British Navy question

[Captain Nemo]

Originally Posted by 3Jane

I think most of the railings ended up being secretly dumped in the sea after the war finished. As they would have been made of cast iron, I'm not sure if they would have been usefull in shipbuilding. But metaleurgy isn't really my field.
As far as I am aware it was a moral boosting exercise for the British public. Like the pots and pans for the 'spitfire fund'. A lot was dumped in the Thames estuary, not sre about the rest.

I remember seeing a 'World at War' episode that supports your view on the pots and pans etc. Purely done for morale.

Nemo

[Chock]

Purely done for morale.

It wouldn't surprise me if that was true to be honest, but the scale of the effort involved in collecting stuff would seem a bit excessive for a morale booster, and while many materials collected were useless, that's not true for iron and steel, it was useful and used, and it still is today (see note at the bottom of this post). Of course it's obvious that rough pig iron would not exactly be useful in creating a Spitfire, and I don't think anyone seriously believed their gate would be a wing on one of them. Sort of in a manner similar to the 'Spitfire Funds' (more correctly, Presentation Spitfires) in which a nominal value was placed on an aircraft so that a group of people, town or borough could 'buy' one. In fact, they merely bought the opportunity to have their name added to a current model from the production lines. In reality, the money probably went to a US Aircraft manufacturer for a P-40 or any other aircraft the RAF was buying from the US, something of that nature, but to a Brit, that wouldn't sound patriotic...

I turned this up after a bit of a search on the 'net with regard to metal collecting from the populace, although it is mostly in reference to the US, it does show that it wasn't all purely for morale:

'In 1942, when the first scrap drives were organized, the war was far from won, and frightened civilians at all levels were anxious to do something, anything, to help. So campaigns were organized to collect not just metal and rubber but kitchen fat, newspapers, rags, and so on. These drives were extremely successful--millions of tons of material were collected. It was only afterward, contemplating the assembled mounds of junk, that those in charge of the war effort asked themselves: What are we going to do with all this crap?

World War II shortages weren't just home-front propaganda. Japanese conquests in Malaya and the Dutch East Indies cut off access to natural rubber supplies. President Roosevelt urged Americans to turn in "old tires, old rubber raincoats, old garden hose, rubber shoes, bathing caps, gloves," and so on at their local service stations. Just one problem: there wasn't (and still isn't) an efficient way of recycling rubber products. Rubber's complex chemistry and the variety of formulations in use made recycling slow and expensive and the resultant material inferior to virgin rubber. Although the rubber recycling industry did produce a fair amount of material throughout the war, the rubber scrap drive didn't significantly boost its output. The real solution to the rubber shortage was development of synthetic rubber and conservation--gas rationing was primarily meant to save tires, not gas.

Many of the other materials collected couldn't readily be recycled either. Many who lived through the war remember collecting old newspapers, but apart from using them as packing material and such there was little to be done with them. A 1941 aluminum-scrap drive to help the plucky Brits pulled in 70,000 tons of aluminum pots and pans, but only virgin aluminum could be used to manufacture aircraft.

Iron and steel were a different story. These metals could be easily melted down and used for munitions. It's not as if the U.S. lacked domestic sources of iron ore, though. The real challenge was gearing up American industry for war production. That meant everything from increasing steel-making capacity to building more factories and designing better weapons. Recycling of steel and iron unquestionably helped. One campaign netted five million tons of steel in just three weeks, and scrap-metal drives continued for most of the war.

Useful though recycled steel and iron were, some scrap drives went overboard. In addition to old streetcar tracks, wrought iron fences, church bells, and the like, people carted off relics of previous wars, including cannons, park statues, and other memorials. When the memorials were being rebuilt after the war, many wished they hadn't been so hasty.

