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Midlands car factories switched to building planes and tanks, with women making up fifth of workforce at peak of production
When the 16-year-old Mary Heath got a job at the Daimler car works in Coventry in 1937, she had no idea she was becoming part of the greatest move of women into engineering of the 20th century, as storm clouds gathered and the factories of the Midlands tooled up for the second world war.
Instead of Morris, Hillman, Rolls-Royce, Daimler, or Humber cars – even the most modest models still a luxury for the elite – they would switch to building aero engines and planes, tanks and armoured cars, jerry cans and helmets.
At the height of production, by 1943, women made up at least a fifth of the workforce, and in many factories they moved out of traditional jobs in upholstery and finishing into skilled engineering work. By the end of the war, women aged between 20 and 50, including married women with children, were obliged to register for war work.
The Coventry Transport Museum, which has created a special exhibition on the so-called shadow factories, estimates that in 1939 there were 3,800 women working in the city's motor and aircraft industries, and within two years this had risen to 13,900.
"All we knew was that it was easy to find work, and it was much better paid than working in a shop. I got a job in two weeks and I was delighted with myself," said Heath, now 92.
The Coventry museum has moved just in time to create an exhibition on the shadow factories, which began years before war was declared and built the air strength on which the war turned.
After the war, as many returned to car manufacture – boosted by huge new plants – their history was half forgotten. With the recent decline of the industry, many have now closed and been bulldozed. The exhibition includes roof trusses from a huge shed that housed one production line, which museum staff salvaged last year just before it was flattened.
The factories began as the government heard reports of the buildup of German military infrastructure from sources including British industrialists who warned of the new machinery and plants they had seen. The government realised that war in the air would be crucial, and the only sector with the skills and the facilities to enormously increase output of planes and equipment was the automobile industry. It was approached directly and told to begin tooling up.
Some factories were secret – Rover built one entirely underground, but it never came fully into production – while others were used as propaganda exercises before the war. The curator, Christiaan van Schaardenburgh, found records of German industrialists, diplomats and senior military being invited to visit, so they would report back on how well prepared Britain was.
He has also managed to track down veterans who worked in the shadow factories, including men exempted from joining the army because of their skills, and women such as Heath.
Heath moved south with her parents and 10 siblings from Lancashire, where she had worked in the ailing cotton mills. "We went where the work was," she said. With her steady hands and excellent eyesight, she became an engraver, marking each of thousands of components with their individual numbers. There was some teasing of women by male workers, but Heath recalled that when they saw that their new colleagues worked hard and could do the job, they were treated well.
"We were soon working 12-hour shifts, and night shifts, working round the clock to keep the work going non-stop. It was hard, but the pay was good and we were young, we were well able for it."
The Coventry blitz was the worst outside London, and Heath vividly recalls cycling to night shifts through streets lit by flares and fires, and home again in the morning through burnt-out districts. Once a fortnight, in the middle of the 12-hour shift, Heath recalled, there was a dance in the factory, and in the alternate week an ENSA concert.
After the war she married a returned soldier who had stepped on a landmine and lost part of his foot but turned up at a dance anyway on two crutches. Unlike many of the women, however, she did not return to the kitchen but continued working in the industry for many years.
"It was very different from the experience on the continent," Schaardenburgh said. "There it was not possible for the Germans philosophically to encourage women, who were supposed to be the homemakers, into the factories, and so they used forced labour. Quality control for them was a real problem, but here it was generally very good.
"The people I have spoken to are very modest about it, they just say 'I did my bit', but they were a very important part of the war effort, and they deserve recognition."