one German bomber lost was probably attributable to an accident.FRANCE: Vichy France protests German expulsion of French-speaking inhabitants from Lorraine stating, "No measure of this kind was ever under discussion at the Franco-German meetings."
GERMANY: Soviet-German negotiations on the USSR joining the alliance of the fascist states failed.
ROMANIA: Romania's Legionary (Iron Guard) government asks Germany for two tank units, which are immediately sent by German Chancellor Adolf Hitler along with instructors to train their Romanian crews. Italian dictator Benito Mussolini protests and suggests that Romania also should ask for Italian troops. Romania declines.
ITALY:
Rome: The Italian Stefani News Agency reported:
The Italian Armed Forces Bulletin No. 138 reported on the enemy raid on Taranto on the night of 11th-12th November. Yesterday in the House of Commons, Churchill gave a completely false version of this incident. However, Italian authorities do not think it necessary to reply to this kind of tendentious twisting of the facts.
GREECE: RAF squadrons deploy from their bases in the Middle East to Greece under the command of Air Vice Marshal J D'Albiac, Air Officer Commanding RAF Palestine.
ALBANIA: Dimitry Statharos reaches the Albanian front south of Koritsa (Korce) and participates in a week long bombardment of the Italian stronghold. The next two and a half weeks will be his busiest combat period of the six month campaign, in addition to bombarding Italian positions he and his men must fight off the cold and hunger as it is in this three week period that food supplies arrive sporadically and his men must turn to boiling snails at times in order to get by. (Steve Statharos)
SINGAPORE: Air Marshall Brooke-Popham arrives as the new British Commander in Chief.
CANADA: Corvette HMS Trillium arrived Halifax from builder Montreal, Province of Quebec.
Minesweeper HMCS Mahone launched North Vancouver, British Columbia.
In Victoria, British Columbia, the Canadian Joint Board on Defence adopts its 10th Recommendation stating that the government will establish airfields and essential facilities as soon as possible permitting rapid deployment of aircraft to the Territory of Alaska.
U.S.A.: Washington: It is reported that Congress has had to take other quarters because engineers have decided that the 112-ton roof of the House chamber and the 90-ton roof of the Senate may crash any day.
Destroyers USS Hobson and Emmons laid down.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: The German armored ship Admiral Scheer is resupplied by supply ship Nordmark east of Bermuda.