During the Second World War, Vauxhall Motors in Luton suspended car production and dedicated their production line to the Churchill Tank.  | | The trucks line up in the streets of Luton after coming off the production line |
Development work started in July 1940 but after the retreat from Dunkirk, the British Army only had 100 tanks left, and Vauxhall was ordered to build them as quickly as possible. Churchill asked for the new tank to be ready for production the following March (1941) and 500 were ordered straight away. The first prototypes were completed by December and the first 14 production tanks delivered at the end of June. They might have missed the target date but this will still go down as a tremendous engineering effort. With just a year to develop and build the tank, the first ones were inevitably rather unreliable, so the Churchill was modified throughout the war, and various improvements were made to its cannons and armour. But despite this, British tanks were still always hopelessly outclassed by their German counterparts. Once assembled, the tanks were tested in the grounds of Luton Hoo stately home, and its namesake, the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill even paid a visit to inspect them himself.  | | The Luftwaffe targets the Vauxhall factory |
Over 5,000 Churchill tanks were built in total. They saw action in France, Italy, North Africa, and even in Russia with the Red Army. The factory in Luton also turned out a quarter of a million trucks during the course of the war, and led Britain's development of the jet engine. Fake inflatable vehicles were also made there, which were used to fool German pilots into wasting their ammunition. All this production for the war effort made Luton a target for the Germans. On 30 August 1940, at about 4.45 in the evening, the Luftwaffe carried out a daylight raid on the factory. Thirty people were killed, and 200 were injured. The raid caused considerable damage to the factory itself, and a number of fires were started in the surrounding area. You can find more stories like this and add your own on the People's War Website. 
| John Nice, High Wycombe | Sunday, 27-Jun-2004 22:25:05 BST |  | | If you want to know about the work Vauxhall did during the Second World War (which includes 95% of the work on the first batch of jet aircraft engines), you MUST read W J Seymour's book 'An account of our stewardship'. I have a copy for loan. |
| John Nice, High Wycombe | Sunday, 27-Jun-2004 22:16:37 BST | | | I was interested to see the pictures of Vauxhall's war work. My late father was a service engineer who spent the War visiting military bases, training service personnel on maintaining vehicles supplied by Vauxhall. It it worth remembering that Vauxhall Motors Ltd supplied one third of all the vehicles used in the Second World War by British forces. And the old Bedford van you refer to was in fact another brilliant Vauxhall success: the Bedford QL 4x4 lorry which saw service throughout the theatre. If you want to know about the work Vauxhall did during the Second World War (which includes 95% of the work on the first batch of jet aircraft engines), you MUST read W J Seymour's book 'An account of our stewardship'. |
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