SAFEST Place from FLYING Fragments of Bursting BOMBS

Sun (Christchurch), Volume IV, Issue 1164, 3 November 1917, Page 12 (Supplement)

SAFEST Place from FLYING Fragments of Bursting BOMBS

TO the millions of lives lost In the great war will be added, before the suspension of hostilities, thousands of other Uves, mostly those of noncombatants, women and children, killed through their own carelessness, foolhardiness or ignorance of knowing Just where to seek safety when bombs dropped from enemy airplanes or shot from great guns miles distant, explode In the streets. In the English and French towns and cities warnings are sounded of the approach of a flock of enemy airships or the beginning of a bombardment, at which time all non-combatants are supposed to flee to places of safety. Take, for instance, the case of an aerial bombardment. Those who have survived such a harrowing experience and live to tell the tale say that it is not an easy matter for every person to determine how far off an enemy air squadron is at the moment of its appearance. He sees the flock of enemy airplanes speeding toward him, possibly at an angle to his position. At such a moment one is apt to think a special squadron has visited one's own street or garden. A little study of the diagram on the immediate right will help the reader in determining the probable position of the enemy. Even if the airplanes are only a few thousand feet up they are at a considerable distance unless almost vertical to one's own position. The spectator here is supposed to view an airplane flying over a city square. If the machine appears to be over the roof, care must be taken to judge how far off the machine is in a perpendicular aense, which is the one which matters to a citizen who may be standing in the open. If the machines are scarcely distinguishable lines of gray in the sky they are at a great height. If the detail of the form is clearly visible they are at a moderate height, and therefore nearer. The diagram just referred to also shows the manner in which a bomb curves forward at the moment when it is released from below the enemy bombing plane. The bomb, it must be remembered, is traveling forward at the rate of, say, 60 miles an hour with, the machine to which it is attached. Naturally at the moment of release it is also flying through the air at this pace.. As it proceeds to drop it curves downward, gradually losing its initial forward impulse. Its flight straightens out before hitting the ground, which it reaches 1200 feet in advance of the point at which It was released. The aviator, therefore, releases his bomb a short time before he is actually over his objective. Naturally, the places of safety easiest and quickest of access during a bombardmen are the homes of the citizens themselves. There are however, as military authorities point out, locations) of such great danger in a house under bombardment that you might just as well remain in the open if you do not know the places of greatest safety from the flying fragments of exploding bombs. These places of danger and of safety are clearly shown in the larger of the accompanying illustrations, which was drawn from a photograph of a big Zeppelin bomb bursting in a London roadway. As one authority remarked, it is well for every one to have this information, for who knows when enemy airships may suddenly appear and rain down death and destruction. Notice in the illustration how the steel fragments

from the bursting bomb fly far up and down the street and shatter the first and even second floor windows. The shrapnel from an exploding bomb is scattered over a very wide area, which makes it exceedingly dangerous for any one to select an open street in which to view such a fascinating method of devastation. Careful observations by military authorities show that in the case of an exploding bomb a height of 20 feet from the ground is the most dangerous level. Therefore, as indicated in the illustration, the safest place, if you live in a modern non-basement house of two stories with an attic floor, is in a rear room on the ground floor. All other parts of the house, with the possible exception of the attic floor, are very likely to be shattered by a bomb exploding directly in front of the house. If you live in a halfbasement house with two or three floors above the ground, then your safest position is in the basement. There are thousands of persons who cannot resist the temptatipn of watching exploding bombs, but it is only the very foolhardy who select roofs as observation posts, thus exposing themselves to every chance piece of flying shrapnel. Since the beginning of the war so much has been heard about shrapnel that many believe that all artil-