"I think it is well also for the man in the street to realise that there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed, whatever people may tell him. The bomber will always get through....The only defence is in offence, which means that you have got to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves. I mention that so that people may realise what is waiting for them when the next war comes."
Stanley Baldwin, House of Commons, November 1932
I've started building these pages around the famous set of A.R.P. cigarette cards; this has allowed me to include notes from my research and photographs of a few interesting pieces in my collection. I hope to greatly expand this area in the future, as I have a few interesting ideas that I want to bring to life.
One such idea was to turn Jordans Dictionary of Civil Defence into a searchable database, enhanced through the use of hyperlinks and extra illustrations. A largely forgotten publication from 1951, Jordans Dictionary builds upon the experience of Air Raid Precautions and Civil Defence of 1939-45, and provides an insight into the post-war era, which is often overlooked.
Although the UK is the main focus of these pages, it should not be forgotten that, for every tragedy that occurred as a result of an air raid on Britain, many more tragedies were suffered by towns and cities such as Guernica, Warsaw, Rotterdam, Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Photograph: gargoyle's-eye view of the ruins of Coventry Cathedral, bombed in November 1940.