The factory's workers included around 17,000 women from the surrounding towns and villages, who worked filling shells and bullets and assembling detonators and fuzes for the war effort.

[18][19][20] The marshy location was chosen as it was an ideal site, shrouded in fog and mist for much of the year, which provided cover against bombing by the Luftwaffe.

[22] As a munitions factory, ROF Aycliffe operated 24 hours a day, employing over 17,000 workers in three shift groups.

They were transported from surrounding areas onto the site by bus and train, with the most local workers arriving on foot or by bicycle.

Operational for just over four years until the end of World War II in 1945, by which point it had produced some 700 million bullets and countless other munitions.