Civil defence

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Yorkshire Post, 27 April 1942, 1

Just at the moment, this war seems mainly to be an air war. The main news today is that Rostock has been bombed for the third night in a row. In addition Stirling bombers carried out a low-level raid on the Skoda works in Czechoslovakia, and six targets in northern France were were attacked by bombers with strong fighter escorts. As the Yorkshire Post reports on its front page:

ROSTOCK has become symbolic of our new air offensive. On Saturday night and yesterday morning the harbour and aircraft works were attacked for the third successive night, by a strong force of bombers, with great results. That was not all. The famous Skoda armament works in Czechoslovakia were the target for the R.A.F. on an all-round flight of 1,400 miles.

Yesterday more attacking flights crossed the Channel for various destinations in this great opening of the Allied offensive.

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Daily Mirror, 25 April 1942, 1

Lots of interesting things in today's papers about the campaign in Burma, the future of India, Anzac Day, and so on -- but there's also a lot on bombing, so I'm going to talk about that. The predominant theme is, as the Daily Mirror's front page headlines above claim, that Bomber Command is now delivering exceptionally heavy blows against enemy-held cities (one, Flushing or rather Vlissingen, is actually in the Netherlands, not Germany, though the Mirror doesn't mention this):

THE RAF have opened a new era in aerial warfare. Within the past twenty-four hours they have launched the two most destructive and furious raids of the war.

While Rostock, the German Baltic supply base for the Russian front, was still burning following one hour of concentrated bombing in the early morning, Fighter Command yesterday carried out their biggest ever single offensive.

In this day attack swarms of Spitfires took a force of Boston bombers to smash the docks at Flushing.

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10 April 1940 has remained in history as "the great panic day". The reason for this designation is the panic that spread through the population of Oslo, after the rumors of the British bombing of the capital had spread. Here you can see how the Oslo people rush out of town on foot, on bicycles, in trucks and buses. The clip is without audio.

From NRK via the excellent RealTimeWWII. (The caption has been run through Google Translate and tweaked by me so it makes more sense, so I can't vouch for its accuracy.)

This one of the many things I didn't know before. I can't find much about it on the web in English; Wikipedia says:

The same day [10 April 1940], panic broke out in German-occupied Oslo, following rumours of incoming British bombers. In what has since been known as "the panic day" the city's population fled to the surrounding countryside, not returning until late the same evening or the next day. Similar rumours led to mass panic in Egersund and other occupied coastal cities. The origins of the rumours have never been uncovered.

It's interesting that the rumours named Britain as the aggressor. Of course Germany bombing a city it already occupied wasn't particularly plausible, so given that the rumour existed it would have to attach itself to Britain. The Altmark incident (and the planned mining of Norwegian waters, though I assume that was not publicly known as it was interrupted by the German invasion which was publicised shortly before the panic) might have suggested that the British were prepared to go further and attack Norway to achieve their own ends. I don't know much about airmindedness in Norway before the war (apart from the ghost flyers) either but in recent months civilians in two small, nearby nations had already suffered aerial bombardment, namely Poland and Finland (and let's not forget China and Spain in 1938) so to that extent the panic was not unreasonable.

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Future schemes of air defence

MONSTER EAR TRUMPETS FOR AIR DEFENCE

During the last years of the Great War, sound detectors played an increasingly important part in the air defences of all the belligerents. Since those days they have undergone great development. Here the emperor of Japan is inspecting the huge trumpet-like detectors that work in conjunction with the anti-aircraft guns (seen right)

This last in a series on 'Things of tomorrow' draws upon Boyd Cable, 'Future schemes of air defence', in John Hammerton, ed., War in the Air: Aerial Wonders of our Time (London: Amalgamated Press, n.d. [1936]), 310-6. (There was a seventh in the series, but by another author and on a non-military subject, that of stratospheric flight.) The previous posts looked at 'Death from the skies', 'The doom of cities', 'New horrors of air attack', 'If war should come' and 'When war does come: terrifying effects of gas attacks'.
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When war does come

FORETASTE OF THE FUTURE

Of all the forms of gas used in the Great War, that which had the least disastrous consequences was "tear gas." Its effect was to inflict temporary blindness on those who came in contact with it. This pathetic row of figures show men temporarily blinded in that way on the Western Front in April, 1918. Affecting as this scene is, the results of the deadly gases of today would be infinitely worse.

Another batch of photographs of 'Things of tomorrow'. After 'Death from the skies', 'The doom of cities', 'New horrors of air attack', and 'If war should come', there followed (and note the shift from the indefinite to the definite) Boyd Cable, 'When war does come: terrifying effects of gas attacks', in John Hammerton, ed., War in the Air: Aerial Wonders of our Time (London: Amalgamated Press, n.d. [1936]), 272-4.
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If war should come

WILL THEY BE A COMMON SIGHT?

