November 15th, 1940 (FRIDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: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.
RAF Fighter Command:
London is bombed heavily this night. More than a 100 bombers drops HE's and incendiaries. Drury Lane Theatre is hit.
RAF Bomber Command: 4 Group: Raids are carried out on Berlin, Hamburg, Bremen and ports from Stavanger in Norway to Lorient in Brittany. The raid on Berlin caused a number of serious fires which were visible 30 miles away.
Motor minesweepers HM MMS 119, MMS 120, MMS 121, MMS 122 ordered.
Corvette HMS Delphinium commissioned.
The prototype de Havilland Mosquito takes off for the first time; designed as a bomber fast enough to dispense with defensive armament, it has a top speed of 400 mph (644 km/h).
GERMANY: During the night of 15/16 November, 67 RAF Bomber Command Wellington, Whitley, and Hampden bombers attack Hamburg doing extensive damage to the city and shipyards, with no loss of aircraft. Another 25 find alternative targets.
POLAND: Warsaw: The Jewish ghetto, with 400,000 inhabitants, is sealed off from the rest of the city.
ALBANIA: The RAF Bomb the port of Valona, base to Italian troops and supplies coming from Bari.
GREECE: HQ British Air Forces in Greece is formed to control units operating in Greece. Air Vice Marshal J.H. D'Albiac is in command. The unit ceased to exist following fall of Greece, Apr 1941.
LIBYA: Sidi Barrani: As Italian troops work to fortify this remote coastal village, the limit of their advance towards the Nile Delta, British troops are carrying out clandestine preparations for a major counter-offensive.
Moving only by night, and lying low under camouflage netting by day, they are burying large quantities of water and fuel in secret dumps along the 75-mile "no-man's-land" from Mersa Matruh and westward.
Marshal Graziani shows no sign of advancing further. An Italian observer reports a "holiday atmosphere" in their ranks as more British tanks arrive in Egypt.
EGYPT: Cairo: Telegram from HQ RAF ME to Air Ministry: [In reply to Churchill's of the 13th.]
CAS has explained that high figures quoted represent large proportion of non-operational aircraft and ancillary personnel. Rest assures I will continue to operate all available aircraft whilst not providing their fighters with too easy prey.
FRENCH EQUATORIAL AFRICA: In Gabon, Brigadier General Charles DeGaulle, Commander-in-Chief Free French Forces, visits Vichy prisoners in an attempt to win them over to Free France. Most reject the offer and are interned along with Air Force General Marcel Tetu, the Vichy Governor-General of French Equatorial Africa, at Brazzaville.
U.S.A.: Submarine USS Trout commissioned.
The first 75,000 men are called to Armed Forces duty under the peacetime draft (conscription).
ATLANTIC OCEAN: U-65 sank SS Havbør and Kohinur in Convoy OB-235. U-65 captured the second officer of the ship Kohinur after sinking that vessel.
BERMUDA: U.S. naval air operations began from Bermuda, one of the bases involved in the destroyers-for-bases pact with the U.K.. First to operate are the PBY-2 Catalinas of Patrol Squadron Fifty Four (VP-54) based on the seaplane tender (destroyer) USS George E. Badger (AVD-3).