(1)
Ebb and Flow
In the strategic and economic conditions of 1942, 1943 and 1944 the flow of supplies was bound to be both highly expansive and unstable. Offensive plans necessitated special offensive weapons; more especially the final landing on the Continent required a large quantity of miscellaneous equipment specially designed for that purpose, such as Mulberry and landing craft. Disseminated all over the main supply programmes were many other items of equipment of the same origin, ranging from additional engineers' equipment and amphibious or waterproof tanks for the Army to special radar instruments for 'tactical' bombing.
As a rule, the new weapons for the offensive were so interlocked with war-stores in current supply that neither at the time nor in retrospect could they be easily isolated from the main stream of Service requirements. The main burdens of the new demands on the supply departments came in that way: as further instalments of Service programmes. Yet from the point of view of the supply departments the period was marked not only by an expansion of Service programmes but by their fluidity. The expansion threatened to pass beyond the bounds of the possible, and before long cuts became inevitable. But the cuts themselves added to that uncertainty and instability which was in any case bound to result from the shifting emphasis of the offensive campaigns.
In the ordinary course of events the sights of production programmes would have risen, and were, in fact, in the process of being lifted at the end of 1941. Some rises were resulting from the progressive changes in weapons which were taking place all the while but which were expected to reach their maximum by 1942. In the
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course of that year the new four-engined bombers were to replace the older types and to lead to vastly increased requirements of materials, components and labour. The fighters of the Battle of Britain were beginning to be replaced by more advanced types—the Typhoon, the Tempest and the new marks of Spitfire. A large and brand-new field of military supplies was being opened up by the development of radar. Less revolutionary, but almost equally expansive, were the coming changes in the army weapons. The 6-pounder gun which generally replaced the 2-pounder gun in the course of late 1941 and early 1942 was to be supplemented, and in part replaced, by the still heavier 17-pounder tank gun and anti-tank equipment. The anti-aircraft artillery was to be supplemented by a new version of the 3.7-inch, but the 4.5-inch, by the much heavier and more complicated 5.25-inch, and by the medium-light twin 6-pounder. Important changes were envisaged in ammunition, both for tank and anti-tank guns and for anti-aircraft guns (proximity fuses). Finally, tanks of the new cruiser type (Cavalier-Centaur) and of the new heavily-armed types (Cromwell, A.30 and A.32) were expected to come into production in replacement of the Matilda, the Crusader, the Valentine and, to some extent, the Churchill. There were also some changes in army organisation leading to demands for special weapons, the outstanding example of which was the formation of airborne troops.
Addition to military programmes also resulted from the growing allocations to the Allies. The Polish Prisoners' Divisions, which arrived in the Middle East from Russia in 1942, had to be equipped from British sources, and there was, of course, the continued drain of supplies to the U.S.S.R. The supplies which Britain undertook to provide un the 'Second Protocol' of June 1942 were to run at roughly the same monthly rates as under the 'First Protocol' of October 19411—200 aircraft per month, 250 tanks per month, etc. And even although the interruptions to the convoys to North Russia which occurred in the late summer and early autumn of 1942 prevented the supplies under the Second Protocol from being in full within the year, the actual burden of the allocations to the U.S.S.R. continued to weight heavily upon the supply programmes and upon the industrial efforts of this country.
These increments, whether emanating from recent offensive plans or inherited from earlier commitments, were all to be superimposed on current programmes. What is more, current programmes themselves were in process of rapid expansion. Planned production was due to be raised in 1942 to reach the culminating rates of output; and the rates themselves were on the point of being expanded in keeping with the wider strategic responsibilities after Pearl Harbor.
The expansion had in fact begun some time before America's entry
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into the war. The British strategic hypothesis and programmes discussed at the Anglo-American conference in the autumn of 19412 necessitated additions of about ten percent to the current rates of Service requirements. The Americans did not, for the time being, make clear forecasts of their own, but before long high targets were set up in Washington. As soon as the United States entered the war the American objectives were enlarged further sill, far above all earlier estimates of supplies necessary for victory. In his famous pronouncement to Congress on 6th January 1942 the President set before American war industry aims so immense as to appear fabulous: 185,000 aeroplanes, 120,000 tanks, 55,000 anti-aircraft guns, 18 million tons of merchant shipping—all within two years.3
Industrial ambitions in Britain could not, of course, be expanded to anything approaching the same height; yet they had already been rising and were to continue to rise with the further progress of current programmes, with the more recent increases in the strength of the Forces and with the mounting demands of the developing offensive. Large and on the whole increasing supplies had to be produced in accordance with programmes, and, in addition, special equipment outside the regular Service programmes continued to be asked for and turned our in ever-increasing quantities.
(2)
The Offensive Tools
(a) BOLERO
Obvious accretions to military demands were bound to result from the purely tactical requirements of the offensive strategy. The demands for 'tools' specially designed for the attack and the urgent needs of various offensive enterprises had begun to mount long before full concentration on 'Overlord' was decreed. Indeed, heavy calls on the economic resources of this country came from the very undertaking which inaugurated the offensive schemes of the Allies: the so-called operation 'Bolero' for the reception and maintenance of American forces in Britain. At the time when 'Bolero' was planned, i.e. at the beginning of 1942, the Battle of the Atlantic was at its height4 and the shortage of which the planners were most conscious was that of shipping. They therefore laid down that for greater
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economy in shipping the stores required by the American forces in Britain should, as far as possible, be found from British production. Needless to say, the burden of 'Bolero' was not to be borne wholly by the supply departments and by war industry. Much of the strain was taken by civil industries of every kind. Some of the burden had to be shouldered by transport services; provision also had to be made for suitable development of the harbours and possibly of the railways of southern England; above all, the operation required a very large allocation of building labour for the construction of aerodromes and camps. In 1943 it was estimated that some 500,000 workers were engaged, directly or indirectly, in providing goods and services of all kinds for United States forces in the United Kingdom, and that of these, thirty percent were engaged in services including transport, thirty percent in building, ten percent in other civil occupations and only thirty percent in providing weapons.
Nevertheless the actual burden on war industries was probably greater than a mere third of the total, for the additional demands now placed on the so-called civil industries made it more difficult to reduce the margin of non-essential labour and materials from which the requirements of war industry could be drawn. It was not until 1944, when the shortage of manpower had come to be felt more acutely than the lack of shipping, that the principle of 'Bolero'; was revised, and the needs of American forces in Britain had to a far greater extent than before to be covered by imports from the United States.5
Other supplies directly related to the coming offensive were too many and too miscellaneous to be listed and described here. They included, however, in addition to the all-important landing craft, one or two items to novel in conception and so spectacular in size as to draw to themselves a great deal of well-deserved publicity. One of them was the famous Mulberry, a series of prefabricated harbours designed to facilitate the landing of supplies on unsheltered beaches; another was 'Pluto', an oil pipe to the armies across the Channel. Measures against the total volume of war production the two projects may not appear very great, but coming, as they did, when resources were stretched to their limit, they were bound to raise production problems out of proportion to their size. Moreover, they had to be fitted to the opening dates of the operation without much time to spare.
(b) PLUTO
Operation Pluto was strategically important, tactically adventurous and, from the industrial point of view, strenuous, but it did not engage any considerable proportion of British resources. More than
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a year's experimental work on the project had been organised by the Petroleum Warfare Department and the Combined Operations Experimental Directorate before the operational stage was reached in June 1943.6 Some time before than a joint effort of an oil company, a submarine cable company and a steel company, working in conjunction with rival commercial firms, resulted in two novel types of oil pipe—the Hais (Hartley-Anglo-Iranian-Siemens) cable made of lead and the Hamel (Hammick-Ellis) steel pipe.7 By the summer of 1943 both types were being made in large quantities and arrangements were also made for lengths of the cable to be produced in the United States.8 All preparations for the operation were completed some weeks before D-day.
The carrying out of the project necessitated close cooperation between companies, firms, government departments and the Services,9 and gave rise to complex problems of organisation, but measured in materials and manpower it did not by itself impose too heavy a burden on war industry. In June 1943 it was estimated that comparatively small quantities of such scarce raw materials as steel, lead and rubber would be required.10 The labour needed was estimated to include an unspecified number of workers for the erection of pumping houses, pumps, pipes, tanks, etc., at the English terminal; approximately 600 men for the extension of a land-line to the coast; and some 600 workers, of whom 112 would be skilled, for the execution of the rest of the operation. Indeed, the main burden of the operation was felt no by industry but by the Services. The resources of the Navy were strained,11 though in the end the project helped to save valuable tanker tonnage needed in the Far East. Both the Navy and the Army also felt the drain on their personnel. In July 1943 the War Office stated that the six or seven hundred engineers employed in connection with Pluto were urgently needed elsewhere. As soon, therefore, as reliable alternative supplies of petroleum became available in sufficient quantities, i.e. from the end of July 1945, the operation was closed down.
