Air raid sirens

[sando]

Does anyone remember the testing of the air raid sirens, this was probably around the mid sixties, and as kids playing in the street it would frighten us half to death, imagining the bombers flying over the city.

[DaveH]

Does anyone remember the testing of the air raid sirens, this was probably around the mid sixties, and as kids playing in the street it would frighten us half to death, imagining the bombers flying over the city.

Sure do sando, and as one of the air raid sirens was on the roof of our old infant school (Arbourthorne north infants, later Norfolk infant school, Cradock Road Sheffield 2) it certainly did give you a bit of a scare when it went off.

I seem to remember that this would be around 1961 - 2 at the height of the cold war with the bay of pigs incident and the Cuban missile crisis.

Why did they test them then? Were they expecting World War 3 to start?

I only found out recently from released 40 year secrecy documents that at the height of the Cuban crisis JFK had gone to bed one night and asked his staff to wake him if the situation got worse and "the button needed to be pushed". In JFK's own words he is quoted as noting "when I went to bed that night I didn't know what sort of a world I would wake up to in the morning, or even if there would be a world to wake up in"

That night, the night of 25 October 1962, has since been referred to as "the eve of world war 3"

Fortunately the Russians had the sense to back down to save the world from a catastrophe, Soviet ships carrying nuclear missiles to Cuba turned back home and the building of Communist missile launch pads in Cuba, only a hundred miles or so from the USA itself, was abandoned.

Frightening how close we came to a nuclear holocaust that night. Let's hope that our leaders do learn something from history.