The Spitfire Site

A Tribute to Britain's Finest Fighter

 

From Peace to War

Royal Air Force Rearmament Programme, 1934-1940
Part 3

By Martin Waligorski
Based on and including excerpts from M.M. Postam: British War Production, HMSO, London 1952.

The Munich Crisis

A new epoch in the history of rearmament began in September 1938 and ended in the summer of 1940. During the Munich crisis the gaps in British defences and equipment revealed themselves to the naked eye of the public. Even the uninitiated understood to what extent Mr. Chamberlain's concessions to the Führer were due to Britain's military weakness. The Government was certainly under no illusions. Early in October the Cabinet called for a thorough survey of the deficiencies disclosed by the crisis, an the replies received from the Services showed wide gaps. By the spring of 1939 the new attitudes were reflected in revised and further accelerated Service programmes.

In view of the general preoccupation with the danger in the air, it is perhaps not very surprising to find that the deficiencies which impressed the Prime Minister and Parliament most were that of anti-aircraft defences. Of the 352 3.7-inch guns approved under the current programme only 44 were available, and the medium anti-aircraft artillery consisted largely of refurbished 3-inch guns, of which 298 (out of a planned number of 320) could be deployed in a crisis. Supplies of other anti-aircraft equipment were even scarcer: 50 two-pounder barrels out of a programme of 992; 1,430 searchlights out of a programme of 4,128; 140 barrage balloons out of 450. The War Office moreover estimated that even by April 1939 only fifty percent of the anti-aircraft guns and sixty percent of the searchlights under the current programme would be available.

The resources of Fighter Command, which was an even more crucial component of the air defence system, also appeared insufficient. The Air Ministry reported that it was 6 squadrons short of requirements; that its satellite airfields were not ready (16 out of 63 were available); that the defence of airfields was insufficient. Delays in the development and production of new aircraft types, by which so much store was set, were severe. In September 1938, out of 30 operational fighter squadrons, only one was partially equipped with Spitfires and five were in process of being equipped with Hurricanes.  The sense of Britain being utterly unprepared was exaggerated by the obvious fact that the so badly needed L programme of 12,000 aircraft was only five months old and experiencing serious delays as described previously. The bulk of its output, as much as 90%, had to materialize quickly if Britain was to meet the German threat on anywhere near comparable terms.

To understand the sense of emergency prevailing after Munich it is necessary to consider the attitudes of the time. There was an inevitable tendency in the Government and among the public to magnify the terror of air attack and to expect immense destruction and decisive military results from the first 'knock-out' blow from the air. Indeed, the idea that a campaign, if not the war, could be won solely by means of a sudden and decisive air attack was very common. Added to this, contemporary estimates German strength in the air were also exaggerated, in the order between 15 and 25 percent. This was enough in the autumn of 1938 to give the impression that German Luftwaffe was twice as strong numerically as the RAF and was expected to retain that lead. The opinions prevailing among the better informed critics in Parliament were even more unfavourable. Sir Hugh Seely, who initiated the great debate in the House of Commons on air strength on 12th May 1938 and Lord Lothian, who took part in the debate in the House of Lords, appeared to assume that Germany might within a year possess a frontline strength of 8,000 aircraft. No wonder all political and military calculations were built on the assumption that Britain was not prepared to face the devastating power of German attack in the air. An immediate consequence of the Munich crisis was therefore that the view that the 'country could not afford it' and the corresponding budgetary limitations were swept aside in favour of an all-out rearmament effort.

Contrary to the political debate, the reaction of the Air Ministry to the Munich crisis was rather calm. It has already been shown that the RAF shook itself free of financial limitations early in 1938 and was the first Service to rearm more or less regardless of cost. A concerted drive to speed up the rate of production which had been going on since the summer months of 1938 was now beginning to show results, and the actual output under the current programmes was now fulfilling expectations. It in fact rose from a monthly average of slightly under 200 in the first six months of 1938 to about 630 in the first six months of 1939 and to about 780 in September 1939. This output already stretched the resources of the aircraft industry to the furthest limit possible in peacetime, and the Air Ministry did not try to force through a further change in the current scale of orders. On the other hand, a great deal still remained to be done to prepare for the expansion of production under wartime conditions; and it is towards these objectives that the Air Ministry now turned its attention.

