World War One: How Coventry fed the Allied war machine

The war saw a seismic shift at Coventry’s factories as the city rallied to meet the increasing demands of the war effort.

Firms which had made machines, engines and components for peaceful purposes were turned over to war production as the city became a major hub for munitions manufacture.

As a result Coventry became home to the production of military vehicles like aircraft, motorbikes and lorries, tank engines, submarine parts, and naval guns, and millions of artillery shells, fuses, bullets and grenades.

Over four-and-a-half years, the Navy and Army, through the War Department, spent more than £40million on contracts with Coventry companies, well over £1bn in today’s money.

The factories had to be filled with workers and 30,000 men, women and girls were drafted into Coventry from other parts of the UK to join local workers.

Around 600 houses were built in Stoke Heath, as well as 500 wooden cottages in Holbrook Lane, but these tenements were not nearly sufficient, so there was official billeting of lodgers in homes around the region.

As the war progressed, factories needed to grow to keep up with the demand for weaponry, putting the lives of many workers at risk.

White & Poppe

One such factory was White & Poppe.

Norwegian Peter August Poppe and Alfred James White joined forces in September 1899 to set up the company and by 1902 they began building their own complete motorcycles using a 5hp vertical-twin engine.

At the outbreak of the war the company employed 350 workers, yet by 1918 this rose to a staggering 12,000 after the company secured many large contracts to build millions of munitions components, mostly made up of aluminium fuse bodies and shell-sockets.

Much of this skilled work was undertaken by women who were drafted into Coventry in their thousands from all over Britain and beyond.

But the materials used in making explosives made it dangerous work.

George Ginns worked at the company and remembered the sight of workers who’d been turned yellow by chemicals.

“They all went yellow. You know, very yellow. And there was quite a lot of them I don’t think they bothered at all, they never bothered about it they just carried on. But some of them were, you know, they used to make up decently and cover it up.

“But a lot of them I don’t think cared a hang whether they looked yellow or green as long as they got the money – that was all they were interested in. But the majority of them in the loading were all on this TNT, were all went yellow. Quite yellow they were.”

In many cases workers died from the effects.

After Lilian Miles and her sister Grace went to work in Coventry in 1917, Grace fell ill.

Lilian said: “Well she was ill. She went to the doctor and the doctor said that she was under the influence of alcohol because she was falling about and she couldn’t hold herself up, she was falling about.

"So the doctor told her to come back again when she was sober, he said.

"Well I went down to the doctor and I said to him, I said, ‘She doesn’t drink.’ He said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I think she was under the influence of drink.’ And I said she wasn’t.

“I said, ‘There’s something wrong with her,’ I said, ‘because she’s falling about all the while.’ And of course she was only 19, she wasn’t 20 – she died before she was 20.

“Besides, she didn’t drink. And so any rate, my landlady she said, ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘don’t go down to him again,’ she said, ‘I’ll send for him.’ So she sent for the doctor and she was ill and he had a specialist to her and they took her in the hospital.

“She died in terrible agony. She died in terrible pain and they said that they reckoned that black powder it burnt the back of her throat away. And the continual breathing of this black powder it sort of burnt the back of her throat away.”

Coventry Ordnance Works

But making munitions was vital for the war effort and one company which played a pivotal role was the Coventry Ordnance Works (C.O.W).

They had been making guns for nine years prior to the war after being set up in 1905 by a consortium of British shipbuilding firms. It also opened a factory in Scotstoun, Glasgow in 1910, which made heavy gun mountings.

Workers in Coventry worked day and night on long shift patterns to create a varied selection of armaments, including guns, gauges, tools and even large naval guns.

The C.O.W. 37mm gun was the first modern auto-cannon developed in 1917. The firm also designed the 5.5-inch Naval gun, a highly successful QF 4.5-inch howitzer, and a 15-inch siege howitzer.

Some of these large guns left the factory across a railway line over Stoney Stanton Road.

The business gained encouragement from the British government, which wanted a third major arms consortium to compete with the duopoly of Vickers and Armstrong-Whitworth, in order to drive down prices.

But the firm struggled in the recession after the end of the war and in 1918 the Coventry works became part of English Electric. It closed in 1925.

Triumph

In 1914 motorbike production was greatly ramped up to supply effective communications with front line troops, and this provided a boost to the Coventry-based Triumph Motor Company.

Triumph was inundated with work as more than 30,000 motorcycles — among them the Model H Roadster also known as the “Trusty Triumph”, often cited as the first modern motorcycle — were supplied to the forces.

By 1918 they were Britain’s largest maker of motorcycles.

Coventry’s Standard Motor Company made a major contribution to the war effort, producing more than 1,000 aircraft, including the Royal Aircraft Factory BE12, Royal Aircraft Factory RE8, Sopwith Pup and Bristol F2B in a new works at Canley, which opened on July 1, 1916.

Other war materials produced included shells, mobile workshops for the Royal Engineers, and trench mortars.

Daimler

And the Daimler Company Limited, which had its manufacturing facilities in Coventry, made more 12-inch (305mm) shells than any other business in the country - 2,000 a week.

Aero-engines manufactured by Daimler included the French-designed Gnome Monosoupape rotary, the RAF 1 and 1a air-cooled V8s, the RAF 4a V12, the Le Rhone rotary, and the Bentley BR2 rotary.

And the company even trained air force mechanics in its works and its training methods became the standard for all manufacturers instructing RAF mechanics.

Having its own body shop, Daimler built complete aircraft.

By the end of 1914, they had built 100 units of the Royal Aircraft Factory BE2C.

These were followed by the BE12 and RE8 and their own test-ground beside the factory became the main RAF testing ground for aircraft built in the Coventry district.

Although Daimler tooled up for production of the Royal Aircraft Factory FE4 bomber the aircraft was cancelled due to poor performance.

The last wartime aircraft produced was the Airco DH10 bomber when they were building 80 aeroplanes a month.

Daimler also supplied the power trains used in the Fosters of Lincoln artillery tractors built to haul 15-inch (380 mm) howitzers.

As a result Daimler produced engines for the very first British Mark I tanks.

One major difficulty for the tanks was the fine oil haze above their engines which the enemy quickly learned meant tanks were operating nearby if out of sight.

Coventry-Simplex

Another manufacturer in the city to help in the war effort was Coventry-Simplex.

When ex-Daimler worker H P Lee met a Danish engineer called Stroyer in 1903, one of Coventry’s leading engine makers was born.

But the original firm - Lee Stroyer - only resided in the city for two short years because in 1905 Stroyer left his business partner, who then relocated to Paynes Lane and renamed his venture Coventry-Simplex.

The company would remain under this banner for almost 12 years, after which it would become Coventry Climax - a name which would stay in the city for the next 60 years.

Coventry-Simplex was a forklift truck, fire pump, racing and other speciality engine manufacturer.

Just before the war, a Coventry-Simplex engine was used by Lionel Martin to power the first Aston Martin car and was also chosen by Ernest Shackleton to power the tractors that were to be used in his Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914.

But when the war started hundreds of engines which were manufactured in the city would be used in generating sets for searchlights.

Searchlights were first used in World War One to create ‘artificial moonlight’ to enhance opportunities for night attacks, a practice which continued in the Second World War.

In 1917, the company was renamed Coventry Climax and moved to East Street, before relocating once again to Friars Road in the 1920s and acquiring the ex-Riley premises in Widdrington Road during the 1930s.

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