How The Brits Engineered The Perfect Fighter Plane | War Factories | Timeline

hi everybody welcome to this timeline documentary my name is dan snow and here i am in a lancaster bomber cockpit one of the few remaining lancasters from the second world war to tell you about my new history channel it's called history hit it's like netflix for history hundreds of history documentaries on there and interviews with many of the world's best historians follow the information below this film or just search online for history hit and make sure you use the code timeline to get a special introductory offer now enjoy this show the untold story of war production [Music] all wars are about competition in production the side that can produce more is always going to triumph over the other side hitler knows he needs industry if he wants to build a war machine this is a war between the factories the real story of how the second world war was fought and won the united states is about to launch the single greatest program of armament production in human history [Music] they swamped the other side with a tide of mass production the secret war of the factories that would decide the fate of the whole world gotta get back to [Music] work [Music] [Applause] at a factory on the isle of wight skilled engineers are restoring world war ii fighter planes the spitfire is one of the great iconic weapons of the war [Music] what we do here is to rebuild these aircraft using the same methodology to produce the same parts that they were making 85 years ago each spitfire here is lovingly restored by skilled craftsmen during the war britain's factories mass produce no fewer than twenty 000 spitfires and an incredible 130 000 bombers fighters and other aircraft [Music] all wars in the second world war is the greatest example of this are about competition in production and british war production is staggering its factories build over a hundred thousand tanks and other military vehicles its shipyards produce more battleships even than the united states [Music] the result for germany is devastating in just one year the allies drop over a million tons of bonds on their enemy the germans not even 10 000 the side that can produce more is always going to ultimately triumph over the other side even if the other side has better soldiers braver soldiers more skillful soldiers the side that can produce more will come out on top but it's not at all obvious in the early 1930s that britain will be able to perform this war production miracle germany has been preparing for another war since the 1920s this has stepped up further under the nazis who spend vast amounts of money on military production with giant firms like coupe and daimler building perhaps one of the most formidable military machines the world has ever seen [Applause] germany it would seem are far more prepared than britain to fight a war on this scale and britain has always traditionally been reticent to spend money on stuff like this anyway but germany had started producing earlier they've more extensively planned um the highly centralized way of doing things so it would appear germany hold all the cards britain does not want to make war britain has a very strong anti-militarist tradition there's never been the kind of glorification of war that you find in some continental countries war is always bad for trade and to the extent that the society is dominated by a trading interest they are going to seek to avoid war in the early 1930s britain hopes the threat of german militarism will pass [Applause] britain is slow to arm and reluctant to spend valuable taxpayers money on making war machines [Music] even its famous navy looks antiquated and to some extent this is an inevitable consequence of the first world war that had seen very high levels of expenditure a very large number of ships added to the fleet after the first world war defense spending falls off sharply and so those ships are naturally going to be used to the greatest possible extent [Music] britain's army is small and poorly equipped out of the few hundred tanks it does have most are obsolete the general staff decided that the tank was not going to be a priority they disbanded the tank design teams the generals who were particularly interested in developing the tank arm were retired and so we entered really the period 1936 to 1939 without essentially a tank production capability it is the same across the aircraft industry where germany is out producing britain by two to one britain in the eyes of the nazis looks weak but here they greatly underestimate the strength of british industry britain is known the world over as the first industrial nation this is where the modern factory was invented the industrial revolution started in britain and this was a move from skilled individuals making things by hand to factories and the beginning of mass production and the idea that you could have a non-skilled person working a bit of machinery that would produce far more than one individual could britain has long been surpassed by the united states as the world's biggest industrial power but in the 1930s while america languishes in its worst ever depression britain is growing fast what we often don't realize is that the united states and great britain had very different experiences during the 1930s and the great depression following the wall street crash america embarks on the vast public spending spree known as the new deal britain reacts to the financial crash quite differently the british response was very different to the american one the british response was to cut government spending dramatically and also reduce taxes the result is breathtaking in the years between 1931 and 1939 the british economy grew more rapidly