AHC/WI: Delay/ slow down British economic decline post 1870

Thomas1195

Banned
I originally did Scenario B2 to wank the post 1945 British armed forces (except I hadn't heard of an ALT history wank in the early 1990s). I worked out that even if the UK was richer and the British economy more productive so that it could afford to buy more arms it was going to be hard to find the men to use them. I hadn't heard of ASBs back then either, but if I though if as if by magic, the British Isles had twice the people then you automatically have twice the military personnel subject to the economy being twice as big.
I mean the military production during ww1 would be much higher than OTL
 

Thomas1195

Banned
Here is an interesting factoid showing the relative scale of the British and German Electrical industries from Wikipedia

Relative size

Just before World War I Siemens had more employees in Britain than in Germany.[12]

So what was actually happening was that Siemens was expanding the British electrical industry without it costing the British investor a penny

You could not get a more cost efficent way to start a new industry Many these Victorians knew a thing or two...
The Dalston lamp factory of Siemens UK lagged behind during ww1 after being cutting off from German research operation and had to close down in 1923. Siemens did not have operations in UK. British firms could not design and produced their own electrical machinery, especially the heavier segments.This is as important. Most firms place their research operations in their home countries.
 
I mean the military production during ww1 would be much higher than OTL
I know you did. I was only telling you where the idea came from.

However, British military production during World War One doesn't need to be much higher, because the British won anyway.

The way I did Scenario B2 for World War One the UK had twice the population, double the economy, but not double the armed forces in 1914. The British Army was twice the size of the real world in 1914, but it did not grow from 40 infantry divisions to 150 divisions in a straight doubling of OTL (when it grew from 20 to 75 infantry divisions). Instead it grew from 40 to 90 divisions. The Royal Navy was not double OTL because it did not need to be. The size of the battle fleet was determined by the size of the next two largest navies and the size of the trade protection force was determined by the size of the British merchant navy. As the rival navies were no larger in my timeline I only gave the battle fleet a few more battleships, armoured cruisers and destroyers. But because the British merchant navy was double the size of OTL in my timeline it had about 45 extra light, second class and third class cruisers, plus double the number of sloops, minesweepers and trawlers. Between 1914 and 1918 I doubled the number of sloops, minesweepers and trawlers that were built, but not the number of battleships, battle cruisers and light cruisers, with a moderate increase in the number of destroyers because they were dual purpose vessels.

IOTL the UK had a National Income of £2,241 million in the 1911-12 to 1913-14 years and a expenditure on servicing the National Debt of £24 million, which was 1.1% of National Income. In 1924-25 the National Income had increased to £4,035 million with £357.8 million spent on servicing the National Debt, which was 8.8% of National Income.

If the UK effort in Scenario B2 had been exactly doubled then in 1924-25 the National Income would have been £8,070 million with £715.6 million spent on servicing the National Debt, which was 8.8% of National Income. However, that was because doubled expenditure in the Great War doubles the National Debt.

However, if the effort was the same and circa the National Debt increases from £1.6 million to £8 billion (IOTL it increased from £800 million to £8 billion) so the cost of servicing the National Debt is £357.8 million in 1924-25, which is 4.4% of the National Income of £8,070 million. The National Debt does not increase to £8.8 billion because the tax revenue between 1914 and 1918 is double OTL.

Edit

According to the Wikipaedia article the UK and Colonies lost 750,000 to 880,000 military personnel and a further 1,675,000 were wounded.

IIRC you were talking about the UK population of 1914 being 50% larger. If the UK makes the same effort as OTL instead of increasing it by 50% about 400,000 extra men won't die and 800,000 won't be wounded. That's going to increase the size of the labour force after 1918 and it will help the British population grow faster after 1918 than it did IOTL.
 
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hipper

Banned
British firms could not design and produced their own electrical machinery, especially the heavier segments..

yes they could

The generators were built by the Electric Construction Company, Limited, of Wolverhampton, and are mounted directly on the engine shafts, each generator being erected between the two half-engines of each set. They are all of the revolving field type, and deliver three-phase current at 6600 volts between phases, at 25 complete cycles per second. The normal output is 3500 kilowatts, or 306 amperes per phase, and 4375 kilowatts on emergency overload.

