Home Front 1942 - Air Raid Precautions
1:1 Scale diorama of two service women in a replica backyard Anderson shelter in a Perth backyard in 1943. On the left is a member of the Australian Women’s Army Service and on the right a Voluntary Aid Detachment member. The Anderson shelter was a small and cheap shelter that could be erected in people's gardens. Within a few months nearly one and a half million Anderson Shelters were distributed in London to areas expected to be bombed by the Luftwaffe. Similar shelters were later available for purchase in Australia.
The Anderson Air Raid Shelter or Air Raid Precaution (ARP) shelter was a prefabricated kit consisting of a 4-piece angle-iron base frame, 6-piece dome section of curved corrugated iron, and corrugated iron end sheets. It was designed c1938 by Sir William Paterson at the request of British Home Secretary and Minster for Home Security, John Anderson (after whom it was named), and was based on an earlier design by Dr David Anderson.
The structure was intended to be buried half in the ground with the upper half covered in soil. The manufacturer John Lysaght P/L states in advertising material: "over 40,000 tons of these shelters were supplied to the British Government by the Australian company of John Lysaght (Aust) Pty Ltd and over 2,500,000 were supplied by the English manufacturers. The Australian War Memorial has an original Anderson Shelter in its collection.
Another home shelter type was the Morrison shelter, officially termed Table (Morrison) Indoor Shelter, had a cage-like construction beneath it. It was named after Herbert Morrison, the British Minister of Home Security at the time. The Morrison shelter came in assembly kits, to be bolted together inside the home. They were approximately 2 metres by 1.2 metres and 0.75 metres in height with welded wire mesh sides supporting a 3mm steel plate tabletop. Shelters in private homes were supplemented by public shelters established by governments at all levels and shelters designed to protect infrastructure key workers.
Australian Women’s Army Service
https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/encyclopedia/awas
Voluntary Aid Detachments
https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/encyclopedia/vad
Anderson shelters during World War 2
https://spartacus-educational.com/2WWandersonshelter.htm
Inside the University of Western Australia’s World War 2 Bomb Shelter
https://www.6pr.com.au/inside-uwa-s-ww2-bomb-shelter-20170421-gvq0o7/
Air raid precautions in Perth 14 December 1941
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/59162721
https://www.facebook.com/LostPerth/posts/war-touched-perth-on-several-o…
Air raid alarm in Perth 11 March 1944