# Building a bomber plane in just a day, WWII - BBC



## observor 69 (13 Sep 2010)

September 2010 Last updated at 06:20 ET

Building a bomber plane in just a day
By Megan Lane

BBC News Magazine

In the midst of World War II, workers at a Welsh aircraft factory gave up their weekend off to build a Wellington bomber from scratch in just 24 hours. Why? To set a new world record. 

With accompaning video.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11107561


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## mariomike (13 Sep 2010)

Baden  Guy said:
			
		

> In the midst of World War II, workers at a Welsh aircraft factory gave up their weekend off to build a Wellington bomber from scratch in just 24 hours. Why? To set a new world record.



A senior civil servant at the Ministry of Aircraft Production described vividly an occassion on which Harris arrived and said furiously, "It's murder, plain murder, to send my young men out to die in an aircraft like that!"
He was actually referring to the four-engined Stirling, which was considered superior to the two-engine Wellington.
Considering the Lancaster could delver a 22,000 lb Grand Slam "earthquake" bomb, compared to the Wellington's 4,500 lb bombload, it is easy to see why he preferred a/c production to focus on the "Lanc". 
Wellingtons and Stirlings did play an important part in Operation Millenium, prior to the "Main Offensive".


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## Yrys (13 Sep 2010)

Building a bomber plane in just a day

In the midst of World War II, workers at a Welsh aircraft factory gave up their weekend off 
to build a Wellington bomber from scratch in just 24 hours. Why? To set a new world record. 

With the country under attack and the war effort in full swing, worrying about world records 
might have seemed like a strange thing to do. But after months of nightly bombing raids by 
the Luftwaffe, the Ministry of War was keen to show the world - friend and foe - that Britain 
could dish it out as well as take it.

And so, in collaboration with the RAF, the ministry issued a challenge to one of the factories 
churning out planes for Bomber Command - to build an operational Wellington bomber in 
record-breaking time, faster than the existing record of 48 hours set in California.

"It might seem odd, but the whole point of wartime aircraft production is speed," says historian
 James Holland. "It's sticking two fingers up at Nazi Germany and at the rest of the world. Our
 image of Germany is that they were all Teutonic efficiency and we were a bit amateurish, but it 
was the opposite.  "If you're breaking records in the middle of a war, it shows confidence, and it 
gives the workers involved a boost." 

It was wartime propaganda, to bolster spirits at home and put the wind up the enemy. Such a 
stunt demonstrated the efficiency of Britain's factories and the unbowed spirit of its people.  And 
it was a muscular demonstration of Winston Churchill's one policy - to defeat Germany, whatever 
the cost. In September 1940, he wrote "the bombers alone will provide the means for victory". At 
his order, vast resources poured into Bomber Command. 

Although the exact date of the stunt is lost, National Archives records suggest it was staged in early 
summer 1943 - about the time British bombers flattened Hamburg in attacks that dwarfed the Blitz - 
and filmed for a Ministry of Information newsreel. "Everybody had someone in the forces, so it was 
worth fighting for to see them home again," recalls Eileen Lindfield, who took part in the stunt at 
Broughton factory in north Wales. 

At its peak the factory, run by Vickers Armstrong for the Ministry of Aircraft Production, was churning 
out 28 Wellington bombers a week. Today, it makes the giant wings of the Airbus A380.  That the 
Americans held the existing record was also significant. Britain was keen to impress its ally, but to 
beat their time would be one in the eye for coming late to the fight against Hitler. The narrator chosen 
for the newsreel was an officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force - a deliberate choice of North American 
accent.

The easily assembled Wellington was perfect for the stunt. Its aluminium frame slotted together like 
Meccano, with a skin of varnished Irish linen.  It was a mainstay of RAF Bomber Command and Coastal 
Command during WWII, used to protect retreating troops at Dunkirk and involved in bombing Berlin on 
25 August 1940 - the raid which so enraged Hitler, he ordered the Blitz. 

And so, one Saturday morning in 1943, Broughton's workers gave up their weekend to assemble Wellington 
bomber LN514 from scratch and against the clock. Many were women, or men too young, too old or too infirm 
to join the armed forces. Of the 6,000 people working 12-hour shifts on Broughton's wartime production lines,
 more than half were women, drafted in to fill places vacated by men sent to the front lines. 

