UK 03The Two World Wars and Machine Tool Control

The shell shortage and the Ministry of Munitions' Machine Tool Department (1914–1918)

Before the war: home production still sufficed

Before the First World War, Britain's machine tool industry could meet the country's peacetime demand. Output in 1907 is estimated at £2.9 million, or roughly 45,000 tons. In 1913 exports were 16,537 tons and imports 3,852 tons; in volume alone, Britain exported far more than it imported^[1]. Exports suddenly nearly doubled in 1909 as war preparations advanced around the world, and much of the increase went to Japan, Italy, Russia and France^[1].

In world terms, however, Britain's position had already fallen. In 1913 Germany's machine tool exports were at least four times Britain's, and America's about three times^[1]. The bigger a country's exports, the more spare capacity it can turn to home use when war suddenly raises demand, and Britain entered the war with little of this margin. Moreover, many light machine tools and small tools were American-made and sold by importers, and the two main sources of imports were the U.S. and Germany. When the war cut off imports from Germany, the U.S. became almost the only foreign supplier^[6].

“Not enough machine tools”

For about a month after the outbreak of war, orders were held back, but demand for munitions then grew “by leaps and bounds,” and pressure on the machine tool trade rose at once. With skilled men leaving for the front and materials short, it became clear that ordinary methods would not be enough^[6]. When factory inspectors surveyed the country's machine tools in March 1915, only about 30% were being used for government work^[6]. Milling machines and lathes ordered from America were weeks late because of congestion at the port of Liverpool and on the railways. In June Girouard, later Director-General of Munitions Supply, wrote in a report to the minister that the shortage of machine tools was one of the main reasons makers had failed to keep their munitions promises^[8].

Then, on May 14, 1915, the Times published an article by its war correspondent Repington. The public learned that there were not enough high-explosive shells to break down the enemy's trenches, and it became a political issue later called the “Shell Crisis.” On the 19th a reconstruction into a coalition government was announced, and on June 9 the act creating the Ministry of Munitions received royal assent, with Lloyd George as its first minister^[8].

Alfred Herbert and the Machine Tool Department

Control of machine tools began within the industry, ahead of the government. In March 1915 Alfred Herbert, who ran the Coventry machine tool maker Alfred Herbert Ltd and also headed the trade association, wrote to Lloyd George and others with a plan to sort out the confusion in allocating machine tools^[6][8]. On April 25 Girouard of the War Office asked Herbert to organize the machine tool trade, and on the 27th Herbert set up an office at Cecil Chambers in London. That day is regarded as the beginning of the Machine Tool Department. At first it was a War Office section with ill-defined powers, but in June it moved to the Ministry of Munitions, with Herbert continuing as its head (Controller)^[8][6].

The Machine Tool Department was run almost entirely by unpaid civilians, because people who knew the trade could not be recruited in the ordinary way; the official history says that closeness to the trade was the very secret of its success^[6]. Herbert himself later recalled that the department was “the servant of all the other departments,” a thankless role caught between their competing claims^[6].

Making orders subject to license

Herbert's first move was to put makers' orders in order of priority. On May 10, 1915, an order issued in the name of the Army Council divided orders into A (British and Allied governments, munitions firms and their subcontractors) and B (neutral countries, civilian demand, etc.): A was to be delivered first, and B could be held back or diverted^[8]. There was also suspicion that some machines bound for neutral countries were finding their way to Germany^[6]. A circular of July 16 brought the machine tool trade under control under the Munitions Act, so that every order needed a license from the Machine Tool Department. A survey that month found makers booked up with orders an average of six months ahead^[6]. The same month a six-member advisory committee appointed by the minister was formed (representatives of the four main producing districts and of the importers, chaired by Herbert), and its minutes survive today in the National Archives^[6][9].

The license system had another effect. With all orders coming to one place, it became clear for the first time which types of machine were needed and in what numbers^[6]. From August 1916, trading in machine tools at all required a license (Defence of the Realm Regulation 30A), mainly to hold down prices^[6].

National factories, subcontracting and America

How to make up the shortfall? The Machine Tool Department rejected the idea of national machine tool factories and relied on subcontracting. It had machine tool makers pass work to general engineering shops and printing machinery works with spare capacity, and helped them with drawings and advice. Many of the early machines were of poorer quality, but the method continued to the end of the war^[6]. Munitions themselves were increased through national factories. The national shell factory at Leeds was approved on May 7, 1915; 17 had been decided by the end of June, and about 30 by the end of the year^[6]. From the summer, large national projectile factories were built for heavy shells, and arranging the machine tools to equip them also fell to the Machine Tool Department^[6].

