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Don't mention the war?...

Paul R said:
I'd read http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/c/F259604 which left open the possibility that the MoAP was sourcing ammunition.

According to the internet proximity fuse development and production was mostly a US based project, after the handover of UK bright ideas in late 1940.
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Thanks for that. I'll have a look though. The RAF Museum person who replied to me seemed to take for granted that Supply = munitions and Aircraft Production = aircraft and installed kit. But it may not have been that clean a division in reality.
 
There was intense false information in the war as the Germans would have selected targets. Proximity fused shells were extremely sensitive technology and were not allowed to be used in an area where a shell might be recovered by the Germans until late in war. After the war the secrets stayed that way due to the Cold War and then lack of interest while the people who knew were still alive.
 
The problem now being that a name made up for the sake of 'security' may mean we'll never know for certain what they *actually* made! :-/ Just that they made quite a lot...
 
Those numbers belong to a consumable, but if you look at later war time aircraft production, each bomber was carrying radios, a few radars, radio navigation instruments and jammers. Someone must have been making each of these units in thousands.
 
Yes, the impression is that it was a consumable component of other equipment. Otherwise if it wasn't a munition it is hard to see how over 12 *million* would have been made. I've just added a 'P.S.' to the webpage outlining some possible ideas. The main one being that it was a 'general purpose' valve (tube) which might have been convenient in some wartime kit because it was rugged, but could be used for many purposes. i.e. more than one per box-of-tricks. The problem there is that the term 'J tube' for such a valve seems to stem from WW1 in the USA!

A general problem is that 'J tube' may simple have been a 'cover name' and thus gives no clue to what it actually was.

I've now had gracesguide.co.uk pointed out to me. So may look though that. But thus far I've not got beyond the mystery outlined in the added P.S.... i.e. not very far. :-/
 
There's no reason from the advert to assume that Armstrong made 12 million of the same thing, and is it likely that they were able to manufacture vacuum tubes in bulk?

It's a conundrum because of the volume, if they'd moved production from the pre-war chassis to something for military use it's hard to see how 12 million could be accounted for. But given they went straight back to producing similar stuff to the pre-war products it's equally hard to see that they shifted completely to mass production of some minor mechanical widget.

I did wonder if it was something like tuning coils or crystals.
 
More likely that it was a J shaped metal tube and Armstrong had a suitable bending machine. They would surely have been making other equipment that used the radio assembly capabilities of the company. Wartime production was often very efficient at using every resource available.
I have seen a civilian radio made during the war, with a cardboard casing to minimise use of strategic materials.
 
Paul R said:
There's no reason from the advert to assume that Armstrong made 12 million of the same thing, and is it likely that they were able to manufacture vacuum tubes in bulk?

It's a conundrum because of the volume, if they'd moved production from the pre-war chassis to something for military use it's hard to see how 12 million could be accounted for. But given they went straight back to producing similar stuff to the pre-war products it's equally hard to see that they shifted completely to mass production of some minor mechanical widget.

I did wonder if it was something like tuning coils or crystals.
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What you suggest about what they made may well be correct. For example, the 'coil packs' advertised to the domestic market might mean that their military products were similar... but again the 'millions' seems too many for that. And Ron did mention the 'j tubes' to me.

However it took them some time to resume selling chassis models to domestic consumers. So "straight back" misses that they may have taken some time to change. Note also that we don't have a clear view of their *export* activity. Yet that was clearly a factor from the ads and the focus thoughout the late 1930s and into the 1940s on what came to be called the 'EXP' models. The difficulty now, is that much is lost from what we know. :-/
 
'gracesguide' have an Armstrong ad claimed to be from Dec 45,

Im194512WW-AWT.jpg
 
Note "preparing" and have a look at when the later ads say sets were being offerred/sold.

It took until around March/April of 1946 to start claiming they were producing domestic sets again. And I suspect the initial production was limited if only by 'austerity'. This was all some time after VE/VJ days. My guess is that putting the factory back into shape to make sets again wasn't the main limitation. It was the difficulty in getting materials and devices given that the UK economy was trashed and we now also had to pay back 'lend lease'. Hence the focus for some time after on 'export' chassis. They probably had to do this to get the materials because Government policy gave priority to export to help our trade balance.

BTW the first appearance I found of that "War is over" ad is in the November 1945 issue on page AD8. Assuming a uniform start-to-press production cycle that gives us an estimate of from Nov 1945 to April 1946 for the changeover. But it is possible that their war production wound down much earler.
 
Jim Audiomisc said:
My guess is that putting the factory back into shape to make sets again wasn't the main limitation. It was the difficulty in getting materials and devices given that the UK economy was trashed and we now also had to pay back 'lend lease'.
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And the male staff coming back from service.
 
Yes, that's another possible factor. I suspect the pre-war manufacturing kit they didn't use during the war was stored somewhere. That may have taken some weeks to get back in place and functional. No doubt some new items were needed as well. So a period of the order of, say, six months seems plausible.
 
Fairly soon after the war it was probably easier to buy a lot of army surplus parts than new civilian, so I can imagine a lot of redesigning going on.
 
Unfortunately, I've never even seen most of the models of chassis that Armstrong made before about 1950! But I suspect most of the initial ones just after the war were 'similar' to the ones at the start, but modded to use now-available parts. The real development came with the flood of newer models a bit later on from the war, I guess.

FWIW this is about the only example I've actually seen in the flesh

http://jcgl.orpheusweb.co.uk/temp/MoCdemo/HiFi/337.html

Saw it when I was taking some photos for the MoC. Here it is part of a 'demo' set of pages I wanted to do for them so that people could see what they had. Alas, they didn't want a detailed website like this covering the sheer range of items. So all I did was the demo! Note the ID may be wrong as I had little to go on at the time of the demo.
 
I've been in contact with the RAF museum in London. They pointed out that the Min of Aircraft Production was for the aircraft and installed kit, not munitions. Which left me with the puzzle of how 12 million items would fit into only around 175,000 aircraft! Cosford said they were too busy to help. Haven't tried Northholt. I'll see if I can find an email address for them.
 
If you get stuck, let me know. I’m in contact with the Head of AHB quite frequently for my Op Gomorrah research and could ask if they might hold any relevant material
 
Jo Sharp said:
If you get stuck, let me know. I’m in contact with the Head of AHB quite frequently for my Op Gomorrah research and could ask if they might hold any relevant material
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I've not found a useful email contact for them. So, yes please, I'd be grateful if you could mention this to them, or can say who will hold/know the relevant data. Thanks.
 
I spoke to Head AHB today: he says the best place to look is in the Avia archives at Kew. There might be some records at Northolt and he will get one of his researchers to have a look, although it won’t be a priority so could be a while before I get an answer.
 
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