than at any time before or since and a large part of that was the growth of a whole lot of new manufacturing industries britain has other things going for it as a pioneer of free trade it has unrivaled global trading links it also has some giant manufacturing companies one in particular will be crucial to the success of british war production vickers they do everything they are multi-purpose multi-plant firm right at the heart of the british military-industrial complex when hitler enters france the german wehrmacht has six times as many medium tanks as the british expeditionary force what's more the german army has some of the most advanced tanks in the world first come heavy breakthrough tanks to drive through the opponent's line in their weight comes quadrant at the squadron of assault tanks designed to scatter opposition the tanks that germany does have are the very latest designs many of the british tanks are completely obsolete because there's been minimal investment in tank design for an entire decade so when the war does start the brits are really struggling to catch up [Music] by the time the war starts what few tanks britain is producing come from a vickers factory in elzick west newcastle and it's to vicars that the war office turns when it needs tanks in their thousands because we're ready to go when the general staff turned to vehicles and said help we need tanks now vickers produce them the model it goes for is the valentine and the company is told to give it absolute priority it's a simple and reliable design and is an updated version of a model that vickers is already producing the lower part is actually almost identical and the engine is also the same as well as the transmission the steering and even the tracks now this means that most of the components and parts are already being produced which should in theory make it easier and quicker to build the problem as always is scaling up production and vickers has never mass produced tanks before so it turns to the car industry for inspiration after the united states britain has the most advanced auto industry in the world and its perfected assembly line production [Music] the valentine would have come through on the vickers production line in two parts first of all the main hull which is a combination of cast and welded elements to it and that would have been machined certainly the turret ring would have been obviously machined and then the engine would have been dropped in and the various elements of the running gear the sprocket the road wheels and when the track is married to the road wheels the tank is ready for production trials soon vickers is averaging 40 tanks a month but it's still not enough when france falls britain loses many of the tanks it had the shortage of tanks is now perilous and there is no spare capacity at existing plants britain has to think outside of the box which is that you look around and you say what kind of business is closest to this and you think well actually could car manufacturers and locomotive manufacturers not just adapt their plant and adapt their processes to produce a tank because they're not that different and that's what happens the british war production system has obviously a certain degree of planning and control but the degree of detailed oversight is much less than you might imagine you don't get detailed targets prescriptive planning of the productive process instead that's left to the private sector manufacturers nuffield morris starts production of the a15 crusader which will become the principal tank in the western desert campaign and over 5 000 churchill tanks are built in voxel's luton plant but the tank that is produced in greatest numbers is the valentine and it's updated continuously throughout the conflict [Music] right the way through the war there was innovation going on to meet the the tactical needs of the battles of all the variants of the valentine that were used perhaps the most extraordinary was the valentine bridge layer a scissors bridge mounted on the valentine hull extremely useful vehicle by the end of 1940 british tank production overtakes germany's in one year it has left by 40 percent the following year production almost quadruples britain is now producing almost twice as many tanks as the germans [Music] british tanks destined to help the soviet in her gigantic grapple with the german war machine are here seen on tests before dispatch to russia and east and front by 1941 britain is producing so many tanks it is even able to send them to the soviet union to help fight on the eastern front [Music] britain fighting to crush the german army sends more tanks to russia and the eastern front by the end of the war more than 3 000 of the tanks driven by the red army will have been built in britain [Music] but vital in the next war will be the battle for the skies and here britain is lacking they want first of all a great air striking force a bomber force that will reduce germany to rubble but also a fighter force that will defend against german bombers vicar's weighbridge develops a twin-engine bomber called the wellington which goes into production in 1936 [Music] this twin-engine long-range bomber with gun turrets foreign should prove a very formidable reply to any aggressor another plane that the air ministry orders in large numbers is the hawker hurricane but the plane that overshadows all the other fighters is a modified seaplane made by vickers supermarine the spitfire this is the latest type of single-seater fighter and as you can see a monopod in design and construction she is not unlike the last snyder trophy winner that she is going to be a great asset to the raf is pretty obvious we are flying along in our own plane at about 175 so what speed