HUGE TUNNEL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 March 1939, Page 9

HUGE TUNNEL

SHELTER FROM AIR RAIDS IN CHUNGKING

BIG ENGINEERING TASK. TWENTY ENTRANCES PROVIDED. As scouts on the hills outside Chungking, China’s capital, sight Japanese bombers on their way to raid the city, advance warnings are flashed, air raid sirens' shriek, and 100,000 of the estimated 700,000 population of Chungking trek swiftly to a bombproof shelter —a 5000 yards tunnel drilled through solid rock. When the Far East war is finished, Chinese engineers will be able to show the world how quickly a war-time shelter can be converted into an underground railway, the first in the Republic. Although Japanese ’planes have flown over the city of Chungking five times this year they have only found the capital once, as a blanket of clouds, mist and smoke shroud its buildings every day. When a raid is on, except on the last occasion when the Japanese broke through the city limits for the first time, Chinese anti-aircraft batteries and pursuit ’planes stay silent on the ground so as not to give anything away to the raiders. BOMBERS SHOT DOWN.

Flying distance from Hankow, the present Japanese base, is too great for the limited cruising range of the Japanese pursuits, so their bombers must depend on their own armaments for their protection. In the first raid on Chengtu, slightly further from Hankow than is Chungking, six heavy Japanese bombers were shot down by the faster. Chinese 'planes. This was substantiated later by an American pilot employed by the Chinese, who said if the Japanese had been accompanied by a protective squadron of pursuit ’planes probably nQne of their bombers would have been shot down.

Realising the imminence of the Japanese thrust westwards, where a base might be established for daily raids to Ichang, and the coming of the summer, when Chungking will no longer be shrouded by clouds, Chinese Government engineers studied the situation and decided upon building the bomb-proof shelter.

Work was started on the anniversary of. the Shanghai outbreak, on August 13, 1938, and since then thousands of coolies have been excavating the tunnel by manual labour, and by modern drilling machines. There are 20 entrances to the tunnel, and, strangely enough, the main entrance is at the Cove of the Goddess of Mercy outside Tung Yuan Men. The tunnell is six feet high and wide, and leads into big underground caves capable of accommodating thousands of people. Although not yet finished, the tunnel is already being used, and the construction work is expected to be finished by the end of February. Ten airpumps will be installed to provide ventilation, and a generator will supply light and also power for a system of loud speakers whereby instructions can be broadcast to the people during a raid.

USE AS SUBWAY. After the war is over, it is intended that the tunnel will be converted into a subway. To go from one end of the city to the other now involves either walking up and down endless streets or flights of steps, or following tortuous paths, jammed all hours of the day with coolies and pedestrians. The total cost is said to be 700.000 Chinese dollars, most of which is being borne by the Chungking Air Defence Headquarters. Because all the capital's buildings are old. and constitute a real fire menace, the city, choked with three times its normal population, fire-fighting equipment scanty, and obsolete water mains, every effort is being made to build bomb-proof shelters. .More than fifty public dugouts have been built on the various hill-sides, and they are on the average 120 yards long and capable of holding 1000 people. Individuals and other organisations have built other shelters, but, despite this, a few well-directed and incendiary air bombs would not only partially destroy the city, but would kill or maim thousands of civilians in the cruellest form of war.