 At work on a Wellington at Broughton Some had been dressmakers. Others nurses, maids, photographic technicians. 
They stitched its linen carapace, drove the roof cranes that shifted wings and tail fins into position, and installed its 
electrics. "Women were absolutely vital - first of all to the war effort as a whole, and to aircraft production," says 
historian Sir Max Hastings, author of the book Bomber Command. "They were very good at what they did. Britain 
mobilised women more efficiently than any other wartime nation, except perhaps the Russians."

Betty Weaver was conscripted from the local co-operative store. "I didn't know one end of a screwdriver from another 
but I got there. I do now. For the first three weeks I didn't sleep, then it all slotted into place."  She, too, worked on 
Wellington LN514 that weekend. The aim was to complete it in 30 hours, with a pilot on hand to take it up Sunday 
afternoon. 

Throughout the day, workers swarmed to slot together its body, to assemble the engine, to tightly sew its fabric shell - 
eight stitches to the inch, or the wind could get it and rip the seams open. By 8.23pm, soon after the night shift arrived, 
it was time to fit the propellers to the wings. The plane was coming together so fast, workers began laying bets on 
whether they'd beat their target.

Two hours later, the landing wheels were installed, each one four and a half feet high and weighing 300lbs.

By 3.20am, the plane left the production line, and began a round of inspections and engine tests. At 6.15am - 21 hours 
and 15 minutes since work started - the engines fired up for final tests, and finishing touches were made to the stitching. 
And at 8.50am, 10 minutes short of the 24-hour mark, it was ready for take-off. Work had progressed so fast the pilot had 
to be awoken from his slumber for its maiden flight. "I hope to God they haven't missed anything," he muttered.

"The record? Yes, they broke it, those workers," remarked the newsreel's narrator. "They said they'd build a bomber in 
their spare time in 30 hours. Its wheels lifted from the ground in exactly 24 hours and 48 minutes." That evening, Wellington 
LN514 was flown to its operational base, ready for duty. And Broughton's workers set to work making another, and another, and another...


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## PuckChaser (13 Sep 2010)

What an amazing story!!! I don't think we'd be able to ramp up production of the complex planes we have now to accomplish this feat.


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## SeanNewman (13 Sep 2010)

PuckChaser said:
			
		

> ...I don't think we'd be able to ramp up production of the complex planes we have now to accomplish this feat.



Not when it takes decades just to decide _which_ plane you're going to make.  Building it may take centuries.


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## FoverF (14 Sep 2010)

> I don't think we'd be able to ramp up production of the complex planes we have now to accomplish this feat.



You might be surprised. The F-35 and F-32 prototypes were hand-built in only a few months. And these were the first examples ever made, not the product of a well-oiled production line.

The fact is that the production line of most military aircraft are intentionally slowed by politicians. If you take several years to build a batch of aircraft that could be built in a month, you can defer the (much increased) costs to future politicians, and keep open a factory full of voters. This is what's known in political circles as 'cost savings'. 

I bet if they went all-out, Boeing could build a Super Hornet in less than a week.


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## mariomike (15 Sep 2010)

[quote/]
Work had progressed so fast the pilot had to be awoken from his slumber for its maiden flight. "I hope to God they haven't missed anything," he muttered.
[/quote]

 ;D

Bombers were considered money well spent:
"It will be seen that the enemy has irretrievably lost 1,000,000 man years.  This represents no less than 36 per cent of the industrial effort that would have been put out by these towns if they had remained unmolested. ... Expressing these losses in another way, 2,400,000,000 man-hours have been lost for an expenditure of 116,500 tons of bombs claimed dropped, and this amounts to an average return for every ton of bombs dropped of 20,500 lost man-hours, or rather more than one quarter of the time spent in building a Lancaster. ... This being so, a Lancaster has only to go to a German city once to wipe off its own capital cost, and the results of all subsequent sorties will be clear profit." 
Air Staff Intelligence Report, February 19, 1944


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