Download or read book Bomb Reconnaissance written by United States. War Department and published by . This book was released on 1942 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book ARP and Civil Defence in the Second World War written by Peter Doyle and published by Shire Publications. This book was released on 2010-02-23 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1938, Britain prepared for war, and to spread the word about what should be done in the event of attack, and to distribute the gas masks that would become universal, a body of men and women were called to public service - the Air Raid Precautions, or 'ARP'. Armed initially with only a badge of appointment, they became the object of public scorn. From the declaration through to early 1940, the volunteer services honed their skills in the face of public criticism. The ARP services - now a well-oiled machine with, among other specialists, wardens, rescue workers, first aiders and messengers - waited under the blackout. In 1940 came the 'Blitz' - and the laughing stopped. The ARP were in the frontline, assisting people to the shelters, reporting on the bombing and rescuing people from their wrecked homes. The Women's Voluntary Service was also vital at this time, providing food, shelter and sustenance to those made homeless. Alongside the ARP were the men and women of the Auxiliary Fire Service (AFS), working with the county fire services, and to coordinate and organise the public, the Police were put on a war footing, with an increase in the volunteer Special Constabulary and War Reserves. In the thick of things, the fire services and AFS battled the fires that raged through British cities throughout the War. As the war progressed, so did the volunteer 'army' of Civil Defence. It became sophisticated, and Britons became familiar with living in the front line. The fire services were nationalized to create the National Fire Service (NFS), and in 1941 The Fire Guard was established. The ARP became truly a 'home army' of non-combatants - the Civil Defence, and this book is its story.
Download or read book The Air Raid Girls written by Jenny Holmes and published by Random House. This book was released on 2021-03-18 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: May, 1941. Meet the Air Raid Girls: three young women keen to do their bit during the Yorkshire blitz. Connie's life has taken an unexpected turn since her husband died - she's living at home and working in the family bakery - but night shifts as an ARP Warden give her a firm sense of purpose. Her younger sister Lizzie is eager to play her part too, perhaps as an ambulance driver. Her fiance refuses to support her decision... but does he really know what's best for her? Twenty-year-old Pamela has led a sheltered life, but when her family's home is destroyed in a raid she must learn to stand on her own two feet - helped by new friends. As bombs fall and fires rage, the young women face the destruction of everything they've ever known. Can their fighting spirit prevail? And what of their families and the men they love? A thrilling and heartwarming new story of friendship, love and duty in wartime by the author of The Spitfire Girls, for fans of Elaine Everest and Rosie Hendry. **Don't miss the next two instalments in the series. The Air Raid Girls at Christmas and The Air Raid Girls: Wartime Brides are available now!** --------------------------------------------- Readers LOVE the Air Raid Girls series: 'There wasn't anything I didn't like about this book' 5 star review 'In all the women at war series of book I have read so far, I think this is the best' 5 star review 'I couldn't put this book down' 5 star review 'Loved the whole story. Hated it coming to an end' 5 star review 'Just the kind of book I like' 5 star review
Download or read book Put that Light Out written by Mike Brown and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Civil Defence was a grouping of civilian emergency services that included the National Fire Service, the police and a whole range of support services that were part of Air Raid Precautions (more commonly referred to as the ARP). Collectively they played a vital role in providing a controlled response to the effects of German bombing raids on British cities. The ARP was managed by report and control staff, incident officers and messenger services. Casualties were dealt with by the Medical Officer of Health staff via casualty clearing zones and depots. The ARP services that were actually on the front line down among the exploding bombs and collapsing buildings included the wardens, rescue services, first aid and stretcher parties, gas identification and decontamination services, roof spotters, fire watchers and fire guards.
