Royal Aircraft Factory

Defence expenditure is not mentioned in Nicholas Crafts comprehensive analysis in his Britain s Relative Economic Performance 1870-1999 (London Institute of Economic Affairs, 2002), but may have been a contributory factor to some of the reasons that he does give cartelisation and poor productivity in firms that were kept going instead of being allowed to fail (defence departments tried to keep contractors going, often peddling out small orders, so that these firms would be available in war) and poor productivity in nationalised industries (which include the royal dockyards and royal ordnance factories, and one major aircraft firm. Short Brothers, taken over in 1943, and kept going on account of the employment it offered in Northern Ireland long after it would have otherwise been closed down). 

Furness s later research included the development of a process to make carbon fibres on an industrial scale for the Royal Aircraft Establishment. She progressed to become Section Leader, responsible for 100 graduate researchers. Her final appointment was Director and General Manager of the Courtaulds factory at Campsie, Northern Ireland, in 1978, from which she retired in 1981. She died on 8 June 2002, aged 81 years. 

R. Exalto, P. F. A. Bijlmer, R. Schiekelman, Fiokling of 2024 T3 Clad as Fretreatment for Bonding Royal Neth. Aircraft Factories, Fokker, Report No. 1091, April 1970. 

In June, 1941, the quarry was allocated to the Royal Enfield Cycle Company for the manufacture of No.3 anti-aircraft predictors. The company started making predictors and hydraulic control apparatus for Bofors anti-aircraft guns at its Rcdditch factory just before the war, but, due to the vulnerability of the site, dispersal to the West Country was proposed in 1940. It was planned at first to convert just 30,000 square feet of Westwood Quarry to provide capacity to build twenty predictors per month. Development was expected to cost 60,000, with a further 50,000 for new machine tools and 10,000 for gauges and hand tools. Later it was decided to also transfer part of the oil-motor capacity, which necessitated an increase of floor space to 41,000 square feet. By the end of the year the cost of quarry development alone had increased to 123,500, exclusive of the cost of site acquisition or of the workmen s hostels which were now required. 

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