I'd argue that Coventry WAS a valid target in view of its long history of precision engineering, much of which was carried out on a cottage industry basis - see pr00ne's last post above.
However what were clearly civilian oriented terror attacks were the later so-called Baedeker raids. This alleged quote (taken from Wiki) is telling::
"The cities were reputedly selected from the German
Baedeker Tourist Guide to Britain, meeting the criterion of having been awarded three stars (for their historical significance), hence the English name for the raids. Baron Gustav Braun von Stumm, a German
propagandist is reported to have said on 24 April 1942 following the first attack,
"We shall go out and bomb every building in Britain marked with three stars in the Baedeker Guide."
[3]"
PS sorry about all the embedded hyperlinks but I don't have the time or patience to edit them all out
And before blaming Harris for the direction of the campaign take a look at the Wiki page regarding the Area Bombing Directive
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_bombing_directive
Note
"The
Area Bombing Directive was a directive from the wartime British Government's
Air Ministry to the
Royal Air Force which ordered RAF bombers to attack the German industrial workforce and the morale of the German populace through bombing German cities and their civilian inhabitants......
" The objective of the directive was "To focus attacks on the morale of the enemy civil population and in particular the industrial workers. In the case of Berlin harassing attacks to maintain fear of raids and to impose
A. R. P. measures".......
"The day after the directive was issued (on 15 February), the
Chief of the Air Staff Charles Portal sought clarification from the Deputy Chief of Air Staff
Air Vice Marshal Norman Bottomley who had drafted it: "
ref the new bombing directive: I suppose it is clear the aiming points will be the built up areas, and not, for instance, the dockyards or aircraft factories where these are mentioned in Appendix A. This must be made quite clear if it is not already understood."
So there you have it Harris was not making policy, he was following direct orders from the Air Ministry