she is capable of you may judge from the pace of which she overtakes us [Music] airframe assemblies on the isle of wight is one of a handful of companies in the world restoring them when supermarine got the order for the first couple of hundred aircraft they had never made airplanes or contemplated making airplanes in such numbers they did actually do it in a very similar way to we're doing here lots of people around lots of benches making lots of individual parts to all come together scaling up production is proving hard with the spitfire and by the end of 1937 vickers supermarine has yet to finish a single one britain is lagging well behind germany when it comes to combat aircraft if the british are going to mass produce their aircraft they're going to have to try something very different so the war office turns once again to the car industry and lord nuffield head of britain's biggest car manufacturer morris motors lord nuffield offered his own expertise to design and construct a vast new factory at castle bromwich now he claims he would build as four times as many planes there as any other factory in the country the treasury of course had its doubts but it does end up approving the project and agrees to pay the 1.125 million it would cost to build nuffield claims he can make 60 spitfires a week but he soon discovers that mass producing a plane is totally different from a car the motorcar makers often didn't have the expertise that you needed to make airplanes because airplanes and aero engines were much much more complicated than motor cars and motor car engines it's not an easy leak to sort of be making door panels for a car one day and then making wing ribs or putting together a flap or an aileron for an aircraft a couple of weeks later the tolerances are far far greater the materials are much tougher to work with it's almost like comparing a very old 1920s or 30s car with suddenly leaping forward to an e-type jam may 1940 not one single spitfire has been completed at castle bromage the following month france falls and churchill knows that hitler's next target is britain there is so much resting on the spitfire they simply cannot allow production to fail so what churchill does is to set up the ministry of aircraft production in may 1940 and he recruits lore beaverbrook to run it beaverbrook is a canadian press baron who owns the daily express at the time the biggest selling newspaper in the world he is a brusque brash self-made man with no experience in aircraft production but he knows how to get things done we need them so urgently we need them so earnestly nuffield wasn't really up to the job what the minister decided to do was to hand this production facility over to vickers armstrong lord beaverbrook reorganizes chains of command and brings in engineers from supermarine to help run the factory he also decides to focus on just five types of aircraft which speeds up production it's very easy to produce the same aircraft again and again and again changing from one model to another itself reduces your ability to to produce by tearing through the red tape and streamlining the production process beaverbook transforms the entire industry in just a few weeks every operation of manufacture and assembly is carried out with that delicate precision for which british workmanship is famous on completion the machines are given a thorough tryout and you'll no doubt be pleased to notice the rapidity of their climb and their handiness in the air [Applause] his intervention comes just in time that july the luftwaffe launches large-scale attacks against britain it is the first major military campaign fought entirely in the air [Music] if the germans destroy the royal air force they will be able to invade britain the odds are desperate germany has 2 600 aircraft the british only have 640. what britain does is really turns it around there's no doubt that the raf shot down more german planes than it lost and that british factories were able to replace those fighters that were damaged or destroyed in 1939 britain's war factories make just under 8 000 aircraft 12 months later they are producing almost double that number in spite of the number of nazi planes the whole nation has complete confidence in our own fighters and with good reason our hurricanes and spitfires day after day are breaking up the nazi formations and shooting down nazi planes by the skull raf fighters destroy 50 more enemy bombers and fighters than they lose in germany it's a totally different story you've got more than 1700 luffa planes destroyed and there are just over two and a half thousand casualties it's actually the first major defeat for hitler during the second world war and the luffa never fully recovers from the planes and all the experienced pilots it's lost between august and october 1940 that year the british are producing 30 percent more planes than the germans britain is now making more warplanes than anyone else in the world [Music] vickers has been making ships at barrow in finesse on the northwest coast of england since the end of the 19th century there's still a thriving industry here today and it's these yards that play a critical role when building up the royal navy becomes a necessity in 1937 with the threat of war looming the british government stirs into action and places a major order with vickers one battleship two aircraft carriers two cruisers four destroyers and six submarines the united kingdom and the whole british empire depends on british naval power why because it is dependent on world trade trade with europe trade with north america with south america with asia its lifeblood is trade and that trade needs to be defended by a powerful navy [Music] world war ii is a war of machines and it's a