Steel Shortage after WW2

[Vanin]

Vaud said:

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_steel

Indeed - it is a real issue.

Now that is very interesting. Back in 2000 I did a log cabin course with a wild man from the backwoods of Devon. I thought that we were going to be using chainsaws, but not a bit of it. It was mainly hand tools, draw knives, chisels, adzes and axes. We were taught how to sharpen them all properly and the result was a really frighteningly sharp tool which you had to handle like gelignite they were so scary.
He spent ages working on the edge, feeling the burr and going on well beyond what I thought was plenty sharp enough. The axes would easily shave all the hair off your arm (skin too if you were not careful!)

He was adamant that the axe had to be made of pre-nuclear steel as something happened to it post Hiroshima. Post nuclear would not give the same edge. We all thought he was nuts, but it seems not looking at that link.
It was amazing to see the chips fly when he was working the axe and also amazing for how long they remained sharp.

[Gary C]

Vanin said:

Now that is very interesting. Back in 2000 I did a log cabin course with a wild man from the backwoods of Devon. I thought that we were going to be using chainsaws, but not a bit of it. It was mainly hand tools, draw knives, chisels, adzes and axes. We were taught how to sharpen them all properly and the result was a really frighteningly sharp tool which you had to handle like gelignite they were so scary.
He spent ages working on the edge, feeling the burr and going on well beyond what I thought was plenty sharp enough. The axes would easily shave all the hair off your arm (skin too if you were not careful!)

He was adamant that the axe had to be made of pre-nuclear steel as something happened to it post Hiroshima. Post nuclear would not give the same edge. We all thought he was nuts, but it seems not looking at that link.
It was amazing to see the chips fly when he was working the axe and also amazing for how long they remained sharp.

The metallurgy is no different, just some weakly radioactive contaminates that will make bugger all difference to the properties of the metal, except it is unsuitable for some very low level detectors.

So basically, he was talking bks.

[Vaud]

Vanin said:

Now that is very interesting. Back in 2000 I did a log cabin course with a wild man from the backwoods of Devon. I thought that we were going to be using chainsaws, but not a bit of it. It was mainly hand tools, draw knives, chisels, adzes and axes. We were taught how to sharpen them all properly and the result was a really frighteningly sharp tool which you had to handle like gelignite they were so scary.
He spent ages working on the edge, feeling the burr and going on well beyond what I thought was plenty sharp enough. The axes would easily shave all the hair off your arm (skin too if you were not careful!)

He was adamant that the axe had to be made of pre-nuclear steel as something happened to it post Hiroshima. Post nuclear would not give the same edge. We all thought he was nuts, but it seems not looking at that link.
It was amazing to see the chips fly when he was working the axe and also amazing for how long they remained sharp.

A little background radiation doesn't change the composition of steel for that purpose.

[2xChevrons]

TEKNOPUG said:

All the steel (along with other materials and resources such as coal) was being sold abroad as the country was bankrupt. There was a huge amount of aluminium left from the war but that was in less demand.

This is the immediate reason as far as the car industry was concerned. There was a global shortage of steel (due to problems with the coal supply, the industrial ruin of much of Europe, the inevitable delay in switching from wartime to peacetime production and the surviving works being all-but clapped out after six years of running flat-out with minimal maintenance) and the UK's finances were dire. So the Attlee government implemented the 'Export or Die' regime and desperately hawked almost anything that wasn't nailed down in Britain to anyone who would buy it (a big part in why Stafford Cripps gave the USSR the blueprints to the Nene jet engine). Steel was rationed for industrial use. Not only was a lot of the steel itself being sent to Europe but British steel purchasers had to be able to prove that a certain percentage of their output would be going to export and earn foreign exchange. The more exports, the more steel.

