September 26, 2013

Finest Hour 104, Autumn 1999

Page 47

PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY DALE WEBER

Churchill spent the night of September 25th, 1941, “in a quiet siding, half a mile from a stone marking the centre of England and a few miles short of Coventry,” his private secretary, Jock Colville, wrote in his diary, later published as Fringes of Power. “The PM dictated half of his speech for the House of Commons next Tuesday. It promises to be his best.” (On the 30th Churchill would say: “Only the most strenuous exertions, a perfect unity of purpose, added to our traditional unrelenting tenacity, will enable us to act our part worthily in the prodigious world drama in which we are now plunged. Let us make sure these virtues are forthcoming.”)

On the morning of the 26th, Churchill’s train pulled into Coventry, where he was met by a reception headed by the Lord Mayor, J. A. Moseley. Colville continued: “the PM was not dressed. He always assumes he can get up, shave and have a bath in 1/4 hour whereas in reality it takes him 20 minutes. Consequently he is late for everything. Mrs C seethed with anger…. We went to the centre of the town….The PM will give the V sign with two fingers in spite of the representations repeatedly made to him that this gesture has quite another significance!

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“We toured very thoroughly the Armstong Siddeley factory, where aircraft parts and torpedoes are made, and the PM had a rousing reception. As we entered each workshop all the men clanged their hammers in a deafening welcome. I drove with Jack Churchill whom some of the crowd took for [Soviet Ambassador Ivan] Maisky! The Whitley bomber factory is a hotbed of communism and there was some doubt of the reception the PM would get. But his appearance with cigar and semi-top hat quite captivated the workers who gave him vociferous [sic] applause.

“We saw the lines of finished bombers and amongst them a rickety biplane built in the same factory during the last war. A new Whitley took off and flew past, a Hurricane pilot did stunts, and No. 605 squadron of Hurricanes flew over in astonishingly tight formation. When we drove away the men and women of the factory quite forgot their communism and rushed forward in serried ranks to say goodbye. But I was disgusted to hear that their production-tempo had not really grown until Russia came into the war.”

Dale Weber sent us the accompanying photographs capturing that moment fifty-nine years ago. In the top photograph, from left to right: Lord Mayor of Coventry J. A. Moseley (wearing chain), Armstong-Siddeley managing director Cyril Woodhaus, WSC, chief test pilot Charles Turner Hughes, chief designer A. Lloyd (in raincoat) and RAF Captain W. S. Strickland.