I never said a keel was laid merely the material was collected for it to be by the contracting shipyard.
I read this a number of years ago, and with like a lot of things at present can't remember where but it was definately in something published not archival.
That is an interesting observation - is there any data surviving about the shipyards in question (I'm thinking of reduction of workforce and the like)?
Jorit
I'll give you some facts and figures to back up my assessment and throw in some more for good measure!
During the economic slump of the interwar period some 30 shipyards closed in Britain.
The number of slipways over 250ft reduced from 459 in 1930 to 266 in 1939 with only 134 of the later figure available for naval construction.
(Source: Hornsby W.
Factories and Plant HMSO 1958).
There was 3 main armament firms for the Admiralty to deal with in 1914 (Armstrongs, Vickers and the Coventry Ordnance Works) by 1939 there was only Vickers-Armstongs left.
Much skilled labour was shed in the 1930s and there was also a lack of recruitment for apprentices (this mirrors also the engineering firms I've studied in Coventry inter-war).
But to give some perspective the British shipbuilding industry in 1939 was still the world leader.
It had some 60 yards and more than twice the merchant ship output of each of the next two largest producers, namely Germany and Japan.
During Sept 1939 to Sept 1945 it would go on to build from scratch over 7,000 warships of all types.
By the end of the 1941 some 2,000 conversions were carried out mostly trawlers, but could also include large vessels e.g. 56 liners were converted to AMC's at the start of the war.
To give also some idea how strained the british shipbuilding industry was as a whole with constant repair work from enemy action this reached a peak of some 30% of the fleet undergoing this in mid-1942, but this fell to only 4% by 1945 showing how the war at sea had been won by that time.
Of course its obvious to state the problem with the british shipbuilding industry was the bottleneck for heavy guns and mountings, but there hasn't been enough said about armour plate.
When the Admiralty ordered the KGV's in 1936/37 it had to finance new armour making plant at three major British makers (English Steel, Firth-Brown and Beardmore) as there was no civilian firms who could take on the work.
To supplement production they also placed orders in Czechoslovakia for non-cemented armour. This was to be for deck armour for the cruisers and aircraft carriers also ordered in the late 1930s.
However, much of this new capacity was diverted to new tank production early war and this slowed new naval construction somewhat.
Going back to guns there really was no way around for this as making heavy gun mountings is a very specialised task requiring expensive, complex and massive machinery using very skilled labour.
You also need factories with gun pits so the whole mounting can be built and tested and thus all teething troubles ironed out before it gets transported to the dockyard. (note: the Nelson's 16-inch mountings and the KGV 14-inch mountings both never had this testing and that is why in part they had problems on the ships themselves later on!)
In the end british industry of the late 1930s and at the start of the war failed to be able to produce both 14inch and 16inch mounts, 6inch and 8inch and 5.25inch mounts all at the same time.
This is why, in part, the larger calibre's were dropped in favour of producing more and more of the smaller calibre's.
Private industry, mainly engineering firms did however come in and make 20mm, 40mm and 12pdr mounts.