war that the british are winning everywhere except the atlantic [Music] over the last 50 years the uk has seen a significant increase in the value of trade it accounts for 61 of our gdp and is a fundamental part of our economy during the second world war it is even more important one of the uh great myths is the idea that self-reliance or tarki is the way to success in war in fact the historical evidence completely contradicts that if you are a country that is integrated globally connected to the rest of the world you're going to have a far wider range of knowledge talents and potential innovations at your disposal than if you're a country that has locked the doors on the rest of the world and chosen to rely purely upon its own resources at any one time there are on average 2 000 merchant ships out at sea each loaded with the resources and supplies from around the world that britain needs to keep on fighting and each one of them is a target for german u-boats particularly after the fall of france once they've got french bases their short-range submarines can now get out widely into the atlantic and there are many more points from which they can attack us for the threat goes up exponentially from 1940 onwards particularly as germany can produce more u-boats at the bottom of the atlantic ocean shipwrecks are being reclaimed by the elements barnacles cling to their rusted hulls while shells of fish colonize their interiors many of these wrecks are of merchant ships [Music] by february 1941 u-boats are sinking them three times faster than the british can replace them germany fails to bring britain to its knees by the threat of an invasion so now it's trying to starve britain into submission by cutting off those vital lifelines that connect her with the rest of the world from the very beginning of the war one of germany's principal aims has been britain's starvation at the time britain is the world's largest importer half its food comes from abroad it did a lot of trade with continental europe it imported some very very important raw materials iron ore from the north of africa from sweden timber from the baltic bacon from denmark fruit from southern europe so the british economy is highly integrated into a continental european economy if britain can't import what she needs then she is out of the war churchill said that it was the only thing that ever really terrified him was the concept of britain completely cut off unable to import everything she needed um not only to survive but to maintain the war effort as well but how is germany able to do this when the royal navy is the biggest in the world and has always been at the heart of britain's defense strategy when the war starts you have yards like vicars still building big ships like battleships and cruisers big ships are needed for a big war that's the way the admiralty thinks britain has successfully blockaded germany during the first world war so what it intends to do is exactly the same again but that strategy has to change because you've got these u-boats starting to blast british ships out of the water fletcher royal navy has this to say about the grave menace of the u-boat nobody should imagine for a moment that because the figures of sinkings of our merchant ships are not published that they are not very heavy the government does not publish the figures because it considers that to do so would give information to the enemy of value to him but i can assure you that the sinkings are very serious indeed the uber campaign certain to be intensified is hitler's greatest hope of staving off defeat he has hundreds of viewbots at sea now he'll undoubtedly have more the answer is to destroy them what's now needed are smaller ships more suited to protecting merchant convoys and of course more merchant ships to replace those that are being destroyed we go from a navy that is focused on enormous very very expensive ships that go very fast to a whole lot of smaller ships that are much more straightforward to operate much simpler to build the time between the leveling of the building blocks and the launching of a british vessel has been reduced to the minimum and wherever prefabrication is possible it has been adopted as for example in the construction of keel sections gradually though by no means slowly the vessel takes shape cranes hang the plates which are bolted into position before being riveted and talking of rivets there are as many as half a million in a 10 000 ton cargo ship this particular riveting squad comprises george peake 16 the rivet heater georgina hayward 17 the rivet catcher the holder up is john willis and there are two more georges george askew and george gillespie all skilled workers doing a first-class job as well as building merchant ships there's another priority at vickers yard repairing the damage caused by enemy action and the brutal atlantic weather they literally work around the clock to these really tight schedules so the ship spend as little time as possible in the port so as the battle of the atlantic intensifies you've got increasing numbers being able to be brought in to all of vicar's yards the defensive arming of british merchant ships continues a pace at the same time vickers is fitting weaponry on merchant ships by the end of 1940 four thousand are armed with anti-submarine guns already several of our cargo carrying ships have given a very good account of themselves in duels with u-boats and there'll be more of such stories to follow you can be sure of that the gunners aboard these merchant ships are itching to have a shot at the nazi submarine and with these modern guns they should make good shooting by the end of 1940 germany has built just four major ships while britain has made over 20 times that number