Even so, home production was not enough. In autumn 1915 the department sent Searle and Lang to America to ask for larger shipments to Britain, and general engineering shops there were also set to building machine tools. Orders through J. P. Morgan reached £1 million, but many machines had inferior materials and finish, and an inspection system was set up in America. The ship Cymric, carrying 1,387 cases of machine tools, was even sunk^[6]. Imports rose from 4,833 tons in 1914 to 20,742 tons in 1915, totaling 77,000 tons over the four years of the war^[1]. At the same time, exports to Russia, France and Italy, which had relied on British machines in peacetime, also had to be increased, exceeding 18,000 tons in 1917^[1]. In 1918, with the U.S. itself now at war, American machines stopped coming, and the department tried to raise home output by having each maker concentrate on fewer types, but this had no effect before the Armistice^[6].

Gauges and small tools

Making shell and fuse parts interchangeable requires huge numbers of go/not-go gauges. Yet Britain at the time had almost no precision lathes or grinders for making gauges, and machines for cutting thread gauges to fine tolerances were especially short. There is a record of Alfred Herbert Ltd delivering 50 sets of fuse gauges in August 1915, but on the whole orders had to be spread in small lots across many firms, and the gap was filled by bringing in machines from Switzerland and designing simple precision machines at home^[6]. The state also went into the factory business for small tools. The national tool factory opened at Gateshead in May 1916 made standardized spade cutters for boring out shells, raised output from 3,000 to 5,000 a week, and cut the price to half the market rate^[6].

What changed on the shop floor. What the Machine Tool Department did in the First World War can be summed up in four things: setting priorities for orders, licensing orders to see the whole picture, having each maker concentrate on fewer types, and giving drawings to subcontractors to build machines. Each is a system for deciding where limited machines and skilled workers should go when demand is many times production. There is also a record of ministry engineers teaching new shell factories the list and timing of operations, suitable machines, cutting speeds and even machine layout; the state was in effect doing what we now call process planning^[6].

Between the wars: why reliance on imports arose (1919–1935)

The old makers of heavy machines withdraw

In April 1918 Herbert handed over the headship of the Machine Tool Department to Edward M. Iliffe^[6]. The year before, in 1917, he had been made K.B.E. for his work at the Ministry of Munitions, becoming Sir Alfred Herbert, and from 1919 to 1934 he was president of the Machine Tool Trades Association (MTTA), the trade association formed in 1910–11^[5].

When the postwar boom ended, the British machine tool industry changed shape. Many of the old firms that had built heavy machine tools for shipbuilding, locomotives and guns withdrew from machine tools. This was precisely the field that had supported the British machine tool industry in the 19th century^[1]. Germany, meanwhile, quickly regained the lead in machine tool exports after 1920, while British exports did not return to their 1913 volume until 1932^[1]. Britain's share of world trade in machine tools fell from 10.0% to 7.1% over 1933–37; in 1937 Germany had 48.3% and the U.S. 35.3%^[1].

Car plants run on American and German automatics

The biggest change in this period was in what was imported. British machine tool imports in 1925–35 averaged 8,000 tons a year, more than three times the prewar level (an average of 2,449 tons in 1911–13). The increase was in American and German automatics and special-purpose machines installed by car and light engineering plants for mass production^[1]. Hornby's official history concludes that the British trade made almost no attempt to build the special-purpose machines needed to mass-produce cars, and that in 1935 Britain depended on foreign types even more than in 1913^[1].

Why did this happen? The official history explains it by the business situation of the British machine tool industry. In a trade with large, unpredictable swings in demand, makers had to concentrate on types with secure home and export demand, or volumes would be too small to pay. In return, the idea of leaving specialized mass-production machines to imports was accepted throughout the industry. Some of Britain's leading machine tool makers were also major import agents for foreign machines^[1]. Alfred Herbert Ltd itself had imported American machine tools from early on and built this up into a large “sideline” supplementing its own standard machines^[5].

The depth of the depression, and quiet preparations

With 1935 as 100, the index of British machine tool production was 60 in 1924 and 72 in 1930, falling to 47 at the bottom of the depression in 1933^[1]. Export peaks came only with large orders from basic industries abroad, such as the Soviet Union's build-up of heavy industry^[1]. In the 1935 Census of Production, the machine tool industry had 123 establishments and 21,000 workers, with the top 10 works accounting for half of output. About a third of output was exported, and about a quarter of the machine tools acquired by home factories were imported^[1].

