FROM THE ARCHIVES:Minister for Defence Frank Aiken tested out an Irish-designed bomb shelter based on beehive huts a few months before the second World War began. -
JOE JOYCE
MR FRANK Aiken, Minister for Defence, and two Irish Army officers sat chatting in a small cone-shaped mass concrete shelter at Kilbride Military Camp, in the heart of the Dublin Mountains, yesterday afternoon, waiting for 50lbs of high explosives, placed in the ground 20ft away, to explode.
Officers of the Chemical Defence Branch of the General Staff had supervised the placing of the explosives – not in an attempt to blow up the Minister, but to test the Army’s latest “beehive” blast proof ARP shelter.
When the Minister and his companions – Capt G Davis, medical officer, chemical defence and ARP branches and Lieut JJ Blake, ARP branch – had settled themselves on wooden forms inside the “beehive”, soldiers, safely hidden behind a nearby reinforced concrete rifle-range shelter, pressed a button.
The mine, consisting of 50lbs of ammonal, exploded with a deafening report, hurling rocks and half a ton of iron fragments high into the air. Many of the fragments crashed against the 12in-thick wall of the beehive. Flying rocks landed 100 yards away. Some pieces fell around press photographers who were “shooting” the explosion at a distance of 220ft; one fragment, the size of a fist, broke three photographic plates in the pocket of a cameraman.
After the last rock had fallen Seán Lemass (Minister for Industry and Commerce), one of the party of officials and reporters under cover at the rifle-range shelter, walked forward to greet his fellow-Minister as he crawled out through the beehive opening.
“Well, any sensation?” he queried, with a smile.
“None at all, no blast or shock,” replied Mr Aiken, with a smile.
Thus was the final test of the igloo-shaped shelter, which may protect the civilian population of Éire in the event of an air raid, pronounced satisfactory.
The beehive, which is the Irish equivalent to the British steel structures, is intended to accommodate six people and to give protection against splinters and blast from 500lb high explosive bombs at 50ft. It can also be easily rendered gas-proof, and is of mass-concrete construction, 12ins thick, 6ft 6ins. internal diameter at base, 7ft high to apex inside. This gives a floor area of 36sq ft.
The cost is estimated at £10 10 shillings, excluding the making or erecting of the casing.
Maj O’Sullivan said it could withstand the collapsing of a three-storey building, so that it might be erected with safety beside houses, and there would be no danger of crushing. “We have been using 225lb of explosives at a distance of only 20ft and this is equivalent to 1,000lb at 50ft. This was a much more exacting test than that carried out in other countries.”
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