How Stafford firefighters prepared for war in the late 1930s

In September 1938, tensions were high. In a crisis that has overtones of what has happened in the Ukraine, Hitler's Germany was intent on grabbing part of Czechoslovakia to "liberate" ethnic Germans living there.

At the end of the month war was averted – temporarily, as it turned out – by the infamous Munich Agreement, which saw Britain and France cave in to the dictator's territorial demands.

With things on a knife edge, there were war drills and exercises across Britain, and trenches were dug. And we've taken a dip into our photographic archives to dig out some pictures of just one of those air raid drills, held in Stafford on Saturday, September 17, 1938.

It involved members of the Auxiliary Fire Service, a new organisation set up in January of that year. It comprised local volunteers, with the AFS providing support to the regular fire brigades. The divisional officer of the AFS covering Stafford was one Mr A R Lloyd, but also on hand was a Mr Haywood, second officer of the Stafford Fire Brigade, along with Mr Haywood's father, who was the brigade's chief.

The drill included a demonstration of how to put out an incendiary bomb. For this, according to the Express and Star's report of the event, they used "a special jet, which confines the flames to a small area".

Official advice was never to throw water on an incendiary bomb, as it would explode, nor send a jet of water directly at it, but instead to spray it with water. Another method was to cover it with sand.

The Stafford exercise included the firefighters tackling some cottages which had been set on fire – the report does not make clear if that was a notional fire, or whether they really did set some on fire.

And the Star's report did not say where it was conducted, but in one of the pictures the street sign for Castle Hill is visible, and in another a curious crowd is watching the action, and there is a pub in the background, the name of which is not visible, but the licensee at the time was William Hancox, according to a sign on the building.

In the event, it seems Stafford was to prove lucky during the war as according to a memory contributed in 2005 by John Weaver to the BBC's People's War website, there was only ever one air raid on the town, which happened some time between 1940 and 1942.

Mr Weaver was working at the time at English Electric's site in Lichfield Road when the air raid siren began to wail, followed seconds later by hooters and klaxons going off almost together, followed immediately by one or two shuddering crumps.

"Some people had started to make it to the shelters," he recalled.

"My young assistant dived under a bench where there were live electrical connections and shot out again like a rocket! After what seemed like minutes, but was probably only several seconds, there was a loud widespread rat-tat-tat pitter-patter on the glass roofs of the factory.

"A few people had managed to get outside in time to get a glimpse of the German twin-engined bomber as it sped away."

It was said the only casualty was a girl who twisted her ankle running down some outside metal stairs.

Mr Weaver went on to say the raider had dropped four bombs, the first hitting the outer edge of the tank assembly shop, but not exploding. The second was an oil bomb which landed on a concrete roof and burnt itself out, and the last two being small 50 pounders which landed on rough ground between the research department and the Euston to Crewe railway line, breaking windows and throwing up gravel which landed all over the factory buildings, which was mistaken by many workers for machine-gunning.

"If the bombs had been released one second earlier the centre of the factory would have been gutted and many lives lost," said Mr Weaver.

"There were later stories about the plane having been shot down but little to confirm this. And that was that – no more bombs on Stafford!"