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Aviation History
1945
1945 - 1507.PDF
122 FLIGHT AUGUST 2ND, 1945 A Record of Achievement Chairman Reveals Something of What Rolls- Royce Accomplished During the War A T a luncheon in London (as mentioned briefly last /-% week) the chairman of Rolls-Royce, Ltd., gave a •^ •* glimpse of the tremendous expansion which his firm achieved between the outbreak of war in 1939 and the end of the war with Germany in May of this year. Captain E. C. Eric Smith, M.C., stated with justifiable pride that, as in the first World War, Rolls-Royce officials and workmen had again justified the faith placed in them by the nation and had demonstrated their ability to beat the best the enemy could bring into battle. "Statistics," Capt. Smith said, "are dry things to everyone except statisticians, but I would like to convey to you, very simply and briefly, the salient features of what Rolls-Royce have done from the beginning of the expansion period which immediately preceded the war up to the end of 1944. As our datum we must go back to the years 1935-6, when the war clouds began to gather. At that date we employed just under 8,000 people in a covered area of just over 800,000 square feet. By the end of 1944 these figures had risen to 57,000 people in a shop area of j\ million square feet. That is to say, in less than ten years we had multiplied our staff over seven times and our shop area nine times. These figures do not include the employees and factories of our 500 sub- contractors who, in their turn, employ an almost like number of sub-sub-contractors. The assembly, organisa- tion, and in many cases training, of this huge additional force, has been by itself a prodigious undertaking. '' The fame of our Merlin engine has been so widely acclaimed that it is hardly neces- sary for i»e to dwell on it now. How this engine was chosen by America to be manufac- tured in the TJ. S. A. Graph showing the rise in Rolls- Royce output from 1939 and onwards through the war years. 00 zz> as CD «== CD 1—1O H ENGINEPRODUCTION DERBY. CREWE-AND GLASGOW SUPERCHARGED ONE SPEED - ONE STAGE • TWO SPIED - ONE STAGE E2 TWOS IED - TWC rrr\ STAGE E ¥\u/A i 1 P 1 II 1P 1 f—\ •' I1 i1 ' NOd d CE fv X S - - 11 i u a CB m 11 11 11 11 11 1 I93B 1939 1940 19411942 1943 1944 9 13 23 TYPES 28 29 One of the many Rolls- Royce power plant assembly lines. . for installation in American-designed and built aircraft is now a matter of history. The rate at which these engines have been produced is not, however, common knowledge, and some figures may therefore interest you. In 1943 the combined Derby, Crewe and Glasgow factories reached an output of 18,000, nine times the 1939 figure. Despite the opinion expressed by certain engineers that the Merlin was not a practical bulk-production proposition, we were able to announce the 100,000th engine delivered on March 29, 1944, and to-day I can tell you that by the end of the European War over 150,000 Merlin engines have been turned out. (These figures include not only those made in the factories under the direct control of Rolls-Royce, but also those produced in U.S.A. by Packards and, in Great Britain, by the Ford Motor Company.) Output Doubled '' I feel you will agree with me that, for the Rolls-Royce Company by themselves to step up the production nine times in four years of such a complicated and delicate piece of mechanism as an aircraft engine is in itself a glorious achievement. But this is by no means all. During the same period, as the result of intensive development and improvements in design, but without increasing its cylinder dimensions, the maximum power of the engine was actually doubled. We had, therefore, to reconcile at one and the same time the radically opposed demands of mass pro- duction with the introduction of the important changes in design necessary to enable the engine to produce double its original power. '' Early in the war it became appar- ent that the facilities which had been envisaged for the repair of engines were going to prove entirely inade- quate, and measures to remedy the position became of the utmost urgency. As you will have gathered, our fac- tories were more than fully occupied with the new engine programme to which I have just alluded. We were fortunate, however, in obtaining the services of certain first-class organisa- tions who, though they had no pre- vious experience with Rolls-Royce engines, were ready to learn from us, and who set about the repair problem
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