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(c) MULBERRY
Of the two projects, the Mulberry harbour was the larger and the more complicated. Fortunately, the equipment which made it up was highly heterogeneous in conception and construction, and the task could be spread between several ministries and a large number of industries. One of its main components (in the end it turned out to be the most effective of all), the booms of blockships comprising the five 'Gooseberries', entailed little additional effort. The thirty-odd blockships, which formed the British contribution, came out of scarce and fully-employed resources of the Merchant Navy, but at least one-third of the ships provided by the Ministry of War Transport were so old and decrepit as to be no longer usable.12 The remainder, although also old, could not be easily spared from British shipping resources, but at the time when they were being mustered for D-day, it was no longer thought necessary or possible to make special provision for replacing them with new shipping tonnage, and no additions to the current shipbuilding programmes thus resulted. The other main components however—the concrete caissons to form the main breakwater (the 'Phoenix'), the pierheads and other equipment making up the main system of jetties and floating roadways (the 'Whale'), and the steel floats composing the outer breakwater (the 'Bombardon')—all had to be designed and produced anew.
Fortunately, a little of the preliminary work had been done some time before the requirement for the prefabricated harbours took shape. In May 1942 the Prime Minister had drawn the attention of the Chief of Combined Operations to the need for piers specially designed for use on beaches, and the discussions which followed had led to the design of a pier-head capable of floating to its site under its own power and of being held there in position by power-operated legs or 'spuds'.13 The first prototype was ordered from the Ministry of Supply in September 1942 and, very providentially, the Ministry took this opportunity to make certain templates and jigs and to work out a special welding technique in expectation of a bulk order. Similarly, the Special Weapon Development at the Admiralty had for some months been considering a project for a floating breakwater out of which the 'Bombardon' was to develop.
On the other hand, the other components were not designed and could not be ordered until the entire project of the Mulberry was ready, and the latter did not take shape until the early autumn of 1943. It had been under discussion at the headquarters of the Combined Operations and of the Chiefs of Staff of the Supreme Allied
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Command, for since the Dieppe landing in August 1942 operations on the Continent had to be planned on the assumption that large ports would not be available in the initial stages of the landing and that troops and supplies would have to be discharged on open beaches. The plan of artificial harbours did not crystallise into a definite requirement until August 1943 when the Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander was at last able to notify the Chiefs of Staff that in his view two artificial ports would be indispensable for the landing on the Continent. The requirement was finally approved by the Combined Chiefs of Staff at their Quebec meeting on the 15th August, but the design of the Phoenix breakwater could not be made ready and the order could not be placed until October.14 Similarly the construction of the Bombardon units could not be begun until November. Most of the secondary components of the piers and floating roadways were designed and ordered at the turn of 1943 and 1944. And as the plan of operations made it necessary for the harbour to be ready in the following spring, there were not more than five or six months in which to do the work. The problem was not made easier by continual changes in detailed design and by the later decision to enlarge the project to land two divisions more than was originally planned.
The main weight of the project fell upon the Ministry of Supply and the Admiralty, for by an agreement with the Allies the designing and construction of the harbour was to be carried out in the United Kingdom. The Admiralty undertook to supply 115 units of the 'Bombardon', of about 200 tons of steel each,15 in addition to a great deal of minor equipment and modifications required for the block-ships. The Ministry of Supply undertook to produce for erection before D-day 167 Phoenix caissons of various sizes, ranging in weight from 1,600 tons to 5,780 tons (the latter was said to be equal in size and weight to a concrete building five storeys high), twenty-three pier-heads and other elements of the 'Whale' piers, including eight collapsible steel extensions to pier-heads (the so-called Baker Floating Dolphins of 100 tons each), ten miles of bridging to form floating roadways and a very large number of floating pontoons to support the roadway as well as a quantity of secondary and subsidiary material. Additional components were ordered after D-day: some to repair the damage caused by the disastrous storms of the 19th–24th
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June, others to reinforce the surviving Mulberry harbour for use in winter.
The enterprise thus turned out to be large as well as complicated and urgent. No wonder it was watched and helped along by everybody concerned, including the Prime Minister and General Eisenhower, with solicitude not unmixed with anxiety. But, except for a few critical days in April when the timetable hung fire, the project proceeded speedily and smoothly and was completed on time. The caissons for the 'Phoenix' were all but completed by the 16th May, and the last was delivered on the 23rd; the 'Bombardon'; was assembled in Portland by the 16th May; the bulk of the 'Whale' order sufficient for the minimum operational requirements was ready on the 27th May. The entire armada was ready to sail on the dates originally scheduled—the 6th, 7th and 8th June—and reached the Normandy beaches in several instalments by the 9th June.
The renown which soon attached itself to the name of Mulberry may have led the public to exaggerate not only the part which the artificial harbours as a whole played in the success of D-day operations, but also the magnitude of the production task it represented. on the other hand, the speed with which it was manufactured in the difficult conditions of the spring of 1944 may belie the true magnitude of the achievement. The total cost in money of manufacturing the Mulberry components was somewhere about £25 millions, or rather less than five percent of the estimated value of the total output of the Ministry of Supply and the Admiralty in the six months in which the Mulberry was under construction. The labour force directly employed was not at any time much in excess of 45,000 (in the week ending the 15th March 1944 the labour force engaged on 'Phoenix' was about 22,000, while the peak labour load on the 'Whale' was estimated at about 15,000 workers and that on the 'Bombardon' at about 8,000 workers). In all, the direct labour requirements of the project did not exceed about two percent of the total labour engaged in munitions production by the two departments at the time. The material used for the 'Phoenix' was mainly ballast, sand and cement, and the total amount of steel required for the Mulberry did not exceed 90,000 tons.
Yet behind these relatively modest figures lay an effort of great complexity and difficulty. The project matured at a time when a demand for even 45,000 extra men was bound to impose a great strain on the labour market, especially as in that number were included categories of workers who were especially scarce. The 1,200 scaffolders required for the 'Phoenix' were more than the total available in the country. The welders and steel erectors for the 'Whale' components were equally difficult to find, and a special emergency scheme for training welders had to be instituted to satisfy
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the demand. The difficulties in the supply of materials were of the same kind. Although only 60,000 tons of steel were required for the 'Whale', it had to be fashioned into 200 completely interchangeable components, and the problem of fabrication was very great. Even the 31,000 tons of reinforcing steel bars required for the 'Phoenix' caissons involved a concentrated effort and a changeover of a number of rolling mills from other work.
When at the end of 1944 Sir Walter Monckton was appointed by the Prime Minister to inquire into the results achieved by the Mulberry harbour and to estimate its cost to the war effort, he was able to report that, according to the evidence he received, the work of constructing the Mulberries in the United Kingdom did not seriously interfere with other important production programmes. This verdict must be read more as a tribute to the manner in which the supply departments succeeded in fitting the Mulberry project into their current programmes than as an estimate of the industrial and administrative effort it called forth. Easiest of all was the provision of labour and material (though not of manufacturing capacity and building sites) for the concrete caissons. Their construction was essentially a building operation, and it fortunately coincided with the time when employment of building labour and materials on aerodromes and factories had slackened.16 For the making of other components no such easements were available, for the main burden fell on the heavily engaged engineering and metal-working industries. In order to prevent too great a disturbance in the manufacture of weapons, the Ministry of Supply had to spread the prefabrication of the pier-heads of the 'Whale' between 300 firms and the prefabrication of the floating roadways among 250 firms. Thus spread, the orders required a great deal of guiding and programming. At the end of the year, looking back on its experience over 'Mulberry', the Ministry of Supply had to report that 'a great deal of work which had to be carried out to meet these programmes was only found possible by the granting of a real overriding priority which was used in some cases ruthlessly'. The report goes on to say that, by any ordinary methods, the task could not have been met and the deliveries to arranged dates could not have been achieved.
No wonder other production had to be sacrificed, even if the industrial effort as a whole as not in any way set back. The war-stores which suffered most were gun carriages, tanks, jerricans, steam-boilers, ammunition boxes, and, above all, Bailey bridges. At one time the making of the floating-bridge units for the piers represented as much as fifty percent of the total production of military bridging. In addition, the fabrication of the pier-heads led to some
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delay in ship construction and repair, although no interference in landing craft was permitted. That these losses did no harm is perhaps due to the healthy condition of British supplies and stocks on the even of D-day; that the losses were no greater is evidence of the efficiency and elasticity of British war production in the fifth year of war.
(d) LANDING CRAFT
More burdensome still, and from the point of view of the coming operation much more essential, was the demand for landing craft. On the eve of the landing on the Continent the landing craft had become the most urgent and most absorbing of the Admiralty's tasks, but the history of landing boats—their design and provision—reaches back to the early months of the war or even earlier. The need for assault vessels had been realised long before the war, and a few had been included in the Admiralty's small vessel programmes of 1937–39 and were ready to take part in operations in Norway early in 1940 as well as those at Dunkirk. But the quantity of the boats was small, their operational quality very modest, and demand for more and better assault vessels was bound to grow in 1940 and 1941.17 When early in June 1940 Mr. Churchill first urged his plans for Commando raids on enemy-held territories, he also foresaw that the raiding parties would have to be carried by special craft, lightly armoured and capable of landing on beaches.18 His request brought forth the earlier version of the tank landing craft (L.C.T.) of 226 tons light displacement. Twenty of these craft were ordered in July 1940 and a further ten in October. By the end of 1941 they had all been delivered and some had taken part in raiding operations on the Continent as well as in the operations at Tobruk in Libya.
