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Air raid shelters

PatHayward said:
Even after all these years my heart jumps whenever I hear the sound of sirens.
That feeling has never gone away - even just thinking about them is upsetting.
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Yes, I get a slightly tense feeling when I hear a recording of the 'up and down' warning. One other sound I remember as I sat in the shelter was the 'throbbing' engine sound the bombers made when they were overhead. Some people thought that they did it deliberately to unnerve us but it was caused by the large number of bombers overhead with their engines running at slightly different speeds.
 
For all the city slickers it is worth remembering that the air raid sirens were not disbanded untimely the 1970's. Where they still existed. in smaller towns they were tested, by a quick test of them, at frequent intervals.
For areas - most of the country outside larger areas of the population- they were used until the 1970's as a method of alerting retained firemen when needed. This also occurred at larger town stations where full time firemen only crewed the initial appliance.
 
oldMohawk said:
Yes, I get a slightly tense feeling when I hear a recording of the 'up and down' warning. One other sound I remember as I sat in the shelter was the 'throbbing' engine sound the bombers made when they were overhead. Some people thought that they did it deliberately to unnerve us but it was caused by the large number of bombers overhead with their engines running at slightly different speeds.
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I was once talking to a chap who worked on bomb disposal. He said some of the bombs did have tailfins that were designed to make a whistling noise as they dropped. The noise was to add to the terror of the bombing raid.
 
although i was not around to witness the air raid sirens i have heard them and i can well remember hearing the sound of what was called the bull calling people to work at joseph lucas gks....to me it sounded like the air raid sirens...think it also sounded at home time...

lyn
 
The bombs certainly made a rushing whistling noise as they fell. One night during a lull in the raid I stood just outside the shelter and watched a bright flare descending on a parachute lighting up the houses and gardens. Suddenly I heard the whistling noise of a falling bomb and rushed back into the shelter waiting for the explosion. There was nothing and next morning on the way to school we could see half the road roped off around a crater in the pavement. When we came home from school there was nothing - the crater was filled in - the bomb was apparently a dud!
 
oldMohawk said:
The bombs certainly made a rushing whistling noise as they fell. One night during a lull in the raid I stood just outside the shelter and watched a bright flare descending on a parachute lighting up the houses and gardens. Suddenly I heard the whistling noise of a falling bomb and rushed back into the shelter waiting for the explosion. There was nothing and next morning on the way to school we could see half the road roped off around a crater in the pavement. When we came home from school there was nothing - the crater was filled in - the bomb was apparently a dud!
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That’s interesting, my friend said there were dud bombs that they had to dig out just in case they went off at a later time.
 
A problem with air raid shelters was that sometimes we were not in them when we should have been.

One evening the sirens had sounded but we usually had up to half an hour before the bombers came over. We were still eating our tea in the house when there was an almighty explosion with a blast wave which shook our house, moved a kettle off a grate, and a lots of soot dropped down the chimney, some window panes had shattered.

The image below dated 1947 shows blocks of houses destroyed in Bradfield Road. The circle shows where our house was - some distance from the explosion. Why the road was a target for high-explosive bombs is a puzzle and our thoughts at the time was that a Luftwaffe pilot had panicked and dropped the lot in one go before racing off ...
click the pic twice to enlarge and scroll
Ios_6411.jpg
Google street view shows that the houses were later rebuilt in original style
goo.gl

Google Maps

Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.
goo.gl goo.gl
 
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PatHayward said:
Even after all these years my heart jumps whenever I hear the sound of sirens.
That feeling has never gone away - even just thinking about them is upsetting.
Click to expand...
hi pat i can only imagine the fear people and children had when the sirens went off never knowing where they would hit...my dad told me that when hunters vale was bombed just missing his house he thought the world had come to an end

lyn
 
I do not think children were as bothered as adults as we did not understand what was going on. We lived in Shirley (considered fairly safe) and had an indoor Morrison Shelter), a stray bomb destroyed a house opposite ours and the blast caused damage to our house, mainly slates and most windows and a crack down the back wall, for 3 weeks we lived in a Romany caravan at a farm in Earlswood while our house was made liveable, a great adventure to me (aged 10 in 1940) and my 2 sisters. When we returned the windows had not been replaced with glass but a fine wire mesh with celluloid, it let the light in but you could not see out of it, they finally put glass in towards the end of the war. Eric
 
We now live in rural Victoria ,Australia and our fire protection is in the hands of the Country Fire Authority.
When they are called out the siren is sounded in conjunction with fire person's pager ( male and females).
The mournful sound can be heard over a large area and the wife and I both recall the WW2 bombings,me from Brum and Maggie from Glasgow.
 
