Ford's 100 years in photos 4/52
27 January 2011
- Ford celebrates 100 years in Britain
- A photo a week from Ford's archive
- This week: Ford's RAF war effort
Ford is celebrating 100 years in Britain by delving into its archive of photographs.
This week's picture shows Ford workers putting together some engines which look rather too big to fit into a car.
That's because they're Rolls-Royce Merlin aeroplane engines which were used during World War II to power fighters and bombers like the Hawker Hurricane, Supermarine Spitfire and Avro Lancaster.
The wartime Government of the day asked Ford for help, so the manufacturer opened a plant in Urmston, Manchester and workers turned their hands, and spanners, to producing Merlins.
In all Ford put together a staggering number of the engines, more than 30,000 in total, and every single one passed the RAF's quality controls.
See the picture in full
Click here for a larger version of the photograph.
Missed the other pictures?
Click here to see last week's picture of a Cortina stuck to a billboard with Araldite.
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