The turbines now at work were made by Messrs. Willans & Robinson, Limited, while the generators were made by Messrs. Dick, Kerr & Co., Limited. They run at 750 revolutions per minute, and will give 6250 kilowatts on emergency overload. The switch-gear is of the remote control electrically operated type. The circulating and feed-pumps are all electrically operated. When completed, the Station is estimated to cost about £800,000, and the total cost of the pier condensing water pipes, and a wharf wall about 260 feet in length, is about £53,000.
 

Thomas1195

Banned
I know you did. I was only telling you where the idea came from.

However, British military production during World War One doesn't need to be much higher, because the British won anyway.

The way I did Scenario B2 for World War One the UK had twice the population, double the economy, but not double the armed forces in 1914. The British Army was twice the size of the real world in 1914, but it did not grow from 40 infantry divisions to 150 divisions in a straight doubling of OTL (when it grew from 20 to 75 infantry divisions). Instead it grew from 40 to 90 divisions. The Royal Navy was not double OTL because it did not need to be. The size of the battle fleet was determined by the size of the next two largest navies and the size of the trade protection force was determined by the size of the British merchant navy. As the rival navies were no larger in my timeline I only gave the battle fleet a few more battleships, armoured cruisers and destroyers. But because the British merchant navy was double the size of OTL in my timeline it had about 45 extra light, second class and third class cruisers, plus double the number of sloops, minesweepers and trawlers. Between 1914 and 1918 I doubled the number of sloops, minesweepers and trawlers that were built, but not the number of battleships, battle cruisers and light cruisers, with a moderate increase in the number of destroyers because they were dual purpose vessels.

IOTL the UK had a National Income of £2,241 million in the 1911-12 to 1913-14 years and a expenditure on servicing the National Debt of £24 million, which was 1.1% of National Income. In 1924-25 the National Income had increased to £4,035 million with £357.8 million spent on servicing the National Debt, which was 8.8% of National Income.

If the UK effort in Scenario B2 had been exactly doubled then in 1924-25 the National Income would have been £8,070 million with £715.6 million spent on servicing the National Debt, which was 8.8% of National Income. However, that was because doubled expenditure in the Great War doubles the National Debt.

However, if the effort was the same and circa the National Debt increases from £1.6 million to £8 billion (IOTL it increased from £800 million to £8 billion) so the cost of servicing the National Debt is £357.8 million in 1924-25, which is 4.4% of the National Income of £8,070 million. The National Debt does not increase to £8.8 billion because the tax revenue between 1914 and 1918 is double OTL.

Edit

According to the Wikipaedia article the UK and Colonies lost 750,000 to 880,000 military personnel and a further 1,675,000 were wounded.

IIRC you were talking about the UK population of 1914 being 50% larger. If the UK makes the same effort as OTL instead of increasing it by 50% about 400,000 extra men won't die and 800,000 won't be wounded. That's going to increase the size of the labour force after 1918 and it will help the British population grow faster after 1918 than it did IOTL.
Agree. But there are some factors. For example, if modern mass production techniques are adopted on a larger scale (to meet the demand of a bigger market), then Britain would produce much more steel, machines and armaments with lower costs. This would reduce imports of manufactures, which were normally more expensive. So I think the debt would be even much lower.

Besides, I think the UK would react to US and Japanese naval expansion programs in 1916.

Finally, I would want to see a POD which involves an earlier abolition of the idiotic Red Flag Act
 
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Thomas1195

Banned
yes they could

The generators were built by the Electric Construction Company, Limited, of Wolverhampton, and are mounted directly on the engine shafts, each generator being erected between the two half-engines of each set. They are all of the revolving field type, and deliver three-phase current at 6600 volts between phases, at 25 complete cycles per second. The normal output is 3500 kilowatts, or 306 amperes per phase, and 4375 kilowatts on emergency overload.

The turbines now at work were made by Messrs. Willans & Robinson, Limited, while the generators were made by Messrs. Dick, Kerr & Co., Limited. They run at 750 revolutions per minute, and will give 6250 kilowatts on emergency overload. The switch-gear is of the remote control electrically operated type. The circulating and feed-pumps are all electrically operated. When completed, the Station is estimated to cost about £800,000, and the total cost of the pier condensing water pipes, and a wharf wall about 260 feet in length, is about £53,000.
Yeah, in fact using the word could not is an overstatement, but could not produce sufficiently seems to be more accurate, as overall Britain relied on products from foreign subsidiaries, all of which were bigger than Dick, Kerr & Co.

