War salvage in Europe

[Bill Murray]

Sorry, here is a more dramatic photo of the B-32 graveyard.
Bill

[Michael R.]

December, 1943. North Africa awaiting breakers for scrap metal. Credit IWM E26958.

[David Dunlop]

I wonder how much of that equipment ended up bypassing the scrappies and being refurbished. Wasn't there a lot of ex-German equipment still in service in the Middle East into the 1960's, and possibly somewhere in Scandinavia? Probably a very good spare parts market running for that time as well.

David

[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...?

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