Vivienne14 said:
Morrison shelter put to a different use. Viv.

View attachment 158244
Source: British Newspaper Archive
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Those steelc orner posts were very sharp if you hit them. This is a picture that brought back memories, every time the siren went mum, my sister and me would scramble in and at least one of us would knock ourselves somewhere as we scrambled in. As the war progressed, we did not rush in, but moved more cautiously. Does anybody know how successful they were? I do remember how it rusted as the war went on.

Bob
 
I don't think many people had the Morison shelters. They took up a lot of room and didn't look pleasant. My uncle had one because he didn't want to dig up his garden for an Anderson shelter.
I didn't hear of anyone whose house or nearby was bombed so don't know how successful they were but if we look at devastation of houses or nearby ones that were bombed I can't see them offering much protection
 
My friend had a Morrison shelter in her family's breakfast room. I can remember playing in it after the war, and her Anderson shelter in the garden.
 
johnny082 said:
I don't think many people had the Morison shelters. They took up a lot of room and didn't look pleasant. My uncle had one because he didn't want to dig up his garden for an Anderson shelter.
I didn't hear of anyone whose house or nearby was bombed so don't know how successful they were but if we look at devastation of houses or nearby ones that were bombed I can't see them offering much protection
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i think you would need a fairly large house to have a morrsion shelter...certainly would not have space for one in a back to back house

lyn
 
Astoness said:
i think you would need a fairly large house to have a morrsion shelter...certainly would not have space for one in a back to back house

lyn
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We had a Morrison shelter in our living/ dining room in Sparkbrook which at the most would have been 12ft x12ft.
It was used as our dining table and sported a buieze (?) cover and then a tablecloth.
When a mine wiped out a big part of Highgate Rd our house was badly damaged and the shelter covered in rubble.
As pre-school kid I was in the shelter with my Mom and her Aunty and we had to be dug out by the ARP, I was the only one injured and that was only a cut in my neck below my ear.
My Dad was a fireman in the AFS and he bought the Morrison as he thought it was safer than the Anderson.
Cheers ! Ps miss Astonian.
 
tim eborn said:
We had a Morrison shelter in our living/ dining room in Sparkbrook which at the most would have been 12ft x12ft.
It was used as our dining table and sported a buieze (?) cover and then a tablecloth.
When a mine wiped out a big part of Highgate Rd our house was badly damaged and the shelter covered in rubble.
As pre-school kid I was in the shelter with my Mom and her Aunty and we had to be dug out by the ARP, I was the only one injured and that was only a cut in my neck below my ear.
My Dad was a fireman in the AFS and he bought the Morrison as he thought it was safer than the Anderson.
Cheers ! Ps miss Astonian.
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hi tim we dont have too many members who can remember ww2 and getting caught up in the air raids ....glad you all made it out safely

lyn
 
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What a great photo. Although not a good time for anyone no doubt the photo brings back happy memories.
As far as size of the Morrison shelter my uncles room was no larger than 12 ft X 12 ft and his was also also in the middle of the room. They also used it as a table fully fledged with a cloth on it
 
A night I remember ...
When the bombing started our shelter was not ready and my sister and me slept under the slab in the pantry. Then one night a bomb crashed through our roof and the first we knew about it was when a neighbour woke us, dragged us outside and carried us one under each arm up to their Anderson shelter. Outside it was absolute bedlam with nearby anti-aircraft guns blasting away, schrapnel falling from the shells, the drone of the bombers, and searchlights sweeping across the sky. Next morning we had breakfast in the neighbour's house and were sent off to school. When we came home the roof was covered by tarpaulin and we looked at the burnt bedroom from an incendiary bomb but the rest of the house was ok.
 
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Testing basement shelters in Gloucester Road.

Viv

Source: British Newspaper Archive
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Radiorails said:
Just to remind our younger :D readers that this was six months before the outbreak of WW2.
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I remember a discussion at a local history session when someone insisted that the government did nothing until September 1939. It was quite an argument when it had to be poiunted out to him that airraid shelters were in place and that shaddow factories had been built and in production before the actual start of the war. I think Chamberlain is still not given the credit for getting us time to prepare however short a time that might have been.
 
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