JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post

The Cement and Concrete Association of Great Britain had issued several pamphlets in 1938 regarding air raid shelters for the protection of individual families, groups, and  cities.  In the pages of the Illustrated London News, writer and war correspondent John Langdo-Davies (1897-1971) reviews (or at least shares) the associations plans for underground fortified military airfields, the illustration for which I reproduce below:

Langdon-Davies saw utility in these ideas, no doubt tempered by his experience covering the Spanish Civil War, which saw the first modern wide-scale use of bombing from aircraft, including the work done by the German Luftwaffe the impact of which was not lost on too many people. In any event, the aviation facilities were not moved underground for a variety of general reasons, some of which have to do with the utility of  the vast scale of the operation versus the introduction of replacement aircraft.  This doesn’t address some of the most adventurous ideas shown in the drawings, like the (assumed to be) very large hangar “deep underground”, the planes hauled up and shot into the air on a catapult, which is a different matter entirely.  The overall interest here though is the recognition–growing in 1938–that there is something going on in Germany that requires this sort of response.