WW2 Air Raid Shelter (Silverdale Road, Eastbourne) Mystery Cache
WW2 Air Raid Shelter (Silverdale Road, Eastbourne)
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(micro)
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This cache is a 35mm film pot placed ~3ft (~1m) above ground level.
This cache marks a WW2 Air Raid Shelter (Eastbourne) in the back garden of a house in Silverdale Road.
This is not the usual corrugated iron Anderson shelter, but a much stronger shelter. I don't yet know whether this shelter was built by a local resident for personal use or by the military after commandeering the local property.
(The remains of several Anderson Shelters can be seen in Polegate. I hope to publish a cache soon that marks their location.)
The cache:
To find the cache:
- first, establish the years that WW2 started (ABCD) and ended (EFGH).
- then, use these formulae to establish the co-ordinates:
-- N 50 G H.(D-C) (F-B) E
-- E 000 A (B-C).(D-C) H (C+G)
Air Raid Shelters (source: Wiki):
Air-raid shelters, also known as bomb shelters, are structures for the protection of the civil population as well as military personnel against enemy attacks from the air. They are similar to bunkers in many regards, although they are not designed to defend against ground attack (but many have been successfully used as defensive structures in such situations).
Prior to World War II, in May 1924, an Air Raid Precautions Committee was set up in the United Kingdom. For years, little progress was made with shelters because of the apparently irreconcilable conflict between the need to send the public underground for shelter and the need to keep them above ground for protection against gas attacks. In February 1936 the Home Secretary appointed a technical Committee on Structural Precautions against Air Attack. By November 1937, there had only been slow progress, because of a serious lack of data on which to base any design recommendations, and the Committee proposed that the Home Office should have its own department for research into structural precautions, rather than relying on research work done by the Bombing Test Committee to support the development of bomb design and strategy. This proposal was eventually implemented in January 1939.
During the Munich crisis, local authorities dug trenches to provide shelter. After the crisis, the British Government decided to make these a permanent feature, with a standard design of precast concrete trench lining. Unfortunately these turned out to perform very poorly. They also decided to issue free to poorer households the Anderson shelter, and to provide steel props to create shelters in suitable basements (Baker 1978).
Air raid shelters were built specifically to serve as protection against enemy air raids. However, pre-existing edifices designed for other functions, such as Underground stations (tube or subway stations), tunnels, cellars in houses or basements in larger establishments, and railway arches, above ground, were suitable for safeguarding people during air raids. A commonly used home shelter was known as the Anderson shelter which would be built in a garden and equipped with beds as a refuge from air raids.
Additional Hints
(No hints available.)