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Show 'Bombing Scheme' Alerts New York For Explosions Crank Threatens to Explode Dynamite Charges in City at Rush Hour NEW YORK A scrawled plan for destroying communications in Manhattan by means of more than 150 rush hour bomb explosions put strategic parts of the borough under heavy guard for three hours The plan was believed to be the work of a crank when it was found by postal employes but it was sufficiently suf-ficiently detailed to cause the police po-lice to take no chances. Patrolmen, detectives, specialists special-ists of the bomb squad and of the fire department bureau of combustibles com-bustibles swarmed into Grand Central Cen-tral and Pennsylvania terminals, Times square, the general post office of-fice on 8th avenue and subway, tube and ferry terminals and stations. sta-tions. Eleven police emergency squads stood by. Fireboats were alerted, and seven police launches inspected the abutments of bridges, and In some instances followed ferryboats, fer-ryboats, as a safeguard. Besides the rail terminals, Times square, and the post office, places specifically marked for explosions included the subway tubes leading to Brooklyn, the Hudson and Man-hattan Man-hattan tubes to New Jersey, and the Battery terminal of the Staten island ferry. In the case of the last objective the "plan" envisaged destruction de-struction of three ferryboats by means of trucks loaded with high explosives. Consists of Five Sheets Contained in a plain, unaddressed and unstamped envelope, the "plan" consisted of five sheets of lined paper, apparently from a loose leaf notebook. Each sheet bore a heading giving the number of the plan, and continuing: "Five to five-fifteen. D-day. Vodka 3-3-48." Each sheet carried a diagram or sketch of the area affected. "Plan No. 1" began with a diagram dia-gram of the post office. The text read: "Twenty-five men and women aboard train one hour before train Is due in. Suitcases with new high explosive bombs. Leave suitcases on platform, mingle with crowd nd vanish. Meet at HQ." Plan No. 2 Plan No. 2 relating to Times square, read: "Fifty men and women in crowd. Rush hour. Leave suitcases of high explosives on platform. Vanish. Surprise element is decisive factor.""" fac-tor.""" "Plan No. 3" with diagrams of Srand Central terminal read: "Some as Pennsylvania railroad." "Plan No. 4" showed a diagram of the Battery area around the barge office, including the slip of the St. George (Staten island) ferry, with three ferries shown near by. After the heading, the "plan" read: "Rush hour. Twenty-seven trucks load in New York side St. George ferry. Drivers drive truck on ferry. Vanish without attracting attention. atten-tion. Blows up in water and sinks without evidence." A diagram of the Brooklyn-Man-tiattan subway tubes accompanied "Plan No. 5." The text read: "Ten people in three groups. Enter with explosives. Get off at South Ferry." This was taken to mean that the explosives were to be dropped in the tunnels. A note added: "Same plan for H & M tubes." |