GREAT BRITAIN IS A WORKSHOP

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 225, 21 September 1940, Page 1 (Supplement)

GREAT BRITAIN IS A WORKSHOP

By W. G. FitzGerald

lITHEN the History of this time YY comes to be written no more glowing chapter will be recorded than that which will deal with the manner in which Britain within a, period of a few months became a workshop of war. The almost unbelievable gallantry of that effort will be given equal place with the magnificent conduct of the fighting 1 servicer which it equipped and served. When this war was barely five months old, Sir George Schuster, M.P., reckoned its cost "at least £3,000,000,000 a year!" Millions untold are being spent .011 capital ships, battle-cruisers,, aircraft-carriers, destroyers and lesser types whose hulls and decks will resist sudden attack from skies above the seas' As for the Allied armies, in these wheels are to-day almost as important M guns. Britain's army- uses' 50 different types of vehicles besides fighting tanks of various weights. In one factory I saw turned out in a day as many motor trucks as our entire armv had when Kaiser Wilhelm "gave the'signal" in 1914. There_ is not a moment to be lost; and, when our General Staff asked for a new type of 15cwt truck, a model of it was waiting outside the War Office in Whitehall by 9.30 next morning!" Such vehicles —all fitted with bullet-proof tyresrange from six-wheeled "heavies" to motor cycles, mobile laundries and laboratories. .> Elements of "surprise" and "change" call for swift adapting of pattern; so the normal peace plants had to behaiw nessed to war uses in short order. From motor car plants to-day come infantry trucks, artillery tractors, anti-tank* gun-carriers, workshops and offices op wheels. The claims of Nazi spokesmen that Britain could never convert her industry to mass production on a war basis* is Iwst answered by the monster guns now lining- Britain's coast?.. Thesemighty cannon hurl' a -ton weigut of "high explosive 'shell "for many

miles! Some have both railroad and mobile mountings; and, their enormous size and intricate mechanism, they can be moved, and set up elsewhere with incredible speed. The Royal Army Ordnance Corps draws all supplies f/om Woolwich Arsenal; but that famous forge has been moved to a secret site well away >from the London area. To it our army looks for all needs; guns great or Bmall to motor transport, even workshops on wheels where repairs of all sorts can be made and spare parts furnished. Again, here is a battery of 9.2 howitzers, each throwing its half-ton shell eight miles or more. The complete battery will weigh 240 tons. Home Front Forges The Home Front is made up of roaring, clattering forges that manufacture, try out and send forward to new fields of war. In one I saw an eagle-eyed man operate a gigantic hydraulic whose blow equalled 3000 tons. Yet all-he-did was to-touch what looked like the joystick of an aeroplane to move that stroke on to the red-hot > "billet" of metal below, which soon began to take shape as gun-barrel or breech-block. Against the inky background one is dazzled by furnaces Whose fierce flames shoot out to light ghostly faces of workers as they tap white-hot steel into shape with machine-hammers, whose clang gives out showers of fiery stars. And the workers are giving themselves tirelessly to the task, living eating and sleeping on the job seven days a week, enduring the tremendous strain with joy in the victory they know it will bring. Raw materials are fundamental, with shipping problems critical and enormous demand for sea-borne cargoes. Aircraft factories call for aluminium; steel is needed for new warships, their armour and guns, with shell cases and transport vehicles for the land war. Cartridge cases need copper and zinc; even the farmers' fields hunger for fertilisers of pyrites and phosphate rock. Of course, large stocks have been • acciimiilated Of all these prime necessaries; so - Britain's global "buys, especially in fuel-oil, have been pro-

digious. One order list came to including timber, pitprops, flax and hemp. Materials bought in such bulks are able to control fluctuations in price.

Simple articles can be turned out quickly by a single factory in thousands each week. But some war tools are most intricate;' for example, the average anti-aircraft gun requires over 2000 drawings; and 150,000 different spare parts are needed to keep the army's motor vehicles smoothly running. To equip each British soldier runs into 84 items and the cost, including his riflo and gas mask, is about £20 per man. Needless to say, he is the best-fed fighter in any nation.

- the peak of production Government factories alone will employ nearlv 300,000 hands on munitions, and half of these will be women. Remember also that every high explosive shell for the "heavies," every cartridge for rifle or machine-gun, as well as aircraft bombs and sea mines (one barrier of these was 500 miles long!)—all swallow up explosives and propellants by the thousand tons.