This is why Rover created the Land-Rover. The market for posh saloon cars was on its knees, the old Meteor Works in Coventry had been bombed into rubble and Rover had to restart production in the huge and now massively under-utilised Lode Lane factory. Rover had no real export market to speak of so was at the back of the queue for steel. The Land-Rover would be in more demand in the rugged post-war world, would be a good export product, needed relatively little steel itself and would earn enough Brownie Points at the Ministry of Supply to get Rover the steel it needed to restart saloon production on a big enough scale to make Solihull viable.

The export drive was partly why all the British firms set their sights on America in the late 1940s/early 1950s, plus it was the only market in the world with the money to buy cars then-and-now and no-one in America had been able to buy a new car for six years. Austin and Rootes set up US subsidiaries (Austin even had a skyscraper in New York as its HQ) and you had made-for-America products like the A90 Atlantic and then the Austin-Healey. Morris had over 1000 North American dealers in 1947. With the exception of sports cars none of the British imports had any real success - the Minor, the A40 and the Minx all had brief sales booms but proved to be too fragile and unreliable for American motoring conditions...and then the VW Beetle came along and cleaned up.

As for why America had its post-war boom- billions upon billions of dollars worth of industrial infrastructure had been installed during the war, nearly all of it in the hands of existing major industrial firms. Not only was there five years of war to make good on, but there was also nearly 20 years of Great Depression (finally vanquished by the New Deal and then, ironically for what is considered the boom time of American capitalism, state intervention and funding on a scale that would have made Lenin proud). There was the perfect mix of a lot of new technology to exploit, a lot of infrastructure to repair, huge industrial investment and resources and millions of GI Bill-receiving servicemen ready to settle down, get a job and start spending on a scale that the world had never seen before. And all this in the only major economy of the world completely untouched by war and in fact in much better economic health in 1945 than it had been in 1939.

[Hoofy]

ApOrbital said:

I know they took steal from all the churches to melt down.

I was going to say the same.

To add something to this convo: https://goo.gl/maps/wK1WwCgXnkC2

[227bhp]

Hoofy said:

ApOrbital said:

I know they took steal from all the churches to melt down.

I was going to say the same.

To add something to this convo: https://goo.gl/maps/wK1WwCgXnkC2

They took the iron railings down from outside anything, not just churches.

[Hoofy]

227bhp said:

Hoofy said:

ApOrbital said:

I know they took steal from all the churches to melt down.

I was going to say the same.

To add something to this convo: https://goo.gl/maps/wK1WwCgXnkC2

They took the iron railings down from outside anything, not just churches.

Oh right.

Can't help but wonder when going around town if it was down to WW2 or travellers, though.

[227bhp]

Hoofy said:

227bhp said:

Hoofy said:

ApOrbital said:

I know they took steal from all the churches to melt down.

I was going to say the same.

To add something to this convo: https://goo.gl/maps/wK1WwCgXnkC2

They took the iron railings down from outside anything, not just churches.

Oh right.

Can't help but wonder when going around town if it was down to WW2 or travellers, though.

WW2. The pie keys took the drain covers and the lead from the roof though.

[TEKNOPUG]

227bhp said:

Hoofy said:

ApOrbital said:

I know they took steal from all the churches to melt down.

I was going to say the same.

To add something to this convo: https://goo.gl/maps/wK1WwCgXnkC2

They took the iron railings down from outside anything, not just churches.

You have to remember that a lot of people were quite insistent that their railings were taken down, as it would appear very unpatriotic not to do so. To that end, a lot of properties had their railings removed by their owners and stored away, to give the impression that they were helping the war effort. Only to reappear after the war.

[Vaud]

2xChevrons said:

The export drive was partly why all the British firms set their sights on America in the late 1940s/early 1950s, plus it was the only market in the world with the money to buy cars then-and-now and no-one in America had been able to buy a new car for six years.

I don't think that is quite right? Auto sales only got banned from '42-45:

http://teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-h...

[catso]

Gary C said:

Wonder why the nazis hid teaspoons

To break the British spirit, by denying us our revitalising cuppa?

