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A city road in England
– one night in 1940
 It
is not widely known that the CWGC also keeps records
of all Commonwealth civilians who died as a
result of "enemy action" in the Second World
War – the Civilian Roll of Honour. Although it
covers the whole of the Commonwealth, most of the names
are from cities in the UK, which were badly bombed.
During the Blitz, over 2 million houses (60% of these
in London) were destroyed and 60,000 civilians were
killed with 87,000 seriously injured. Of those killed
the majority lived in London. Until halfway through
the war more women and children in Britain had been
killed than soldiers.
The city of Coventry was home to many factories such
as Dunlop, Daimler, GEC, Humber and Armstrong-Siddeley,
which produced a whole range of products for the war
effort from bombers to scout cars to tanks and machinery.
This made it a prime target for destruction.
On the 8th November, 1940 the RAF bombed Munich. Hitler
made a public promise that "an attack on the capital
of the Nazi movement would not go unpunished."
On the night of the 14th November, German bombers flew
over Coventry. For ten hours, from dusk to dawn, there
was seldom a period of more than two minutes when a
bomb could not be heard falling. The city took the force
of 150,000 firebombs and 503 tons of high explosives,
as well as 130 mines dropped by parachute. Seven vital
factories were hit, halting production for months. In
the city centre, 60,000 out of 75,000 buildings were
destroyed or badly damaged; 568 people were killed and
countless more injured.
Foleshill Road
Foleshill Road leads northwards out of the city centre.
Look at what happened to the inhabitants of one road
on one night in 1940.
Click
here for the register entries of civilian war dead
for Foleshill Road.
Using statistics
Your task is to use Excel and produce a graph
to show:
- the age range of those who died
If you’re not sure how to produce the
graphs click
here for a Step-By-Step Guide. The
example uses data from Glenwood High School so
you will need to insert the figures for Foleshill
Road.
- the locations of those who died – by
house number or specific place
N.B. The ages of babies
are in months. To put these into Excel:
- select the cell in which you want the age
to appear in the long white bar at the top
- as an example, for 6 months, put in =6/12
then press enter. In the cell 0.5 will appear
Consider the following questions:
- Who was the youngest to die?
- Who was the oldest?
- How many families were affected, in the total
number of people killed?
- Find the family that suffered the greatest
loss of life.
- Find the location that was worst hit. Can
you explain this?
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