vicar's shipyards now employ over 40 000 people [Music] building the vessels that are needed to protect britain's merchant shipping only now they are using some of the methods that were pioneered in the u.s such as welding instead of riveting if you have someone welding it's arguably much easier to train someone to just weld two bits of metal together there are many women in the ship building industry welding being one more contribution made by them towards the winning of the wall you can pre-fabricate large sections of metal that just need to be welded together far more easily than you could try and do with individual plates that need to be riveted tens of thousands of times welding steel components transforms production particularly when it comes to submarines the main difference between the submarine the conventional ship is just that lack of tolerance for failure so because of the nature of its environment because it goes underwater even a relatively minor manufacturing floor operating floor in a submarine can lead to total loss of the vessel so therefore the requirement of getting it absolutely right in the submarine fleet is even higher than it is for the surface fleet this is a t-class submarine of the patrol type at sea where our cameramen were permitted to film her at work at its peak vickers can assemble an entire submarine in just two weeks [Music] after a long patrol or return to port where the submarine depot ship is waiting to welcome her home she wears the jolly roger on which various signs indicate the measure of her success straight bars for freighters sunk are you crossed out for a u-boat destroyed a badge for gunnery successes and daggers for other items of good work faithfully done german attempts at mass producing u-boats are disastrous what the germans come up with is an entirely new model of u-boat called the mark 21. now this is inspired by american production methods and they've decided to divide the hull into eight separate sections and have each one built by a different manufacturer so when they use these american style techniques the germans hope to reduce the time each u-boat takes to build to just 175 days however there's a problem and it's calamitous because they all leak like crazy where these sections join together and it took almost as long again to repair them as it did to make them in the first place of the 80 mark 21 u-boats only four are launched neither manages to sink a single allied ship by the end of 1942 britain is out producing the germans on every level making 30 more aircraft four times as many tanks and 15 times as many major surface vessels [Music] during the second world war there is a real effort by the government to make sure that the british people have enough to eat and to make it possible to grow more food there's also a rise in the number of tractors being produced at ford's dagenham plant they're making 80 a day which are given to farmers with the help of government financing while you have most of europe surviving on a really restricted diet britain actually increases the amount of food it grows so what you see by the end of the war is that britain is producing 91 of the food it needs and although a picture of farming may look like a holiday believe me it's one of the toughest war jobs there is would you like to go back to the bank of england after you no no i have any desire to be able to go back there not at all the women's land army and farmers all over britain have fought and are still fighting their hardest to win the battle of supply by the end of 1943 the conflict is turning in favor of the allies whose wall factories are producing a staggering amount of military hardware and vickers is at the heart of this increased production when roy chadwick of avro develops the powerful lancaster bomber it's vickers who helped to build it giant bombers like these massive lancasters are rolling off our production line even within airplanes you get radical changes from year to year so governments don't really know where the leading edge of aviation will be 18 months down the line they're living with massive uncertainty about what weapons will be will be effective and i don't think you can understand the second world war without understanding that very unstable technical arms race that's going on the lancaster goes into production at vickers new aircraft factory in may 1941 over 8 000 people produce over a thousand of the bombers in a single factory with a shop length of more than a quarter of a mile the men and women who are working on the assembly lines these production soldiers know that this is in truth and reality a war between the factory between 1939 and 1945 the british and the americans transformed not only the aircraft they produced but how they produced them by contrast the germans are essentially producing the same airplanes in 1945 as in 1939. why essentially because they're a much poorer country they can't devote resources to development successfully at least in the same way that britain and america can the lancaster is comparatively easy to fly easy to maintain and easy to repair and ideally suited to mass production it has a maximum speed of 287 miles an hour and a range of 1660 miles far enough to penetrate and destroy germany's industrial heartlands using vickers made bombs the lancaster has the raf's lowest heavy bomber loss rate and it's used extensively in high and low level day and night raids germany does not stand a chance against the lancaster air marshal of harris has promised germany a tremendous unprecedented non-stop bombing a lot of people say that bombing can never win a war well my answer to that is that it has never been tried yet and we shall see by the second half of 1943 bomber command is