Michael M. Postan

“ With the country in the midst of another effort of rearmament the interests of security demand that some topics should be eschewed altogether and that others should be cast in a form less specific than that which had at first been intended for them. Thus, the whole of the projected chapter on the quality of weapons, dealing with the problems of design, development, research and innovation has been scrapped. ”

“ Like all the other volumes in the civil histories this volume is based on a vast mass of original material. Most writers of individual volumes in civil histories have found their documentation voluminous to the point of being overwhelming. How much more voluminous and overwhelming must then be the documentation of a volume covering the entire field of war production and based upon the records of four Government departments and a large number of industrial undertakings! ”

“ Since Japan was regarded as the only possible enemy, the 'one-power standard' in practice meant the maintenance of a naval force capable of meeting the Japanese Navy as its selected moment. Making allowance for the necessity of docking and refitting, the force needed to confront the Japanese in the far East was estimated at some twelve capital ships, five aircraft carriers, forty-six cruisers, nine flotillas of destroyers, fifty submarines and a proportionate number of small craft. ”

“ The present volume has been designed to introduce a series. In his preface to British War Economy Professor Hancock, the General Editor of the Civil Histories of the War, made it clear that the studies concerned with war industry and with the four supply ministries would from a self-contained group of volumes, a series within a larger series. The plan of the war-production histories, which was announced at about the same time, was perhaps more ambitious than the books which are now taking shape. But the general composition of the series has not been much altered. ”

“ The general impression is that throughout these years the quality of R.A.F. equipment was falling below the standards which in the early thirties were being established in foreign countries, such as Italy and the United States.
With financial provisions and new output at a very low level, the Air Ministry had great difficulty in maintaining its industrial reserves. The aircraft firms, including the principal engine firms, found themselves in a position of chronic penury and sometimes on the very verge of bankruptcy. ”

“ The automatic infantry weapons were the Vickers machine gun designed in the eighties of the last century and the Lewis gun designed in 1912. It was not until 1933 that the War Office, in its search for a modern light machine gun, picked on the Zbrojowka 0.303 gun, the Bren of the future years; and the first batch of Brens made in this country were not delivered to the Army until the end of 1937. Although designs for a modern tank and anti-tank gun (the 2-pounder) were available in the early thirties, none were ordered till December 1935, and none delivered till April 1937. ”

“ As a result of a chronic depression in the shipbuilding industry specialised labour was drifting away from the main shipbuilding areas: slowly in the early twenties, much faster in the thirties. By 1935 the total insured labour force stood at about 157,000 or about one-half of what it had been in the early twenties. ”

“ Mechanisation was the largest and the best-advertised of the Army's projects of modernisation, but in fact throughout the twenties and early thirties it was not carried beyond a merely experimental stage. ”

“ Adequate as the fleet might appear in numbers it was weakened by a great proportion of old ships. Under the 1930 Treaty the British Government accepted a rate of replacement under which it would take Britain about fifteen years to re-equip her fleet with modern ships. In actual fact the scale of new construction was even slower than that. The average annual cost of new construction from 1930 up to and included 1934 was some £6 millions; [6] this sum covered three cruisers, nine destroyers and a small number of submarines and sloops. ”

“ In theory, it was expanding all through the late twenties and early thirties. By a Government decision in 1923 the Royal Air Force, then greatly reduced by demobilisation and economy campaigns, was to be raised to and maintained at a level of fifty-two squadrons for home defence with a first-line strength of 594 machines. This decision, however, was not back by sufficient financial appropriations and remained largely a dead letter. Aeroplanes for new formations were coming forward very slowly, sometimes not at all ”

“ The annual allocation for the purchase and maintenance of army weapons and war-stores in the decade between 1923 and 1933 seldom exceeded £2.5 millions and averaged about £2 millions, or slightly less than nine percent of the small sums spent on armaments in an average year. ”