In the course of time the demand for landing craft was to be steeply raised in preparation for the offensive enterprises. The landing of armies on sea coasts required a number of landing craft very much greater than the earlier programmes of naval construction had ever contemplated, and among them ships of larger size and of more elaborate design than the landing-boats of 1940. The main need was for vessels capable of transport and landing tanks and assault craft. In the end several specialised types of such vessels like the L.S.T.s (tank landing ships) capable of ocean voyages. The second and improved version of the L.S.T. (the L.S.T.2), played a prominent part in the shipping armada required for the Normandy
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landing. By the end of 1943 there had also emerged a design for a still more advanced landing ship of great endurance, the L.S.T.3, conceived largely in preparation for landings in the Far East. Meanwhile a number of specialised types had also budded off from the basic design of both the landing craft and the assault craft.19
It was, however, the tank landing craft, not the tank landing ship, which was to form the backbone of the British programmes of 1942 and 1943. British production of landing vessels had perforce to be concentrated on smaller types—the small assault craft and above all the tank landing craft—for landing ships could only be built in shipyards at the expense of mercantile tonnage. It was therefore necessary necessary to rely from the outset on the rapidly developing shipbuilding facilities of the United States for future supplies of L.S.T.s. At the time when the United States entered the war no more than six such vessels were available, of which three were makeshift adaptations of older shallow-draught ships, and further supplies of these and other landing craft could only come from the United States. During the months immediately preceding the landing on the Continent efforts had to be made to supply a number of ships from British sources,20 but in the end most of the landing ships taking part in the operations on Normandy beaches were American-built.
On the other hand, various types of tank landing craft and of smaller vessels with numerous specialised variations were to be built in this country. Both the requirements and the orders for them grew throughout the war years, though it not until the second half of 1943 that their building could go forward on a scale and at a pace suited to the needs of the imminent landing on the Continent.21 The programme was drastically scaled up a few months after America's entry into the war, when, for a time, it appeared possible that an invasion of the Continent might have to be staged in 1943. Eventually the programme of 1942 rose to a level as high as 1,168 vessels to be completed by May 1943 as against 662 vessels outstanding under the old programme. The expectations of deliveries never ran as high as that, and the main hopes rested on the 2,500 craft of various types which were to be delivered from the
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United States. Requirements nevertheless continued to mount in spite of the fact that the actual production of landing craft, like all other branches of naval construction, had to concede first place to escort vessels. In the spring of 1943 the programme of British construction of landing craft was for 1,050 units, about equally divided between small assault craft and various other types of landing craft. Later in the year additional orders were placed for about 850 landing craft.
By that time plans for landing on the Continent had taken shape, and requirements of landing craft rose to their peak. The campaigns in the Mediterranean had fully demonstrated the crucial importance of landing craft and had brought out the part which supplies of them were bound to play in the timetable of the Allied offensive. The plans for landing on the Continent, as they were the maturing, were based on the clear assumption that the size of the landing fleet available would not only decide the ability to mount the operations on the appointed day but would also determine the size of the landing armies.22 As soon as the date and the general dimensions of the coming operation were definitely decided (in October 1943) the Admiralty was instructed to concentrate on landing craft to the uttermost limit of shipbuilding capacities and at the expense, if necessary, of all other forms of naval construction. The orders and the output soared sufficiently to provide, by May 1944, the British contingent of the landing fleet almost in full. By that time some 3,000 units, of which two-thirds were landing craft of various types had been made available.
The effort which went into building of landing craft and the difficulties encountered will be told later as part of the general story of naval construction. Here it will be sufficiently to note that the effort was sufficiently great not only to require the grant of overriding priority to all other branches of naval shipbuilding, but also to make big inroads into current output. Fortunately for the naval programmes as a whole, the great rise in the demand for escort vessels. Yet even then the strain was great and some dislocation was inevitable.
Bolero, Pluto, Mulberry and landing craft have been singled out for special treatment as examples of the urgent additions resulting from the offensive, but in terms of productive resources they represented a mere fraction of the additional burdens which resulted from the new needs of the offensive campaigns abroad. Above all there were
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vast increases in requirements for engineering stores, transport and 'general stores' in preparation for D-day. There were great increases in the demand for ammunition throughout the twelve months of active fighting. But these various additions are even more difficult to separate from the main stream of regular Army demand than were such 'freak' enterprises as the Mulberry.
(3)
Naval Construction and Shipbuilding
(a) ESCORTS AND LANDING CRAFT
Viewed from the point of view of the anxieties it caused, the priorities it enjoyed, and the successes it scored, naval construction was almost as typical of the conditions of war production in 1942 and 1943 as aircraft was of the conditions of 1940 and 1941. Throughout the greater part of the period it was under a constant pressure of expanding requirements; and until the second half of 1943 the preference which the War Cabinet gave to parts of the naval programmes helped to sustain the pressure.23 Naval programmes and naval output accordingly expanded throughout 1942 and 1943. Indeed 1943 was the year in which the naval shipbuilding effort in the United Kingdom was at its highest. The average amount of naval tonnage under construction throughout the year was over 1.7 million tons, a far higher figure than that reached during the previous war years. The general cut in munitions programmes in December 1943 was bound to lead to a decline in naval construction, but the decline was neither steep nor sudden. Production continued throughout 1944 on a level no more than ten percent lower than that of 1943.24
On the other hand neither output nor authorised requirements could grow at the same pace over the entire range of naval needs. In conditions of industrial stringency naval construction had to be concentrated on the part of programmes which accorded best with the strategic exigencies of the time. And the exigencies varied sufficiently frequently to make a stable it is only too easy to discover an ever-changing distribution of industrial effort.
The period opens with the battleship in the forefront. The programmes from the previous period were almost exclusively
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devoted to the emergency output of small vessels, but in the last quarter of 1941 hopes of being able to shift back to a more balanced programme of naval construction were again running high. The number of small vessels requisitioned from the United States had been growing, and it therefore appeared probable that, if American deliveries continued to come up to expectations, shipbuilding labour and materials might at least be available for other types of ships. Before long hopes were further strengthened by what appeared to be obvious necessity.
The first effect of Pearl Harbor and the war in the Far East was to make the need for 'other types' more urgent than before. Now that the depots and bases at Singapore, Rangoon and Hong Kong had been lost, the Navy had to be supplied with additional facilities for servicing and maintenance to enable it to operate for long periods at long distances away from the full-equipped bases still available to it. But above all it had to be given battleships. In accordance with the Prime Minister's directive of 26th March 1941,25 construction of all vessels except the that could not be completed within two years, except the Vanguard, had been suspended. Outside the George V class the Vanguard was therefore the only battleship being built at the end of 1941. It might well be that with the completion of the Duke of York and with the entry into the war of the United States, the Allies had a superiority over Japan in capital ships which even the loss of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse in Malaya, of the Hood in the Atlantic and of the Barham in the Mediterranean could not wipe out. Yet considering the dispersal of the ships of the Royal Navy over the oceans, the margin of superiority was small, and might have disappeared altogether if the French fleet were to fall into the hands of the enemy.
Needless to say, events in the Far East had also strengthened the doubts about the efficacy of the battleship, but battleships were still demanded to give the fleet striking power in all conditions of geographical position, weather and light. Above all, it was thought that so long as the enemy possessed heavy ships the battleships would be necessary to counter them. The demand for battleships was therefore maintained and had to be met, though it could not of course be satisfied to the extent of reviving all the capital ship programmes previously sanctioned and suspended. The shortage of materials, men, armaments and instruments was too great for that. The Naval Staff was nevertheless anxious to proceed with at least two new battleships, and to go as fast as possible with the Vanguard.
The emphasis on battleships was not, however, destined to last. At the beginning of 1943 the battleship position no longer appeared disturbing. The danger of French battleships falling into German hands
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had gone; the Anson and the Howe had been completed during 1942; and with the British capital ship strength at fifteen the Naval Staff were better prepared to agree again to the postponement of the Lion and of the other battleships on order for the sake of new demands which were becoming urgent.
Some of the urgency had passed to the aircraft carriers. If the construction of carriers had hitherto been somewhat neglected, the neglect was due not so much to lingering doubts about the importance of ship-borne aircraft as to the Admiralty's reluctance to lay down new aircraft carriers until their designs could embody the lessons of the loss of the Ark Royal. By mid-1942 the new design was available, and above all the strategic and tactical value of the aircraft carrier had been strikingly demonstrated in the six months of war in the eastern oceans. Not only had carriers proved a most powerful weapon of naval warfare, but they were also proving very effective in convoy service. Naval opinion was therefore running very strongly in their favour—so strongly that the Naval Staff was now prepared to set its aims as high as an eventual force of fifty-five to sixty-two carriers of all types and sizes.