And we could not find info about the quality and efficiency of industrial machinery and equipment produced. I am only sure about American superiority in farm machinery and machine tool. Also, US and Germany were still the main players in electrical industry after all.
 
Agree. But there are some factors. For example, if modern mass production techniques are adopted on a larger scale (to meet the demand of a bigger market), then Britain would produce much more steel, machines and armaments with lower costs. This would reduce imports of manufactures, which were normally more expensive. So I think the debt would be even much lower.
I my TL the UK produced double the goods because it had double the workers. There were no productivity improvements. Imports would have to be doubled or possibly more than doubled because the UK could not necessarily grow twice as much food or mine raw materials in doubled quantities.

The economies of scale came in things like doubled R&D resources and advertising.

Which in the 1945-75 period did things like doubled spending on the TSR2 to £250 million in 1965, when IOTL the projected R&D cost of the aircraft was £270 million and a production run of 150 aircraft was expected to cost £510 million. The doubled cancellation costs of £140 million would have paid for 41 aircraft at the 1965 estimated unit cost of £3.4 million. The £90 million that would have been spent on F-111K in my TL would have paid for another 26 TSR2 at 1965 prices. However, if BAC and Bristol Siddeley had been better at cost control and kept to the 1959 estimates of IIRC £90 million for R&D and the unit cost of £1.7 million it would not have been cancelled IOTL in the first place.

IOTL the UK had a massive naval armaments industry in 1914 to support the equally massive Royal Navy, which AFAIK at the time was the most efficient of its kind in the world. The rot set in between 1919 and 1934.

IIRC France had a Metropolitan Army of 72 infantry divisions and Germany could mobilise and army of 98 divisions, AFAIK all with the most modern equipment and adequate stockpiles of ammunition and a reserve of equipment to replace losses and allow for rapid expansion. Therefore they had equally large military armaments industries to provide the equipment already in place in August 1914.

Compared to the Continental Armies the British Army was relatively small. The Home Army consisted of 20 infantry divisions (6 regular and 14 reserve (the Territorial Force)). Furthermore the military armaments industry was only large enough to support the 6 regular divisions because the reserve divisions were still equipped with Boer War vintage weapons. Furthermore the reserve divisions had less artillery than the regular divisions, 48 field guns instead of 72 and the Territorial Force had fewer corps and army artillery batteries than the regular army, IIRC it was 12 regular batteries and 3 T.F batteries. Plus reserves of equipment and stocks of ammunition were only sufficient to fight a campaign on the scale of the Boer War.

Therefore Britain had a very small military arms industry in 1914 compared to France and Germany. However, it did have civilian industries that it could convert to military production. Things like the shell shortage happened because of the time it took to convert civilian factories to war production.

IOTL if British Governments had been prepared to organise the Territorial Army along the same lines as the Regular Army and provide it with modern equipment between the end of the Boer War and 1914 that would automatically treble the size of the British military arms industry.

In my timeline spending on the Armed Forces was doubled before 1914, but because the Royal Navy wasn't doubled in size there was a lot of spare cash available. I used that to organise and equip the 28 T.F. infantry divisions to the same standard as the 12 regular divisions. Plus I provided a 100% reserve of material so that the army could rapidly be expanded from 40 to 80 divisions. That required a 13 to 14-fold increase in the size of the military arms industry over OTL. I also doubled the scale of corps and army artillery to 4 batteries per infantry division instead of 2 so that there were a grand total of 160 batteries (24 regular and 136 T.F.) plus the 100% reserve of material. The corps and army artillery was towed by Hornsby tractors, which as there were 4 guns per corps and heavy battery required a front line of 640 tractors with a reserve of 640. After that there was still enough money left to quadruple the RFC and RNAS instead of doubling them, which also meant the British aircraft industry was four twice the size of OTL in 1914 instead of double the size.
 

Thomas1195

Banned
I my TL the UK produced double the goods because it had double the workers. There were no productivity improvements. Imports would have to be doubled or possibly more than doubled because the UK could not necessarily grow twice as much food or mine raw materials in doubled quantities.