On the government side, the defense Supply Board, set up in 1929, formed subcommittees on gauges in 1930 and on machine tools in 1931 and began to study the types and production capacity that would be needed in war. The troubles with gauges and machine tools in the First World War were still fresh in memory. But this was effective only for gauges and precision machine tools and did not go as far as increasing overall supply^[1]. It was in 1932, in the depths of this depression, that the 600 Group, later Britain's leading lathe maker, set up its first machine tool company^[10].

Rearmament and the shadow factories (1936–1939)

The choice of 1936: more imports

When rearmament began in 1936, the three services' machine tool needs for 1936–38 were estimated at £11 million at least. Since British machine tool output in 1935 was £6.5 million, an extra £4–5 million a year was a heavy load. In Commons debates Lloyd George and Churchill stressed the importance of machine tools, and Lloyd George even proposed that the state build machine tools, but the government did not take this up^[1].

What the government and the industry chose was to keep exports up and make up the difference with imports. Not hindering economic recovery and exports was the policy of the government as a whole, and the Board of Trade was especially reluctant to see the export share of machine tools fall. In July 1936 the government and the industry agreed to increase duty-free imports of machine tools; imports in 1936 were about three times those of 1935 by weight and rose further in 1937. Imports exempted from duty on the grounds of long delivery times from home makers made up nearly half of all duty-free imports in 1937–38^[1]. On the other hand, it was decided in 1936 that special-purpose machines for guns and ammunition alone would be designed and built in Britain, and some of this capacity was in place by the outbreak of war^[1].

The shadow industry: car companies build engines

Announced in the same 1936 defense white paper was the aircraft “shadow industry”. Companies outside the aircraft industry, especially car companies used to mass production, ran factories built at state expense to make aircraft and engines. The first to join were seven car companies, which formed a joint group to build Bristol aero engines, with each company making different parts. The first engines were delivered in November 1937^[1].

This is where the machine tool problem appeared. Wartime plans up to 1938 assumed that car engine plants could make aero engines by replacing some of their machines. But a survey in 1938 found that the existing equipment was almost useless and that a large-scale replacement of machines was needed^[1]. Aero engines have tight tolerances, and their materials and shapes differ from those of cars. Of the state's spending on plant for aircraft production from 1936 to 1944, 40% went on equipment for engine factories^[1]. In May 1939 demand for Rolls-Royce's Merlin engine doubled, and a plan for a large agency factory in Glasgow, to be run by the company, was approved at a little over £5 million^[1].

By summer 1939, British machine tool output had about doubled from 1935, to about 100,000 tons or 37,000 machines. Most of the increase came not from new firms but from existing ones taking on more people and using idle plant to the full^[1]. Even so, the expansion of the army in spring 1939 suddenly raised demand, and the policy of “raising exports to half of production” had to be reconsidered. Yet much of the export went to the Soviet Union, and stopping it suddenly risked a diplomatic problem^[1].

★The Second World War and Machine Tool Control (1939–1945)

Who was the Controller?

When the Ministry of Supply was formed in June 1939, a machine tool adviser to the minister was appointed. When the Machine Tools Control Order (S.R.&O. 1939 No.1373) was issued at the outbreak of war, the adviser became the Controller of Machine Tools. The order required everyone who made, owned, sold or used machine tools to follow the Ministry of Supply's directions and keep records, and “machine tools” included even woodworking machines, small tools and accessories^[1]. In October, licenses to import machine tools also came to go through the Controller^[11].

So who was this Controller? Alfred Herbert, who led the Machine Tool Department in the First World War, is sometimes named, but as far as the trade journals of the time show, the Controller in the Second World War was not Herbert. The Engineer of June 21, 1940 reported the resignation of the Controller, Arthur A. Rowse, saying that Rowse had become adviser to the minister, Burgin, twelve months earlier and had taken charge of machine tool control just after the outbreak of war. His successor as Controller was Percy Mills, with J. C. Blair as deputy^[12]. Rowse had been production director of Morris Motors for 15 years, and later trade journals also describe him as Controller in the period when Burgin was Minister of Supply^[13]. In January 1940 Herbert discussed the labor shortage as “the Controller in the last war,” and went on speaking about government control in lectures and in his company's house journal, but he did not head control in the Second World War^[14][15][5].

