CHAPTER 4 RAW MATERIALS : STEEL' TER the Formation of The

CHAPTER 4

RAW MATERIALS : STEEL'

TER the formation of the Department of Munitions in June 1940 , Acontrol of the supply of raw materials—principally metals and heavy chemicals—consumed by all the industries engaged in making munitions , was in the hands of the Directorate of Materials Supply headed by Si r Colin Fraser. This directorate arranged for the rationing of these materials where necessary and for ensuring that the needs of defence were give n their appropriate priority . The comparatively small number of suppliers of base metals and heavy chemicals in Australia allowed effective control of these raw materials to be imposed at the source of supply . 2 The Broke n Hill Proprietary Company Ltd had a monopoly of the iron and stee l industry and the "Collins House Group" dominated the production of non - ferrous metals; heavy chemical industry was almost entirely in the hand s of Imperial Chemical Industries of Australia and New Zealand Lt d (I.C.I.A.N.Z.) . The conventions in regard to the use of the terms production and suppl y in the civil series of this history require some explanation . Hasluck3 says : Production, in its simplest sense, covers the growing of crops, the winning of ores , timber and fuel, the generation of power, the processing of materials, the manufacture of commodities, implements, machines, weapons and munitions. It also means the bringing together of the men and materials, the machines and power in the right place in order that they may produce. . . . Supply, in its simplest sense, covers the arrangements by which any kind of product is obtained and delivered at the poin t where it is to be used. It covers both the products of the nation's own industry an d the products of other nations . . . . It involves the placing of orders, arrangement s for delivery, storage and paying of bills . Although the terms supply and production are used to describe a grea t number of inter-related activities, the emphasis in this volume will be o n production and the way in which it was influenced by science and tech- nology. It is not intended to give a detailed account of the activities of all the directorates in the Department of Munitions, since a number wer e concerned with questions of finance, control and supply which are full y described in the other volumes of this series . 4 Only so much of the story of supply and administration will be told as is necessary to see production in relation to defence. The degree of industrialisation of which a country was capable and upon which its defensive strength so greatly depended, was to a larg e

For help in writing this chapter I am particularly grateful to Mr Neville Wills, the B .H .P. Company's historian, and to Mr George Bishop . 2 Essential materials controlled were : (a) ferrous metals—iron and steel sheets, plates, strips, etc ; (b) non-ferrous metals—copper alloys (angles, bars, pipes, etc) ; (c) alloys of molybdenum, tungsten, nickel, platinum, etc ; (d) a large range of industrial chemicals. Control was exercise d by licence, and the use of a material could be prohibited either for all purposes or for state d purposes . 3 P . Hasluck, The Government and the People 1939-41, in this series, p. 449 . "See Hasluck, and also S. J. Butlin, War Economy (in two volumes) .

RAW MATERIALS : STEEL 67 extent determined by the abundance of its supplies of raw materials, amon g which none stood higher in importance than metals, fuels and heavy chemicals. Of the forty-odd metals 5 in commercial use iron and steel easil y overshadowed all others, making up about 90 per cent of the total consumption. This was the reason for the statement sometimes made that the ability of a country to make war was roughly proportional to it s capacity to produce steel. In the years 1939-45 about 90 per cent o f Australia' s total output of iron and steel, amounting to 7,559,000 tons of pig iron and 8,477,000 tons of steel ingots respectively, was used for purposes of war . Efforts to set up an iron industry had been made at Mittagong, Ne w South Wales, as early as 1848, but nothing had come of them. The first steel industry of any significance was developed at Lithgow, and by 191 2 it had, as already related, grown sufficiently to induce the Commonwealt h Government to erect a Small Arms Factory in its neighbourhood. In 1911 the B .H.P. brought to Australia an American steel expert, Mr David Baker, to give advice about establishing a new steel industry . Baker reported that adequate supplies of suitable raw materials were availabl e but in three widely separated regions : unusually rich iron ore at Iron Knob near the port of Hummock Hill s on the western shore of Spencer ' s Gulf, South Australia, suitable coking coal in Newcastle, New South Wales , and a sufficiently pure limestone at Wardang Island (S .A.) . Providentially, all three were conveniently close to tide water, a circumstance which di d much to ensure the economic well-being of the future industry . 7 Since in those days it required about three tons and a half of coal and one ton an d a half of iron ore to make a ton of steel, it was clearly advantageous t o bring ore to coal, and it was mainly for this reason that Baker recom- mended the industry be established at Port Waratah, Newcastle . Swamp lands in this vicinity were reclaimed, and when, on 9th March 1915, th e first blast furnace was blown in by a small team of skilled American steel - workers assisted by Australians they had trained, and directed by Baker , who was now manager of the steelworks, the foundations were laid of an industry destined to have a profound influence on Australia's genera l development and her powers of defence . From the beginning, the organisation and technological practices of the Newcastle steelworks bore the im- print of American influence . Greatly stimulated by the first world war—though it did not contribute much by way of munitions—the Newcastle industry attained an outpu t from its two blast furnaces and seven open-hearth furnaces of abou t 200,000 tons of steel a year, which enabled it to provide rails for the East - West Transcontinental Railway in Australia and for the Western Fron t in France, plates for the Australian shipbuilding industry, and steel fo r

