Thousands of women join Adelaide's factories making World War II munitions, equipment
Women working in one of the Adelaide factories involved in producing World War II munitions and equipment.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia
Adelaide became an arms-making machine during World War II, especially after the conflict with Japan in the Pacific erupted.
Finsbury Munitions Factory, employing 4,000 women, operated from 1941 making cartridges for the World War II campaign. The factory had about 20 major buildings spread over 50 hectares, bounded by Torrens Road, Carlton Crescent and Burleigh Avenue, with accommodation for 300 women in fibro huts (later Finsbury migrant hostel).
Another huge complex was the Salisbury Explosives Factory with a workforce of more than 6,000 men and women. A Hendon factory (taken over by Philips Electronics after the war) made .303 rifle ammunition.
Car body production lines at General Motors-Holdens in Woodville, Beverley and Birkenhead and the T.J. Richards' Keswick factory (later LeCornu’s on Anzac Highway) switched to producing guns, tanks, and military aircraft parts. Islington railway workshops churned out armoured cars.
British Tube Mills (Australia) Kilburn factory, from 1939 the only one in Australia making steel tubing, was thrown into producing aircraft guns, warships' boilers and oil/fuel bottles for torpedoes, within days of the outbreak of the war.
Other South Australian factories working as federal government annexes in making equipment for the war included Colton, Palmer & Preston (grenades), David Shearer of Mannum (track links for machine-gun carriers), Horwood Bagshaw at Mile End (anti-tank guns), ICIANZ at Osborne (calcium chloride), Kelvinator at Keswick (primers), Perry Engineering at Mile End (shell forging and machining), Pope Products at Beverley (aircraft practice bombs), Southcott of Adelaide (heat treatment of tools and gauges), Wheatley and Williams of Bowden (non-ferrous castings), Wiles Chromium and Electroplating of Mile End (Wiles mobile cookers).
