THE BLACK-OUT
BRITAIN’S REGULATIONS. MYSTIFYING NAZI BOMBERS. (Official Service.) LONDON, Bth February. Black-out regulations are irksome, but in the Old Country once householders understood the need for making efficient any precautions taken, all thought of inconvenience vanished. Safety is better than comfort. The black-out, it was explained, is not designed to protect one home, but to protect vital targets and to save lives. To achieve this it must be sufficiently complete to prevent accurate navigation, aimed bombing, or to make unaimed bombing a totally haphazard affair. OBSERVATION FROM THE AIR. The general application of the scheme is to cut down lighting in large towns so that the outline is obscured to such an extent that it cannot be recognised-r-in other words, so that small towns look like villages ano villages disappear entirely, or look like single cottages. Lights on roads and railways are also reduced to deprive enemy airmen of navigational aids.
In Britain the policy adopted by the authorities Was to produce a complete black-out as a basis, and then, whenever possible, to grant relaxa tions which were decided upon by trial from the air. Incidentally, it may be of interest to know that the normal p'Ace-time lighting of a town can be seen by the pilot of an aircraft
more than thirty miles away in con ditions favourable to him.
Experiments carried out before the war showed that adequate war-time amenity lighting was visible at 10,000 feet from a distance of ten miles. Lighting which was of value to pedestrians could be seen at 2000 feet from one mile, while motor-car lights, improperly screened, have been seen at 10,000 feet from seven or eight miles. EASILY VISIBLE. In a reasonably clear night a pocket torch, carelessly used and raised above the horizontal, can give away position to aircraft 6000 feet up at a distance of three miles, and the ordinary sitting-room light is visible at 10,000 feet some four or five miles away.
The area of a city may be so large that it will always be located from the air, but by means of effective black-out the outline can be blurred and roads made so difficult to trace that
even aimed bombing will not be profitable.
In Britain it was found that the country black-out generally was good, but cases were reported where the bombing of villages was directly attributable to the fact that lights had not been properly screened. One of the factors helping to put the Nazi bombers off their targets in Britain at night is the effective blackout which hampers the navigators, and this has been secured by a strict application of black-out rules. These rules have saved thousands of lives and they have protected valuable factories working on munitions.
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Bibliographic details
Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 62, Issue 4403, 17 March 1941, Page 8
Word Count
456THE BLACK-OUT Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 62, Issue 4403, 17 March 1941, Page 8
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