Air Raids and Earthquakes
| Published date | 01 April 1940 |
| Date | 01 April 1940 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0032258X4001300210 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Air
Raids
and
Earthquakes
IT
may seem that there can be no connection between an
air raid and an earthquake
but
the writer, when standing by
in the more or less uneventful watches of the night waiting for
a raid to occur, has allowed his mind to carry him back to his
experience of an earthquake and it seems to him that, in some
respects, both calamities give rise to similar situations and
that the problems which arose then may be repeated if our
enemies indulge in the bombing of open towns.
Up
to now we have had
but
little experience of attack
from the air and perhaps the worst efforts of puny man could
not cause so much devastation as Nature when it stages an
earthquake. On the other hand, given time to carry out a
series of raids with large numbers of aeroplanes, the ultimate
result would be more or less the same.
The
earthquake which the writer has in mind affected
an area as large as Scotland and the earth swayed and shook
so that railway lines were twisted into serpentine switchback
tracks, lamp posts bent as though to a mighty wind, while
houses collapsed like so many packs of cards built up by a
child and blown down by his mischievous playmate. Could
even the
Hun
cause such havoc? Perhaps not by one or two
attacks
but
the cumulative effect, should our enemies drop
many heavy bombs on selected cities, might soon enough make
these places look as though they had been stricken by an earth-
quake. In any case the damage caused by even half a dozen
bombs would yield results in the area affected akin to
that
of an
earthquake, houses would collapse, people would be buried
in the debris and to make confusion worse, on top of all there
would be fire. Oddly enough in the earthquake referred to fire
did not play any serious part.
This article will be confined to observations on what
happened in one town of about sixty thousand inhabitants of
lSI
To continue reading
Request your trial