The economies of scale came in things like doubled R&D resources and advertising.

Which in the 1945-75 period did things like doubled spending on the TSR2 to £250 million in 1965, when IOTL the projected R&D cost of the aircraft was £270 million and a production run of 150 aircraft was expected to cost £510 million. The doubled cancellation costs of £140 million would have paid for 41 aircraft at the 1965 estimated unit cost of £3.4 million. The £90 million that would have been spent on F-111K in my TL would have paid for another 26 TSR2 at 1965 prices. However, if BAC and Bristol Siddeley had been better at cost control and kept to the 1959 estimates of IIRC £90 million for R&D and the unit cost of £1.7 million it would not have been cancelled IOTL in the first place.

IOTL the UK had a massive naval armaments industry in 1914 to support the equally massive Royal Navy, which AFAIK at the time was the most efficient of its kind in the world. The rot set in between 1919 and 1934.

IIRC France had a Metropolitan Army of 72 infantry divisions and Germany could mobilise and army of 98 divisions, AFAIK all with the most modern equipment and adequate stockpiles of ammunition and a reserve of equipment to replace losses and allow for rapid expansion. Therefore they had equally large military armaments industries to provide the equipment already in place in August 1914.

Compared to the Continental Armies the British Army was relatively small. The Home Army consisted of 20 infantry divisions (6 regular and 14 reserve (the Territorial Force)). Furthermore the military armaments industry was only large enough to support the 6 regular divisions because the reserve divisions were still equipped with Boer War vintage weapons. Furthermore the reserve divisions had less artillery than the regular divisions, 48 field guns instead of 72 and the Territorial Force had fewer corps and army artillery batteries than the regular army, IIRC it was 12 regular batteries and 3 T.F batteries. Plus reserves of equipment and stocks of ammunition were only sufficient to fight a campaign on the scale of the Boer War.

Therefore Britain had a very small military arms industry in 1914 compared to France and Germany. However, it did have civilian industries that it could convert to military production. Things like the shell shortage happened because of the time it took to convert civilian factories to war production.

IOTL if British Governments had been prepared to organise the Territorial Army along the same lines as the Regular Army and provide it with modern equipment between the end of the Boer War and 1914 that would automatically treble the size of the British military arms industry.

In my timeline spending on the Armed Forces was doubled before 1914, but because the Royal Navy wasn't doubled in size there was a lot of spare cash available. I used that to organise and equip the 28 T.F. infantry divisions to the same standard as the 12 regular divisions. Plus I provided a 100% reserve of material so that the army could rapidly be expanded from 40 to 80 divisions. That required a 13 to 14-fold increase in the size of the military arms industry over OTL. I also doubled the scale of corps and army artillery to 4 batteries per infantry division instead of 2 so that there were a grand total of 160 batteries (24 regular and 136 T.F.) plus the 100% reserve of material. The corps and army artillery was towed by Hornsby tractors, which as there were 4 guns per corps and heavy battery required a front line of 640 tractors with a reserve of 640. After that there was still enough money left to quadruple the RFC and RNAS instead of doubling them, which also meant the British aircraft industry was four twice the size of OTL in 1914 instead of double the size.
But a bigger population base would provide more incentive for standardization and mass production rather than flexible, craft based methods OTL, as demand would have been bigger. This is the case in the US.

Besides, the UK in this scenario would be much more willing to object battleship holiday, so shipbuilding industry could be sustained. They would have a stronger bargaining power on the diplomatic table.
 
But a bigger population base would provide more incentive for standardization and mass production rather than flexible, craft based methods OTL, as demand would have been bigger. This is the case in the US.

Besides, the UK in this scenario would be much more willing to object battleship holiday, so shipbuilding industry could be sustained. They would have a stronger bargaining power on the diplomatic table.
I'm telling you what I did, not what you can do.
 

hipper

Banned
Yeah, in fact using the word could not is an overstatement, but could not produce sufficiently seems to be more accurate, as overall Britain relied on products from foreign subsidiaries, all of which were bigger than Dick, Kerr & Co.

