Operation Einheitspreis

one price

'Einheitpreis' was a German unrealised bombing raid on the British industrial city of Wolverhampton (7/8 November 1940).

By the autumn of 1940 the Luftwaffe was making use of the 'Knickebein' system of radio beams to direct bombers for accurate night attacks. The system was based on the transmission of two radio beams: the bombers acquired the first and flew along it in the direction of the target, over which they acquired the intersecting second beam and dropped their bombs.

Early in November 1940, a decoded German message revealed that the Germans had ordered the beam stations to prepare intersections of beams from Kleve in north-western German and Stollberg in northern Schleswig-Holstein over the Midlands cities of Birmingham, Coventry and Wolverhampton.

After raids on Birmingham and Coventry ('Mondscheinsonate'), additional anti-aircraft guns were sent to the Wolverhampton area, but no raid materialised, and it seems that this may have resulted from the German realisation, based on aerial reconnaissance, that the anti-aircraft defences of the area had been significantly strengthened.

Had Wolverhampton area been targeted, the primary industrial targets would have been the facilities of Guy Motors Ltd, Ever Ready Ltd, the gas works, the railway workshops, the Electric Construction Co., and the Boulton Paul aircraft factory at Pendeford to the north-west of Wolverhampton. In order to protect this last, a dummy factory was built at Coven, some 2 miles (3.2 km) farther to the north, and this was in fact bombed three times later in the war.