British shadow factories

British shadow factories were the outcome of the Shadow Scheme, a plan devised in 1935 and developed by the British government in the buildup to World War II to try to meet the urgent need for more aircraft using technology transfer from the motor industry to implement additional manufacturing capacity.

Sir Kingsley Wood took responsibility for the scheme in May 1938, on his appointment as Secretary of State for Air in place of Lord Swinton.

[1] General Erhard Milch, chief administrator of the Luftwaffe, was in Britain in the autumn of 1937 inspecting new shadow factories in Birmingham and Coventry, RAF aeroplanes and airfields.

[citation needed] Swinton's civil servants approached their new boss, Sir Kingsley Wood, and showed him a series of informal questions that they had asked since 1935 on the subject, such as those posed to Morris Motors with regard to aircraft engine production capability at its Cowley plant in Oxford.

[4] As it turned out, the specialised high-output engines required by the RAF were made by Armstrong Siddeley, Bristol Aeroplane, Napier & Son and Rolls-Royce, all of which employed a high number of sub-contractors.

The first motor manufacturers chosen for engine shadows were: Austin, Daimler, Humber (Rootes Securities), Singer, Standard, Rover and Wolseley.

[12] The five shadow factories in Coventry were all in production by the end of October 1937 and they were all making parts of the Bristol Mercury engine.

[14] In July 1938 the first bomber completely built in a shadow factory (Austin's) was flown in front of Sir Kingsley Wood, Secretary of State for Air.

[18] The White Paper on Defence published in February 1937 revealed that steps had been taken to reduce the risk of air attack delivering a knockout blow on sources of essential supplies, even at the cost of some duplication, by building new satellite plants which would also draw labour from congested as well as distressed areas.

[42] The shadow factory proposals and implementation, particularly its rigidity when bombed, meant that other key areas of military production prepared their own dispersal factory plans: When the Birmingham Small Arms plant at Small Heath, the sole producer of service rifle barrels and main aircraft machine guns, was bombed by the Luftwaffe in August–November 1940, it caused delays in productions, which reportedly worried PM Churchill the most among all the industrial damage during the Blitz.

[50] The Government Ministry of Supply and BSA immediately began a process of production dispersal throughout Britain, through the shadow factory scheme.

[63] By that time large numbers of Bristol engines and aircraft were being made in Government owned shadow factories and in the Dominions and other foreign countries.

[20] In February 1944 the Minister for Production, stated in Parliament that there were "in round figures" 175 firms managing agency schemes or shadow factories.