trichlorotrifluoroethane

[medwaygreen]

I Do

 

The longest sentence most men suffer

 

 

I'm away to get my tin hat on now

 

Here you go mate, you my need this if your wife reads the AN forum as well.

 

 

Morrison Shelters

 

There had been a debate as to the feasibility of using the Anderson Shelter indoors as well as outdoors but was dismissed as being too dangerous.

 

The reason was, should the building collapse then there was a fear that those who were sheltering inside the Anderson would be crushed.

 

 

 

But what of those people who did not have the facilities to build an Anderson Shelter out of doors? How could they be protected?

There were also many people who did not want to leave their homes - even for the relative safety of Public Shelters. Even those with Anderson Shelters would forsake their shelters for the comfort of the under stairs cupboard rather than spend a cold night outside.

 

A solution needed to be found in the form of some kind of safe shelter that could be used inside a house. The problem was handed over to Lord John Fleetwood Baker and the staff of the Research and Experiments Branch of the Ministry of Home Security for consideration as to what could be done.

 

 

 

Lord John Fleetwood Baker shows his theory for the Morrison Shelter

 

 

Baker, who was a Professor of Mechanical Sciences, devised one of his most spectacular applications of his plastic theory in the form of the indoor Morrison Shelter whereby the shelter was designed to squash down plastically by no more than 12 inches if the house collapsed as a result of a bomb.

 

Which saved countless lives and for which he won £3000 for his design.

 

 

 

 

Although the Morrison shelter was in fact named after the then Minister for Home Security, Mr. Herbert Morrison.

 

The theory behind the design of shelter was that should the house collapse whilst using the Morrison shelter then those inside would crawl out from the rubble unhurt. However,in practical terms if they were trapped and the house was on fire, then they would most probably die, unable to save themselves.

Yet it was considered that any shelter was better than no shelter at all.

 

The Morrison Shelter (such as that shown at the top of the page) had a rectangular steel frame measuring approximately 6 feet 6 inches long by 4 feet wide by 2 feet 6 inches high, with a solid 1/8 inch steel plate top, welded wire mesh sides, and a metal lath mattress floor, assembled from 359 individual parts using 3 tools supplied with it.

 

 

It was just big enough to sleep in. The entire structure was designed to absorb impact and deform within limits to absorb energy and protect those within it, whilst the mattress floor would absorb the force of being driven through a floor by debris falling on the top of the shelter.

 

The mesh sides could be removed to allow use of the shelter as a table, and the shelter could be used as an enclosed bed.

Concerns on the part of some about the immorality of single men in a bed shelter with female housekeepers led to the production of a limited number of two-tier shelters similar to

A two-tier Morrison Shelter

 

 

 

 

that shown on the right.

It was intended that the Morrison shelter should be used in a two story house.

 

In an examination of how the shelter performed in practice, a census was taken of 44 heavily damaged houses where morrison shelters has been in use.

Of the 136 people who used the shelters at the time, 3 were killed, 13 seriously injured, and 16 lightly injured, in spite of shelters being buried under heavy loads of debris for extended periods of time.

 

 

 

In an examination of cases where fatalities resulted, direct hits on the shelter by a bomb and cases in which the shelter was not properly sited in the hose accounted for a high proportion of the fatalities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Like the Anderson Shelter the Morrison shelter was also supplied free to people earning up to £350 a year and were on sale at about £7 to people who earned more.

 

Over 500,000 were given out by November 1941 in preparation for expected German V-1 attacks, and an additional 100,000 shelters were ordered in late 1943, with 9,000 being distributed to the residents of London in January and February of 1944.