What did people do in air raid shelters in ww2?
Some accurate bits of information above. Remember however that air-raid shelters came in different varieties. In some built-up areas there was the ubiquitous brick-built (3 or 4 bricks thick, no cavity wall) shelter with a reinforced concrete roof and a blast-wall inside the door so that if the wooden door was blown in, shrapnel would not get very far. These shelters had bunks and a single door. Ventilation was accordingly poor, even if the door was left wide open – which it usually was not. Where there was available land we had the ‘long-barrow’ type; a long structure built as above but sunk into the earth with a covering of earth on top, so that the thing looked like a prehistoric burial mound. These had a square ‘chimney’ at one end with steel rungs set into the masonry and a steel trap-door for emergency escape – if, for instance, the single door at the other end was covered with debris. Since the trapdoor was normally kept shut, this too could be stifling. Both of these were proof