In the new conception of the Fleet Air Arm large fleet carriers were, to begin with, to play a predominant part, and the mid-1942 plans envisaged a force of some thirteen to twenty fleet carriers, or seven to fourteen more than were at that time in service or under construction.26 Industrial conditions however made it impossible to contemplate an immediate addition of very large ships, while military considerations were against undue concentration on ships that might take five to six years to build and would not be ready in time for operations in the war. So in the end, of the 1942 programme only one large carrier, the Audacious, was laid down, to be completed in April 1946. Two other aircraft carriers, the Implacable and the Indefatigable due to be completed in 1943 and 1944 respectively, were not to be given high priority, while the two remaining fleet carriers of the 1942 programme, the Eagle and the Ark Royal, though ordered, were not laid down. Four more were included in the 1943 programme, but the Naval Staff took it more or less for granted that they would not be laid down in 1943 or the following year.
The need for aircraft carriers was to be mainly satisfied by auxiliary and, above all, by light fleet carriers. The former—essentially escort vessels—were little more than fast merchantmen converted to carry a small number of aircraft. Their provision therefore depended very largely on the supplies of fast merchantmen, and they were mostly to come from the United States. In so far as they
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were to be provided from British sources their story is closely interwoven with that of the repair and conversion of merchant ships, and will be mentioned again later.27 On the other hand, the light fleet carriers were specially designed and fully-equipped aircraft carriers suitable both for escort duty and service with the fleet. They were sometimes described as 'intermediate' in that they were less slow and helpless in combat then the auxiliary carriers but small than the large fleet carriers and therefore enjoyed the advantage of easier and speedier construction. The minimum period they took to build was two years compared with the minimum of three years for a large fleet carrier. They were therefore to form a large and ever-increasing part of naval programmes for the rest of the war and were to be given priority over cruiser, battleships and even over large carriers.28 Four light fleet carriers were ordered in the spring of 1942, and twelve more by the end of the year. Of these sixteen, ten were actually laid down by January 1943 and were expected to come into service in late 1944 and 1945.29
The shipyard capacity for larger ships thus came to be mainly engaged on aircraft carriers. There was however no question now of enlarging it at the expense of smaller ships as had seemed possible at the turn of 1941 and 1942. In the course of 1942 the need for escort and anti-submarine ships of every kind was becoming more and not less urgent than before. In June the enemy attacks on shipping in the Atlantic reached their highest point, and losses of merchant shipping and of escort vessels were exceptionally and alarmingly large. Moreover the expectations of American supplies had to be drastically lowered. Now that the United States were at war and their shipping routes were everywhere under direct attack ,they proceeded to divert to their own use most of the escort ships they were building for Britain. The War Cabinet and the Admiralty were thus compelled to revive and to reinforce the earlier emphasis on Britain's own output of small vessels. Towards the end of the summer of 1942 the Naval Staff estimated the minimum requirements of ocean-going escort vessels at 1,050, but in October of that year only 445 such vessels were available and of these about 100 were old destroyers of 1914–15 vintage. The deficiency was great, and at current rates of production and losses it threatened to be persistent as well as high; it was estimated at 352 by the end of 1944 even if American assignments were honoured in full. Additions therefore had to be made to British production programmes for every type of small vessel capable of
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escorting merchant ships or of fighting the submarine—minesweepers, sloops, corvettes, frigates, and, above all, destroyers.
The building of destroyers was to be continued to the limit of capacity. But even at its maximum the supply of destroyers could make a relatively small contribution to the problem as a whole. Under the wartime 'emergency' programmes there were by the end of 1941 some 118 destroyers in various stages of construction. To these in the course of 1942 there were added forty-two, of which sixteen were larger fleet destroyers of new design and of much increased anti-aircraft firepower. During 1942, seventy-five destroyers were completed and some 107 were still in hand at the beginning of 1943. An additional forty-three were authorised, even though the capacity of the shipyards was so full engaged that there was very little change of their being laid down or being completed before the end of the war.
The main needs of the escort programme thus continued to be covered by the output of vessels which were easier to build then destroyers: minesweepers, trawlers, and, above all, ships of the corvette type.30 The corvette, unlike the trawler, was a true escort vessel, but it was less elaborately armed and was easier and quicker to construct then the destroyer. It is therefore no wonder that the Admiralty was determined to continue the building of corvettes to capacity and even to forgo the hopes of a wholesale switch to the improved twin-screw type—the frigate. The latter had a greater endurance and were more habitable than the corvettes, but their construction impinged more on the capacity which now had to be diverted to the intermediate carrier. Above all they could not be expected to come in as quickly as the corvettes. So corvettes, as well as frigates, had both to be built in Britain and ordered abroad to meet the urgent needs of the time.
The supply of corvettes did not at first respond to the urgency of the demand in spite of every advantage of overriding priority, and the output of 1942 and early 1943 was badly behind the ever-mounting requirements. Worse of all were the American supplies. In the course of 1942 the American authorities had made it clear that out of the 150 on order 100 or so would not be made in time owing to shortage of steel plate. So great was the American need for small escort vessels that in the course of the year ten corvettes which were being completed in Britain had to be turned over to the American Navy; the latter was also allowed to buy from Canada the twenty-five corvettes that were being made for Great Britain. Only twenty-eight
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British-built and twelve American vessels were added to the Royal Navy by the autumn of 1943, and yet somehow 200 additional vessels were expected between November 1942 and January 1945.
Heroic measures to expand production at home were therefore necessary. Out of these measures the first large-scale schemes of prefabrication and industrial reorganisation were to be undertaken by the Admiralty, and more about the changes will be said later. Reorganisation however took time, and less than fifty corvettes and frigates were completed during 1943. In the meantime the extreme urgency had passed and the emphasis in the naval programme shifted again, this time from escort vessels to landing craft.
The brief story of the evolving design and the rising requirements of landing craft has already been told.31 That story with its successful dénouement on D-day is apt to belie the difficulties encountered in the course of production and the extraordinary measures which had to be taken to achieve the rate of output which the plan of the landing required. One of the causes of the delay—the priority which had been assigned in 1942 and early 1943 to escort vessels—has already been mentioned. In the conditions of 1942 and 1943 the winning of the Battle of the Atlantic ranked in order of time well before the preparations for the landing on the Continent. In so far as the delays in launching the offensive could be attributed to an insufficient supply of landing craft they were in the last resort due to the high strategic and industrial priority which the Allied leaders assigned to the defence of the shipping lanes.
That priority prevented a great expansion in output of landing craft; it did not result in actual reduction of output. It will be shown later32 that a high rate of production could be maintained in spite of the higher preference now given to escort vessels. An even higher rate might have been achieved but for the resistances which the more ambitious landing craft programmes generated in the Admiralty. It was not that the importance of landing craft was not understood or that measures to increase their production were not taken. But throughout 1942 and 1943 the Admiralty worked under great pressure and was faced with a rapid succession of urgent tasks. Above all, so great had now become the difficulty of recruiting and maintaining the labour force and so precarious was the balance of labour supplies and of wage rates that the Controller of the Navy and his department went about in fear lest a sudden spate of orders for landing craft should throw into chaos the entire labour system in the shipyards. The main danger was that a great increase in construction in inland centres of fabrication, where labour was highly paid, would disturb
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the settled conditions of employment in the shipyards and would also set up uncontrollable movements of labour.
Substantial as these fears were for a time and great as was the resistance they generated, they had completely vanished in the months of active preparation and above all in the spring of 1944. In these months the output of landing craft developed very fast indeed—probably faster than any branch of naval programmes had ever developed in the past. The output of landing craft in 1942, 1943 and 1944 moved as shown in Table 37.
Landing craft: number and tonnage under construction (quarterly averages)
TABLE 37
Period
Number
Tonnage (thousand tons)
1942:
First quarter
518
104.4
Second quarter
846
167.2
Third quarter
1,215
250.6
Fourth quarter
1,361
270.6
1943:
First quarter 1,364
290.8
Second quarter 1,336
291.2
Third quarter 1,338
327.3
Fourth quarter 1,360
361.2
1944:
First quarter 1,270
328.8
Second quarter 1,381
363.2
The figures for the first six months of 1944 are even more creditable than it might at first sight appear from the table. For in the months immediately preceding D-day the demands had grown so high and had to be met with such haste that production of hulls again began to give trouble. The capacity in constructional engineering firms was insufficient to cope with it, and a large proportion of the programme had to be brought back to the shipbuilding yards and forced ahead at the expense of other ships.33 The newly-introduced 'landing craft gun' (L.C.G.) proved most troublesome. It was more complicated than the L.C.T.s, it entailed much preliminary work, especially in the drawing stage, and occupied a great deal of fitting-out capacity. Equally trouble some, though in a different way, were the landing ships (L.S.T.s) which, contrary to an earlier understanding with the United States, had now to be introduced into the British programme. There was not enough space in the shipyards to allow boats as large as the L.S.T. to be laid down, and in order to make space, the Admiralty was compelled to remove the keels of naval vessels which
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had already been laid down. This was done with one of the battle-class destroyers, with the aircraft carrier Eagle, and with two submarines.
The demand for landing vessels slumped somewhat after D-day, as was only to be expected, but it did not cease altogether. It was maintained as part of the preparations for war against Japan and in some respects was even more exacting then the larger demands of 1943 and 1944. The landing vessels did not however monopolise the attention of the Admiralty, for in the meantime another change of emphasis occurred within the naval programme. This time the most urgent demand was for the so-called Fleet Train—a change connected with the war in the Far East which will best be described elsewhere.34 With it the record of changing priorities in naval programmes came to its final conclusion.