[Johnnytheboy]

TEKNOPUG said:

All the steel (along with other materials and resources such as coal) was being sold abroad as the country was bankrupt. There was a huge amount of aluminium left from the war but that was in less demand.

Finally the right answer (and 2 x Chevrons' expansion on it).

It's the same reason food rationing went on into the 50s.

[Welshbeef]

Johnnytheboy said:

Finally the right answer (and 2 x Chevrons' expansion on it).

It's the same reason food rationing went on into the 50s.

How did the food rationing actually work?

I’m assuming any garden grown fruit and veg you could consume it all.


Was food rationing a way to force the U.K. public to buy 100% only food. We’re people encouraged to turn lawns into vegetable plots so that as a nation we could then have over supply and flog it overseas?

[Ruth Rack]

As an interesting little follow on to topic:-

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/08/15/campai...

[Ruth Rack]

As an interesting little follow on to topic:-

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/08/15/campai...

[unsprung]

2xChevrons said:

This is the immediate reason as far as the car industry was concerned. There was a global shortage of steel (due to problems with the coal supply, the industrial ruin of much of Europe, the inevitable delay in switching from wartime to peacetime production and the surviving works being all-but clapped out after six years of running flat-out with minimal maintenance) and the UK's finances were dire. So the Attlee government implemented the 'Export or Die' regime and desperately hawked almost anything that wasn't nailed down in Britain to anyone who would buy it (a big part in why Stafford Cripps gave the USSR the blueprints to the Nene jet engine). Steel was rationed for industrial use. Not only was a lot of the steel itself being sent to Europe but British steel purchasers had to be able to prove that a certain percentage of their output would be going to export and earn foreign exchange. The more exports, the more steel.

This is why Rover created the Land-Rover. The market for posh saloon cars was on its knees, the old Meteor Works in Coventry had been bombed into rubble and Rover had to restart production in the huge and now massively under-utilised Lode Lane factory. Rover had no real export market to speak of so was at the back of the queue for steel. The Land-Rover would be in more demand in the rugged post-war world, would be a good export product, needed relatively little steel itself and would earn enough Brownie Points at the Ministry of Supply to get Rover the steel it needed to restart saloon production on a big enough scale to make Solihull viable.

The export drive was partly why all the British firms set their sights on America in the late 1940s/early 1950s, plus it was the only market in the world with the money to buy cars then-and-now and no-one in America had been able to buy a new car for six years. Austin and Rootes set up US subsidiaries (Austin even had a skyscraper in New York as its HQ) and you had made-for-America products like the A90 Atlantic and then the Austin-Healey. Morris had over 1000 North American dealers in 1947. With the exception of sports cars none of the British imports had any real success - the Minor, the A40 and the Minx all had brief sales booms but proved to be too fragile and unreliable for American motoring conditions...and then the VW Beetle came along and cleaned up.

As for why America had its post-war boom- billions upon billions of dollars worth of industrial infrastructure had been installed during the war, nearly all of it in the hands of existing major industrial firms. Not only was there five years of war to make good on, but there was also nearly 20 years of Great Depression (finally vanquished by the New Deal and then, ironically for what is considered the boom time of American capitalism, state intervention and funding on a scale that would have made Lenin proud). There was the perfect mix of a lot of new technology to exploit, a lot of infrastructure to repair, huge industrial investment and resources and millions of GI Bill-receiving servicemen ready to settle down, get a job and start spending on a scale that the world had never seen before. And all this in the only major economy of the world completely untouched by war and in fact in much better economic health in 1945 than it had been in 1939.

photographs and long text I almost never quote in full on PH

I'm making an exception for this highly-informative and well-written examination by 2xChevrons

sod the car talk; I'd come to PH daily for this combination of history, culture and economics

thank you

[TEKNOPUG]

Welshbeef said:

Johnnytheboy said:

Finally the right answer (and 2 x Chevrons' expansion on it).

