Steel Shortage after WW2
Discussion
Vaud said:
A fairly balanced article here exploring the topic:
http://www.londongardenstrust.org/features/railing...
I must say from a relatively innocent question this thread has come up with a mine of information,http://www.londongardenstrust.org/features/railing...
Thanks to all, but this link from Vaud was
interesting as it seems that all the railings and scrap collected during the war was more than could be dealt with and a lot of it was sent to the
bottom of the sea.
My Gt uncle had a Morser howitzer on the edge of one of his fields. It was a trophy from WW1 and old folk in the village claimed that they
could get inside the barrel when they were kids, but it was taken for scrap in WW2 so probably at the bottom of the North Sea now.
I appreciate things were very difficult just after the war, but you would have thought that things would have settled by the time Tadek Marek
started to build his six cylinder engine for Aston. in1954/5/6
The old railing where party used in a range of pillboxs and Admiralty scaffolding, whiles there a few stranded patterns, often there made from what was at hand.
Of course with air plane grade metals, the stuff was literally falling out sky quite often during the battle of britain, that's why you always see the police guarding wrecks, some ones comeing to collect that and melt it down it to a new spitfire.
Post war there 6 years of pent up demand for steel and a war to rebuild from.
Of course with air plane grade metals, the stuff was literally falling out sky quite often during the battle of britain, that's why you always see the police guarding wrecks, some ones comeing to collect that and melt it down it to a new spitfire.
Post war there 6 years of pent up demand for steel and a war to rebuild from.
My grandfather served in the last war. On being demobbed he went back to being a machine fitter for some of the big factories around Oldham and Rochdale. He always maintained that the Germans did more harm to our post war economy by failing to destroy a lot of the ancient industrial equipment and tooling. While the Germans were kitting out their factories with state of the art equipment my grandfather was still keeping machinary working that George Stephenson would have probably recognised.
Not sure what my point is other than we were very slow to crawl out of our victory in the last war. My dad grew up through the war and alway maintains that the post war years were worse than the war years. Less food less money less work. There wasn't even the excitment of watching Manchester burn of an evening.
Not sure what my point is other than we were very slow to crawl out of our victory in the last war. My dad grew up through the war and alway maintains that the post war years were worse than the war years. Less food less money less work. There wasn't even the excitment of watching Manchester burn of an evening.
I’ve never heard that the route master was built using aluminium recycled from old war planes but I would be truly astonished if they weren’t as the vast majority of Aluminium is recycled as it takes far less energy to do this than produce new. The Routemaster was a revolutionary design built using techniques learnt during the Second World War.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AEC_Routemaster
As for the UK struggling post ww2 the Americans did everything they could to hammer us, as they wanted the British Empire gone. we only paid off the ww2 debt to them in the last 15 years...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AEC_Routemaster
As for the UK struggling post ww2 the Americans did everything they could to hammer us, as they wanted the British Empire gone. we only paid off the ww2 debt to them in the last 15 years...
Huskyman said:
As for the UK struggling post ww2 the Americans did everything they could to hammer us, as they wanted the British Empire gone. we only paid off the ww2 debt to them in the last 15 years...
at the risk of putting foot in mouth, I'd like to say that those equipment deals and loans were offered at favourable, sometimes ridiculously low, ratesthere are massive benefits to Britain of the familial ties to the US, the same language, body of law, etc.
Britain is today the world's second largest exporter of services
75 percent of all US foreign direct investment in Europe (Europe, not merely the EU) is managed via Britain
many of the post-War challenges in Blighty had less to do with the War and more to do, in my opinion, with structural issues of economics and society which preceded the War
there was no US targeting of Britain; all colonial empires were deemed things of the past --- vestigial concepts which had to be abandoned in the race to bring to light self determination as well as institutions like the United Nations, the World Bank, etc.
it was the dark and continuous threat of the Soviet Union -- and not US/UK infighting -- which defined how the Allies went about their rebuilding and their responsibilities after the War
Vaud said:
Nanook said:
Didn't know you were that old!
If you're melting stuff down, the fact it wasn't particularly high grade or an appropriate grade to begin with isn't too relevant. You're going to refine it first, add the appropriate alloying materials etc.
No-one was proposing melting old frying pans and just pouring them into a spar casting.
A fairly balanced article here exploring the topic:If you're melting stuff down, the fact it wasn't particularly high grade or an appropriate grade to begin with isn't too relevant. You're going to refine it first, add the appropriate alloying materials etc.
No-one was proposing melting old frying pans and just pouring them into a spar casting.
http://www.londongardenstrust.org/features/railing...
How amazing is that?
Going back to my original point about Tadek Marek and the 6 cylinder. I have always understood that iron was not available in 1956 to make the blocks for Aston. Jaguar managed to pull a few strings to find their iron, so I do not think that it was the lower melting point of the aluminium that was the factor here.
There were many problems with the crankshaft expending at a different rate to the alloy blocks causing loss of oil pressure only cured by upping the oil pressure to over 100psi when hot, so it was not an easy move and I am sure that they would have preferred iron to alloy at that time.
There were many problems with the crankshaft expending at a different rate to the alloy blocks causing loss of oil pressure only cured by upping the oil pressure to over 100psi when hot, so it was not an easy move and I am sure that they would have preferred iron to alloy at that time.
wolfracesonic said:
O/T I know but how come the post WWII US economy boomed while ours went down the pan? I realise we must have drained the kitty paying for the war but so must have the Americans, surely?
The real bugger was the withholding of nuclear weapons tech despite the initial agreement.However the Manhattan project security was as leaky as a Syrian refugees boat so we and the Soviets had less of a catchup than initially thought.
Welshbeef said:
SCEtoAUX said:
A lot of the steel was used to make teaspoons after the nazis destroyed or hid around 85% of the world's supply.
How could they hide steel supply?War over
Supply of steel is from certain locations where iron ore is found.
techiedave said:
That's why they look for sunken ships. They can use the steel and also its not been contaminated by some types of radiation as the seas protected it from it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steelIndeed - it is a real issue.
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