attacking with the same kind of accuracy as daylight bombing and the british are absolutely pulverizing german factories like never before the lancaster is britain's most successful bomber deadly accurate highly effective and all part of the plan by 1944 britain is dropping a hundred times more bombs than the germans and it shows the remarkable resilience of this lonely island off the pan-european german empire [Music] in june 1941 after the germans attacked the soviet union britain has to find a way of sending huge amounts of war materiel to its new ally which it does through the icy waters of the norwegian sea british sailors face not just the enemy but extreme cold and pack ice the loss rate for ships is higher than on any other allied convoy route winston churchill calls it the worst journey in the world germany occupies all the main routes into russia so the only way for ships to reach the soviet union is to travel north from scotland around the very top of norway deep into the arctic circle and then down to mamansk there are 35 merchant ships in each convoy with an escort of 20 royal navy ships delivering over 4 million tons of supplies to the russians churchill insists on making this really big effort to encourage stalin to stay in the ring now this is a big political gamble but as it gathers pace it gains in strategic importance those arctic convoys are absolutely vital in keeping the soviet union on the wall men and women you will be delighted to know that we have just received a cable gram from lord beaver brook thanking you for a record output of tanks for russia [Applause] every tank completed a schedule is one more nail in hitler's coffin so let him roll over a period of four years the british send an astonishing amount of military hardware to the soviet union on the eastern front russia manages to turn the tide on germany now the time is right for britain to launch its own attack and reopen the western front all over britain war factories are in production overdrive as it prepares to launch the largest seaborne invasion in history supply includes every weapon of war heaven knows the variety of weapons for this war is almost infinite field depots contain examples of many weapons already familiar to us temporarily parked here awaiting distribution certainly doesn't look as if the anglo-american forces are going to go short does it one of the most extraordinary aspects of the british war production effort is you get a transformation of british industry of british infrastructure to make it possible not only to create a great army that will invade europe but also to bring over an american army that will invade europe times have certainly changed since those days when invasion implied invasion of britain well even with the mere gloves that some of the invasion supplies we can imagine the amount of shipping that's going to be required british american and canadian invasion of normandy looks like a terrible gamble but in fact the allies knew that they had overwhelming superiority and equipment over the germans and what it tells us really is the huge spare capacity the british and indeed the americans had by this time in the war [Music] out of the total number of warships used in d-day more than three-quarters of british and the british make three times as many landing craft as the us the german air force is outnumbered by a factor of thirty to one on d-day they will not manage to overcome these odds for the rest of the war from here the fall of berlin is only a matter of time d-day is the great victory in the war that the british had been fighting since the first ship rolled off the docks at barrow inverness the great war of production the british war economy was a place of plenty there was more than enough food for troops there was more than enough oil there was more than enough equipment you had thoroughly mechanized and modern armed forces the case of germany was very different the german war economy was short of food it was short of coal it was short of steel it was short of labor and that transferred itself into the armed services themselves the british victory was not only due to the heroism of its soldiers or the tactical genius of its generals but to the strength of its industry and ambition of its entrepreneurs britain fought a profoundly industrial war it was a war of investment a war of factories a war of technology and war of science however it's britain that learns the wrong lessons from the six years of conflict they conclude from their experience during the war that a controlled economy is more efficient and more effective than a more free market one and the result is that the dynamism that the british economy had shown during the 1930s is lost it goes from being one of the most innovative economies in the western world with the most dynamic sectors in areas like consumer goods car manufacturer light engineering to being as it was by the 1970s the sick man of europe instead of sticking with the strategy they'd been following successfully in the interwar period they go down the road of much greater state involvement and also trying to sustain a very large and very expensive welfare state which the british economy simply could not afford britain may have won the war but it lost the peace a country which rose to every challenge during the second world war now languishes behind its old enemy germany by failing to learn the lessons from its past [Music] you

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 79,232

Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, british spitfire, vickers, developing the spitfire, supermarine spitfire, british history, ww1

Id: LeOQv4tn-Xc

Length: 44min 7sec (2647 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 11 2021