30,000 GUN SIGHTS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 05, Issue 71, 29 June 1942, Page 5

30,000 GUN SIGHTS

FROM A SINGLE LONDON FACTORY A now automatic weapon which Britain is producing in huge quantities is getting each week 30,000 gun sights and 20,000 other parts freiin a factory in South London which in peace time sent millions of Coronation and Jubilee medals all over the Dominions. At first the production of the: new weapon Avas held up by a shortage of extruded bars of mild steel from which the parts were cut and machined into shape. When the medal makers were, called in tliey demonstrated how they c'c.uld stamp out the parts in exactly the same way as they had produced medals since 1840 using ordinary strips of mild steel which is easily obtainable. It was a victoiy for old established craftsmanship over mass production machinery. The medal makers were given a contract at once. They are now doing this precision work more speedily than anyone else, Avith three-thousandths of an inch as their nearest margin of error, and a production "bottleneck"' has been completely wiped out. Unskilled labour can be trained to the job in a few hours: some of the workers are girls not A r ct 10 years old. The factory also makes its own gauges. At the moment the only medals they are striking are the Croix de Guerre and the Medaillc Militaire for the Free French Forces in Britain. They are also making a large shield in iron and silver which the Free Polish Government is presenting to the British forces. In peace time*' they made dies for the coins of many countrks in South America and for China and Si am. They have also, struck medals for many of the world's learned societies, including the Royal Academy and the Hudson's Bay Company. The son of the present principal arranged the dies of the first two D.F.C.'s —awarded to Hawker and Grieve in the last Avar.