In the first six months of 1939 the actual deliveries, compared with programmes, were as shown in the following table.

Number of aircraft programmed and delivered respectively, January-June 1939. The "programmed" numbers refer to the Scheme L, as revised in September 1938 at the time of Munich crisis.
The diagram shows cumulative number of aircraft programmed and delivered during the period.

In the late summer of 1938 the production departments gave much thought to the various hypothetical estimates of aircraft production in war. The Production Department of the Air Ministry estimated that if war were to break out in October of the following year the war potential than in existence or in the course of construction would be sufficient to produce 2,000 aircraft per month within eighteen months of the beginning of hostilities. At that level the war potential was, in the opinion of the Air Staff, sufficient to meet operational losses until the peak of production was reached.

In January 1939, however, it also became clear that by March and April 1940 the wartime demand for aircraft would outrun the maximum supply of alloy sheet, extrusions and forgings which the existing capacity could provide. Immediate instructions went out from the Air Ministry to increase fabricating capacity for light alloys from the 40,000 tons under the existing plans to 63,000 tons.

Tighter still was the prospective supply of engines and of certain other main components. The manufacturing capacity of engine manufacturers had not expanded quite as quickly as that of airframe manufacturers, and in addition, the general trend of requirements of engines could be expected to rise faster than that of airframes owing to the coming introduction of four-engined bombers. Unfortunately, mobilising the war potential of the engine firms in the short term was very difficult. So complicated were their requirements of certain special machine tools and equipment and so greatly did they vary with the type of engine, that only small increases could be brought about by working the existing production lines all round the clock.

Yet on the whole the measures then taken were neither wholesale nor drastic. Indeed, at about that time the Air Ministry assured the Secretary of State that the existing potential, if working at full capacity, could produce nearly 2,000 airframes a months and that there was, therefore, little need for more airframe factories.

The Harrogate Programme of 1939

Thus as long as the final aim of the current programmes remained fixed at 12,000 aircraft by the spring of 1940, and the war potential at 2,000 aircraft per month, relatively little had to be added to the existing provisions. Before long, however, both the figure of 12,000 aircraft and that of the monthly output in war came to be reconsidered. In the months immediately preceding the outbreak of war the Air Ministry asked the Cabinet to authorise immediate 'follow-on' orders to the aircraft industry. Eventually the Ministry obtained the agreement of the Treasury to the raising of the total number of Aircraft on order from 12,000 to 17,500 on the understanding that the additional 5,500 were to be delivered after 1st April 1940. But this was obviously not enough. The Air Staff had been nursing plans for following up Scheme L with a further programme in order to keep pace with continued German expansion, and it was also necessary to maintain the operational quality of the Royal Air Force. A number of new aircraft, principally heavy bombers, had been under development since 1936, and a new programme to embody them was now thought both necessary and possible. The War Cabinet had also before it projects for an all-round increase of the Army to 55 divisions, and that alone would have necessitated additional aircraft for army cooperation.

On 9th September 1939 the Air Council decided that the objective of the RAF requirements should be increased from 2,000 to 3,000 new aircraft per month, based on an assumption that the war would last three years. The ambition reflected by these numbers was indeed very high, and even prompted a certain amount of criticism inside the Air Ministry. A smaller programme was therefore worked out for submission to the War Cabinet. On the assumption that 240 aircraft per month would be available from the Dominions, the target for the third year of the war - June 1942 - was set at 2,550 aircraft per month.

With this hopeful addendum the programme of 2,550 which came to be known as the Harrogate Programme formed the basis of wartime planning and was indeed to prove the most stable and most permanent of all the estimates of future output ever made in the Air Ministry or in the Ministry of Aircraft Production.