Download or read book The Blitz Companion written by Mark Clapson and published by University of Westminster Press. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Blitz Companion offers a unique overview of a century of aerial warfare, its impact on cities and the people who lived in them. It tells the story of aerial warfare from the earliest bombing raids and in World War 1 through to the London Blitz and Allied bombings of Europe and Japan. These are compared with more recent American air campaigns over Cambodia and Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, the NATO bombings during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, and subsequent bombings in the aftermath of 9/11. Beginning with the premonitions and predictions of air warfare and its terrible consequences, the book focuses on air raids precautions, evacuation and preparations for total war, and resilience, both of citizens and of cities. The legacies of air raids, from reconstruction to commemoration, are also discussed. While a key theme of the book is the futility of many air campaigns, care is taken to situate them in their historical context. The Blitz Companion also includes a guide to documentary and visual resources for students and general readers. Uniquely accessible, comparative and broad in scope this book draws key conclusions about civilian experience in the twentieth century and what these might mean for military engagement and civil reconstruction processes once conflicts have been resolved.
Download or read book Civil Defence written by Terence Henry O'Brien and published by . This book was released on 1955 with total page 758 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Give Me Shelter written by Andrew Paul Burtch and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do you do when a nuclear weapon detonates nearby? During the early Cold War years of 1945-63, Civil Defence Canada and the Emergency Measures Organization planned for just such a disaster and encouraged citizens to prepare their families and their cities for nuclear war. By the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the civil defence program was widely mocked, and the public was vastly unprepared for nuclear war. Canada’s civil defence program was born in the early Cold War, when fears of conflict between the superpowers ran high. Give Me Shelter features previously unreleased documents detailing Canada’s nuclear survival plans. Andrew Burtch reveals how the organization publicly appealed to citizens to prepare for disaster themselves -- from volunteering as air-raid wardens to building fallout shelters. This tactic ultimately failed, however, due to a skeptical populace, chronic underfunding, and repeated bureaucratic fumbling. Give Me Shelter exposes the challenges of educating the public in the face of the looming threat of nuclear annihilation. Give Me Shelter explains how governments and the public prepared for the unexpected. It is essential reading for historians, policymakers, and anybody interested in Canada’s Cold War home front.
Download or read book Creating the people s war written by Jessica Hammett and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-02 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why has the 'people's war' been such a durable and attractive myth? Creating the people's war examines how civil defence personnel engaged with this narrative during the war and in the following decades to answer this question. Civil defence was the most significant voluntary organisation of the Second World War, involving millions of men and women of every class, generation and locality in Britain. This book shows how local communities of civil defence personnel co-developed narratives about the value of their work which challenged hierarchies of war service. In their social groups volunteers wrote themselves into the 'people's war' and invested it with meaning, creating national identity from the bottom up. Community was both central to these representations and vital for their production.
Download or read book The Light Over London written by Julia Kelly and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reminiscent of Martha Hall Kelly’s Lilac Girls and Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale, this entrancing story “is a poignant reminder that there is no limit to what women can do. A nostalgic, engrossing read” (Julia London, New York Times bestselling author). It’s easier for Cara Hargraves to bury herself in the past than to deal with the present, which is why working for a gruff but brilliant antiques dealer is perfect. While clearing out an estate, she pries open an old tin that holds the relics of a lost relationship: an unfinished diary from World War II and a photo of a young woman in uniform. Captivated by the hauntingly beautiful diary, Cara begins her search for the author, never guessing that it might reveal her own family’s wartime secrets. In 1941, nineteen-year-old Louise Keene feels trapped in her Cornish village, waiting for a wealthy suitor her mother has chosen for her to return from the war. But when Louise meets Flight Lieutenant Paul Bolton, a dashing RAF pilot stationed at a local base, everything changes. And changes again when Paul’s unit is deployed without warning. Desperate for a larger life, Louise joins the women’s auxiliary branch of the British Army in the anti-aircraft gun unit as a gunner girl. As bombs fall on London, she and the other gunner girls show their bravery and resilience while performing their duties during deadly air raids. The only thing that gets Louise through those dark, bullet-filled nights is knowing that she and Paul will be together when the war is over. But when a bundle of her letters to him is returned unopened, she learns that wartime romance can have a much darker side. “Sweeping, stirring, and heartrending in all the best ways, this tale of one of WWII’s courageous, colorful, and enigmatic gunner girls will take your breath away” (Kristin Harmel, bestselling author of The Room on Rue Amelie).