After Dunkirk

For more than a year after the outbreak of war, control was groping in the dark. Nobody knew which ministry needed how many machines of which types. Orders to America, too, were placed separately by each firm under individual import licenses until June 1940, and not even records of them survive^[16]. In June 1940, when France surrendered and the troops were evacuated from Dunkirk, everything changed. On June 17 it was decided that all orders for machine tools from America would go through the British Purchasing Commission^[16]. Around the same time, Britain took over large numbers of machine tools France had ordered in America^[16]. At home, makers were given “continuation agreements”, under which the state covered losses on unsold machines, and were kept producing each type at a higher rate than in the previous few months. Control had neither the staff nor the time to set the output of each maker^[1].

Licensing and surveys of how machines were used

On December 9, 1940, a license from Control became necessary for every purchase of a machine tool, including imports^[16][1]. As with the licensing of the First World War, it was a system for weeding out duplicate and non-urgent orders and seeing all the country's orders at once. Control rejected orders for 8,000 machines in 1942 alone^[1].

What was new in Second World War control was that it examined even how machine tools were used. Control's utilization branch checked whether the machines ordered really suited the work, whether there were too many, and whether existing machines were running enough hours; simply switching to a suitable type, it is said, often raised efficiency by 50%. Teams of specialists in individual operations such as milling and grinding were also sent to factories to review machine layout and the sequence of operations^[1]. In September 1941 the Emergency Machine Tool Utilisation Corps of about 120 demonstrators and operators drawn from the industry was formed to help start up new machines and train operators^[1].

Machines from America: from cash and carry to Lend-Lease

For some time after the outbreak of war, Britain had to pay for American goods and carry them away itself, "cash and carry". Britain gave its scarce dollars priority for food, raw materials and machine tools, and could buy few weapons as such^[16]. Machine tool imports were 72,261 tons in 1940 and 77,658 tons in 1941, each year exceeding the total for the four years of the First World War. Machine tools arriving from America numbered 33,111 in 1940 and 32,044 in 1941, and in 1940–41 imports made up at least a third of total home supply^[1].

In March 1941 the Lend-Lease Act was passed in the U.S., removing the payment constraint. In 1941, however, Lend-Lease supplies were mainly food and raw materials; weapons arrived in quantity only later^[16]. By type of machine, the reliance on imports was even clearer. Comparing the largest annual numbers imported from America in 1940–41 with British production in 1942, automatics stood at 249%, turret lathes at 280% and vertical drilling machines at 198%, all exceeding home production^[1]. What came from America was mainly advanced special-purpose machines for mass production.

The 1942 peak, and people

British machine tool production peaked in 1942: 95,788 machines worth £33.5 million, over 200,000 tons, about 4.5 times the 1935 level^[1]. Firms mainly making machine tools rose from about 190 in 1939 to more than 330 by early 1942, and about 310 subcontractors also built complete machines, more than 600 firms in all. Even so, about 75% of peak output came from firms that had been in the business before the war^[1].

What held back expansion was people. Building machine tools needs a high proportion of skilled workers: in March 1942 they made up 62% of the whole workforce and 75% of male workers. Most firms were small and mass-production methods were rare, so “dilution” (breaking skilled work down and passing it to unskilled workers) was hard to push forward. Employment peaked at 68,600 in March 1943, with women over 20%^[1]. Few factories ran two shifts, and an American investigator who came in October 1941 pointed out that British makers were not using their plant to the full. The American view was that higher British output would allow orders to America to be reduced^[1].

Building the machines Britain had never built

In the second half of the war, control turned to “machines never built in Britain.” In December 1942 the Controller General (the title from 1941) reported that the main types not previously built in Britain were now being produced at 66 a month, with plans to raise this to 250. They were machines to replace at least 14 American types, including five kinds of automatics, broaching machines, automatic milling machines and gear shapers^[1]. At the same time, overlap between firms making machines for the same purpose was reduced, and production of more than 100 makes was stopped by the end of 1943^[1]. In 1944 imports fell to a sixth of home supply, and exports exceeded imports^[1].

The shadow factories grew large too. The Merlin engine factory Ford built at Trafford Park in Manchester spent over £4 million on machine tools against £1.5 million on buildings, produced its first engine in October 1941, and by 1944 reached an average of 900 a month, the largest monthly output of any single factory. Its strength was being able to concentrate on one type of engine^[1]. In early 1944 monthly engine output was 2,483 from the shadow factories and 3,007 from the parent makers^[1].

