Steel Shortage after WW2
Discussion
Vanin said:
I was wondering why there was a steel shortage after WW2 which forced companies like Aston Martin to make their engines from aluminium and other companies to make their bodywork in aluminium. Surely there would have been tons of scrap tanks, ships and weapons around.
All those scrap tanks would be on mainland Europe, the ships would either still be ships or at the bottom of the ocean, and the weapons would either still be in the hands of the soldiers who remained in Europe, or stock piled for a few years after the war.I would imagine that there would have been a huge "vacuum" of steel supply - bear in mind that if the majority of steel was directed to the war effort, a hell of a lot of other industries other than the car industry would not have had enough to get by, it takes time for supply to finally catch up with demand.
I think from what I read it is more a case that pre ww2 Aluminium supply was low and very expensive. It is hugely energy intensive to produce. During the war Aluminium production was vastly upscale for the aviation industry and then post war the material was available, usable and cost effective so other industries adopted it. So rather than a post war steel shortage it was an Aluminium availability. Also the rapid development of technology during the war no doubt increased the capability of industry to work with Aluminium.
Wasn't it also a shortage of energy to smelt the ore or scrap metal? Aluminium melts at 660°C or thereabouts, Steel at 1510°C. Chopping up aeroplanes and melting them down would consume considerably less energy than cutting up and melting down tanks, etc.
During the war oil, coal etc. were sourced more or less 'money no object' to get the war won. After the war the country was broke, and every effort was made to avoid spending abroad. The 1947 dock strike wouldn't have helped either.
During the war oil, coal etc. were sourced more or less 'money no object' to get the war won. After the war the country was broke, and every effort was made to avoid spending abroad. The 1947 dock strike wouldn't have helped either.
Vaud said:
Like the melting down of railings, wasn't that all just war effort propaganda? The railings, etc were poor grade cast iron / low grade steel - no use for planes/etc? I may have misremembered.
That's my recollection. They also melted down saucepans and other aluminium made kitchen utensils - again as much as for propaganda as anything else.I doubt this had much to do with any post war shortages.
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...
Dogwatch said:
Continental steel plants would be piles of scrap themselves and those which weren't would have been worn out . Events like the very bad winter of 1947 when everything was snowed in or frozen solid didn't help either.
we can hardly now appreciate the extreme environment post Warin southern Europe, Italy in particular, people starved to death after the war; in Greece people starved to death during the war; they weren't merely hungry: they died!
US president Truman got on the radio and issued a national programme by which Americans would go meatless one or two nights per week -- the federal government then buying the surplus and shipping it, frozen, to Southern Europe
despite the presence of Allied forces, gangs operated with impunity in some regions; and these gangs included a number of Allied soldiers who had deserted their positions to enter a life of black market crime and personal profit
in some quarters there were civil rights abuses by Allied soldiers over both Allied civilians and Axis civilians; and Axis civilians were booby trapping things -- decapitating Jeep and motorcycle drivers at night with wire stretched over the road, for example
and none of this approaches the horror of what occurred in the shattered nations of Central and Eastern Europe -- where roving bands of Soviet NKVD assassinated free-thinking republicans and installed the thick and naive as communist puppets
the Red Army were barely literate jackals and took whatever personal possessions and young flesh they wanted: removing entire staircases and fireplace mantels and shipping these thousands of kilometers back home
fighting with partisans ensconced in forests, in some Eastern countries, continued into the mid-1950s; America and Britain provided covert aid via air drops and a network of well-formed agents on the ground, but this was not enough and, in any case, the scheme was shattered by double-dealing spies who had got on the Soviet payroll
my father once said how short-wave radio enthusiasts would, on occasion, come across, say, Lithuanian partisans asking for ammunition, medical supplies and food; there was nothing that these teen radio enthusiasts in the US could do
I often find it odd how we now enjoy horror movies as a genre; if you want horror, it surely was on barbarous and pitiless display in the post-War years
my brother in law recounts a tale of his father (who was an engineer and had a factory) stripping down the gun turrets from Lancaster bombers after the war, purely to salvage the nuts and bolts as you couldn't get them- chucking the plexi glass etc to one side.
can you imagine what a collector would pay for a full bomber turret these days !!
can you imagine what a collector would pay for a full bomber turret these days !!
unsprung said:
the Red Army were barely literate jackals and took whatever personal possessions and young flesh they wanted: removing entire staircases and fireplace mantels and shipping these thousands of kilometers back home
I think it was in "Berlin" by Anthony Beevor - he recounted how a Soviet soldier sent a pane of glass home.I'm very keen on war history and there are some amazing photos on a lot of the FB groups, the scale of devastation in Germany and elsewhere simply beggars belief. It's a tragedy in it's own right - all those beautiful places. It's difficult to believe that they rebuilt it at all, with or without help.
Having said that I was born in the late 60s and still remember old bomb sites being common.
, and gave it to me.Vanin said:
I was wondering why there was a steel shortage after WW2 which forced companies like Aston Martin to make their engines from aluminium and other companies to make their bodywork in aluminium. Surely there would have been tons of scrap tanks, ships and weapons around.
It's more likely that wasn't the reason at all.Gassing Station | The Lounge | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff