I read something interesting from a WW2 researcher the other day. In the early days of the war we gave Germany a bit of a hefty bombing with our Whitley bombers. At the time they made up the biggest part of our heavy bomber fleet. Apparently, someone jokingly suggested that Germany had been 'Whittled'. Hitler got to hear of this and demanded to know where the Whitley was built. This may have been one reason that Coventry took such a battering? But it is almost certainly the reason why the expression 'coventrated' was coined.