What was the same in the two world wars, and what was different? In both wars Britain relied on American machine tools and allocated them by licensing orders. The difference was that in the Second World War control reached into how machines were used inside the factory, and went on to have types that had been imported built at home. Hornby's history concludes that it had been shown that developing British substitute types could, to a considerable extent, free Britain from dependence on foreign supplies^[1]. How that lesson was applied to the postwar British machine tool industry, however, is another story, as Chapter 4 shows.

The end of control and the postwar years (1945–)

As the end of the war came in sight, control was relaxed. On February 1, 1945, the Ministry of Supply switched from full control to “selective control”. Only types in short supply were kept on a designated list, licensing of other orders ended, and price control on new metalworking machines was also lifted. Licensing and price control of woodworking machines continued^[20]. Surplus machine tools held by the government were gathered into Control's “pool” and offered at prices favorable to buyers, to make it easier for industry to re-equip. Stock records could be inspected at offices in London, Birmingham, Bristol, Glasgow, Leeds and Manchester; buyers had to undertake to use the machines in their own businesses in Britain, and buying for resale was not allowed^[20].

By May 1945 the number of people building machine tools had fallen to 45,000^[1]. Total output of the postwar British machine tool industry rose from £72.1 million in 1948 to £148.8 million in 1952. The late 1940s, down from the wartime peak, were seen as a slump, but later research regards this as merely a return to prewar levels^[18]. The American mass-production machines brought in during the war, and the wartime practice of “building fewer types,” remained in postwar factories. How British machine tools then faced NC and the wave of imports is covered in Chapter 4, "NC, FMS, Industrial Decline and Revival".

⛩Links with Japan

In the period of this chapter, there were times when the machine tool relationship between Japan and Britain reversed direction. When British machine tool exports suddenly rose in 1909, much of the increase went to Japan, Italy, Russia and France, which were expanding their armaments^[1]. Meiji Japan was a buyer of British machine tools. But when supplies from Europe dried up in the First World War, it was Japan's Ikegai Iron Works that exported lathes to Britain, Russia and elsewhere, sending five lathes to Britain in 1915 (see Japanese Archive, Chapter 1, "The Lineage of Japanese Lathes")^[7]. While Britain was desperately gathering American machines, Japanese lathes were filling a small part of the gap.

The two countries also went the same way in state control of machine tools. In 1938 Japan passed the Machine Tool Manufacturing Industry Act, designating companies with more than a certain amount of equipment as licensed companies and having them increase output^[23]. When the U.S. stopped exporting machine tools to Japan in 1940, Japan, which had relied on the U.S. for more than 80% of its imports, was hard hit^[24]. Britain in the same period, by contrast, sustained its wartime production with American machine tools and Lend-Lease. The Japanese side of the story is in the timeline of Chapter 1 of the Japanese archive, and trends in output in The History of Japanese Machine Tools in Numbers.

FAQ

How is the “Shell Crisis” of the First World War connected with machine tools?

In May 1915 newspapers revealed a shortage of shells, especially high-explosive shells, which led to the creation of the Ministry of Munitions. More shells need lathes to machine them and precision machines to make gauges. Girouard, Director-General of Munitions Supply, named the shortage of machine tools as one of the main reasons makers had failed to keep their munitions promises, and the ministry, through the Machine Tool Department led by Alfred Herbert, made orders subject to license and controlled allocation.

Was Alfred Herbert the head of Machine Tool Control in the Second World War?

No. Herbert served as head (Controller) of the Machine Tool Department in the First World War (1915–1918). In the Second World War the Controller of Machine Tools was Arthur A. Rowse, formerly of Morris Motors, from the outbreak of war to June 1940, and after him Percy Mills (Controller General from 1941; he stepped down in November 1944 and was succeeded by S. F. Steward). Herbert, then in his seventies, continued to speak out in lectures and commentary.

Why did Britain rely on American machine tools in both world wars?

Because the British machine tool industry concentrated on types with secure home and export demand, leaving the automatics and special-purpose machines used for mass production of cars and the like to imports from America and Germany. In war, it was exactly those mass-production machines that were needed in huge numbers. In 1940–41 at least a third of total home supply was imported, and for automatics and turret lathes imports from America exceeded home production.

What is a “shadow factory”?

A scheme begun with rearmament in 1936, in which factories built and equipped at state expense were run by companies outside the aircraft industry (especially car companies) to build aircraft and engines. Later, state factories run by aircraft companies were also called shadow factories. Ford's Trafford Park factory, which built Merlin engines, is a typical example; its machine tools cost more than twice its buildings.