6 There were about 8,000 alloys in commercial use . "Later known as Whyalla . Leases covering this deposit had been taken out by the B .H .P. some years before when they began exploring the deposit for ironstone fluxes needed for smeltin g operations at Port Pirie . 7 Neville Wills, "Economic Development of the Australian Iron and Steel Industry" .

68 THE ROLE OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTR Y the United Kingdom, all under conditions which, in so far as they involve d freedom from oversea competition, were economically favourable . This breathing space for the industry did not long outlast the war. The next few years saw a determined struggle on the part of the Newcastl e steel industry to meet the rising flood of oversea competition . In spite of government encouragement in the form of a protective tariff, and of step s to improve efficiency and increase local consumption by encouraging th e development of associated fabricating industries such as those based on black iron sheets, corrugated galvanised sheets, wire, wire rope, nettin g and nails, the Australian steel industry came close to economic disaste r more than once during the next ten years. Its salvation on those occasion s lay in the fact that B .H.P. had other assets upon which to draw. 8 In spite of many adverse circumstances, B .H.P. steadily pursued it s policy of expansion and technical improvement, extending its ownershi p backwards to raw materials by acquiring three large collieries and a flee t of freighters for shipping ore, and forwards by reaching agreements wit h the fabricating industries . Keeping well ahead of Australia 's demand for steel, the company concentrated during the twenties on making the unit s of the industry as large as possible with bigger-than-average blast furnace s and open hearths . Modern electrical generators, providing power to operat e rolling mills and other machinery throughout the plant, were installed . The Newcastle steel industry gradually became one of the most highly integrate d and self-contained in the world . The company's wisdom in controlling its own sources of coal suppl y may be seen in the fact that the Newcastle works at that time used more than 750,000 tons a year, the greater part of which went into the production of metallurgical coke. Efficient use of coal and recovery of the by - products of coking was a crucial factor in the economy of a steel plant . Replacement of the original Semet Solvay by-product ovens in 1930 b y the much more efficient Willputte regenerative coke ovens was an important step in bringing the industry up to date . The weekly output of these ovens (at a time when they were consuming 17,000 tons of coal a week) was : 11,000 tons of metallurgical coke ; 190,000,000 cubic feet of coal gas (enough to supply a city of 1,000,00 0 inhabitants for a week) ; 190 tons of ammonium sulphate; 40,000 gallons of benzol, toluol, solvent naphtha ; 120,000 gallons of tar. Some of the coal-gas was used to fire the coke ovens ; the remainder was used in the works for a number of purposes . An important feature of the new ovens was that they required for thei r own heating only 40 per cent of the coal gas they produced, as compare d

8 Essington Lewis, "The Importance of the Iron and Steel Industry to Australia". Joseph Fishe r Lecture in Commerce, Univ of Adelaide, published at the Hassell Press (1948) . e B .H.P. became associated with Lysaght Bros (Aust) Pty Ltd 1929 ; Vickers-C'wealth Stee l Products (later C 'wealth Steel Co) 1929 ; Rylands Bros (Aust) Pty Ltd 1925 ; Stewarts and Lloyds (Aust) Pty Ltd 1929; Aust Wire Ropes Pty Ltd 1923 ; Titan Nail and Wire Co Ltd 1933 .

