The Smog of War: The Battle for Britain’s Clean Air
The wartime government’s programme of deliberate smoke production was an attempt to protect Britain from the Luftwaffe; for the National Smoke Abatement Society, the decision was a disaster.
On 20 June 1940, with the threat of large-scale enemy bombing looming ever closer and the Battle of Britain imminent, a letter from the Ministry of Home Security was sent to selected town clerks across Britain. The missive would signal the beginning of one of the wartime coalition government’s more curious initiatives: a controversial programme of deliberate smoke production intended to obscure Britain’s key military-industrial sites from the aerial threat posed by the Luftwaffe.
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