Officers of the St. Johns Ambulance Brigade, who, in their black and white uniforms, are familiar and friendly figures to Londoners, are now preparing for the possibility that grim and terrible duties may one day fall to their lot. A number of them have recently received instruction in a hall beneath one of London's biggest blocks of flats in methods of first aid in the streets, in the use of shelters and airlocks and the gas-proofing of private premises. A group of them is here seen clothed from head to foot in anti-gas equipment

These photographs are from the fourth of a series of articles on the future of aerial warfare: Boyd Cable, 'If war should come', in John Hammerton, ed., War in the Air: Aerial Wonders of our Time (London: Amalgamated Press, n.d. [1936]), 201-4. The preceding articles were 'Death from the skies', 'The doom of cities', and 'New horrors of air attack'.
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New horrors of air attack

SUCH THINGS WILL HAPPEN

In April, 1935, a Kentish Voluntary Aid Detachment of the British Red Cross Society conducted an air raid rehearsal. Here Red Cross men wearing box respirators and anti-gas clothing are rescuing a woman caught by gas in the open. With a heavy concentration of the deadly gases that modern chemists have now evolved there is little chance she would survive for more than a few minutes.

These images are from Boyd Cable, 'New horrors of air attack', in John Hammerton, ed., War in the Air: Aerial Wonders of our Time (London: Amalgamated Press, n.d. [1936]), 143-6, the third article in a series on 'Things of tomorrow', following on 'Death from the skies' and 'The doom of cities'.
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The doom of cities

RAIN OF BOMBS

Milan's wonderful cathedral is here shown under a rain of dummy bombs dropped by 80 aeroplanes during recent manoeuvres of the Italians. To make the display more impressive and to ascertain the results with more certainty, luminous "bombs" were used and fell in a fiery rain upon the city -- a dire portent of future terrors

The images in this post are from Boyd Cable, 'The doom of cities', in John Hammerton, ed., War in the Air: Aerial Wonders of our Time (London: Amalgamated Press, n.d. [1936]), 96-8. It was Cable's second article in a series on 'Things of tomorrow'. The text doesn't actually connect with the illustrations very well. Cable's main point is given away in the title, that in the next war cities will be ruthlessly destroyed from the air, since 'the murderous slaughter of non-combatants' is the most effective way to force a nation to surrender. While he notes that some experts are sceptical of this (Captain Turner, late of Woolwich Arsenal, Lord Castlerosse, Frederick Handley Page), he argues that 'they are flatly contradicted both by the known facts of the last war and by the preparations which we know have been made in anticipation of the next great struggle'.

Today, and as far as we can see into the future, War first of all means Air War; and Air War spells, literally and actually, the "doom of cities."

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Brighton Technical School, 1942

This is an image we might particularly associate with the United States in the 1950s, when schoolchildren were taught to duck and cover in the event of the flash of an atomic blast. But its use in civil defence drills predates the Cold War (albeit without a Bert the Turtle to help kids remember the message). I've seen scattered references to it being used in ARP drills in British schools in the 1930s, and the same thing may well have happened in the First World War. But details, and photos, seem to be rare. The above photo was actually taken in Melbourne, at Brighton Technical School, probably in 1942. (Here's another Australian one from the 1940s, and here's one from London in July 1940.) It's really just common sense: if the roof and walls are about to come crashing down and there's no time to get to a proper shelter, getting the students under their desks when the bombs started to fall would give them some protection and might save their lives.

I wonder about the handkerchiefs or rags the boys have in their mouths? My guess is that it's intended to guard against being choked with dust and plaster. Also, soaked in water, they might help against some forms of gas attack, such as chlorine. Soaking them in urine would be more effective, but that would probably be beyond the scope of most school gas drills!

Source: State Library of Victoria (via Geoff Robinson).

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Death from the skies

The images in this post are from Boyd Cable, 'Death from the skies', in John Hammerton, ed., War in the Air: Aerial Wonders of our Time (London: Amalgamated Press, n.d. [1936]), 20-4 (see below).

The article itself is a short story describing an air raid in the next war. I won't summarise it in detail, but it argues for the futility of both air defence and civil defence. The RAF's interceptors never even encounter the enemy bombers (in part because they are stealthy thanks to their silenced engines, only 20% as loud as normal aircraft engines). Though the populace has been drilled well and resists panic, at least at first, they are too vulnerable. A first wave of bombers uses high explosives to block the streets with rubble, making it impossible for fire engines to pass; the second drops incendiaries which set the city ablaze and, crucially, force civilians out of their shelters; and the final wave drops poison gas, which starts killing the now-exposed people on the streets. Now the panic starts and the mob flees, their suffering increased by strafing raiders. The RAF now has its chance, but the city is doomed...

"Proof enough of what we've said so long," growled the one [Air Staff officer]. "Defence as such is a wash-out. Attack is the only useful form of defence."

"If we can hit them harder and faster and oftener than they can hit us, we win," said the other. "We can do it, too, if we have more bombers -- men and machines -- than they have."

"Yes -- if," said the other wearily. "That's what we were arguing as far back as the first R.A.F. expansion scheme in -- what was it -- 1935 and '6, wasn't it?"

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