The Key West citizen. [volume] (Key West, Fla.) 1879-current, 1941-10-27
AIR RAID OSCARS
WOULD EVEN SCARE
MAN FROM MARS
FBI HAS SET UP AN ExHIBI-
TON OF EQUIPMENT CON-
sIsTtNG OF STRANGE
LOOKING UNIFORMS
tBy Associated PressD

WASHINGTON, OFT 2l.-H
bombs ever fall on the United
States, our police won't be
caught short On knowledge of the
best methods of meeting such
emergencies
Over at the Federal Bureau of
Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover's
boys have set up an exhibition
straight from England, showing
all of the equipment used by
police during black-outs and
air raids.
There are a couple of Oscars
(ghouliSh dummies used by the
FBI in demonstrating murder in
vestigations) logged out in COS
TUNES that would make Men
from Mars look like a bunch of
sissieS. In shouted gas masks.
rubber suits and boots, steel
helmets. walkie- talkie radios
strapped to their backs, and
"blackout lights, which look
like cowbells at their belts, these
two fellows are enough to finish
off a good nightmare even If
never a bomb was dropped.
To anyone who ever has bat
tied the traffic of American cit
les, probably even more impress
sive will be the display of street
lights, traffic lights, and auto
headlamps. With bumpers paint
ed white, strips of white paint
around tenders, and a single
headlight that shows three Sits
of down-cast light, the sample of
an authorized car for black-out
driving can be dirnly seen at 20
PAGES.
The street lamps, 30 feet
above the kerb", toss out the glo-
rious illumination of .02 of one
candle-power-about the same as
a lighted cigaret held foot away
from the object you wish to see.
The traffic lights are the Gus
tomary green-yellOw-red, but the
light is emitted from little four
inch crosses, with bars an eighth
of an inch wide.
There's a lot more to the eX-
hibition-bomb shelters, various
methods of combating incendi-
airy bombs, air raid sirens, first
aid in air raids, and a dozen 9TH
er horrendous things that any
good police force in a bombed
city would have to know.
The exhibition is semi-pubbc-
that is, available to visitors to
/ the Justice Department Build
ing, when it is not being used to
instruct retaining courses" in
I the FBFS national police school,
where 400 men from police de-
partments all over the country
are getting concentrated instruc-
ton in methods employed by
London boobies to protect the
public during air raids.
There is one story in cOnnec-
ton with the exhibition that
never has been told. Early last
winter. Hoover sent two of his
ablest assistants to London at
the height of the AFRAID sea-
SON
He told them to take their
/ time. to make a thorough study
of everything that had to do with
police activity during blackoutS
and air raids. He armed them
with special letters to Scotland
Yard officials and ordered them
to bring back every item Of
equipment that might be used in
demonstrating British methods Of
the American police
The men stayed four months
and collected hundreds of pieces
of equipment, ranging from nit
tens with the finger tips cut out
flor teletype operators, and such,
during gas attacks to tail-fins
from 4,400-pOund land mines"
I (which were dropped on London
and made craters go feet deep.
The men came back by plane,
the exhibition by ship. Some
where off the coast of the British
y-1o- Chi, ,rd axybititiOr, lie ~