FO371-24688 — Page 284

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Air-attack on the Island,

Active defence.

The Colony has no fighter planes

The anti-aircraft gun

nor facilities for them. defences are insufficient in number to counter heavy attack.

Shelters.

·

The intensely crowded buildings in the town and the nature of the soil which is either of solid granite or fairly recent reclamation, preclude the possibility of above ground and under- ground shelters, respectively, on any considerable scale. The nature of the majority of the buildings, viz. little shops or workshops on the ground floor with tenements above, all thickly congested with humanity and goods, precludes the conversion of ground floors into shelters, even if the necessary material were available, which it is not.

Accordingly, the approved A.R.P. policy is that residents should, as far as possible, stay in their houses, trenches being dug in the streets and the few open places for those caught out of doors. Most of the streets in the most thickly inhabited parts are too narrow for trench-digging, however.

Most of the tenement-

Condition of Buildings. houses are in poor condition and wide-spread collapses would follow on H. E. bomb explosions.

:

Danger from fire. All the old town and much of the modern is in a very inflammable condition. The existing brigades could not cope with several large simultaneous fires.

Food-stocks would suffer heavily in case

of wide-spread fires.

Conclusion.

Massed air-attacks would cause collossal slaughter and destruction on the Island,

Military issues,

Long-range bombardment.

Once in possession of the mainland the enemy could, without difficulty, out-number the few guns defending the Island on the north. The effects would be much as in the case of bombardment from the air.

Given

Assaults on the Island by landing-parties. sufficient forces, these could be made simultaneously from many near-by points; i.e. on the north and east from the mainland and on the south from Lamma Island and the Lamma Group. Whether the available British forces are sufficient to deal with such a combined attack is a military matter. It has to

be remembered that the whole sea-front of the town is some seven miles in length, much of it deep water wharf with many landing piers at right-angles to it.

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