The success of D-Day owed so much to the bravery of the sailors, marines, soldiers and aircrew of the Allied nations that took part, and to all those who contributed to the complex planning and logistics operations that supported Operational Overlord. What is also self-evident is that D-Day could not have taken place without the vital efforts of millions of British workers. Day in, day out, they toiled throughout the Second World War to deliver munitions, aircraft, ships, submarines, vehicles, guns and communications equipment in an unprecedented industrial effort to help win the war. The names of the British defence companies of the 1930s and 1940s – famous names like De Havilland, A.V. Roe (Avro) and Vickers Armstrong – may no longer be as familiar to us today, yet the ingenuity and commitment which inspired those companies have not been lost. They have found a new form through a series of mergers and acquisitions to emerge in BAE Systems - our company today.
In the 1930s, as the threat of war heightened, the British Government took action to ensure that, if war broke out, British industry would be in a position to increase production of all kinds of military equipment. The Ministry of Supply constructed dozens of new Royal Ordnance factories to manufacture bullets and shells for the armed forces. These included facilities at Glascoed in Wales and Radway Green in Cheshire which we still operate.
Britain’s shipyards began to increase the production of naval vessels. Elsewhere, new factories were built and existing ones expanded to meet an urgent need for more aircraft, using technology transferred from the motor industry. One of these ‘Shadow Factories’ was built at Samlesbury in Lancashire where, during the course of the war, more than 2,000 Handley Page Halifax aircraft were constructed.
We continue to run a major centre for military aircraft systems design and manufacturing at Samlesbury and have also established a dedicated skills academy where more than 200 apprentices and graduates are trained every year.
As the Second World War progressed, the British Government was keen to show that civilian workers on the home front were just as vital to achieving victory as military personnel on the frontline. The Ministry of Information ran a nationwide campaign in support of the war effort with posters and slogans such as “It’s a Full Time Job to Win” or "We Work or Want”. Everyone was encouraged to play their part by increasing production and reducing waste.
The campaign paid off. Across many different industries and communities, men and women engaged in war production rallied to the cause with the Second World War becoming known as the ‘People’s War’.
Many factories moved to 24-hour production, which memorably saw a team of workers at Broughton, Chester, build a Wellington bomber in less than 24 hours. In Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, the Vickers-Armstrong shipyard, home today to BAE Systems’ submarines production, delivered two aircraft carriers, two cruisers, an aircraft repair ship, 12 destroyers, 112 submarines and 35 transport vessels over the course of the war. At the peak of the shipyard’s wartime production, a submarine was completed every two weeks.
Production reached impressive levels elsewhere, with workers at the Royal Ordnance factories contributing up to one and a half million shells and mines a week, while the De Havilland Airscrew Propellers factory in Lostock, Bolton, manufactured 77,000 propellers during the war, for more than 40 different aircraft types. By the time the Allies launched the D-Day operation, overall UK war production was an astonishing six and a half times the level of production that was being achieved in the opening months of the war in 1939.
As in the First World War, and with so many men engaged in fighting overseas, direct appeals were made to recruit women into war production.
Nowhere was the contribution of women more vital than in the network of Royal Ordnance factories. The war demanded a constant supply of ammunition, shells and other ordnance to keep Britain’s military forces equipped in the fight against the Axis nations.
The women of Britain were again urged to come into the munitions factories and they responded in their tens of thousands. At peak production, it’s estimated that anywhere between 1.5 million and 2 million people were employed in the munitions industry, of whom some 950,000 were women.
Whilst munitions workers formed the largest single body of female war workers, women performed a variety of vital roles during the war. These included active service in various branches of the military and intelligence services themselves, from code-breaking at Bletchley Park, farming and other rural work as part of the Women’s Land Army, to piloting and delivering aircraft for the Air Transport Auxiliary.
