American Propaganda
Philadelphia's Air Raid System, 1941 US poster: Civil-defence diagram for Philadelphia

Philadelphia's Air Raid System

Philadelphia's Air Raid System, a city defense council's flow chart

A Philadelphia Council of Defense chart traces an air raid from a bombed house to the warden, the control center and the crews sent back. NAID 515173.

Techniques named on the archive record

Fear appeal
Date
1941
Made by
Philadelphia Council of Defense
Medium
Poster
Country
United States
Regime
Roosevelt Administration
NARA
NAID 515173; Record Group 44
Source
Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
Source
U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters , retrieved October 4, 2026
Source
Public domain (U.S. government work) Philadelphia Council of Defense. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, 44-PA-1508 (NAID 515173).

Object, image, and catalog record from the FRAME archive. Text on this page is CC BY 4.0. Image rights are as the archive records.

Full record at propagandaarchive.org

Philadelphia's Air Raid System is a civil defense diagram approved and released by the Philadelphia Council of Defense and catalogued at 1941. A bomb hits a house, a warden reports to a control center by telephone, and arrows send fire, police, medical, repair and other units back to the scene, ringed by the insignia of each volunteer corps (NAID 515173).

From bomb to control center and back

The chart tells one story. A bomb strikes a house. The air raid warden reports it by telephone to a control center, where telephonists take the report and pass it to a commander. Arrows then send the right crews back to the house: fire, police, medical, public works, repair, the Red Cross. If the phones fail, a messenger carries the report. Round insignia for the volunteer corps frame the whole sheet.

PHILADELPHIA'S AIR RAID SYSTEM

[...]

AIR RAID WARDEN MAKES REPORT TO CONTROL CENTER

MESSENGER CARRIES REPORT IF MECHANICAL COMMUNICATION BREAKS DOWN

COMMANDER AND STAFF

CONTROL CENTER

TELEPHONISTS RECEIVE WARDEN'S REPORT AND TRANSMIT TO COMMANDER

APPROVED AND RELEASED BY

[seal: PHILADELPHIA COUNCIL OF DEFENSE]

[...]

Transcription in the FRAME record, read from the image and not independently checked; the lists of corps and units are cut and marked [...]. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NAID 515173, local id 44-PA-1508, Record Group 44.

The cut lines name the units. Among them are air raid wardens, auxiliary firemen and police, rescue squads, a medical corps, bomb squads, decontamination and demolition crews, messengers, a nurses' aides corps, and an emergency food and housing corps.

Mostly information

The FRAME catalog tags a fear appeal and calls it faint: the only alarm is the bombed house, and the rest of the sheet is an organization chart. The purpose is recorded as "Warn or inform," and that is what the chart does. It tells a citizen who does what during a raid, and it shows that the response runs on named, local bodies.

Two features deserve credit. The sheet is signed: a seal says who approved it. And the archive describes the insignia around the sheet as those of volunteer corps: wardens, auxiliary police, nurses' aides and messengers, organized under a local defense council rather than a distant agency.

What the chart does not show is any power behind the system: whether a warden could give orders or enforce rules. The record says nothing on that point for Philadelphia, and this page adds nothing.

This site's civil defense and atomic age hub notes the wartime Office of Civilian Defense sheets before turning to the years after 1945.

Sources

  • FRAME object record, Philadelphia's Air Raid System, catalogued at 1941. Philadelphia Council of Defense.
  • U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, 44-PA-1508, NAID 515173, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).