And we could not find info about the quality and efficiency of industrial machinery and equipment produced. I am only sure about American superiority in farm machinery and machine tool. Also, US and Germany were still the main players in electrical industry after all.

what's the drawback in having foreign owned industries operating in your country,
apart from international d**k waving contests.

American superiority in farm machinery is unsurprising Britain had contracted out its farming to the Argentine and Australia, Germany relied on smallholder farms. America farmed on a continental basis and its market was closed to UK firms.

also would you mind mentioning which American and German electric companies industries were operating in the UK prior to 1914

Siemens brothers as you now know specialized in cable manufacture (the Victorian internet)
and I'm not sure that Sir William Siemens can be classified as a foreigner!

GEC did not come to the UK till the 1930's
 

Thomas1195

Banned
what's the drawback in having foreign owned industries operating in your country,
apart from international d**k waving contests.

American superiority in farm machinery is unsurprising Britain had contracted out its farming to the Argentine and Australia, Germany relied on smallholder farms. America farmed on a continental basis and its market was closed to UK firms.

also would you mind mentioning which American and German electric companies industries were operating in the UK prior to 1914

Siemens brothers as you now know specialized in cable manufacture (the Victorian internet)
and I'm not sure that Sir William Siemens can be classified as a foreigner!

GEC did not come to the UK till the 1930's
BTH was GEC subsidiary. Westinghouse.

And it was the American who carried out the electrification of London Underground.

Well, telegraph cable would be eventually replaced by wireless communication. And Britain fared better in the... the oldest segment in electrical industry. Well, they basically only done well in Victorian things. But in newer apparatus and precision instrument, electrical machinery, or telephone, they lagged, significantly. Firms like Dick, Kerr and Co were just minor players in global oligopoly.

Well, UK also lagged in industrial machine tools, especially to the US.

Besides, Werner and other Siemens were still German.

Well, ww1 broke out, Siemen UK were cut off from its parent's R&D, and it lagged behind. Foreign firms would not locate their research in the UK back then.

Not to mention a wonderful blunder of synthetic dye.
 

hipper

Banned
an American financier came to the UK and electrified the London underground but his expertise was financial engineering not electrical. The first electric locomotives for the London Underground were made in Kilmarnock.

British Westinghouse was established in 1899 and taken over By Vickers 1917 to create Metro Vickers exactly the kind of large electronic conglomerate you say Britain did not have. The share capital of BW was 40% British when it was setup. It did not lack innovation after it was cut off from its American roots either.

British Thomson-Houston was General Electric subsidiary taken over by Metro Vick in 1929

GEC was a British company which expanded after the First World War to become a global corporation and national institution

William Siemens came to the UK to start his business, at the start of world war one it employed more people than its German counterpart. After world war one it bought by English Electric, the new company reestablished contact with its parent company and they became joint stockholders in each others companies.

"a working agreement with Siemens Brothers and Co for the preferential exchange of the special products of each company"

I'm not convinced that the establishment in the UK of a large number of foreign electrical Firms about 1900 hurt the British economy in any way.
Remember The UK was the world leader in Turbine technology which was the heart of the Electrical revolution .

I'm not sure waiting till WW1 and getting Germany's patient s for free hurt the British chemical industry in any way.

certainly by the end of WW1 they were ahead in the manufacture of poison gas
 
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Thomas1195

Banned
an American financier came to the UK and electrified the London underground but his expertise was financial engineering not electrical. The first electric locomotives for the London Underground were made in Kilmarnock.

British Westinghouse was established in 1899 and taken over By Vickers 1917 to create Metro Vickers exactly the kind of large electronic conglomerate you say Britain did not have. The share capital of BW was 40% British when it was setup. It did not lack innovation after it was cut off from its American roots either.

British Thomson-Houston was General Electric subsidiary taken over by Metro Vick in 1929

GEC was a British company which expanded after the First World War to become a global corporation and national institution

William Siemens came to the UK to start his business, at the start of world war one it employed more people than its German counterpart. After world war one it bought by English Electric, the new company reestablished contact with its parent company and they became joint stockholders in each others companies.

"a working agreement with Siemens Brothers and Co for the preferential exchange of the special products of each company"

I'm not convinced that the establishment in the UK of a large number of foreign electrical Firms about 1900 hurt the British economy in any way.
Remember The UK was the world leader in Turbine technology which was the heart of the Electrical revolution .