RAW MATERIALS : STEEL 69 with 60 per cent used by the older type of oven; in addition they gave higher output and improved recovery of other by-products . Fuel econom y was achieved by other means as well : by faster and better methods of handling material to and from furnaces and ovens, and by improved designs for burners and regenerators . Much was achieved purely by methods of good housekeeping, or "by chasing waste as the good housewife chase s dirt".' The net result over the years was to reduce the amount of coal needed to produce a ton of steel from three tons and a half in 1915 t o about one and a half in 1932 . These economies did much to help th e steel industry weather the world depression . Important developments took place in other industries of the Newcastl e area. In 1935 Vickers-Commonwealth Steel Products Ltd, a subsidiary of B.H.P., became known as the Commonwealth Steel Company Ltd . About this time the company began manufacturing alloy steels (mainl y of the stainless and heat-resisting varieties) . Stewarts and Lloyds, a branch of the English company and an associated company of B .H.P., in 1934 made a notable contribution to the development of the steel industry b y introducing the manufacture of butt-welded tubing. 2 While these changes were taking place at Newcastle a new steel industr y was coming into being at Port Kembla, N .S.W. The Lithgow industry 3 had, during the twenties, been encountering greater and greater difficulties, owing partly to the exhaustion of the easily-accessible iron ores in its vicinity but mainly to rising costs of transporting both raw materials an d finished products . The directors of the Lithgow industry realised that if it was to survive in competition with Newcastle it would have to leav e the Lithgow valley for a location near tidewater . They chose Port Kembla, and then contracted with a Chicago engineering firm (Freyn) for the design and construction of a blast furnace with a much greater capacity than an y at Newcastle. This had barely been completed when a merger was arranged with three well-known British and Australian firms 4 to form a new company, Australian Iron and Steel Ltd. Using iron ore from Whyalla, South Australia, limestone from Marulan, New South Wales, and local coal, this furnace, the largest of its kind in the British Commonwealth , began producing pig iron in August 1928 at the rate of 800 tons a day . In the early days of its operation the Port Kembla steel industry wa s seriously unbalanced, lacking by-product coke ovens and sufficient open - hearth steel-making furnaces, but by 1939 this had to a large extent bee n rectified. The early life of Australian Iron and Steel coincided with the economi c depression and it laboured under serious disadvantages, from which it was rescued only by becoming a subsidiary of B.H.P. Consolidation of the

1 J . D . Norgard and W . H. Brooke, "Coal Utilisation, Modern Steel Works Practice " . Proceeding of the A/sian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, New Series No 145 (1947), p . 255. 2 A. N . Hamilton, "Tube making in Australia" , Proceedings of the Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, No 99 (1935), p . 1 . $ Hoskins Iron and Steel Ltd, which had been operating since 1900 . ', Dorman, Long & Co Ltd, and Baldwins Ltd of England, and Howard Smith Ltd of Australia .

70 THE ROLE OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTR Y two main steel industries of Australia took place in October 1935, but th e industry at Port Kembla retained the name of Australian Iron and Steel . In the same year decisions were taken that were to have an importan t influence on the immediate future policy of the steel industry . During a tour abroad in 1934 Mr Essington Lewis became convinced from what h e saw in Germany and Japan that war with these countries was almost inevitable. In his thinking about the needs of defence Lewis was wel l ahead of contemporary public opinion in Australia, which then as in mos t democracies, occupied itself mainly with the problems attending the recovery from the economic depression . On returning from Europe he and the Chairman of the Board of Directors of B.H.P., Mr Darling,5 set about preparing the Australian steel industry to meet the demands tha t war might make upon it . It is difficult to say how far the rapid rise in th e industry from its very low ebb during the depression was due to purel y

1,600 -I 1 1,500 ~- Australian Ingot Steel Production by Localities i 1,aoo - 1915 . 16 to 1943 j 1300 Source : Economic Development of the Australian Iron 6Sfeel /~ . Industry ' — by Neville R.Wills 1,200 / A.1.&-S. 11,00 ~' Port Kembla - 1,000 .--- _ y _ h X900 - .- - 1 O eo o ~__ N 1 700 1 600 lrI.. ti 500 1 f/ 400 300

200 B •H•P Newcastle -

too • _ 0 " ' :EstimaFed - LtthgOw ^ ^ ~~ T H O A O h G N N N N N N N N Q N .O h O. N N N = M N a 7 economic factors and how far it was the result of a deliberate polic y aimed at self-sufficiency . The upward trend had begun before 1935 . One thing seems certain: without the extraordinary expansion that took plac e after 1935 Australia could not have met the industrial challenge of the

s H. G. Darling. Chairman, B .H.P . Ltd, 1922-50. Of Melbourne; b . Adelaide, 9 Jun 1885. Die d 26 Jan 1950 .