(b) BUOYANT OUTPUT
The changing balance within the naval programmes must be borne in mind in considering the ups and downs of output. It imposed additional strains at a time when the prospects of raw materials were precarious, labour short and the supply of components and equipment irregular. Special problems—mostly local shortages and failures in synchronising supplies—arose in quick succession as one naval type after another was singled out for preferential treatment. It is therefore not surprising that delays in construction were becoming troublesome and even disturbing during 1942. The completions by April 1942 were between ten to thirty percent behind the forecasts of July 1941 in all classes of most urgently needed vessels. Whereas the expected production of battleships, carriers and cruisers had been cut down sufficiently low for production to be running full up to forecasts, the output of smaller ships ran as shown in Table 38.
Smaller naval vessels: production forecasts in July 1941 and actual production to April 1942
TABLE 38
Numbers
Forecasts, July 1941
Actual production to April 1942
Destroyers
61
38
Convoy escorts
50
42
Submarines
21
17
Landing craft
171
142
Minesweepers, anti-submarine vessels and other miscellaneous craft were about fifteen percent below forecast
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What was more surprising than the delays in 1942 is that in 1943 the rate of completion rose, delays shortened and output improved in spite of the withdrawal of preference. Work in hand rose sharply as the year 1942 drew to its close, and continued to rise in 1943. The increase was most marked in types of ships for which hulls could be prefabricated—L.C.T.s and corvettes. But the general trend of output also reached its highest point during 1943. Tonnage in hand rose from 1,525,000 tons in January to a peak of 1,953,000 tons in December. The tonnage of naval vessels completed rose to 316,000 tons, and the disparity between expectations and fulfilment was now narrower than ever before.
Naval tonnage completing between January 1941 and June 1944 (down to and including trawlers)
TABLE 39
Tonnage expected to complete by end of period
Tonnage actually completed by end of period
Percentage
%
1941:
January to June
252,433
171,755
68
July to December
230,970
179,850
78
1942:
January to June 192,302
157,257
82
July to December 189,227
162,340
86
1943:
January to June 134,582
124,257
92
July to December 208,080
191,855
92
1944:
January to June 218,532
157,944
72
These improvements can to some extent be ascribed to the priority which naval construction as a whole or parts of it enjoyed during the great part of 1943. It made it easier to obtain materials and more especially labour, for the employment of labour in Admiralty industries steadily rose during this period in December 1943 stood 918,000, the highest point it was ever to reach. But the high rate of production continued even after the overriding priorities had been taken away, thus revealing what probably was the most important cause of rising output, i.e. improvements in the efficiency of the industry. In naval construction the improvements mostly came as a result of new methods adopted in the manufacture of smaller vessels and also in the technical re-equipment of the shipbuilding industry as a whole. Of the new methods, the most important one—prefabrication—has already been mentioned. It was mainly to be employed in the making of corvettes and landing craft, but in this
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special field its effects were all but revolutionary. Without it neither the large programme of escort vessels of 1942 and 1943 nor the still greater programme of landing craft of 1943–44 could have been achieved.
The first steps to introduce prefabrication had been taken in 1940, but the whole of 1942 and a great part of 1942 passed before the scheme was in full working order. Its main principle, as it then worked, was to entrust constructional engineering firms with welding large units out of which hulls could be assembled in the dockyards. This division of labour economised a great deal of time in the slips and of dockyard labour, and the economies grew as the scheme was getting into its stride. At first the prefabricated parts were limited to five tons, but by degrees cramped dockyards were cleared, more powerful cranes were provided, and the dimensions and weights of prefabricated units were increased far above earlier limits. In the first half of 1943 some firms were producing prefabricated L.C.T.s in two or two and a half months as against the six months they had taken previously. Unfortunately for the landing-craft programme, but fortunately for the escort programmes, the need for frigates flared up just at the time when the system of prefabrication was at least working at full efficiency. But the system was again to prove of immense value seven or eight months later when L.C.T.s again replaced the corvettes in the engineering shops and on the slips.
Considering how meagre was the pre-war experience of prefabrication—it had been chiefly confined to the manufacture and assembly of certain types of ancillary equipment—the scheme was remarkably successful. Firms were of course able to draw on American experience; they caught the sense of urgency which animated the preparations for the final offensive; but they also undoubtedly benefited from the various re-equipment schemes which the Admiralty sponsored in the course of 1943.
The purpose of this re-equipment was not so much to develop facilities outside the main shipbuilding centres as to re-equip and to modernise the main processes in the shipyards themselves and in marine engineering firms. Their modernisation had to be tackled sooner or later. Whereas some firms, like Vickers, had re-equipped on the even of the war or in the early years of the war, the industry as a whole continued until well into 1942 to suffer from general obsolescence. In the shipyards machine tools, heavy plant, especially cranes and power supplies were generally deficient, and provisions for welding were very meagre. Most of the marine engineers worked with old machines; a large proportion were twenty to thirty years old and were debilitated by wartime working speeds for which they were not designed. The technical processes, especially in coppersmiths' and blacksmiths' shops, were slow and old-fashioned. All these
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facts were well known both in the industry and in the Admiralty, but in the earlier years of the war the pressure of immediate production tasks left the firms no time for a comprehensive survey and a drastic reform; and in any case their capital resources were not such as to enable them to embark on a wholesale reconstruction out of their own means.
It was left to the Government to take the initiative. In the course of 1942 the difficulty of expanding output in the shipyards was becoming manifest, and the impression that their equipment was at fault gained ground in the Admiralty and elsewhere. In July 1942 the Barlow Committee.35 reported to the Minister of Production that in its view the industry was in urgent need of re-equipment and modernisation. This view was to be reinforced in detail by an inquiry which an engineer outside the shipbuilding industry carried out on behalf of the Machine Tool Controller.36 In accordance with his recommendations the Admiralty undertook to instigate the re-equipment and to shoulder the main cost. A Shipyard Development Committee was set up inside the Admiralty in November 1942 'to consider proposals and where necessary to initiate action for the improvement of equipment, re-equipment and/or extension of shipyards and marine engineering works with a view to achieving maximum economic production and ensuring that such steps are consistent with the most economical use of manpower'. In all, schemes of capital development were approved at about a hundred contractors' works at a total cost of about £6.9 millions, of which £5 millions were to be borne by the Government. They were designed to provide the industry with new machine tools, cranes, power supplies and certain other improvements of a structural kind. Above all, rapid steps were to be taken to equip the industry for the use of welding.
The early history of welding in British shipbuilding was marked by much scepticism and inertia. Although some welding processes had been in use for years, the foreign successes in producing welded constructions were watched with interest mixed with distrust. There were, to begin with, technical doubts whether welded structures would withstand the special stresses and strains to which ships in general and naval ships especially were subjected, and there were also reasons both economic and social, not to say sentimental, for continued preference both in the Admiralty and in the industry for riveted construction. There was however no doubt about the economies of welded construction in wartime, for supplies of riveters
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were short and difficult to expand, while fabrication by welding was proving quicker and cheaper than any other alternative method. Before long the accumulating experience both in naval vessels and elsewhere (especially in tanks) were to prove the technical qualities of welded seams. By 1942 opinion in favour of general adoption of welding was sufficiently ripe for the Admiralty to take the initiative in equipping the yards for a very wide use of welding. Between July 1942 and July 1943 the number of welders employed by the main naval shipbuilding firms grew by almost forty percent, and work could be begun in the first all-welded pressure hulls for submarines and on the first all-welded destroyer.
This and other improvements were carried into effect very quickly. By August 1943 the Shipyard Development Committee was able to report that the bulk of the development scheme would be completed by the end of the year and that the welding scheme would be completed by the end of the year and that the welding scheme would be finished earlier still, by September. And it was largely by these means that the output of hulls was progressively expanded in the course of the year.
The increase in the output of hulls was of course to bring with it its own problems. As elsewhere in war production, accelerated output in any one direction was bound to bring out shortages in others. The industries supplying the shipyards with materials found themselves at the turn of 1943 and 1944 under additional strain. Heavy castings and forgings threatened to become scarce in 1944, and the light carrier Majestic was actually held up on that account.
More serious still and more chronic was the shortage of equipment. The very success of prefabrication in the making of hulls for landing vessels created in the course of 1943 the problem of finding the necessary engines. Admiralty requirements for diesels had reached a peak of 500 per month, for even though minor landing craft were engined from American sources, larger craft had to be equipped by engines made in the United Kingdom. There was particular difficulty over supply sufficient big oil engines (Paxman T.P.12). An additional factory which had been given over to this work started production early in the year, but a shortage of supplies continued, and it was reported in the summer that though output would meet current production it was insufficient to make up arrears or to provide spares. The position, however, never became desperate and had rectified itself by the spring of 1944.
