Abstract
THE scheme of air raid protection prepared by a committee of scientific workers, including Profs. J. B. S. Haldane, J. R. Marrack and J. B. Bernal, working in conjunction with engineers and medical men, and recently submitted to the Home Office, presents what may be regarded as a scientific and technical view of the best preparation against the eventuality of air raids. The scheme, which is also being placed before the L.C.C. and all the London Borough Councils, has been prepared at the instance of the Science Commission of the International Peace Campaign and might with advantage be studied by all who take an interest in this matter. Because it combines an important strategic centre containing three main line railway termini, a better-class residential district with many open spaces, and a densely packed working-class area, the Borough of St. Pancras was chosen as typical of the conditions to be dealt with and has been made the basis of a typical scheme worked out in broad details. Experience in Spain and China shows that air raids now are of a very different character from those of the Great War and that the civilian population has become a definite objective. The scheme is based on the assumption that all four types of attack-machine guns, gas, incendiary bombs, and high explosive bombs-may be used either separately or in conjunction, and figures are quoted as to the destructive and penetrative powers of these weapons.
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Protection from Air Raids. Nature 142, 424 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/142424b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/142424b0