Download or read book Material Cultures of Childhood in Second World War Britain written by Gabriel Moshenska and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-04-01 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do children cope when their world is transformed by war? This book draws on memory narratives to construct an historical anthropology of childhood in Second World Britain, focusing on objects and spaces such as gas masks, air raid shelters and bombed-out buildings. In their struggles to cope with the fears and upheavals of wartime, with families divided and familiar landscapes lost or transformed, children reimagined and reshaped these material traces of conflict into toys, treasures and playgrounds. This study of the material worlds of wartime childhood offers a unique viewpoint into an extraordinary period in history with powerful resonances across global conflicts into the present day.
Download or read book The British Home Front 1939 45 written by Martin Brayley and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-07-20 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The population of Britain was mobilized to support the war effort on a scale unseen in any other Western democracy – or in Nazi Germany. They endured long working shifts, shortages of food and all other goods, and complete government control of their daily lives. Most men and women were conscripted or volunteered for additional tasks outside their formal working hours. Under the air raids that destroyed the centres of many towns and made about 2 million homeless, more than 60,000 civilians were killed and 86,000 seriously injured. This fascinating illustrated summary of wartime life, and the organizations that served on the Home front, is a striking record of endurance and sacrifice.
Download or read book At Home and under Fire written by Susan R. Grayzel and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-09 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the Blitz has come to symbolize the experience of civilians under attack, Germany first launched air raids on Britain at the end of 1914 and continued them during the First World War. With the advent of air warfare, civilians far removed from traditional battle zones became a direct target of war rather than a group shielded from its impact. This is a study of how British civilians experienced and came to terms with aerial warfare during the First and Second World Wars. Memories of the World War I bombings shaped British responses to the various real and imagined war threats of the 1920s and 1930s, including the bombing of civilians during the Spanish Civil War and, ultimately, the Blitz itself. The processes by which different constituent bodies of the British nation responded to the arrival of air power reveal the particular role that gender played in defining civilian participation in modern war.
Download or read book Raiders Overhead written by Barbara Marion Nixon and published by Scolar Press. This book was released on 1980 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book An Imperial World at War written by Ashley Jackson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-07-01 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the start of the Second World War, Britain was at the height of its imperial power, and it is no surprise that it drew upon the global resources of the Empire once war had been declared. Whilst this international aspect of Britain’s war effort has been well-studied in relation to the military contribution of individual dominions and colonies, relatively little has been written about the Empire as a whole. As such, An Imperial World at War makes an important contribution to the historiography relating to the British Empire and its wartime experience. It argues that the war needs to be viewed in imperial terms, that the role of forces drawn from the Empire is poorly understood and that the war's impact on colonial societies is barely grasped at all in conventional accounts. Through a series of case studies, the volume demonstrates the fundamental role played by the Empire in Britain’s war effort and highlights some of the consequences for both Britain and its imperial territories.Themes include the recruitment and utilization of military formations drawn from imperial territories, the experience of British forces stationed overseas, the use of strategic bases located in the colonies, British policy in the Middle East and the challenge posed by growing American power, the occupation of enemy colonies and the enemy occupation of British colonies, colonial civil defence measures, financial support for the war effort supplied by the Empire, and the commemoration of the war. The Afterword anticipates a new, decentred history of the war that properly acknowledges the role and importance of people and places throughout the colonial and semi-colonial world.’ This volume emanates from a conference organized as part of the ‘Home Fronts of the Empire – Commonwealth’ project. The project was generously funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and led by Yasmin Khan and Ashley Jackson with Gajendra Singh as Postdoctoral Research Assistant.
