The Siren Board

Hi

I have an old Chema hand cranked Air Raid Siren and I was wondering if anyone knew any history on it. Date of manufacture? applications of use... (apart from the obvious!). It's waist height, built onto a frame. It's old. Paint is peeling off but there's a big circular Chemea logo on the side. As I mentioned it's operated by turning the handle.

Any info would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers in advance.

Do you have any pictures of the siren?

Wow they came out a bit big! If you right click and open image in a new tab then you can see all! Thanks

I remember seeing a "Chema" marked siren on eBay that was in Bulgaria. Maybe it's a ComBloc siren?

Hi Brendan

Thanks for commenting. What is a ComBloc siren? The fountain of knowledge that is Google comes up with nothing!


Here's a similar looking siren and all it says is it's from WW2 http://canucks.nhl.com/club/news.htm?id=453671

alanweb wrote:Thanks for commenting. What is a ComBloc siren? The fountain of knowledge that is Google comes up with nothing!

"Communist Bloc" - or from around Eastern Europe.

The only online reference to a Chema siren was an article about Vancouver Canucks fans sounding one during games. If it is from Eastern Europe, it could be from a country like Poland, Czech Republic (at this siren's age, Czechoslovakia), Romania, or Hungary, whose languages use the Roman alphabet. Since the letters of "Chema" are in the Roman alphabet and not the Cyrillic, it is probably not from Bulgaria or Russia.

alanweb wrote:Hi Brendan

Thanks for commenting. What is a ComBloc siren? The fountain of knowledge that is Google comes up with nothing!


Here's a similar looking siren and all it says is it's from WW2 http://canucks.nhl.com/club/news.htm?id=453671

ComBloc is short for Communist Bloc (also known as the Warsaw Pact), Which was the USSR and it's allies in Eastern Europe, like Albania, Yugoslavia, East Germany, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Poland, etc.