It's the same reason food rationing went on into the 50s.

How did the food rationing actually work?

I’m assuming any garden grown fruit and veg you could consume it all.


Was food rationing a way to force the U.K. public to buy 100% only food. We’re people encouraged to turn lawns into vegetable plots so that as a nation we could then have over supply and flog it overseas?

The UK wasn't self sufficient in food. It hadn't been since the industrial revolution saw a huge increase in the popuIation. It had the largest merchant navy in the world and that was needed to import foodstuffs from around the globe. Come the start of WW2 (Germany invasion of Western Europe), we could no longer import food from Europe (Butter, Cheese, Pork products etc). Merchant shipping also had huge demands for raw materials for the war effort, rather than food. Plus a lot of shipping was being lost. And you then had a huge army/navy/airforce to feed around the globe.

So we couldn't import enough food for people to be able to buy whatever they wanted. Hence food was rationed. People were encouraged to grow their own and presumably they could keep what they grew (although I imagine this depended upon the quantity). Following the end of the war, European countries weren't growing enough to provide a surplus and we were trying to scale back the imports due to the huge costs. Plus we were trying to earn foreign money, not buy stuff from abroad. Which is why rationing continued into the 50s.


"Britain's War Machine" by David Edgerton is a great resource and read, which details the science and industry as well as the actual logistics that Britain and the Empire employed during WW2 to turn the country into "total war" nation. Things like 95% of the world's merchant shipping was controlled by the UK; Britain out-produced Germany in Aircraft, Tanks and weapons from 1940 onwards (that's UK production, not buying from the US) and that by 1944, the UK's domestic (ie non-military) oil consumption was something like 5 times that of the entire German war effort (including military use).

It points to an interesting scenario, should the US not have entered the war and had the will been there for Britain to continue to fight, that even a Nazi dominated Europe couldn't hope to compete in men, resources or productivity against the British Empire.

[D1bram]

What a superbly interesting thread! Thank you to all the informative posts.

[PAUL500]

Had the US not entered the war we would have been fighting on three fronts all alone, Japan would have taken the Far east and Australia, India etc, Africa and the middle east would have gone next to the Axis forces.

We would then have had a long drawn out defence of the nation whilst the Germans and Russians battled it out.

We would have been starved into submission by whoever won the outcome of that, and given that the nuclear option was not a huge leap for Hitler, he would have had the upper hand probably.

The world would have been carved up into 3 distinct areas, those of the US, Europe and Africa/Middle East for the Germans and the east for Japan.

I imagine a cold war would then have existed between the 3 due to the atomic age, just like it did anyway.

German territories would have been the first to decay as you cannot enslave such a big area indefinitely with such a small home population to manage it all, so again a bit of a fall of the wall scenario maybe about now though rather than the 90s.

[227bhp]

TEKNOPUG said:

227bhp said:

Hoofy said:

ApOrbital said:

I know they took steal from all the churches to melt down.

I was going to say the same.

To add something to this convo: https://goo.gl/maps/wK1WwCgXnkC2

They took the iron railings down from outside anything, not just churches.

You have to remember that a lot of people were quite insistent that their railings were taken down, as it would appear very unpatriotic not to do so. To that end, a lot of properties had their railings removed by their owners and stored away, to give the impression that they were helping the war effort. Only to reappear after the war.

I strongly suspect that didn't happen very often and was a bit of an old wives tale or something which got blown out of all proportion. Railings were made from cast iron which can't be welded very easily so it's unlikely they were ever put back after being cut off.
The whole railings thing was probably propaganda which got out of hand.

The other point worth mentioning is what did they want cast iron for during the war? It has very little use for the war effort and it's reported that most of the railings were hidden out of embarrassment and never used.
It spoiled (architecturally) the face of Britain's villages and towns for no real reason apart from to make people feel good.