British shadow factories

British shadow factories were a plan developed by the British Government to implement additional manufacturing capacity for the British aircraft industry, in the build up to World War II. Developed by the Air Ministry under the internal project name of the Shadow Scheme, the project was created by Sir Kingsley Wood and headed by Herbert Austin.

Background

Up until 1936, the Air Ministry had been headed by Lord Swinton, who at that point had been forced to resign his position by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain due to a lack of progress in re-arming the Royal Air Force. 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 re aircraft engine production capability at their Cowley plant in Oxford. Wood's immediate response was to put forward a plan which would enable the trebling of aircraft production and manning.

Implementation

The plan had two parts:

• Development of nine new factories
• Extension and extensions to existing factory complexes to allow either easier switching to aircraft industry capability, or production capacity expansion

Underneath the plan, there was government funding for the building of these new production facilities, in the form of grants and loans. Key to the plan were the products and plans of Rolls-Royce, whose Merlin engine powered many of the key aircraft being developed by the Air Ministry.

Wood handed the overall project implementation to the Directorate of Air Ministry Factories, appointing Herbert Austin to lead the initiative (most of the facilities to be developed were existing motor vehicle factories), and the technical liaison with the aircraft industry to Charles Bruce-Gardner. He also handed the delivery of the key new factory in Castle Bromwich, that was contracted to deliver 1,000 new Supermarine Spitfire's to the RAF by the end of 1940, to Lord Nuffield.

As the scheme progressed, and after the death of Austin in 1941, the Directorate of Air Ministry Factories, under the auspices of the Ministry of Aircraft Production gradually took charge of the construction of the buildings required for aircraft production. In early 1943 the functions of the directorate of Air Ministry Factories were transferred to the Ministry of Works.

Follow on initiatives

The shadow factory proposals and implementation, particularly its rigidity when bombed, meant that that other key areas of military production prepared their own shadow factory plans:

• Alvis had 20 sites in Coventry alone, producing vehicles and munitions.
• Birmingham Small Arms Company alone during the war controlled 67 factories from Small Heath, employing 28,000 people operating 25,000 machine tools. This organisation produced more than half the small arms supplied to Britain's forces during the war. BSA's war production included: 500,000 Browning machine guns; 1,250,000 service rifles; 400,000 Sten guns; 10million shell fuses; 3.5million magazines; 750,000 anti-aircraft rockets.
• Ford of Britain at their Dagenham plant built over 13,000 tracked Universal Carriers, 250,000 V8 engines, over 185,000 military vehicles, and Bren gun carriers.. Agricultural vehicles were also an important element: at one point the Fordson represented 95% of UK tractor production..

List of shadow factories

LOCATION	OWNER	ORIGINAL PURPOSE	WARTIME PRODUCTION	TODAY
Acocks Green, Birmingham	Rover	Westwood's market gardening	Parts for Bristol Hercules radial engine	Redeveloped as housing
Blackpool, Lancashire	Vickers	RAF Squires Gate	Bombers	Blackpool International Airport
Broughton, Flintshire	Vickers	Farms	Aircraft production	RAF Hawarden
Banner Lane, Coventry	Standard		Bristol Hercules sleeve valve radial engines	Engine plant for Standard cars and the Ferguson TE20 tractor. Later closed.
Browns Lane, Coventry	Daimler	Farms	Aircraft sub-assemblies	Browns lane plant
Castle Bromwich, West Midlands	Nuffield Organisation	Farm/Sewage works	Supermarine Spitfire	Castle Bromwich Assembly
Crewe, Cheshire	Rolls-Royce	Farm	Rolls-Royce Merlin	Bentley Crewe
Distington, Cumbria	High Duty Alloys Ltd	Farm	Aircraft parts made of Hiduminium	Abandoned
Grantham, Lincolnshire	BMARC	Farms	Hispano-Suiza 20 mm cannon	Redeveloped
Hawthorn, Wiltshire	Bristol Aeroplane Company	Quarry, Bath stone	Aircraft engines (Never used)	Abandoned under RAF Rudloe Manor
Hawthorn, Wiltshire	BSA	Quarry, Bath stone	M1919 Browning machine gun	Abandoned under RAF Rudloe Manor
Hillington, Glasgow	Rolls-Royce	Farm	Rolls-Royce Merlin	Closed 2004, redeveloped as an industrial estate
Longbridge, Birmingham	Austin	Farm	Aircraft production	Redeveloped as housing
Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire	BSA	Farms	Hispano-Suiza 20 mm cannon	Redeveloped
Newtown, Powys, Wales	Accles & Pollock	Farms	Tubular steel: aircraft frames, gun barrels	Industrial Estate
Ryton, Warwickshire	Rootes Group	Farms	Aircraft engines	Ryton plant, now redeveloped
Trafford Park, Manchester	Ford	Derelict motor assembly plant	Rolls-Royce Merlin	Trafford Centre
Willesden, North London	Freestone and Webb	Coach builders	Wing tips for the Spitfire	Housing

National Archive catalogue entries

Information concerning the Shadow Factory plan and Shadow Factories can be found among the following records and descriptive series list code headings held by The National Archives. For the full set of references (including German shadow factories) see the Catalogue below:

CATALOGUE REFERENCE	DESCRIPTION
AIR 19/1-10	Shadow scheme and factories, 1935-1940
AIR 20/2395 AIR 20/2396	Shadow factories schemes
AIR 2, code 6/2	Aircraft production, shadow factories
AVIA 15, code 25/1	Factories general
AVIA 15, code 25/5	Shadow factories
T 161/1070	Insurance of Government property managed or maintained by private contractors; `Shadow' factories
T 161/1156	Banking: Shadow factories banking accounts

External links

• Flight Global, April 14, 1938 - A critic of the expansion of UK Aircraft production
• Sperry and Hoffmann - Shadow factories in Stonehouse Glos