Vindicator file photo

Vindicator file photo
AFTER THE BOMBS: West Federal Street in downtown Youngstown quickly returned to normal as crowds surged onto the sidewalks from their cover in nearby buildings during a Civil Defense air raid drill July 20, 1956. Minutes earlier, all vehicular and pedestrian traffic came to a standstill when air raid sirens sounded. The test presumed that two make-believe bombs, each 20 times as powerful as those dropped on Hiroshima in World War II fell on the Mahoning Valley, one at the Youngstown Municipal Airport and one at the Lordstown Ordnance Depot. Civil Defense Chief Robert Hay estimated that there would have been 15,000 deaths and 15,000 injuries, almost all in Trumbull County.