RAW MATERIALS : STEEL 71 second world war as successfully as she did. Large stocks of iron ore , limestone and other raw materials vital to the steel industry were built u p at Newcastle—a policy that was to pay good dividends when war put a great strain on the resources of coastal shipping . In spite of these efforts, stocks of iron ore were not sufficient during the war to prevent the nee d for reopening the New South Wales iron ore deposits . From 1935 onwards steel-making capacity at Newcastle was rapidl y increased by the addition of an open-hearth furnace each year for thre e years . Extensive additions were made in coke ovens, machine shops an d rolling mills ; one of the most important steps towards increasing th e efficiency of the early stages of steel fabrication was the electrification of the heavy rolling mills, begun in the early thirties but not complete d until 1940 . Important developments took place in other industries in the Newcastle area. In 1935 Vickers-Commonwealth Steel Products Ltd became a subsidiary of the B .H .P., changing its name in the process to the Common- wealth Steel Company . In the following year the company initiated a ne w phase of the Australian industry by manufacturing alloy steels, mainl y in the form of castings and forgings of stainless and heat-resisting varieties . Later, plans were made for the rolling of special steels. Stewarts and Lloyds (Australia) Pty Ltd, a branch of the Englis h company and an associated company of the B .H.P., having established the process for making butt-welded tubing in 1934, decided in 1936 t o install a push-bench for producing seamless tubing, an innovation tha t was to play an important part in the manufacture of shell bodies . The plant at Port Kembla was also enlarged, the most notable additio n being a blast furnace with a capacity of 1,000 tons of pig iron a day , which was blown in in May 1938. Earlier the same year a coke-oven and by-products unit came into operation. Considerable progress had also been made with the mechanisation of three South Coast coal mines owned b y B.H.P. While the output of pig iron from Newcastle's three blast furnace s was only slightly greater than that of the two larger furnaces at Por t Kembla, the production of steel at Newcastle was considerably greate r because of the greater number of its open-hearth furnaces . Port Kembla, on the other hand, possessed newer and heavier rolling equipment an d in some respects the two works were complementary . The suggestion had been made in 1937 that B .H.P. might assist in the development of South Australian industry through an extension of it s activities to the State from which for many years it had drawn its entire supplies of iron ores. Whyalla, the port from which these ores were shipped , was a possible site for a new steel industry since the efficiency in utilisation of coke for smelting had now advanced to a point where it was economically feasible to bring coal to ore . Continuity of ore supply had bee n guaranteed by the 1937 Indenture Act, 6 under which the South Australia n

6 Parliamentary Papers 56 . Parliament of S Aust . Evidence before Select Commission of th e House of Assembly on the B .H .P. Indenture Bill 1937, S Aust Blue Book.

72 THE ROLE OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTR Y Government agreed to extend the company's iron ore leases at Middlebac k for a period of 50 years . If any further stimulus was required to set the industry in motion, i t was supplied by the imminence of war . Decentralisation of iron making had much to recommend it from the point of view of defence . As hap- pened 24 years earlier at Newcastle, the actual outbreak of hostilitie s speeded up the whole project . Whyalla, the site chosen, had for many years been developed as an ore shipping port, but its growth was greatl y accelerated in 1937 after a decision to erect a blast furnace there. The major units of the iron and steel industry in operation at the end of 193 9 are shown in the accompanying chart . By their unswerving pursuit of efficiency and their policy of ruthlessly scrapping obsolescent plant and replacing it with the most up-to-date available, and by exploiting to the utmost the economic advantages inherent i n the supply of raw materials, Lewis and Darling had on the outbreak of war brought the Australian steel industry to the stage where it could make steel cheaper than any other producer in the world . With a capacity of about 1,000,000 tons of ingot steel a year—double that of 1935—th e Newcastle Steelworks became one of the largest in the British Common- wealth.' Australia was now able to provide most of its own requirement s of steel for the agricultural machinery, motor-body building, aircraft , chemical, shipbuilding and heavy engineering industries . The B.H.P. not only supplied the great bulk of the nation's steel but also operated work - shops designed principally to meet the needs of its own construction and maintenance programs, which were capable of undertaking a wide range of jobs including the building of engines and the construction of bridges . Machines in these workshops stood ready for the manufacture of guns , gun ammunition and other munitions . On the whole the steel industry, the corner-stone of the country's industrial structure, was more nearly ready to meet the shocks and stresse s of war than any other . By way of more direct preparations, large stock s of iron ore, limestone and other vital raw materials, especially thos e obtained from overseas, were built up at Newcastle. As early as 1936, and by arrangement with the Department of Defence, B .H.P. sent technica l officers to the Ordnance Factory at Maribyrnong to study methods of shell manufacture. Some months before the war, shell bodies for 3-inch anti- aircraft and 18-pounder guns were being turned out at the rate of 3,500 a week which, although negligible by comparison with later efforts, meant that the company had gained experience that proved to be of the greates t value when large-scale production was called for . B.H.P. was the firs t commercial organisation to enter the field of munitions production .