In view of the removal of budgetary constraints on rearmament, one financial factor still limiting its excess was the reserve of hard currencies. Concern about means of payment abroad and more especially about gold and dollars began to colour the financial policies of rearmament some time before war broke out. The effect of the dollar shortage on war supplies turned out to be even greater than the early estimates indicated. The theme became more pronounced as the implications of the American policy of 'cash and carry' became apparent. A rough statistical inquiry at the Bank of England and the Treasury showed that the realisable reserves of foreign exchange would not allow expenditure of gold, dollars, or other hard currencies to exceed £150 millions per year for three years. This set a limit on rearmament which was bound to slow down to a rate of progress which would spread the dwindling dollar reserves over a three-year war. It was not until February 1940 that the Allied Governments showed signs of accelerating their military purchases abroad beyond the pace dictated by dollar prudence, and agreed to spend their foreign exchange more quickly than the dollar rations would allow. The balance of payments policy was in fact only wholly abandoned when the Churchill Government took office.

Industry Under Government Control, 1939-1940

When in the autumn of 1937 the Cabinet considered further expansion of the Air Force which eventually led to the L programme, the Secretary of State for Air took the opportunity to point out how difficult it was to expand the production of aircraft while 'business remained as usual'. He warned it that so long as the Government did not allow rearmament to interfere with the normal processes of industry the programme could not be completed by the end of 1939 but would require additional two years. In February 1938 the argument received forceful backing of the Chiefs of Staff, who argued that the policy of non-interference with normal trade would be a serious handicap when Britain was competing with Germany whose whole financial, social and industrial system had in fact been mobilised on a war footing for at least three years.

Consequently, when the Government finally decided to remove the financial limits and to order all that the industry could produce it was also bound to reconsider the entire system of industrial priorities. On the 22nd March 1938 the Cabinet decided that the entire industrial production must be governed at the nation-wide level. In word of the Prime Minister at the House of Commons,  'men and material will be required, and rearmament work must have first priority in the nation's effort. The full and rapid equipment of the nation for self-defence must be its primary aim'.  These decisions formed a basis for later creation of the Ministry of Aircraft Production in 1940, with which the Churchill Government de facto took control over industrial planning, distribution of resources, priorities and stockpiling.

In the period between Munich and June 1940 the problem with which governmental planners were mainly concerned was the supply of skilled workers. A lesson which emerged from the First World War was that the heavy demands on the munitions industries lead to haphazard recruiting of the more important skilled workers. The idea of a 'central' schedule of protected occupations had been evolved late in the 1914-18 war when the authorities had been called upon to extricate from the Services men essential to industry. One of the problems faced at the eve of the new war was eventual indiscriminate call-up of men to the armed forces. One of the results of economic depression at the beginning of 1930s was small intake of learners and apprentices, leading to increase the proportion of younger men in the skilled grades, which also were eligible for service in the armed forces. These had to be shielded from conscription to avoid endangering the labour supplies of war industry.

This and the simultaneous problems of distribution of skilled labour were well understood by the planners and became the subject of the Ministry of Labour's planning starting with 1939. So far as there were still reserves of skilled labour in the country, either among the unemployed or in firm not engaged in war production, the remedy was to organise a wholesale transfer of labour. However, for various political and economical reasons the Ministry of Labour did not enforce transfers of labour until about mid-1940.

State of Preparedness at the Outbreak of War

The industrial achievement of the rearmament programme should be judged by the state of preparedness which the country achieved. How much better prepared for war was the country in September 1939 than a year earlier and how much better was it able to engage in military operations in the spring of 1940 than it had been at the outbreak of war.

The supply of armaments at the outbreak of war, compared with the supply in October 1938, had improved beyond all possible dispute. Whether the improvement was sufficient to fulfil its strategic objective depends on the definition of the objective. If the sole strategic aim was to make Britain better able to withstand attack from the air then production in the year following Munich went some of the way towards achieving it.

