"It is better," wrote Napoleon, "to have no artillery at all than a bad artillery that endangers the lives of men and the honour of the nation," and selecting this fundamental principle as a basis on which to build the fabric of his excursion into the then untravelled paths of shell manufacture, Mr. Cooke made arrangements at the very outset for his leading representative of the machine-tool department to visit Woolwich, for the purpose, not only of acquiring first-hand knowledge as to the most approved Government methods of producing shells, but of making detailed dimensioned sketches from which to manufacture, in the Company's own tool department at Crewe, the multifarious gauges, or instruments, designed to verify in the most minute manner imaginable the diverse form of the shell.
The consecutive operations through which the shell passes number some thirty all told, and for each separate operation separate gauges are required.
As emphasising not merely the delicacy of these all-important little instruments, but the delicate proposition "up against" which he found himself in his endeavour to discover firms who were capable of their manufacture, Mr. Lloyd George confessed that "we found that some of the shortage (of shells), if not a good deal of it, was due to the fact that, although you turn out shell bodies in very considerable numbers, you were short of some particular component which was essential before you could complete the shell. It might be a fuse, it might be a gauge. There was always some one thing of which you had a shortage!" Evidently gauges were a source of considerable anxiety because "we therefore had to set up two or three national factories in order to increase the supply of these components."
By already possessing the necessary machinery for, as well as considerable experience in, the art of gauge-making, Crewe was in a position to ease very materially the burden of those Government departments, those newly created "national factories" directly responsible for the manufacture and the issue of gauges in quantities sufficient to meet all demands, having merely to submit on completion any inspecting gauges to the National Physical Laboratory at Teddington for testing and stamping, prior to putting them into commission in the Works. Further, Mr. Cooke, as a member of a "strong committee of machine-tool makers" who were then "sitting constantly at Armament Buildings in London," was specially qualified, in view of his inside technical knowledge and practical experience, to assist in "directing the operations of the whole of the machine-tool manufacturers of the kingdom"; and finally, as Mr. Lloyd George went on to say, "the result of all this" was "to increase very considerably not merely the output of shells, but also the power at the disposal of the nation at short notice to turn out even more than we have ordered if the emergency demands" (The Times, July 29th, 1915).
The rough forging of a shell body, rolled and pressed to suitable dimensions from a steel billet, is an uncouth-looking object, resembling as much as anything one of those upright earthenware umbrella-stands to be found in any cheap furnishing store; and with a view to licking it into shape, to turning it as quickly as possible into the smoothly finished article it was destined to become, Mr. Cooke's representative, on his return from Woolwich, having, as a preliminary, set in motion the machinery necessary for a supply of gauges, forthwith proceeded to improvise a further series of machines and tools, calculating the nature and number required for a given output of shells per month, and mapping out a plan whereby the various operations should follow one another from start to finish in correct and regular sequence. How important is the strict adherence to a regular sequence of operations is borne out by the fact that a shell might easily be ruined in the event of any operation being performed out of its turn. A convenient and suitable locale in which to lay out this shell-manufacturing plant was found available in a previously unoccupied extension of the new fitting shop; and as in the case of fuse manufacture at the old works fitting shop, so in the present instance, members of the fair sex were destined to figure prominently—a little band of neatly attired novices, some 150 strong, speedily responding to the call, and ranging themselves under the immediate supervision of a suitable quorum of expert mechanics of the sterner sex.
6-inch Shell Manufacture in the New Fitting Shop, Crewe Works.
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A multiple cutter-milling machine, formerly habituated to the peace-time art of facing locomotive cylinders, suddenly found itself saddled with a row of a dozen shell forgings, the open ends of which it faced to a correct distance from the inside of the base. Thenceforward, engine and turret-lathes deftly manipulated by our little friends of the fair element bore the onus of the succeeding operations.