The laboratory was totally unprepared for any form of aerial attack. The director, Stanley Kemp, adopted the view that (a) there would be no bombing from the air in this war, and (b) if there was aerial bombing Plymouth would escape it. Why? Because it was an open secret that the oil storage tanks had been emptied, the docks were insignificant and Plymouth was not on one of the main air lanes.
With great difficulty I persuaded the director, in my capacity as an air-raid warden, to allow me to provide the laboratory with fire-fighting equipment in the form of stirrup pumps and gas masks. It is difficult to believe, but this equipment, ridiculously inadequate as it was, was the only fire-fighting apparatus on the premises when the raids eventually began. No water had been stored in the massive tanks available, and of course the mains were soon put out ...
