page_title: 11th Anti-Aircraft Division (United Kingdom)
section_title: Coventry Blitz
hierarchical_section_title: 11th Anti-Aircraft Division (United Kingdom) / The Blitz / Coventry Blitz
caption_attribution_description: English: Broadgate in Coventry city centre following the Coventry Blitz of 14/15 November 1940. The burnt out shell of the Owen Owen department store (which had only opened in 1937) overlooks a scene of devastation.
context_page_description: The 11th Anti-Aircraft Division was an air defence formation of the British Army during the early years of the Second World War. It defended the West MIdlands during The Blitz, including the notorious raid on Coventry, and the subsequent Baedeker Blitz, but only had a short career.
context_section_description: At the time the 11th AA Division was created, the industrial towns of the UK were under regular attack by night, to which the limited AA defences replied as best they could. The West Midlands had already suffered badly, with Birmingham and Coventry receiving heavy raids in August and October. The new division was still being formed when the Luftwaffe launched a series of devastating raids, beginning with the notorious Coventry Blitz on 14/15 November.
  The Coventry raid was preceded by a dozen pathfinder aircraft of Kampfgeschwader 100 riding an X-Gerät beam to drop flares and incendiary bombs on the target. The huge fires that broke out in the congested city centre then attracted successive 40-strong waves of bombers flying at heights between 12,000 and 20,000 feet to saturate the defences. The AA Defence Commander (AADC) of the 95th HAA Rgt had prepared a series of concentrations to be fired using sound-locators and GL Mk. I gun-laying radar, and 128 concentrations were fired before the bombing severed all lines of communication and the noise drowned out sound-location. Some gun positions were able to fire at S/L beam intersections, glimpsed through the smoke and guessing the range. Although the Coventry guns fired 10 rounds a minute for the whole 10-hour raid, only three aircraft were shot down over the UK that night, and the city centre was gutted.
  The change in enemy tactics led to HAA guns being moved from London to the West Midlands (for example, the 6th HAA Regt).
caption: Coventry city centre following the 14/15 November air raid
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