Hunningham Lighting Decoy Site

1 Hunningham lighting decoy site in the QL programme for the Coventry area. It was set up to simulate the lights of a marshalling yard (parallel railway sidings) and so to protect the Armstrong Whitworth Yards. Lighting decoys were a cheap and successful way of confusing enemy aircraft, and date from 1941. Every site differed, so that they were a sort of theatrical lighting show to mimic some local vulnerable point. An associated shelter would have been built to house the generator/s and other equipment.
2 No evidence of the site can be seen on an aerial photo of 1947.
3 Site visit of remaining building which was an engine house for the engines/generators used to power the light, it was noted that the engine room was clean of any sign of use during it working live in World War Two. This report is illustrated with photographs of the remains of the building.
4, 5 Contra 2, elements of the lighting decoy site are visible on wartime aerial photographs. On the 1945 RAF? photographs available on Google Earth, clear lines of lighting runs are visible in fields to the immediate south of the river and to the east. Those to the east, in particular, are parallel and seem to imitate railway sidings, as referred to in 1. The engine house, described in 3 is situated at the extreme south corner of a field to the south, suggesting that the decoy site spread across a significant area.