This month marks VE Day. Celebrated on 8 May each year, VE Day stands for Victory in Europe Day. It commemorates the day in 1945 when Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced that fighting Nazi Germany in Europe had come to an end.
After over 5 years of war it is hard to imagine the sense of relief that people living in the UK felt. Fathers, sons and brothers who had been away were finally coming home. The threat of falling bombs on factories and homes disappeared at a stroke.
The war in Europe was finally over.
The War and the Plastics Industry
Commemorating that moment, and remembering the enormous sacrifices that so many people made to safeguard our freedom is of course incredibly important.
What is less well known is the story of how World War II triggered an acceleration in the manufacture and use of plastics that provided the foundation for the rapid expansion of the industry in the post-war period.
Even before the war, in the late 1930’s, the industry was establishing itself as a key part of the future. New materials like Bakelite, polystyrene and polythene had already been developed by scientists in Europe and the United States.
Just before the outbreak of war there was a growing sense of optimism about the benefits that plastics could deliver to humankind.
Two British chemists, Victor Yarsley and Edward Couzens coauthored a book called Plastics in 1941. In it they painted a picture of a future unlike anything mankind had seen before.
“Plastic,” they wrote, “would create a world brighter and clearer than any previously known […] a world free from moth and rust and full of colour”.
The authors anticipated, “a world in which man, like a magician makes what he wants for almost every need, out of what is beneath him and around him: coal, water, and air.”
That vision presented by Yarsley and Couzens was realised in the 1950s and 1960s, but World War II was the big disruptive event that started to usher in that world.
Plastic Fills the Gap
For one thing, traditional materials like steel and rubber were suddenly essential for the war effort, so plastics were needed to fill the gap in consumer goods that was left.
Let’s start with something as simple as the humble comb. In the years leading up to World War II these were usually manufactured from hard rubber. But all of a sudden rubber was a scare resource – needed to manufacture tyres for vehicles and planes.
New modern plastics stepped in to fill that gap. In 1941, the US Army made it a requirement that all combs issued to servicemen be made of plastic instead of hard rubber. This meant that every single member of the US armed forced received a five-inch black plastic pocket comb as part of his standard “hygiene kit.” That is a lot of combs.
And plastics were also used to support the weaponry that ultimately won the war. It was used in countless applications – from cords for parachutes, liners for helmets, and components for aircraft.
ENL Group was itself part of that national war effort, helping provide the essential components for the planes that kept Britain’s skies safe. This is a key part of our own company’s heritage – moving on from making pianos, to manufacturing wooden components for aircraft, before graduating to moulded plastic components.
It is a tradition that continues to this day. We have relationships across civil and defence aerospace providers, with household names such as Boeing and Airbus and Bombardier amongst our customers.
The Post War Legacy
World War II saw an explosion in the manufacture and use of plastics, accelerated by a scarcity of traditional materials. The numbers speak for themselves. Worldwide production of plastics quadrupled during the war, increasing from under 100,000 tonnes 1939 to 365,000 tonnes in 1945.
The legacy of this was that once the war ended, the world not only understood much more about the manufacture and use of plastics, but the industry around the globe had also developed the skills and capacity to produce goods at scale.
There was also a tide of rising customer demand for new consumer goods, pent up by the austerity of the war years.
This created a perfect storm of conditions for the industry to become a key building block for the post-war recovery with the sector stepping in to provide new durable products to families in the 1950s and 1960s.
That period was, in many ways, the age of plastics. However, what we should not forget is that it was wartime industry pioneers who set the stage for that to happen.
So, as we once again remember VE Day and the sacrifices of previous generations, it is worth remembering those scientists, chemists, and innovators away from the frontline who played such a vital role in the wider war effort.
About ENL Group
ENL Group is based in Portsmouth, UK and Veľké Kostoľany, Slovakia. Established in 1958, we have been servicing UK-based and European companies for decades. Working with a secure supply chain, ENL provides quality components for quality-driven customers – with full certification for all of our products and quality checking at every stage.
Operating 24/7, we design, manufacture and deliver critical components for our customers across the UK and Europe.
Contact Us for more information about ENL and how we can help your business.
