War salvage in Europe

[Tony Smith]

Diverting the course of this thread a little, but what to extent did recycling occur during the war? We have heard stories of scrap metal drives to feed war production, but how much scrap returned from the Front to be re-used in the factories? Presumably all those convoy ships crossing the Atlantic returned with nearly empty cargo holds, just as Road Transport supplying dumps near the front would have been "light" going back to the beachhead. I think of the amount of small arms and artillery brass cartridge case that would be measured in the tons, that today would be highly sought and valuable scrap. Perhaps rifle brass would have been uneconomic to retrieve in all circumstances, but artillery is generally at a fixed point at one end of an established line of supply. How much spent brass would have been stacked by the guns following the massive barrage of El Alamein? In both senses of the word, I would say thousands of Pounds worth!

[Bill Murray]

Hi Tony:

I would like to expand on my answer but have a bit of stuff to do right now but in the meantime, the following link will answer a little bit of your question about returning convoy ships.

Bill

http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question...6062830AAsmlgq

[David Dunlop]

Tony.

I am not sure about other countries, but I ran across a book here in Canada a number of years ago that had been published by some federal gov't department in the late 1940's, which alluded to Canada not at all being interested in returning scrap of any kind for processing. They had very rapidly downsized the RCN and Merchant fleets within two or three years of the war's end and probably could not have brought much back even if they had wanted to. One only has to take a tour of western coastal communities in British Columbia today to see how many harbours were built from the sunken hulks of our wartime naval fleet. I suspect the focus for the government of the day was to maximize jobs on the home front for all the demobbed vets and you can hire far more at the raw material level than at some midpoint in the manufacturing process for recycling.

There was probably also the added benefit of leaving the junk in situ to help the recovering economies in Europe and elsewhere. A far more progressive concept than what the Allies came up with at the end of the First War, thank God.

David

[Tony Smith]

Originally Posted by Tony Smith

Diverting the course of this thread a little, but what to extent did recycling occur during the war?

My question relates to Wartime, when Armament and Munitions production would have required huge inputs of ferrous and non-ferrous metals. If recycling of available in-theatre scrap was not happening, where did the metals come from? (I'd expect that mining and refining of metals would have been affected by manpower, and Britain in particular would have had limited to imports of raw material.)

[Michael R.]

Recycling during wartime? Naturally. Use prisoner labour too. A few carrier bits spotted there!
Images credit of IWM collection.

[Tony Wheeler]

Where do you want this one Sarge...?

mp.natlib.govt.nz 82.jpg

[Kuno]

A sad thing seeing all these photos - with the eyes of today. But at least as it comes to the aircraft - there was simply neither need nor money to maintain tens of thousands of propeller driven fighters and bombers anymore after the war... and in addition, they were technically obsolete...

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Note: donating the war-surplus material was done after the decision to re-equip the Canadian Army with American-type equipment.

See http://www.nato.int/archives/1st5years/chapters/12.htm:

"Canadian aid

The Canadian mutual aid programme began in 1950, in conjunction with the decision of the Canadian Government to re-equip its land forces with American-type equipment. The British-type equipment with which their forces had hitherto been supplied, or which was being kept in reserve stock, was made available to NATO.

From the beginning, Canadian aid has been made available on the basis of multilateral offering to NATO countries. It is transferred to individual European recipients in accordance with Canadian acceptance of allocations recommended either by the Standing Group or by the NATO Secretariat. In this way, the early phases of the Canadian aid programme provided the basic infantry and artillery weapons, motor vehicles, other equipment and ammunition to supply three European ground divisions (one Belgian, one Dutch and one Italian). Much additional equipment, ammunition and explosives have been donated, and every European member nation except Iceland (which has no armed forces) has been the beneficiary of Canadian military assistance."

Also see e.g. http://www.nato.int/archives/1st5years/chapters/12.htm on MDAP

[Ed Landstrom]

There were industries founded not only on scrapping or modifying military equipment and selling either vehicles or parts, but on manufacturing new equipment from left over bits.

One example was Ferrucio Lamborghini who got his start by manufacturing tractors out of US surplus parts. The sports cars came later.

A less "sexy" example in Canada were the "army wagons" built from leftover CMP parts. They used to be common here in Ontario and one still occasionally turns up at a farm auction.

It probably wouldn't take much digging to turn up hundreds of companies set up to re-use surplus parts. As the supply of parts dried up, some of them called it a day, while others moved on to other manufacturing.