EFFECTS OF BOMBS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXI, Issue 97, 24 March 1941, Page 5

EFFECTS OF BOMBS.

PRECAUTIONARY MEASURES. NEW TYPE BEING USED. How civilians and others who are on duty in areas being bombed take precautions against the effects of the missiles is explained in a letter from a resident of London' which was published in the United States in January. In. the letter, also, is an outline of the effect of bomb-blast on buildings and windows in particular, while a reference is made to a new type of bomb being used by the Germans. "Manv persons have been killed, but, taking these as a percentage of the whole, however, it is surprisingly small when one considers that London is 40 miles across," states the writer, "f have been one of the unfortunate ones and lost my house as the result of two bombs. I was about 10 or 15 yards off one of the bombs, a 500pounder when it landed. 1 heard this big fellow swishing down and promptly dived into the gutter and was resting on niv elbows, keeping my stomach and chest clear of the ground and my mouth closed in the approved fashion for earth concussion and bomb-blast. From the first you arc likely to get serious internal injuries ; from the latter your lungs pulled out. 1 was 'looking toward the spot where I anticipated it would fall. It fell all right, exploded (I saw the blast), and in that fraction of time I saw four houses crumbling down. The peculiarity of the wholo thing is, however, that to me they crumbled up in the manner of a~ slowmotion picture. They seemed to he falling very, very slowly indeed, as if there were plenty of time to get to earth. Looking back, one realises that this took place in a fraction of time. I was very lucky in the place I had chosen because, had I been on the other side of the street, I should not have been writing this letter. The bombblast threw everything clear over me and it landed on the opposite side of the street. One paving stone was the other side of the street and actuliftcd, taken over a friend's house, on ally hit the door of his dug-out, 60ft. down in tlie garden. "Another thing I did not feel was the suction by the blast. This is a very real danger, and that it was there was shown by the fact that all the doors and windows around had been pulled out of the houses. It is a noticeable thing that, generally speaking, within a certain range of the bomb the glass is found on the ground outside the house, but when you get beyond that range the glass goes inward and many severe cuts to people have been caused. "There is a new typo of bomb which baa a highly explosive contact ,and explodes immediately it hits the ground It makes practically no crater and the whole of its force is thus exploded above the ground ; .and without being masked in any other way, as that oi the other type of bomb is. As the result of the effects of one of these bombs it was necessary to evacuate about 60 houses in our district."