Download or read book Half the Battle written by Robert Mackay and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How well did civilian morale stand up to the pressures of total war and what factors were important to it? This book rejects contentions that civilian morale fell a long way short of the favourable picture presented at the time and in hundreds of books and films ever since. While acknowledging that some negative attitudes and behaviour existed-panic and defeatism, ration-cheating and black-marketeering-it argues that these involved a very small minority of the population. In fact, most people behaved well, and this should be the real measure of civilian morale, rather than the failing of the few who behaved badly. The book shows that although before the war, the official prognosis was pessimistic, measures to bolster morale were taken nevertheless, in particular with regard to protection against air raids. An examination of indicative factors concludes that moral fluctuated but was in the main good, right to the end of the war. In examining this phenomenon, due credit is accorded to government policies for the maintenance of morale, but special emphasis is given to the 'invisible chain' of patriotic feeling that held the nation together during its time of trial.
Download or read book Doing Their Bit written by Kimberly Brice O'Donnell and published by Helion and Company. This book was released on 2019-05-08 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first in-depth study of the role of canines in WWII Britain, an “important but hitherto under-represented subject,” with photos included (Society of Army Historical Research). The Second World War allowed for the use of an unprecedented number of dogs for military duties, both internationally and among the British Armed Forces. On the British Home Front, civilians responded to calls from the British Army’s War Dogs Training School and the Ministry of Aircraft Production Guard Dog Training School by donating their canine pets for military training and employment “for the duration.” As dogs were instructed in roles with the British Army, the Royal Air Force and the London Civil Defence Region, the distinction between pet and trained working animal became increasingly unclear. While civilians and servicemen alike continued to view military dogs as pets, many also saw trained canines as human-like soldiers “doing their bit,” a depiction promulgated by both the military and the wartime press. Yet, historians have paid little attention to the subject. In the first comprehensive scholarly account of the employment of British military and Civil Defence dogs in the Second World War, Kimberly Brice O’Donnell traces the story from the belated establishment of the short-lived War Dog School and the Messenger Dog Service of the First World War to the more recent employment of canines in Iraq and Afghanistan. With a focus on WWII, Doing their Bit examines why and how dogs were trained and employed, and how humans shaped and perceived their use. Using archival material, O’Donnell analyzes the performance of guard, military police, patrol, mine detection, and rescue dogs in training and on operations by considering the advantages and disadvantages of canines in such roles. Military and Civil Defence dogs offered a number of advantages over humans and technological equipment, and the experience gained by dog trainers and handlers led to the continued employment of canines in the postwar period. While the use of horses and other animals has since diminished, World War II marked a turning point in the history of the British military dog, ushering in the seemingly permanent training of dogs for police and military roles.
Download or read book The Next War in the Air written by Brett Holman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-17 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early twentieth century, the new technology of flight changed warfare irrevocably, not only on the battlefield, but also on the home front. As prophesied before 1914, Britain in the First World War was effectively no longer an island, with its cities attacked by Zeppelin airships and Gotha bombers in one of the first strategic bombing campaigns. Drawing on prewar ideas about the fragility of modern industrial civilization, some writers now began to argue that the main strategic risk to Britain was not invasion or blockade, but the possibility of a sudden and intense aerial bombardment of London and other cities, which would cause tremendous destruction and massive casualties. The nation would be shattered in a matter of days or weeks, before it could fully mobilize for war. Defeat, decline, and perhaps even extinction, would follow. This theory of the knock-out blow from the air solidified into a consensus during the 1920s and by the 1930s had largely become an orthodoxy, accepted by pacifists and militarists alike. But the devastation feared in 1938 during the Munich Crisis, when gas masks were distributed and hundreds of thousands fled London, was far in excess of the damage wrought by the Luftwaffe during the Blitz in 1940 and 1941, as terrible as that was. The knock-out blow, then, was a myth. But it was a myth with consequences. For the first time, The Next War in the Air reconstructs the concept of the knock-out blow as it was articulated in the public sphere, the reasons why it came to be so widely accepted by both experts and non-experts, and the way it shaped the responses of the British public to some of the great issues facing them in the 1930s, from pacifism to fascism. Drawing on both archival documents and fictional and non-fictional publications from the period between 1908, when aviation was first perceived as a threat to British security, and 1941, when the Blitz ended, and it became clear that no knock-out blow was coming, The Next War in the Air provides a fascinating insight into the origins and evolution of this important cultural and intellectual phenomenon, Britain's fear of the bomber.
