The History of Ruddington Depot
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Wartime Operations
Filling the bombs
Lilian Slack inspected the work carried out in both the mixing shop and the adjacent filling shop:
“The 500lb and 1000lb bombs – we did both – came in as empty casings. When they had been cleaned they went into the filling shop, which was a very secret place, with walls 10 ft thick. They were weighed and put into position in wooden jigs by an overhead crane. The explosives to fill them were mixed in the mixing shop alongside.
In this shop were six coppers (which had two storeys). The operatives filling the coppers worked above them, and the mixture was drawn out at the bottom in buckets when it was ready.
We inspectors had a blackboard, and we wrote down the exact time each ingredient went in. Fifteen minutes after the first went in the next one was added. That had five minutes, and then the last one went in. It was all boiled and mixed up. We had to tell them when the time was up. “It’s OK now. You can take it out. It’s ready.” It was white hot when it came out - very lethal.
The buckets had to be taken through a hole in the wall into the filling shop. Most of the men handling the buckets were Asians. They had to be pretty nippy when they whipped through the hole in the wall with about three buckets of white hot mixture on a wooden trolley. The hole was about five feet high, and it went through a wall about five to six feet thick.”
Margaret Stapleford’s job was to prepare the waiting bomb cases to receive explosive mixture:
“There was a conveyor belt down the middle with a platform along each side. There were two men and two girls to a platform – we were still girls then - and six bomb cases on each platform. The girls had to fill the bottom part of the bomb case, the nose, with what was called a flapjack. It was black, like tar. We packed it in, and then went along with cans of T.N.T about 9 inches high, and poured that in. Along the conveyor belt came the steaming hot mixture… it tasted horrible… We were supposed to wear masks but more often than not didn’t bother. The men filled the bombs and tamped them down with a little mallet. When they had done that the girls went back, put more T.N.T. from a can on top, and then another flapjack. When the filling was set, a plate was screwed on and a crane came along and hoisted the bombs off. They were taken out for A.I.D. inspection and weighed again.”
Lilian Slack was also involved in the final stages:
“When a bomb was full it had to be weighed again to see if it had the right amount of filling. If it hadn’t it was rejected. I think at weekends they steamed the filling out.
The next stage was back onto another platform with jigs at the end. The bombs were sealed with a base plate which held the fuse, but we didn’t fuse them. It was here that we used to keep warm. On a winter’s evening it was nice to snuggle up to the bombs. We used to get our backs between two hot bombs. It was a lovely feeling on a cold night, getting your back warm. From here the bombs went out to the transit shed.
Each A.I.D. Inspector had a stencil, a small stencil with a number on it. You kept that. It was your individual number. When each stage of the filling had been done to your satisfaction then you stencilled this number with yellow paint on the side of the bomb case. When bombs got to the transit shed they had a series of A.I.D. numbers all the way down. We checked these and recorded them on a big chart. When that was done we painted all the numbers out, in the same colour as the bombs. If the stencils were where you couldn’t get at them then you just got your foot, and gave a little kick and it rolled. Finally the bombs would be put in a line ready to be loaded onto railway trucks.”
The Story > Chapter 3 > Section 3.07