World War Two Ball Bearing Production
 

A very interesting topic popped up related to this in the Carrier Section recently.

Prior to, and during WW2, Sweden pretty much owned the world ball bearing market. SKF alone, between control of raw material, patents, manufacturing machinery and intellectual knowledge controlled close to 60% of German supplies and close to 30% of Englands.

I recall reading once that at one point during the Battle of Britain, between new production on the lines and aircraft in for repairs, work on around 1,500 aircraft could not be completed in England due to lack of bearings. They are present in nearly everything when you think about it.

As a recognized neutral country, if Sweden wanted to sell bearings to Germany, it could not do so without getting permission from England, and vis versa. Under this surface, however, postwar information has revealed an interesting extent that Sweden went to favouring supplies of ball bearings to England. Both aircraft and ships were used.

The aircraft i believe were all marked BOAC but flown by RAF crews dressed as civilians. There was at least one dedicated airfield in Sweden they operated out of. I do not know what ships were used, but they did not have civilian crews either and also operated out of a dedicated port somewhere in Sweden, and at least one article I have seen implies they were fast and well armed.

Interesting that Carrier wheels designed to work around that ball bearing shortage 80 years ago are still turning up.

David

Echuca
 

Was a bearing factory here at Echuca set up during WW2

https://www.ozatwar.com/civilian/ech...ncefactory.htm

More info

https://foodmach.com/factory-history

Youtube for Mark Felton's histories. I remember seeing a story about Mosquitos making the Baltic Sea shuttle.

I guess it was the early war that saw Timken's rise. Many of the carrier wheel bearings I have seen are USA made.

Oddly enough, I just read a few lines on smuggling (by boat) from Sweden...Fairmiles.....must have been mostly bearings.. Full link incl pics of a "fairmile Freighter" below..

https://www.quora.com/During-WW2-wha...edFbOx8QpIMXWU

It gets better than that! Have a read: https://archive.org/details/CharlesH...e/n71/mode/2up

Follow the money!

Skf made in germany
 

This SKF - Made in Germany ball bearing came up on another forum:
My response:
Check out the official SKF history timeline here: https://www.skf.com/group/organisati...story-timeline
“1921: Seven German ball bearing factories acquired. A new company formed in Germany - Vereinigte Kugellagerfabriken A.G. Production concentrated to Schweinfurt and Cannstatt.
1938: New ball bearing factory built outside Berlin.”
Nothing to report in Germany during 1939-1945. Then in 1948: “Post-war production began slowly in Schweinfurt and Cannstatt.”

And from https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sven...lagerfabriken: “Von 1929 bis 1953 hieß die SKF in Deutschland Vereinigte Kugellagerfabriken AG (VKF), mit Hauptsitz in Schweinfurt.”

So, it is unlikely one will find wartime bearings with “SKF made in Germany” inscription. A wartime bearing marked “VKF” may be found, although I suspect they used a factory code rather than a name to confuse Allied intelligence.

SKF itself does not publish a lot about its wartime exports, but historic research has proved that Sweden's export of ball-bearings to Germany during the Second World War attracted remarkably intensive international attention even at the time - read https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/....1975.10407803

ball bearing run
 

The runs were run from the ports or HULL and ABERDEEN on the east coast of england the company in HULL that played a important role was ELLERMAN and WILSON who had years of experience in the BALTIC shipping trade and some of the staff went on the runs having personal knowledge of the waters

Australian Bearings
 

With reference to Mike Kelly's post (2, above), there had been a ball bearing re-manufacturing/refurbishment company with the very imaginative(!) name of the Australian Ball-Bearing Company operating in Melbourne since 1922. Nevertheless, new ball bearings and components for refurbishing bearings were all imported.

From early in WW2, this meant the USA almost exclusively, with many, many thousands of bearings purchased under the 'cash-and-carry' scheme of November 1939 to March 1941,followed by the Lend Lease scheme from March 1941. Australia's home-grown AFV, aircraft, ship, railway and agricultural machinery production and anything else that used ball and tapered roller and roller bearings were all wholly dependent upon imported bearings (among other components not produced locally). The Echuca factory came into limited production in 1944 using mostly machine tools imported from the USA, but was never developed to a size that could cater to all of Australia's wartime needs.

Mike

Some things never change: bearing sizes for example.

Here’s a new SKF bearing for an 80 year old Sherman tank idler wheel.

Attachment 130388