There's no denying scrap drives and other World War II home-defense efforts were meant in part as morale builders. Some seem pretty loopy in retrospect--air-raid blackouts in Nebraska, for example. But a few were surprisingly effective. In 1943 victory gardens produced 40 percent of the country's fresh vegetables. Salvaged kitchen fat was used to produce glycerin, an ingredient in drugs and explosives. Then there's the Civil Air Patrol, organized in 1941 to watch the coasts and assist in search and rescue operations. Less help than hindrance, right? Not so. In the 18 months before the navy took over patrol duty, the CAP spotted 173 U-boats, located 363 survivors of sunken ships and downed aircraft, and reported 91 ships in distress. Lest you think all home-front volunteers were paunchy air-raid wardens in tin hats.'

So if all, or any, of that is true, I wonder if I can phone Gordon Brown up and ask him to put the railings back on my garden wall? If not, I'll settle for a free Spitfire:rotfl:

Oddly enough, the theft of metal in the UK has risen massively in recent months, and it is reckoned that China's expansion, and the worldwide demand for metal is at the heart of this trend.

Chock

[Captain Nemo]

Originally Posted by Chock

Oddly enough, the theft of metal in the UK has risen massively in recent months, and it is reckoned that China's expansion, and the worldwide demand for metal is at the heart of this trend.

Yes, saw that on the news recently, apparently copper prices have more than doubled. Plumbers are already expensive, now more so if they need to use new pipe.

Nemo

[johnm]

Apparently favourite items to steal are: cast iron man-hole covers and the odd bronze 'work of art' (if handy). Mind you, some of the newer art needs scrapping!

I read somewhere that in America nickels and cents are now worth more as scrap than as money! Supposedly they are passing laws to prevent them being melted down.

I can also confirm the removals of iron railings, Liverpool was full of walls with stumps of iron popping out (my childhood home)

[PapaG39]

What it seems to look like then as I read through this vast storehouse of knowledge poring in from my British cousins, is that during the war the DD's and aircraft carriers became the most in demand.
I know that the US had carriers galore...big ones, small ones & just about anything that would hold a barn door on top would launch something...
Then they had a dozen DD's running around protecting each and every one.

A very telling statement came out in that old movie "D-day" where the german in the bunker screeming at his superior over the phone during the initial bombardment... "THOSE 5000 SHIPS U SAY THEY DON'T HAVE, WELL THEY HAVE THEM!"

I can't believe that the average U-boat Kaptian didn't see the hand writing on the wall. As time marched on and he could see more and larger convoys that just kept coming...No matter how many he sank, they just kept coming...more and more, and endless array of ships full of supplies.

My uncle Al joined the merchants in 1936. He was sunk first in the channel and then again just in sight of New York harbor.
He told me that the Mermansk run was the worst. They were so heavly loaded and he watched while one iced up ship just went into a wave and never came back up.

I think of some of those "sea war stories" that he told me about sometimes while I am playing this game.. Especially after I have torpedoed a merchant in very rough seas....

[Chock]

Yup, it's when you hear 'em first hand from those who were there that it really comes alive.

A good friend of mine's Grandfather (now sadly deceased) told me about a time he was on a Merchant ship in WW2 manning the anti-aircraft gun with another guy, and they were running low on ammo. While his pal carried on firing, he left the turret it was placed in and ran over to an adjacent gun to fetch some ammo back. Halfway back to his pal, the gun was hit and his friend killed and the gun knocked out of action. If it hadn't have been for that trip to the next gun to get some ammo, he'd have been killed too. Stuff like that must really freak you out. As far as I recall, that was in the Med.

I must try and scan some of his photographs sometime, because there are some real interesting ones that have probably never been published before, including a few of them picking up a U-Boat's crew after their sub had been destroyed. The thing that really strikes you in those pictures is how young the U-Boatmen look, it's quite shocking and it really sticks in my memory.

Chock

[PapaG39]

Yes, young...lol... I have a picture of me and a guy I did training with standing on an anchor on a troop ship while enroute from New York to Bremerhaven I think it was..that was 1958 & I was 18 years old...Man, I can't believe how young we look... All the guys in my basic training platoon were around 17-18 or so. To damn young to know any better, but at an age where we can be molded to what ever they want us to be. I loved my M-1...
During the first & second world wars the kids were going directly from high school to the front lines...Just a 6-8 week for basic and then the rockets red glare...