I'm not sure waiting till WW1 and getting Germany's patient s for free hurt the British chemical industry in any way.

certainly by the end of WW1 they were ahead in the manufacture of poison gas
Well, during interwar, ICI was still behind IG Farben, the largest chemical corporate in the world (they manufactured things like sarin and tabun).

If a country's industry is dominated by foreign firm subsidiaries but few or none of these firms locate their R&D team there, there will be problems in the long run.

UK electric output in lagged behind Germany.

Before ww1, UK also lagged in telephone, with lower number of telephone per 1000.


And of course Britain had no equivalent of Krupp Essen, the biggest steel, armament and engineering conglomerate in Europe. Oh, wait, one more solution for Britain could be consolidating British firms and forming large or super large industrial complex like Essen to take advantage of economies of scale
 

Thomas1195

Banned
I my TL the UK produced double the goods because it had double the workers. There were no productivity improvements. Imports would have to be doubled or possibly more than doubled because the UK could not necessarily grow twice as much food or mine raw materials in doubled quantities.

The economies of scale came in things like doubled R&D resources and advertising.

Which in the 1945-75 period did things like doubled spending on the TSR2 to £250 million in 1965, when IOTL the projected R&D cost of the aircraft was £270 million and a production run of 150 aircraft was expected to cost £510 million. The doubled cancellation costs of £140 million would have paid for 41 aircraft at the 1965 estimated unit cost of £3.4 million. The £90 million that would have been spent on F-111K in my TL would have paid for another 26 TSR2 at 1965 prices. However, if BAC and Bristol Siddeley had been better at cost control and kept to the 1959 estimates of IIRC £90 million for R&D and the unit cost of £1.7 million it would not have been cancelled IOTL in the first place.

IOTL the UK had a massive naval armaments industry in 1914 to support the equally massive Royal Navy, which AFAIK at the time was the most efficient of its kind in the world. The rot set in between 1919 and 1934.

IIRC France had a Metropolitan Army of 72 infantry divisions and Germany could mobilise and army of 98 divisions, AFAIK all with the most modern equipment and adequate stockpiles of ammunition and a reserve of equipment to replace losses and allow for rapid expansion. Therefore they had equally large military armaments industries to provide the equipment already in place in August 1914.

Compared to the Continental Armies the British Army was relatively small. The Home Army consisted of 20 infantry divisions (6 regular and 14 reserve (the Territorial Force)). Furthermore the military armaments industry was only large enough to support the 6 regular divisions because the reserve divisions were still equipped with Boer War vintage weapons. Furthermore the reserve divisions had less artillery than the regular divisions, 48 field guns instead of 72 and the Territorial Force had fewer corps and army artillery batteries than the regular army, IIRC it was 12 regular batteries and 3 T.F batteries. Plus reserves of equipment and stocks of ammunition were only sufficient to fight a campaign on the scale of the Boer War.

Therefore Britain had a very small military arms industry in 1914 compared to France and Germany. However, it did have civilian industries that it could convert to military production. Things like the shell shortage happened because of the time it took to convert civilian factories to war production.

IOTL if British Governments had been prepared to organise the Territorial Army along the same lines as the Regular Army and provide it with modern equipment between the end of the Boer War and 1914 that would automatically treble the size of the British military arms industry.

In my timeline spending on the Armed Forces was doubled before 1914, but because the Royal Navy wasn't doubled in size there was a lot of spare cash available. I used that to organise and equip the 28 T.F. infantry divisions to the same standard as the 12 regular divisions. Plus I provided a 100% reserve of material so that the army could rapidly be expanded from 40 to 80 divisions. That required a 13 to 14-fold increase in the size of the military arms industry over OTL. I also doubled the scale of corps and army artillery to 4 batteries per infantry division instead of 2 so that there were a grand total of 160 batteries (24 regular and 136 T.F.) plus the 100% reserve of material. The corps and army artillery was towed by Hornsby tractors, which as there were 4 guns per corps and heavy battery required a front line of 640 tractors with a reserve of 640. After that there was still enough money left to quadruple the RFC and RNAS instead of doubling them, which also meant the British aircraft industry was four twice the size of OTL in 1914 instead of double the size.
Is the average size of British firms and plants bigger than OTL?
 