More stubborn were some of the other shortages of equipment, most of which resulted from more recent and above all more exacting requirements. The ships which were being built with a view to possible use in the Far East necessitated improved living conditions, and consequently a large increase in electrical installations of a 'non-combatant' kind, such as laundries and kitchens, and thus added to
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the chronic shortage of electrical equipment. The continued development of radar created difficulties in the supply of wireless telegraphy and direction-finding apparatus. In the design of engines there was a marked tendency towards increased heat and pressure, and the standards were rising just when the burdens of production capacity were at their heaviest.
Worst of all was the supply of fire control gear. Not only was the productive capacity barely sufficient to meet to the total volume of requirements, but the requirements themselves were changing as a result of the rapid progress of design. Especially troublesome was the provision of fire control gear for light anti-aircraft guns. The production of modern equipment for the 40-mm. gun (there were two such equipments in production) was giving trouble during 1943, and early in that year the design department brought forward the so-called BUSTER, a twin self-controlled mounting developed from a previous design, which it was to superseded. A successor also had to be found to the pom-pom director, which had not proved a successful equipment at sea; the result was the Close Range Blind Fire Director based on the same principle of control as the BUSTER.37
The industrial situation in 1943 and 1944 prevented these ideas from being fully realised. Much was however done to expand production. Owing to the specialised and complex nature of the products, it was not easy to draw on capacity not specially created for the purpose. So, to begin with, the Admiralty went on entrusting the expansion to firms which possessed sufficient experience to be able to produce work up to the required standard. In the end the Admiralty adopted the 'group system', in which orders were placed with inexperienced firms which were coordinated in groups led by an experienced firm. But although the groups were quickly formed, difficulties in making the system work persisted until the end of the war, and production was not expanded as hoped for. Ships were still being equipped with the multiple pom-pom and its out-of-date control, though experience of Japanese bomber attacks had shown the combination to be inadequate. A large number of ships continued to reach the fitting-out stage with the probability that the equipment in general and fire control in particular would not be ready in time.
Generally speaking, the last year of war in Europe was marked by recurring anxieties about a large variety of supplies: no sooner had shortages in one direction been done away with than, owing to the generally overloaded state of industry, they appeared in another. Wireless items, including the main switchgear, continued to be
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difficult. There was a shortage of wireless valves so serious that steps had to be taken to obtain supplies from the United States and from the Air Ministry. Flying-bomb attacks added to production difficulties in this field and helped to create a shortage of dry batteries which continued for several months. At the end of the year it was reported that renewed difficulties were expected over these items, mainly as a result of new designs. But for these and the earlier shortages the achievements of naval construction in the closing years of the war in Europe would have been even greater than the total output shows them to have been.
(c) THE MERCHANT SHIPS
The record of merchant shipbuilding reflected and recapitulated the general trend of naval construction. It benefited from the increased efficiency of the industry, suffered from changes of emphasis in requirements, and in the end it contracted to fit the falling labour supplies. At the time of Pearl Harbor merchant shipbuilding appeared in a position remarkably and unexpectedly prosperous. It will be recalled that early in 1941 the supply of merchant shipping had gone through a depression.38 Two and a half millions tons of damaged merchant shipping lay immobilised in ports and shipyards at a time when the Battle of the Atlantic was entering one of its intense phases. In March of that year the Prime Minister was compelled to seek a way out of the conflicting claims of repairs, merchant shipbuilding and naval construction by decreeing a general scaling-down in the construction of new vessels. In addition to calling a halt to the construction of heavy warships, he laid down that the output of new merchant ships in 1942 should be reduced from the 'target' of 1.25 million tons previously fixed to 1.1 million tons, and that the Admiralty should not for the time being proceed with any merchant vessels which could not be completed by the end of 1941. The Prime Minister's object was to set 10,000 men—5,000 from merchant ship construction and 5,000 from naval construction—free to deal with the enormous arrears to repairs to merchant ships and their escorts.
In the event, the change of policy did not result in reductions quite as drastic as the Prime Minister was ready to face. The large-scale transfer of labour proved difficult to carry out, and the Admiralty disregarded the direction to suspend work on merchant ships not expected to complete within the year. It did so in the expectation that the accumulated repairs, largely seasonal in origin, could shortly be worked off without recourse to so drastic a step, and that most of the men required for the repair of merchant shipping could be (as they were to be) drawn from long-term naval repair work.
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Thus, paradoxically, the prospects of improving the output of new merchant ships were better in 1941, following the lowering of the target figure, than they had been for a long time. Between February and June the number of men engaged on merchant shipbuilding increased owing to a rise in the rate of recruitment, and the increase continued to the end of the year and beyond. Earlier difficulties in the manufacture of propelling machinery were also being resolved. By the autumn the numbers of workers engaged in the construction of marine engines had increased sufficiently to remove the worst shortages, and the supply of engines and boilers for merchant ships had practically ceased to cause anxiety. In addition, the Government's policy of concentrating upon the production of the simplest classes of merchant ships and upon economical and semi-standardised individual types was beginning to take full effect. Before the end of the year considerable progress had also been made in the prefabrication of hulls. The difficulties of riveting and fitting-out still persisted in the shipyards, but they did not arrest the general advance in output. During the second half of 1941 production was at the annual rate of 1.4 million tons. Since March, tonnage immobilised in repair yards had been halved and the production of new merchant ships in the course of the year exceeded by 50,000 tons the target figure of 1.1 million tons then fixed.
Indeed, so favourable did the state of production appear at the end of 1941 that the Prime Minister and his advisers thought it possible to restore the earlier 'target' of one and a quarter million tons. There were even some hopes of exceeding it, and the hopes came true. Production in 1942 reached 1.3 million gross tons and the position in the shipyards and in industry in general appeared to be set fair for some time. There was still difficulty in recruiting special classes of skilled workers, such as riveters, riggers and fitters, but the total supply of labour which had grown in the preceding year continued to increase slightly owing to the introduction of women. What is more, some of the earlier additions to the labour force could now be employed to accelerate the construction of merchant ships, for the burden of ship repairs continued to lighten. By December 1942 the number of workers engaged on merchant shipping construction was approaching 43,000, the highest figure of the war.39
The progress was bound to come to a halt in 1943 and 1944. By then the Battle of the Atlantic and the readjustment of priorities to fit the growing labour shortage began to have their effects on merchant shipbuilding. Faced with mounting losses of inadequately protected merchant shipping, the War Cabinet decided in October 1942 that the right policy would be to use shipbuilding resources for
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the production of escort vessels rather than for additions to the Merchant Navy. The hulls for corvettes under the new programme could perhaps be supplied by prefabrication without greatly encroaching upon merchant shipbuilding, but it was impossible to engine them without reducing the merchant shipbuilding programme by at least 100,000 tons. The latter was accordingly scaled down in January 1943 to 1,199,000 tons in 1943 and 1,129,000 tons in 1944.
In accepting this reduction in the merchant shipbuilding 'target', the War Cabinet hoped that increased supplies of labour would make up the loss incurred by the transfer of workers and berths to the making of escort vessels. But the growing difficulties of labour supply left this hope unrealised, and the loss to merchant shipbuilding remained uncompensated.40 After September 1943 the number of workers in shipbuilding began to decline, partly through natural wastage and partly in response to the War Cabinet's request for cuts.
The actual output nevertheless did not slacken off as fast as might have been feared. The total output in 1943 reached 1.2 million gross tons and, moreover, contained a number of vessels more difficult to produce than standard tramps. Even the ordinary tramps built in 1943 were more complex and costly vessels than those of 1940 and 1941. Their speeds were higher, their fittings, defensive equipment and crew accommodation were more elaborate.
The comparative buoyancy of the output figures in 1943 largely reflected the improvements in the physical equipment of the shipbuilding industry resulting from the Admiralty's campaign for re-equipment.41 Of the £6.9 millions which was the estimated cost of the re-equipment scheme sponsored by the Shipyard Development Committees only about £2.4 millions was expended on yards devoted mainly to merchant shipbuilding. In some instances the development schemes may have done little more than arrest the accumulated deterioration of plant and equipment through the war years. Yet as long as the cuts in the labour force were relatively small the improvements were sufficient to keep production slightly above the planned level.
It was not until 1944 that the losses in the labour force coupled with the changes of emphasis within the shipbuilding programme itself, brought about a drastic reduction in both output and programmes. The merchant programme was now deeply involved in the 'final' moves of the offensive strategy. Less attention was being paid to mere volume of output, and resources were being diverted in ever-growing
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measure not only to the construction of naval vessels and fleet auxiliaries but also to merchant ships capable of serving the needs of the offensive; and some of these required an increased productive effort per gross ton. Merchant vessels suitable for operational roles had been included in programmes since the summer of 1942—mainly tugs. In the course of late 1942 and 1943 there appeared in the programme numbers of vessels like the coastal tankers for cased petrol to be used in combined operations, tankers of 5,000 tons deadweight for service in smaller Mediterranean and Far Eastern harbours, crane ships, vessels of the 'Bel' type for transshipment of heavy cargoes, to say nothing of tugs and lighters.
