APPENDIX 1
REPORT ON CONDITIONS IN PLYMOUTH FOLLOWING THE SEVERE RAIDS
SECRET

1. INTRODUCTORY NOTE

On May 5th, 6th and 7th, on the instructions of the Director of the Home Division, the Regions' Adviser and the Head of the Home Intelligence Branch visited Plymouth to study post-blitz conditions. A large number of local and regional officials were interviewed. In addition, the blitzed parts of the city were visited; and Communal Feeding Centres, Queen's Messenger Canteens, Rest Centres (including a peripheral Rest Centre at the Tavistock Town Hall) and parts of the Dockyard were inspected. No likely occasion for conversation with members of the general public was missed.

It is possible for us to compare the situation in Plymouth with that in the other blitzed cities, inasmuch as one of us has visited many of these cities within the past months, while the other has analysed all the Home Intelligence reports of these raids.

2. GENERAL SCALE OF THE DAMAGE

Plymouth is an amalgamation of three towns, Plymouth proper, Devonport and Stonehouse. While all parts are severely damaged, the devastation is largely to the Dockyard workers' residential area in Devonport, to the shopping centre in Devonport and Plymouth proper, and to the Civic Centre in Plymouth proper. In these parts, whole streets are completely flattened. The exact amount of damage is not known, but two estimates given were 15,000 houses damaged in Plymouth as a whole, and 50% of the houses in Devonport. Certainly the damage is on an enormous scale, though there are a few parts of the city which are still almost entirely intact. The exact number of casualties for the 5 raids is also unknown, as there may still be bodies buried under the debris. Both the Regional Commissioner and Paymaster Captain Ayre put the total fatalities at 1,200, though the former said there were not many Dockyard casualties, while the latter spoke of two direct hits, one causing the death of 100 Naval ratings, and the other the death of 80.

3. THE PEOPLE OF PLYMOUTH

The morale of the people as a whole appeared to be good. They were making a slow but steady recovery from their harassing experiences, and were showing a high degree of courage and individual adaptability. But it was stressed that they still had some way to go before they could again face a “repeat performance” with anything approaching confidence. On all sides, there was evidence that those with air-raid duties to perform, had performed them with great courage. But one factor was in the end beginning to tell against them - physical fatigue . As raid succeeded raid, the powers of adaptability and concentration, and the individual efficiency of the personnel declined. Those on duty all night often had full days of work to tackle. And the effects of the fatigue was most disastrous, where many offices were concentrated in a single person.

Each night a number of people were trekking out of the city to sleep somewhere in the comparative safety of the countryside. The official estimate of 6,000 nightly trekkers seemed to us to be on the large side. The people were travelling out by bus, army lorry, private car, or on foot. Some were sleeping in lodgings, others in tents, others in emergency Rest Centres (public buildings, dance halls or chapels), and some on the moors surrounding the city. What we saw seemed to be on a far smaller scale than the trek out of Boulogne in the Spring of 1918, when whole families, with old people, babies, and possessions walked 8 kilometres each night to sleep in the Foret de Boulogne. The trekkers from Plymouth were of all social classes - the individual and not the family group. Those we saw in the Rest Centre at the Tavistock Town Hall were the kind which takes shelter nightly in the London tubes. They probably represent that section of the population which either from age, fatigue or poor mental constitution feels it can in no circumstances endure “another night of it”. Many of the nightly trekkers were, in fact, not homeless, and returned daily to their undamaged houses in Plymouth. The volume of the nightly trek was stated not to be decreasing, as a fair volume of gunfire and a few bombs were still Plymouth's nightly ration while we were there. There was no sign of the roads being blocked by the trekkers.

4. THE LOCAL MINISTRY OF INFORMATION

The local sub-office had continued to function in the centre of Plymouth (the Regional Commissioner had established his sub-office at Tavistock, 14 miles from the city). We gained the impression that our Plymouth sub-office had done excellent work. After the raids, the fatigue of the population was so great that loudspeaker announcements and notices giving lists of places where help for the homeless was available made little impression. This situation was solved partly by the use of bold posters (printed in green and blue) with arrows pointing the way to Rest Centres and Feeding Centres, and partly by the use of voluntary women workers, who went round with the loud-speaker vans to give individual help and instruction to the people in the blitzed areas. It was suggested that it would be a great help if some form of armlet (indicating that the wearer was an M.O.I. Adviser) could be devised and issued. The first instruction about help for the homeless (issued to the M.O.I. by the Muncipal Authorities) were in some cases incorrect; as a result the M.O.I. was blamed by the public for disseminating false information. These mistakes were put right as soon as correct information could be obtained from the local authorities.

The broadcast news of the Plymouth raids was taken by the public to minimise the severity of the situation, and this naturally led to much criticism. The R.I.O. issued a formal notice in the local paper pointing out that the M.O.I. and B.B.C. were merely disseminating agencies for official communiqués by other Ministries. In fact, the remarks complained of were B.B.C. comments, and not part of the official communiqués themselves, though listeners failed to make this distinction. The leader of public complaint on this matter was Lady Astor. We talked with her and hope that we left her with a more friendly feeling towards the M.O.I. The matter is now dying a natural death.

5. THE LOCAL AUTHORITY AT PLYMOUTH

The pre-blitz preparations of the Plymouth Local Authority appear to have envisaged nothing on the scale of what actually did happen. The Authority was carrying on, on an expanded peace-time basis, rather than on the expectation of being a front-line battle headquarters. The Emergency Committee of the Council consists of the Lord Mayor and three Aldermen (civic leaders by virtue of long and faithful political service) - of whom two are over 70. The Town Clerk directs the activities of all the municipal officers (engineer, surveyor, and M.O.H.) and is also A.R.P. controller, and officer in charge of post-blitz welfare services. The Chief Constable is also chief of the fire-brigade. As a result of this situation, we had a vivid impression of lack of directive in the blitzed areas, of absence