Then into them all—from automatic torpedoes to trench mortar or grenades —must be worked deadly chemicals to give the very maximum of smashing energy. So to keep pace with this tornaclo we have built Secret plants to turn out cordite, "T.N.T." and other high explosive terrors. Huge Contracts Orders for clothing and equipment were at the rate of £2.500,000 a week, with Birmingham's jewellery firms making 500,000,000 buttons in less than six months. Think of one order for 3,0(M),000 overcoats, 2,000,000 steel helmets, 1,000,000 cap comforters, 1,500,000 pickaxes for trench digging and defence work. Britain's most brilliant men of science and invention are enlisted where they can best serve; and abundant help and co-operation in all" spheres have been offered by the great Dominions and Colonial Governments.

Even Northern Ireland lends a vigorous hand in its ships-rope works and linen trade. Before Hitler's Üboats and aerial machine-gunners had caused so much havoc among the fishing "fleets of Hull and Grimsby, nets were made in cottage homes. Now they are. turned out in Ulster, where one factory, covers 44 acres „of _ ground.

Also made here are tent lines, balloon cords and every kind of twine. Other works have 60,000 skilled hands in the linen lines.

Sheffield is the classic home of special steels for the Navy and Air Force. This metal is here brought to incredible perfection; one R.A.F. pilot was safely pulled out of a deadly "spin". which he estimated at 650 miles an hour! —with a steep climb of 400 m.p.h. to follow it sharply. All praise, then, is due to the designers and builders of so stout a craft, but we should not forget the steel-makers. National capacity. at 14,000,000 tons a ' year is already doubled, with ingenious co-operation which enabled this major industry to change over from peace to war in the first few days.

No region is so weird at night as blacked-out Sheffield. Iron sheets blanket the roofs of forges to shut out light and yet draw off hot air. Here they make costly armament plates for "Sheffield's own ships of war," also heat-resisting steel for aeroplanes, as well as shells, bombs and fuses with psecision parts of fine delicacy. Here also is made cutlery for millions of war meals; razor blades and clasp knives by the hundred thousand, as well as tin openers, screwdrivers, saws, files and drills.

Liverpool is busy with the moving and mending -of ships; Birmingham has given up wedding rings for waterbottles and respirator fittings, brass buckles and army web equipment. Cardiff, in South Wales, is a coal centre that keeps the steel furnaces and armament shops in full production.

On the Clyde from Glasgow to Greenock, world-famous shipyards that built the Queen Mary now resound with giant hammers and pneumatic riveters. Here the best customer i 3 the Admiralty, which has placed orders of £80,000,000 to cover ships of all sorts, from little boom vessels to battlecruisers. Farther south you come on a brand-new aero-engine factory employing 15,000 specialists. In a word, Scotland's marine, and general engineering works clang and roar all day and night turning out tanks, armourplates, naval, anti-aircraft and field guns, with shells of every calibre. Some cities find it hard to ' house their war workers. Old Coventry is in a tight fix with ever-increasing thou sands of migrants, seeking a home there. -At-one- time big-factorieanear-

ing completion "threatened" Coventry with yet another 40,000 workers on its pay-roll, with only temporary "billets" available for about 15,000 of these. Near here also lie ore; fields that feed new blast furnaces with the pig-iron which becomes Bessemer steel for bayonets. At the outbreak of war thirteen monster factories in Northampton were able to start without delay. It is the same from Land's End >clear up to John o' Groats and the remote islands and highlands of Scotland; the same from Fenland over to Wiltshire and down to Devon. Widespread Factories New factories are widely spread because of air raid risks. One enormous plant in. the Midlands turns out over a million 3:7 anti-aircraft shells in a year from billetß Of steel weighing about 381b. After being gauged and weighed, these containers go to the filling factory for explosives. . The entire weight of Britain's wealth and industry is now flung into the scales; the ablest workers in the world with over a century of industrial experience behind them use wonder machines in this endless drive to keep war output at fever heat. As the day shifts go home, a night force comes on. Furnaces are never raked out, vermilion gun barrels emerge from their huge foundries; lines of. bombing and fighting aeroplanes "advance'' along hundreds fo factory floors. Outside in green fields to-morrow's war tanks are being severely tested in an ocean of mud. Each one swallows 171 gallons of gasoline -during its cross-country hill-climbing, sudden braking or fording ditches and crashing headlong into deep trenches. Eye and brain grow weary at last, whether in the cordite factory of high explosives or in shops where the Bren machine-gun is perfected and tried out in 3000 operations. There are 172 separate parts of this complex weapon, and 5000 gauges are needed to produce it even before the firing tests are made of so "wholesale" a killer. From the 17-inch bayonet of the short service rifle to the costly and elaborate torpedo, one is heartened by the tremen dous effort 4>eing made. In the present supreme - crisis our weapons must be different, more varied and deadly. For this reason strategy and tactics are wholly changed in battlefields whose area and location none can foresee. But of our final victory there can be no possible doubt. The workshop is already winning that victory.