Above all, the merchant programme as a whole had to be sacrificed to the building of tank landing craft. In November 1943 the War Cabinet decided that, in addition to tank landing craft produced by standard prefabrication methods, an additional number would have to be built in the normal shipyards, including merchant berths. Shortly afterwards similar accommodation had to be made for a new type of tank landing ship or transport ferry (L.S.T.3) for South-East Asia Command. The net estimated loss of merchant shipbuilding from all these causes in the course of the year was approximately 80,000 tons. The actual loss of output however was even greater than the cuts in the programme and the inroads into it. Total production in 1944 just exceeded a million tons (1,014,000 gross tons) and would have fallen still further had not the downward movement in the employment figures been temporarily arrested in the closing months of the year. By then preparations for war against Japan were in full swing.
(4)
Aircraft Production
(a) THE REALISTIC PROGRAMMES
Much more continuous and more general was the expansive urge in aircraft production. The strategic change-over to the offensive did nothing to impair the importance of aircraft and more especially that of the bomber. In January 1942, as in October 1941, the bomber was still the only means of getting to grips with the enemy at home and ranked first among the offensive instruments available to this country. In the strategic discussions between Britain and the United States an intensive bombing attack on Germany was apt to be considered both as a contribution to the joint enterprise with Russia and as a preparation for the coming landing on the Continent. Even higher estimates of what the bomber could and should do were
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current in the R.A.F. The heads of Bomber Command assumed—and acted on the assumption—that, given all the aeroplanes and bombers they asked for, they could bring Germany to the very verge of defeat by bombing alone. This doctrine was never accepted quite so baldly by the high strategic command in this country of the United States, but enough of it entered into the official plans, as they were taking shape in the course of 1942, to keep the demand for bombers at a level at least as high as it had stood in 1941.
Aircraft production therefore continued to enjoy prior claim on resources which it had acquired in the dramatic summer months of 1940. In the course of 1941 it had to share its claims with a number of other urgent war-stores, but its total demands, especially after the introduction of the bomber programme at the end of 1941, were to great as completely to outweigh the burden of other priority demands. It would not an exaggeration to say that throughout 1942 aircraft production was by far the largest single claimant to additional factors of production, and more especially to labour. In requirements under the bomber programmes for more than a million additional men and women42 and for an intake for the first five months of 58,000 per month, were of course greatly exaggerated and could not possibly have been met. Yet even in October 1942, after the requirements had been pruned by the Lord President and the Minister of Production, they still amounted to 208,000 for the second half of the year, which was more than the comparable requirements of the other supply departments together.
In the late autumn of 1942 as a result of the developing battle in the Atlantic the bomber programme had for a time to concede the highest priority to anti-submarine vessels and weapons, and soon afterwards M.A.P. had to share in the December reductions of the manpower requirements of the war. The whole scale of national contribution to the war in the air had to be slightly reduced.43 Yet the reductions which M.A.P. was expected to undergo were much less than those of other departments. In accordance with the Prime Minister's directive the combined effort of the R.A.F. and M.A.P. was to be raised by additions of aircraft rather than by increases in the R.A.F. personnel, and the original manpower demands of the R.A.F. and M.A.P., for 472,000 and 603,000 respectively, were reduced by 225,000 for the former by only 100,000 for the latter. Allowing for the reductions, the combined allocation of M.A.P. and the R.A.F, at 750,000, was still as great as that of the Navy, the shipbuilding
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industry, the Army and the Ministry of Supply put together, while the allocation of M.A.P., at nearly 503,000, was nearly 75 percent of the combined quotas of the Ministry of Supply and the Admiralty.44
The allocations were of course lowered again in mid-1943 when, it will be recalled, all programmes had to be drastically cut. On this occasion M.A.O.'s allocation for the eighteen months' period was nearly halved from 503,000 to 259,000.45 But while deciding on these reductions the War Cabinet also reimposed the overriding priority of M.A.P.'s claims to the resources of the country. In the Prime Minister's opinion, the failure to increase the supply of bombers was then the greatest danger facing the war effort as a whole, and every possible endeavour had to be made to enable aircraft firms to obtain the labour they were promised. They were to be allowed to retain the mechanics they had received on loan from the R.A.F. and all the men and women who under existing rules were liable to be called up for the Services. The newly-developed machinery of 'headquarter preferences'46 was to be harnessed to fill the vacancies in the most important branches of aircraft production. So effective indeed was the cumulative action of the various priority measures that for the first time in the history of aircraft production the intake of labour into the aircraft industry exceeded allocation, and by the end of 1943 the industry had received 307,000 persons instead of the 259,000 allotted to it in July 1943. It was not until July 1944 that, with the general curtailment of war industry, M.A.P. at last lost the priority it had enjoyed with but one interruption since 1940.
The strategic importance of the bomber was not, of course, the sole motive behind the priorities. The privileges conferred on the aircraft industry reflected not only the urgency of its products but also the insufficiency of its output. The programmes of September and October 1941, already repeatedly mentioned and described opened up a new phase in the history of expectations. From now on all efforts had to be concentrated, without digression or interruption, on the supply of bombers for the strategic bombing of Germany. But from the very outset the demands of the Prime Minister and of the Air Ministry, and the hopes of M.A.P. itself, proved too hard to fulfil, and in the end they had to be scaled down to conform more closely with economic and industrial possibilities.
This change in the method of 'programming' aircraft production at the turn of 1942 and 1943 was another turning-point. The aircraft industry and M.A.P. were approaching that point all through 1942. It will be recalled that as a result of the discussions in the autumn of
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1941 the bomber programmes which M.A.P. undertook to fulfil were considerably less than the 14,500 bombers by 1943 asked for by the Prime Minister. Yet even this objective was beyond the reach of the industry. Whereas the programme of December 1941 laid down that 12,159 aircraft would be produced in the first six months of 1942, only 11,583 were in fact produced.47 In the course of the year output as a whole was only two percent below the programme of July 1941, but this relatively narrow difference concealed gaping deficiencies in more important types of aircraft, and it will be shown that worst of all was the position of the bombers and of naval aircraft. It is therefore not surprising that by the autumn of 1942 a sense of disappointment and disquiet entered into the discussion of future prospects.
The use of 'target' programmes as yardsticks to measure failures served to increase this perturbation. While most people were aware that the 'target' programmes were not wholly realisable, they did not know how great was the measure of 'unreality' taken for granted in their compilation. The final crisis in the use of unrealistic targets came to a head in the autumn of 1942. The Secretary of State for Air, Sir Archibald Sinclair, acting with the knowledge of the Prime Minister made what he called his 'Clarion Call' to the Minister of Aircraft Production to produce enough heavy and medium bombers to raise the operational strength of heavy and medium squadrons in Bomber Command to a total of fifty by the end of the year. The Minister of Aircraft Production, after consultations with the industry, promised by an all-out effort to produce 780 heavy bombers during September, October and November. But although this was 255 more than had been produced in the preceding three months, it was 170 short of the figure laid down in the programme of July 942,48 and the Minister of Aircraft Production had to admit that the July programme 'was too high for the firms to live up to'. Programmes had, he said, customarily been fixed 'rather higher than most firms can probably do … because such a policy keeps them pressing hard all the time'. On the other hand he emphasised that his promise to the Secretary of State for Air of 780 heavy bombers was a realistic one—'what I think can be produced'.
These words gave the clue to the new policy of lower expectations. The Minister, Sir Stafford Cripps, who had been appointed November 1942, and the Chief Executive, Sir Wilfred Freeman, now back at M.A.P., favoured a radical change of method. In their view the effect of the 'carrot' was short-lived: 'if dangled too long it loses its effect altogether'. At the same time it led firms to build up stocks of materials and components in excess of their needs, thus helping to
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create shortages. What, then, was to take the place of the old type of programme? No single answer to this question was possible. Programmes had several purposes: first, to serve as a basis on which contracts were placed; secondly, to form a basis for provisioning materials and components and for calculating raw materials, machine tools and labour; and finally to serve as the standard by which the performance of the industry could be judged. Some of these objects could be satisfied by a 'minimum' programme, i.e. a programme which would provide the two Service departments with 'the best and most accurate programme possible' on which to base their strategic planning and give the War Cabinet a fair standard by which to judge industry's performance. On the other hand responsible people at M.A.P.—among them the Deputy Director General of Statistics and Programmes—considered that aims pitched above the minimum programmes might still be necessary. Much was to be said for planning production in a way which would allow the minimum programme to be exceeded, and also for retaining some degree of inflation as an incentive to firms whose management was as yet less efficient than average.
Nevertheless the yearning after a more conservative standard by which the performance of M.A.P. and industry could be judged prevailed over other considerations and found its expression in the first 'realistic' programme of January 1943.49 The programme showed a startling contrast to all its predecessors. It was a 'minimum' programme in that it promised the number of aircraft which M.A.P. was prepared to guarantee that industry could deliver. In the Minister's words, the programme was 'the most accurate forecast (possible) of what we shall in fact get produced'. All predictable contingencies, such as holidays, sickness, and absenteeism, were allowed for, and on this basis a minimum programme for each firm was fixed by reference to its past performance. At the same time the incentive inflation of the 'carrot' was not entirely eliminated. Each firm's programme carried an additional quantity roughly representing the 'extent to which we (the Ministry) believe the firm is likely to fall below an programme which is set it'. The object was, in the words of the new Minister, 'to put the programme for inefficient units beyond their present output but not beyond their reasonable capacity'. Special arrangements were also made for provisioning materials at a rate greater than the programme required as as not to prejudice the possibility of its being exceeded by the more efficient firms.