Some pioneering women also worked in design and engineering roles, women such as Stella Rutter, who was the only female draughtswoman working at the Vickers-Supermarine Aircraft Company during the Second World War, having previously worked at a naval drawing office in Portsmouth. Though small in numbers, the work of women like Stella and others broke new ground during the war, and helped pave the way for future generations of female designers and engineers.
Although located hundreds of miles away from active battle fronts, the increased range of aircraft and, in the latter stages of the war, the introduction by the Germans of flying bombs, meant that those working in war production could find themselves every bit as exposed to the dangers of war as those on battlefields. At the Vickers aircraft factory at Weybridge in Surrey, which delivered more than 3,000 Hawker Hurricanes and 2,500 Vickers Wellingtons during the war, 86 factory workers were killed, and more than 400 injured in a bombing raid by the German Luftwaffe in September 1940.
A month later, 21 people were killed and 70 injured in a raid on the de Havilland Aircraft factory at Hatfield, Hertfordshire, which was engaged in Mosquito production, while in March 1941 the Yarrows dockyard, where BAE Systems employees are currently building the Type 26 frigate HMS Glasgow, was hit by two bombs and one land mine in the worst air raid to hit the Clyde during the war. Forty-eight Yarrow workers were killed in the attack on the dockyard, almost all as a result of one of the bombs landing directly on an air raid shelter in the factory where they had been sheltering. The very nature of war production work meant that workers could be exposed to dangers even when not being actively targeted by the enemy. Explosives are highly volatile and in November 1944 an accident at an ammunition depot at RAF Fauld in Staffordshire killed 81 people, many of them civilian workers, when 3,700 tonnes of bombs stored in underground bunkers exploded at once. Some munitions workers became known as the ‘Canary Girls’, after their skin and hair began to turn yellow from exposure to some of the chemicals used in ammunition manufacturing.
Image of the ARP (Air Raid Precautions) personnel at Yarrows Shipyard, Scotstoun, Glasgow, in March 1940.
The role of Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman at Bletchley Park in developing ‘The Bombe’ has become more widely known in recent years. This electro-mechanical device built on earlier work by Polish mathematicians and helped crack the German enigma codes, allowing the British to discover the enemy’s plans. Further work by Turing and other cryptanalysts is credited in helping to change the course of the Second World War.
Radar too delivered a significant military advantage to Britain and the Allies. One example stands at our Great Baddow facility in Essex. It’s a rare survivor of a ‘chain’ of early warning radar stations which were built along the south and east coasts of Britain. The chain provided early warning of incoming enemy aircraft at a range of 80 miles and played a vital role during the Battle of Britain, giving the Royal Air Force immediate ability to respond to incoming German attacks and use its limited resources of pilots and aircraft to the best possible effect.
Innovations and technological developments in aircraft design and manufacture enabled pilots to achieve a military advantage too. The four-engine Lancaster heavy bomber designed and built by A.V. Roe & Company entered service with Bomber Command in 1942 and soon became Britain’s main heavy bomber, playing a vital role in the Allied aerial offensive against Germany. Although primarily conceived as a night bomber, the Lancaster excelled in many other roles including daylight and precision bombing raids. Its versatility was one of the reasons it was chosen to equip 617 Squadron and used during Operation Chastise, the attack on Germany's dams in the Ruhr Valley, more commonly known as the Dambusters’ Raid. Likewise, the Vickers-Supermarine Spitfire’s distinctive elliptical wings and innovative sunken rivets gave the aircraft the thinnest possible cross-section. In combination with powerful Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, the Spitfire gave exceptional performance in both speed and manoeuvrability.
The pioneering work of engineers at Yarrows, Airspeed, General Aircraft, Thornycroft and countless other companies continues to inspire us as we develop new types of defence and security technologies to counter threats to peace and prosperity today. Integrating the latest virtual technologies including artificial intelligence, with autonomy, stealth, aerodynamics, naval architecture and the most advanced manufacturing methods, we’re proud to continue providing protection across air, land and sea, as well as cyber and into space.