The probable method of an enemy sending air squadrons over London will be to order his planes to drop a certain amount of poison gas and to follow this up with plenty of medium-sized high explosive. This would plaster the city with TNT and would shake up buildings and smash windows, thus making it impossible to stop draughts and generally pave the way for an enormous rain of incendiary bombs.
Now, these incendiary bombs are surprisingly small. The most usual type weighs about two pounds. and one large bomber can carry between 1000 and 2000 of these things. If scattered over a city and not dealt. with at once, they might start so many fires that no fire brigade could cope with them all. Moreover, the previous use of high explosives will have damaged water mains, so that there would probably not be enough water for fire engines to use, and will also have broken up thoroughfares so that fire engines could not reach the sites of the fires.
Incendiary bombs, owing to their lightness and general flimsiness, cannot be aimed with any degree of accuracy. They are not dropped singly, but are released from contain. ers, each holding ten to 20 bombs, and, in fact, a big salvo of several containers can be released simul-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.