To the outside world this programme came as severe shock. It dispelled illusions which had been nursed for years, and which successive disappointments seem never to have touched. Compared
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with previous programmes, figures were indeed low, for the new programme implied a reduction by the end of 1943 of thirteen percent, distributed as shown in Table 40.
The 'Realistic' programme for 1943 and the previous aircraft programme
TABLE 40
Number
Old programme50
New programme51
Changes
TOTAL
32,399
28,147
-4,252
Heavy bombers
6,245
4,724
-1,521
Medium bombers
3,872
3,342
-530
Light bombers
526
549
+23
Fighters
12,718
1,220
-1,498
General reconnaissance
831
1,221
+390
Naval types
3,575
2,011
-1,564
Trainers
4,632
5,080
+448
Sacrifices of heavy bombers and Fleet Air Arm types were specially criticised; yet compared with the actual output in 1942 the programme promised a steady although not a spectacular improvement. Total output for 1943 was programmed to show, in operational types alone, an increase of thirty percent over the actual output for 1942, i.e. 23,067 aircraft against 17,730, an increase of 5,337. In the end, the programme was approved by the Defence Committee (Supply_ although it was agreed that the estimate of naval types should be further discussed.
With minor adjustments in April this programme continued in force till September 1943 when the time came for further realistic adjustments.52 For in spite of the minimum rates now adopted the firms were still falling down on their programme scales. The result of the revisions in September was to lower again the general level for the remaining months of the year, and to compensate for the immediate decreases by raising the forecasts for 1944. The experience of the next few months, however, showed that the September reductions, like those of the preceding April and January, were still insufficiently realistic, and further reductions would in any case have been necessary in 1944. In the end the reductions came as a result of the general scaling down of munitions programming at the end of 1943.
The reduced allocations of labour to munitions industries of
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December 194353 made it no longer possible to contemplate the old aircraft programmes however realistic. Although the cut in the labour force employed at the end of the year was not great (some 105,000 in all), the expectations of the labour intake which M.A.P. considered necessary for the fulfilment of the existing programme were lowered by 155,000. The programme had to be reduced in proportion—by about eight percent in numbers and four percent in structure weight—and the monthly output was not planned to rise above 2,600 aircraft. The principle urged by the Prime Minister, that of preparing the heaviest possible impact on the enemy in 1944, was not thereby prejudiced. The cuts were mostly at the expense of trainers and of aircraft whose operation quality was unsatisfactory or uncertain, e.g. Stirlings and Warwicks, or whose possibilities of development had been exhausted, e.g. Wellingtons, Hurricanes, Beaufighters and Sunderlands, or whose usefulness was impaired by delays in development, e.g. the Buckingham. The more important types urgently required by the Royal Air Force, e.g. the Lancaster, Halifax, Spitfire, Tempest and the Mosquito, were not only kept in but were 'designated', i.e the firms making these types were promised preferential treatment by means of the recently devised 'preference' machinery for labour vacancies.54 Output of heavy bombers was to increase from 475 in March 1944 to a peak of 670 in October 1945, fighter output was to remain fairly even at about the 1,000 mark, whilst medium bombers and general reconnaissance, transports and trainers were substantially reduced. Naval types alone were to considerably increased.55
The programme with further adjustments in March 194456 remained in force for some months and was not revised until the more general scaling down in the summer. The new programme which was then envisaged forecast a lower and a slowly falling output up to December 1946.57 The peak monthly output figures for all types were reduced to a fairly stable level, which fluctuated between 1,900 and 2,300.
(b) PRODUCTION LOST AND REDEEMED
The programme were thus continually scaled down but—to repeat—their scaling down was due as much to the unduly optimistic projects of expansion as to the failure of aircraft production to
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expand. For, viewed by itself production grew throughout the period. Output measured in numbers, in structure weight, and in structure weight corrected by man-hours, rose throughout the period, as shown in Table 41.
TABLE 41
Monthly averages
Period
Numbers
Structure weight
Structure weight corrected by man-hours
(million lb.)
(Jan. 1942 = 1,000)
1942:
First quarter
1,879
9.17
1,001
Second quarter
1,982
10.80
1,165
Third quarter
1,980
11.82
1,241
Fourth quarter
2,049
12.67
1,328
1943:
First quarter 2,135
14.21
1,472
Second quarter 2,201
15.53
1,591
Third quarter 2,171
15.37
1,585
Fourth quarter 2,246
16.63
1,698
1944:
First quarter 2,473
18.82
1,918
Second quarter 2,396
18.44
1,885
Third quarter 2,048
16.80
1,718
Fourth quarter 1,903
15.45
1,573
It will this be seen that, however measured production rose steadily in the first half of 1942, somewhat more slowly in the second half of 1942 and the first half of 1943, slumped in the third quarter of 1943 and then rose again towards the end of 1943, and more steeply in early 1944. A marked decline in output did not set in until several months after the cuts in the labour force of the previous December—indeed no until the third quarter of 1944. The labour force grew throughout the period to reach its peak of 1,821,500 at the beginning of 1944, and the man-hour equivalents of finished airframes grew from 42 million per month in the first quarter of 1942 to some 50 million in the last quarter of 1943.58
Yet measured against programme output appeared consistently laggard. In the first half of 1942 the gap between programmes and output was considerably less than the convention fifteen percent exaggeration implied in the 'pre-realistic' programmes. But in the second half of 1942 the scissors opened up very widely until by the end of the year production, especially that of bombers, lagged as badly as at any previous point except the winter of 1940–41.59 Worst
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of all during 1942 was the output of heavy bombers. In the first six months of the year their output was some twenty-two percent below the current programme; in the second half of the year the gap widened to about twenty-eight percent of the revised programme of July 1942.60 As has already been indicated the gap persisted even after the first 'realistic' programmes were introduced, In only one month of 1943 (March) did total output of all types of aircraft exceed the programmed figure, though in two months (February and May) it was within two percent of its target. In all other months, in spite of successive readjustments of programme, the gap persisted and was widest of all in July.
The lagging record of total production was somewhat redeemed by the good showing of the heavy bombers and fighters in 1943. From January to June the output of the 'heavies', especially of the Lancasters, at last caught up with the programme and thereafter the gap was relatively narrow. Fighter production also settled down to within a short distance of the programme targets. On the other hand medium bombers straggled behind schedules in spite of the drastic reductions in the autumn of the year. Worse still was the record of naval types. They were far behind programme and the distance between output and programme widened from July onwards. It was only towards the very end of 1943 and during the first six months of 1944 that aircraft production at last approached sufficiently closely the targets of the programmes to make further adjustments of the latter unnecessary.
In this story of output failing to expand until the end of 1943 but expanding more rapidly thereafter it is easy to discern the action of forces some of which were common to war industry as a whole, while others were peculiar to the aircraft industry. Shortages both new and inherited played their part. In the course of 1942 the wholly-renovated department of Materials Production in M.A.P. brought system into the provision of raw materials and greatly raised both estimates of the aircraft industry's needs and the productive capacity of the fabricating firms. But in the meantime shortages of fabricated raw materials could still be blamed for failure of production. M.A.P. used the argument more or less convincingly in a discussion about the naval Barracudas in the early months of 1943. Similarly, in the discussions on the April 1943 revisions of the 'realistic' programme M.A.P. issued a warning that the revised programme, though slightly smaller in total structure weight, might require a larger amount of raw materials than it was safe to assume would be available. Throughout the year raw materials, though
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adequate on paper, were still too short for even minor additions to programmes; and this at a time when the programmes were not in fact being met in full. This naturally created the impression that the Director General of Materials Production was still planning under the influence of inflated programmes, i.e. was assuming that programmes would not be met in full and thus need not be fully provided for. The real explanation however was to be found in the more simple fact that the recent expansion of raw materials production was still too recent and that the Director General of Materials Production was finding it difficult to build up the month;s lead of materials which was required by the January programme and was necessary for the smooth expansion of output. By the end of the year however the position righted itself, and the output of fabricated materials appeared more or less adequate even allowing for production of spares and contingencies of scrap. In November 1943 the Deputy Director General of Statistics and Programmes was able to report that supplies of raw materials were running more smoothly than at any time since the war had started; and although occasional difficulties still cropped up till the end of the war, the provision of raw materials in general ceased to count as a major limitation on M.A.P.'s efforts.
Much more important was the shortage of labour. It has already been shown that the net intake of men and women into the aircraft industry between July 1942 and December 1943 ran far behind the original requirements presented by the Ministry or even the much reduced scales laid down by the Lord President and by the Minister of Production in the early autumn of 1942 or by the War Cabinet in the allocations of December of that year.61 It is therefore nor surprising that the insufficiency of labour could provide the Ministry with an obvious explanation of insufficient production. The argument was not, of course, accepted by the Ministry of Labour. Its recurrent rejoinder to M.A.P. was that shortage of labour was not an impediment to greater output. On at least one occasion t