Researched and written 9 October 2026. Sources are listed at the end.
The raid
The Luftwaffe called it Operation Moonlight Sonata. More than 500 aircraft attacked Coventry from 7pm on 14 November 1940 for 11 hours, into the morning of 15 November. Huge firestorms swept the city centre.
Between 380 and 554 people were killed and thousands more were injured or made homeless. More than 4,000 houses were damaged or destroyed, along with around three quarters of the city's industrial plants. Apart from London, Hull and Plymouth, no British city suffered more damage from the Luftwaffe.
Why Coventry
The city was packed with armaments, munitions, aircraft and aero-engine factories, which made it a target. Some have claimed that Hitler ordered the raid in revenge for the RAF's bombing of Munich six days earlier, choosing a city whose medieval heart was among the finest in Britain.
The cathedral
St Michael's, a fourteenth-century church made a cathedral in 1918, was bombed almost to destruction that night. Only the tower, the spire, the outer wall and the tomb of its first bishop survived. Provost Richard Howard had the words Father Forgive inscribed on the wall behind the ruined altar.
Three medieval roof nails salvaged from the rubble became the Cross of Nails, which now sits at the heart of the high altar cross in the new cathedral. It gives its name to the cathedral's Community of the Cross of Nails.
Rebuilding
After the war Coventry was rebuilt under the Gibson Plan, with a pedestrian shopping precinct that was the first of its kind in Europe on such a scale. Sir Basil Spence won a competition in 1950 to design the new cathedral, keeping the ruins as a garden of remembrance beside it. It was consecrated in 1962.
Many of the city's surviving historic buildings were cleared by a council that saw no need for them, including some that could have been repaired.
Visiting today
The ruins and the new cathedral stand side by side in the city centre and entry is free, with a suggested donation. The cathedral's visitor pages list a Blitz Museum among its sights. Stoke Lodge and Stoke House are about 2 miles by road from the cathedral, Humber Hub about 2 miles and Sullivan Heights about 2 miles.
Sources: Wikipedia: Coventry; Wikipedia: Coventry Cathedral; coventrycathedral.org.uk/visit/visit-coventry-cathedral/faqs. Distances by road from each house, worked out on OpenStreetMap.