The output of aircraft was rising. Even more importantly from the point of view of air defence, the number of modern fast fighters among the aircraft coming into production increased even more dramatically. The monthly output of Hurricanes rose from 26 in October 1938 to 44 in September 1939 and of Spitfires from 13 to 32 in the same period. The number of squadrons equipped with new aircraft had grown correspondingly.

The land defences against the bomber showed even better results. The monthly output of anti-aircraft guns increased from 56 in September 1938 to a monthly average of 85 in the last months of 1939. This rate was sufficient to increase the number of AA guns in service by a factor of four compared with October 1938. At the same time, their combined strength at the outbreak of war was only 1,650 anti-aircraft guns or about 50% of previously defined requirements.

Even more important achievement was the completion in 1939 of the most important line in anti-aircraft defence, the home chain of radar stations. This chain had been developed from scratch in the space of less than four years. In December 1935 Treasury approval had been given to the provision of five radar stations covering the Thames estuary, and in August 1937 the Treasury had sanctioned the construction of a home chain of twenty stations covering the east and south-east coasts. During the Munich crisis the Thames estuary was in continuous operation, and by the outbreak of war the country was guarded by a chain of eighteen permanent stations stretching from the Orkneys to the Isle of Wight. Much more remained to be done to complete it to the final specification, and still more was to be added to the programme after the fall of France, but radar had become an established weapon of war.

Thus by September 1939 Britain's defences against air attack were substantially increased. On the other hand, if the strategic objective was 'to catch up with Hitler', then the achievement is more doubtful. The general impression is that the margin between German and British air forces had narrowed, while at the same time German superiority in land armaments increased.

On the whole, it appears very probable that in September 1939 the Luftwaffe was not as superior in the air as it had been a year earlier. Its first-line strength had grown from 2,847 in August 1938 to 3,609 in September 1939 whereas the British first-line metropolitan strength in mobilisable squadrons was 1,854 in September 1938 and 1,978 in September 1939. The German and the British figures are, of course, not entirely comparable for the definition of first-line aircraft in the two Services differed, e.g. the British figures contained 'immediate' reserves which the German apparently did not. To some extent, even the British figures at the two dates cannot easily be related, for in the meantime the composition of the total reserves had changed, and by the end of September 1939 the British first line was backed by 2,200 aircraft in reserve, a higher proportion than in 1938.

The general impression which these figures leave, however, was that judged by number of first-line aircraft unrelated to reserves and quality the German strength had grown somewhat faster than the British. The main advantage that Britain had gained during the period was not, however, that of numbers but that of quality. It has already been shown that from September 1938 to September 1939 more recent types of aircraft, above all Spitfires and Hurricanes, were coming into use in greater numbers. The total number of squadrons equipped with modern fighters increased during this period from 6 to 26, and the percentage of fighters in the overall production increased. It is here, in the modernisation of the fighter force, that the most important achievement of rearmament between Munich and the outbreak of war will be found.

Development of fighter vs. bomber production, 1938-1940

Percentage of fighters in overall aircraft production, 1938-1940

The rate of success of RAF rearmament programme can be judged not only in hindsight of the well-documented  victory in of the Battle of Britain, but also by comparison of relative improvements in British and German armies. Here, the results were highly unfavourable to the British effort. According to the estimates of the War Office, the strength of the German Army in the autumn of 1938 amounted to some 51 divisions more or less fully equipped and of a total field army of 690,000. These figures must be compared with the 106 divisions fully equipped and a total field force of 2,820,000 which Germany possessed at the time of the invasion of Poland.

Britain, on the other hand, in October 1938 was able to put into the field only 2 (two) fully-armed divisions. In September 1939 it disposed of sufficient equipment for about 5 divisions more or less adequately equipped. The final balance was therefore that of 106 versus 5. Comparison of these numbers with the effects of RAF rearmament adds much to the explanation of the contrast between the defeat of British Expeditionary Force in France and the subsequent victory in the Battle of Britain.

Quarterly deliveries of new aircraft by main groups, 1938-1940

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