The Second World War

Woolwich Arsenal in 1943, Robert Sargent Austin

At the start of World War II, the government looked to the same solutions for munitions production that had been used in the Great War. The dilution of skilled labour, and the use of women in the factories, would eventually see around seven million British women engaged in war production. War work - either in the factories or in the Forces - was compulsory for women under 40, unless pregnant or ill. This was a war of national survival. By 1944 around 22 million workers were engaged in war production. Again, Britain ran up foreign debts so vast that loans are not expected to be paid off until 2006.

The minor irritation of air atacks in the Great War would be replaced by the mass aerial bombardment of civilian and industrial targets in this war. The dispersion of war production was to lessen the risk of a single vital facility being put out of action. From 1936, the original three Ordnance Factories at Woolwich, Enfield and Waltham Abbey were supplemented by another forty; of the 300,000 employed in these, some 60,000 would work at the Arsenal.

Dot Noble recalls her time at the Arsenal: In 1942 I was called up, and had to make a choice about which service to join. My husband had made it quite clear he did not want me to join the Army, Navy or Air Force; guns and ammunition were in great demand, and I was encouraged to go into munitions. I did so want to be a Wren (WRNS) but bowed to his wishes and have regretted it ever since! I took a course in Engineering at Goldsmith's College - I think it was eight weeks - to learn to use engineering tools, micrometer etc., and at the end to supposedly be a semi-skilled engineer. The machine shop at the Arsenal was huge, like a hanger - rows of lathes and milling machines - the whole experience was awesome.

Dot made breech blocks for 25lbr field guns on her machine. The work was gruelling. We were put on shift work - two weeks of days then two weeks of night shifts. It played havoc with meals and sleep. I was always tired on night shift, and many a time near to tears, but like everything in life then we got used to it. We were having air raids on and off, but did not go to the shelter when the warning went, instead carried on working until the shop's spotter decided when the planes were near enough to be dangerous. Life from 1942 to 1945 became very odd; night turned into day and vice-versa.

By March 1945 the allied armies were sweeping the nazis from occupied Europe, with Hitler only weeks from death and peace within sight. The nazis clung stubbornly to Holland, and especially to a coastal area in the west where launching sites for their terror weapon, the V2 rocket, were located. With a range of about 200 miles, the rockets could still reach London from here. Dot's husband served on troopships, and it was a time of long separations punctuated by hastily snatched and unexpected periods of leave.

Dot recalls My husband and I found a flat in Kidbrooke Park Road, next to St James' Church. The flat was over a private kindergarten school; the children had been evacuated leaving the place empty. It was a lovely flat, and we managed to partly furnish it and spent a few happy leaves there. In the early hours of the morning of Friday 2nd March, a German Artillery technician on the Dutch coast pressed his firing button, and within four minutes the V2 shattered lives and homes in south-east London.

Within minutes of the blast, the rescue services swung into well-practiced action. Ambulances, cranes, heavy rescue parties and searchlight units gathered in the pre-dawn darkness, the devastation of the scene surreally illuminated in the flare of a blazing gas-main. The mortuary van arrived an hour after the rocket struck, silently awaiting its grim cargo.

Dot remembers: I had been told by the ARP post opposite the Church that I must report whenever I was in the flat. My mother was ill, and I stayed that night with my sister in Charlton. I was so worried about my dear mother that I forgot to inform the air raid post. By 6.11 three fatal casualties had been taken away, and the log records the rescue parties continued to search for "1 doubtful person". Dot says; When the rocket fell they burrowed back to front and side to side in what was left of the shored up basement where I used to sleep. The ARP were not at all pleased with me. I was severely told off because of the possibility that I might be buried in the rubble.

I visited the flat later and was horrified to see the devastation. They arranged for my husband to come home on compasionate leave and gave me coupons for clothes and furniture and help with necessities. Following the rocket lots of my clothes were hanging in the trees nearby. I was taken to Greenwich Baths where you were supplied with essential clothes to carry on with.

Dot Noble's flat was next to St James' on the left.

For days afterwards I scrabbled amongst the rubble to find bits and pieces, looking for something I might treasure but very little was found whole. We had moved into the flat with all our wedding presents; some were never used but all were lost. Although wartime propaganda stressed the great virtue and resilience of the nation at war, there was sometimes a darker side that was not reported in the newsreels. I did suspect at the time that lots of everyone's stuff was stolen before any security guards or me were present. It was well known that "sharks" were on the scene very soon after bombs fell.

Again, in one of those ironies that run through Woolwich's history, it was the Arsenal that first developed the rocket as a weapon of European warfare. The technology of the V2 would also be used 24 years after it shattered Dot Noble's home for a far different purpose - to put a man on the Moon.