WW2 Weapons High Altitude Flying Heavy Artillery Fighter Planes Bren Machine Gun Tanks Cigarette Cards

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It’s eerie how so many military card sets were issued in the years leading up to WW2. This particular set of cards was released just before WW2 started. Cigarette cards ceased being produced during the War, due to severe paper rationing. Rationing continued right through until the 1950s. Carreras’ Turf brand managed to get round this by ingeniously printing their cards on the sliding section of the packets, inspiring cereal companies to produce a number of packet card issues, such as Sugar Puff’s Nation Motor Museum, 1974. Turf’s monochrome blue ink picture cards were not as well received as their multi-coloured counterparts.

Returning to the subject of this WW2 card set, these cards show how Britain’s defences had changed since WW1: “during the Great War a soldier laden with his pack could travel about fifteen miles per day, now he can be moved a hundred miles or more..” , thanks to improvements in military vehicles such as the tank, which is featured on card no. 34. Recently, I reviewed a card set of WW1 Military Motors. I wonder how significant these vehicles were in The Great War or whether they were more experimental than practical. Perhaps the set was an elaborate bluff, over emphasising the allies’ mobility capability to scare the Germans into submission.

Military aircraft were first used in the Great War but it was not until WW2 that they played a decisive role : “planes are being built in thousands, whereas they used to be counted by tens”, it states on the back of one card. Aviation had advanced so much that one card is devoted to high altitude flying and speculates about space warfare in the not too distant future. The Germans did not resort to gas warfare on the battlefield in WW2 but the allies still had be prepared and several cards show soldiers wearing gas masks. The famous light Bren machine gun was quite new when this set of cards was issued but is featured on no. 27. Card no. 14 shows several naval personnel escaping from a submerged submarine, although I don’t think they would be smiling as much as they are if it were really happening.

Carreras, Britains Defences, 1938 (50 cards)

Includes:Britain's First Defence Line,HMS Hood 4 in Anti-aircraft Gun,How Blows the Wind?,Home To See the Family,The Daily Round,Quarters Clean Guns,Pay Day in the Navy,The Dinner Hour,Signalling in the Royal Navy,They're in the Navy Now,Signalling at Sea,Anything About?,Loading Torpedoes,Davis Escape Apparatus,After a Gas Attack,With The RNVR,Defence Not Defiance,Coastal Defence Artillery,Medium Artillery,Field Artillery,An Anti-Tank Gun,The King's Own Soldiers,The Royal Scots,Our Mechanised Army,Infantry Mortar, Mechanised Transport,The Bren Light Automatic Gun,Anti-Tank Rifles,Anti-Aircraft Gun,A Listening Post,A Searchlight Projector,Anti-Aircraft Guns,Air Barricades,With The Tank Corps,All Aboard,Flying Training,Preparing For a Hop,High Altitude Flying,Air Duels,Loading Bombs,Landing Troops From The Air,Torpedoing From The Air,Ground Range Practice,Gas Training in the RAF,Fighting Aircraft Fires,Catapulting an Aeroplane,Gloster Gauntlet Fighter,Hawker Hector Biplanes,Hawker Hurricane Fighter,Vicker Wellesley Monoplane

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