Is the average size of British firms and plants bigger than OTL?
It depended. Sometimes it was the same number of firms, but each firm was twice as big. Sometimes it there were twice as many firms.

I had not worked it out in that detail. However, AFAIK the main producer of the British Army's guns, ammunition and explosives were the Royal Ordnance Factories, so their capacity would have been increased in proportion to the quantitative and qualitative changes I made to the British Army. I leave it to you to provide that extra capacity by building more factories or making the ones they had in OTL larger and more efficient.

Another thing I had done was to increase the number of machine guns per infantry battalion at the outbreak of World War II from 2 to 40. That is 4 Vickers guns and 36 Lewis guns. As the British Army had 465 infantry battalions in August 1914 (160 regular, 101 Special Reserve and 204 Territorial Force) IOTL and 930 in my TL the establishment of machine guns was increased from 930 to 37,200 plus a 100% reserve. There is some scope for you to introduce some mass production methods there.

Furthermore instead of the OTL 18pdr Gun and 4.5" howitzer I had a dual-purpose gun-howitzer developed for the Royal Field Artillery. That was primarily because I thought it would be better for each infantry division of 3 brigades and 12 battalions to be supported by 3 RFA Brigades with 24 gun-howitzers and each brigade to have 4 batteries of 6 gun-howitzers. That way there was one RFA brigade per infantry brigade and one RFA batter per infantry battalion. I thought that was a better arrangement than the OTL system of 54 field guns in 3 brigades of 18 guns (3 batteries each with 6 guns) and one brigade of 18 field howitzers (also 3 batteries each with 6 guns). However, the secondary reason was to simplify the production of guns and ammunition.

Tanks weren't invented any earlier in my TL, but when they were they all had separate engine and crew compartments, sprung suspensions and modified Liberty or RR Eagle aero engines for power. IIRC they were also built in quadruple the quantities, though I can't remember why I settled on that number. IIRC I did build more than 4 times as many Gun Carrier Tanks, Mk XI Heavy Tanks (because they were really armoured personnel carriers) and Newton Tractors.

However, in the case of the quadrupled RFC and RNAS there were the same number of firms, but each firm received orders for 4 times as many aircraft and airships. There might be some scope for improved production methods there, but in my TL there weren't.
 

Thomas1195

Banned
Besides, we know that before ww1, obsolete craft-based practices still had a dominant or significant position in many British industries, such as optical, shipbuilding, small arms, or among small machine tool firms, which massively hindered mass production and ramping up output quickly during just a short time period, which was crucial for WW1. The other big weakness is that the majority of British factories were steam powered. So I recommend the FULL mechanization of these industries.
 

Thomas1195

Banned
Establishing the industries involves cost. Establishing them when they're not economical due to competition requires a lot more cost.
And I assume you speak of money saved during the war - when the British were deficit spending OTL anyway and were buying everything the country could produce. If they wanted more ships and there was the slack to build more ships, they'd build more ships - the bottleneck was either production capacity or desire for ships, not money.
You said that building new industries cost money, but if it could lead to global monopoly, then the return would far exceed to cost. For example, Britain imported most of tungsten from Germany for producing high-speed steel, a key war material, but wolfram, the material to make it, was mostly from the Empire. They have wasted a monopoly chance. Similar case with synthetic dye (which supplied khaki dye for Army), where Britain had both the invention and material, but could not capitalize to achieve world monopoly like the way they crushed Flemish wool textile trade in 15th-16th century. Finally, Britain also lost the monopoly in industrial machinery both in output and more importantly, in TECHNOLOGICAL SUPERIORITY to BOTH the US and Germany.
 

Thomas1195

Banned
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=169307&start=75

Look at two most important industrial resources for making weapons: steel and machine tool.

Steel (1942):
UK: 12.9 mil tons
Germany: 30.9 mil tons

Machine tool (1940-1944):
UK: 379000
Germany: 813000

Now, assume that UK steel output rose to 17-18 mil tons and UK machine tool production rose to 650000-800000. If we assume that compared to OTL, the output of ships, tanks, trucks and planes rose in correlation with this increase in machine tool production, Lend Lease could be limited to just oil or even butterfly away.
 
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