[TR] Seventy years ago today...

John Macartney macartney.john at yahoo.co.uk
Tue Nov 9 05:28:28 MST 2010


Knowing there are a number of "history buffs" on this list, I thought I'd just
point out that today is rather significant in terms of the Triumph name.

It's
all a long time ago now - and national 'differences' have thankfully long
been put to one side and will hopefully remain that way. It's important to say
that, as I'm anxious to avoid accusations of emnity and continuation of
hostility. The point of this post is to remember that the *original* Triumph
factory in Coventry - not the later one at Canley which made postwar Triumphs,
was obliterated on the night of 14th November 1940, as part of the Blitzkrieg
in 
WW2. For those of you who have visited Coventry Cathedral as it stands
today, 
the Chapel of Unity is about as close as you can get to the site of
the old 
Triumph car plant off Priory Street. If you want to see what the
Chapel looks 
like today, Google on Coventry Cathedral and then search within
results for 
Chapel of Unity.
I'm proud to say that my maternal grandfather
visited the cathedral on the 
morning following the attack and extracted some
nails of the former 14th century 
roof out of the still smouldering wreckage.
He put them (still warm from the 
fire) into his lunchbox, took them to work
and welded them into a simple Cross 
which he later gave to the Bishop of
Coventry. A (larger) replica of that same 
Cross was then made from larger and
similar nails and this is now to be found on 
the High Altar of the new
Cathedral. Sometime after the war and in a gesture of 
reconciliation,
Coventry Cathedral had another similar Cross made and this was 
presented to
the Frauenkirche Cathedral of Dresden in Germany, in recognition of 
the
British and US Air Force raid on that city during February 13-14, 1945. That
attack saw 773 Avro Lancasters and 527 USAAF heavy bombers taking part and
created perhaps the worst firestorm of WW2 in which many tens of thousands of
people lost their lives.

Lest we forget 'the larger picture' in pursuit of
our hobby

Jonmac


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