{"id":3233,"date":"2020-05-11T15:32:06","date_gmt":"2020-05-11T14:32:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.constructionplantworld.com\/news\/?p=3233"},"modified":"2020-05-11T15:32:06","modified_gmt":"2020-05-11T14:32:06","slug":"75th-anniversary-of-ve-day-t-w-wards-wartime-efforts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.constructionplantworld.com\/news\/2020\/05\/75th-anniversary-of-ve-day-t-w-wards-wartime-efforts\/","title":{"rendered":"75th Anniversary of VE Day & T W Ward\u2019s Wartime Efforts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last Friday marked the 75th<\/sup> anniversary of VE Day \u2013 a celebration and opportunity to remember all of those that fought so hard for us during the Second World War. “To those who gave so much, we thank you.”<\/p>\n

During World War II, the Ward’s Group had notable involvement in construction of roads, runways, and railway sidings. The company\u2019s present day expertise of machine tool reconditioning was vital at the time to war production and utilized to the full.<\/p>\n

When it was decided to remove the nation’s aircraft factories to secret sites less vulnerable to enemy bombing, the Ward organisation was entrusted with the huge task of moving and reinstalling the hundreds of machine tools and ancillary equipment used at the many plants. It was accomplished with a loss of less than twenty four hours’ production time per machine. Lord Beaverbrook described the job as ‘the most gigantic of its kind in history’.<\/p>\n

Mulberry Harbour and PLUTO <\/strong><\/p>\n

Many other wartime projects involved Ward. Two of these have passed into history-Mulberry Harbour and PLUTO. The two prefabricated ports of Mulberry, each the size of Gibraltar, were manufactured in sections, and towed to their destination off the coast of Normandy. Ward co-ordinated the supply and distribution of materials for this unique construction, which greatly simplified the problem of maintaining supplies to the Allied Armies in Europe. Ward excavators were called upon for PLUTO, or the ‘pipe-line under the ocean’ by which fuel was fed in vast quantities across the Channel.<\/p>\n

Unique Contribution to War Effort<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is noteworthy that during this time, Ward had become the parent of a diverse group of companies, each of which made its own unique contribution to the war effort. This included: Midget submarines, tanks and naval guns, from Marshalls of Gainsborough; cranes, winches and excavators from Smiths of Rodley and Smiths of Keighley; specialised castings from Widnes Foundry; huge tonnages of cement from Ketton for airfields, roads, defence constructions, and the many wartime civil engineering projects throughout the country.<\/p>\n

Wards were also instrumental in rescuing the famous Triumph car manufacturing company from oblivion. Triumph got into difficulties around this time and Ward purchased the assets and goodwill in August 1939 and part of the factory was used during the war for making aero engines and components.<\/p>\n

Salvage Operations<\/strong><\/p>\n

There were many difficult and dangerous salvaging operations to carry out throughout the war, including the demolition of almost 100 vessels ranging from submarines to the 56,000 ton liner ‘Majestic’. Such was the reputation of Ward in this activity that when the ‘Graf Spee’ was scuttled by her German crew outside Montevideo harbour, it was the company’s experts who were flown to the scene.<\/p>\n

When hostilities ceased, Thos. W. Ward Ltd. was again at the centre of the mammoth job of clearing up. Bomb-damaged sites were levelled, construction equipment and materials provided for their redevelopment. The many skills of The Ward Group were now focussed upon the task of serving industry in an increasingly competitive post-war world.<\/p>\n

We hope you have enjoyed learning about our company\u2019s efforts during this monumental period of time and hope you enjoyed a celebratory VE Day and that you and your families take care and stay safe.<\/p>\n

www.wardcnc.com<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last Friday marked the 75th anniversary of VE Day \u2013 a celebration and opportunity to remember all of those that <\/p>\nRead more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3234,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-plant-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.constructionplantworld.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.constructionplantworld.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.constructionplantworld.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.constructionplantworld.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.constructionplantworld.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3233"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.constructionplantworld.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3235,"href":"https:\/\/www.constructionplantworld.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3233\/revisions\/3235"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.constructionplantworld.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.constructionplantworld.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.constructionplantworld.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.constructionplantworld.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}