7 Australia stood fifth in the list of countries in terms of steel production per head, and wa s 13th in terms of total production : U.S.A . 0.601 tons per head of population Britain 0 .300 tons per head of population Belgium 0 .445 " " " " Australia 0 .246 „ , „ „ Germany 0 .306 " " Canada 0 .229 „ „ „ „ „

IRON AND STEEL INDUSTRY

PIG IRON STEEL (Carbon) SPECIAL ALLOY STEEL S B.H .P. Newcastle B.H .P. Newcastle Commonwealth Steel Co . Port Waratah B.H.P. Whyalla Australian Iron & Steel , Port Kembla Australian Iron & Steel , Australian Iron & Steel Ltd, Port Kembla Port Kembla Melbourne Iron & Steel Mills Pty Ltd, Brooklyn

FABRICATING INDUSTRIE S

WIRE TUBES SHEETS Ryland Bros (Aust) Pty Ltd, Stewarts & Lloyds (Aust) Lysaght Bros (Aust) Pty Lt d Newcastle Pty Ltd, Newcastle Newcastle and Port Kembla Aust Wire Ropes Pty Ltd , British Tube Mills, (Aust) Pty Ltd Commonwealth Rolling Mills Newcastle Adelaide Pty Ltd, Port Kembla Titan Nail & Wire Co Ltd Newcastle

74 THE ROLE OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTR Y In order to make even the briefest survey of the activities of the steel industry in Australia during the war it will be necessary to consider the m in three main sections: 8 1. the manufacture of raw materials for munitions industries—steels of many kinds for tools, for guns, ammunition, tanks, torpedoes and aircraft ; 2. the manufacture of machine tools and forgings for guns and ammunition; 3. the fabrication of iron and steel into sheets, wires and tubes for militar y purposes other than weapons . This is a very rough classification and there is a good deal of over - lapping between (2) and (3) . From this point on the main concern will be with the steel industry as a source of raw materials for munitions . Though much had been done in the way of preparing the steel industr y for the emergency of war, a great deal remained to be done after war broke out . No one could have predicted exactly what the demands on it would be. The completion at Whyalla of a sixth blast furnace, which began operation in May 1941, was a major step in the wartime expansion of th e industry. It brought the total capacity for producing pig iron up to 1,764,000 tons a year ; the maximum output of 1,543,973 tons was achieve d in 1941, but thereafter, owing to the inevitable decline in manpowe r available for industry, and, after 1943, the decline in demand, production fell. The output of iron and steel from 1938 to 1944 is shown in the accompanying table . To keep pace with the increased output of pig iron it was necessary to build more open-hearth furnaces for making steel : one was built at the Newcastle Steelworks, and two at the works o f Australian Iron and Steel at Port Kembla . This step did not of itself guarantee an increased supply of steel . There remained the problem of obtaining the raw materials used in the conversion of pig iron to steel . Pig iron Ingot steel (tons) (tons ) 1938-39 1,104,605 1,171,78 7 1940-41 1,475,707 1,647,10 8 1941-42 1,557,641 1,699,79 5 1942-43 1,399,306 1,632,82 5 1943-44 1,305,357 1,527,564

One of the few weaknesses of the Australian steel industry before th e war (as far as its self-sufficiency was concerned) lay in its reliance on im- ports for all ferro alloys . These alloys of iron with fairly large proportions of such elements as silicon, manganese, zirconium, tungsten or chromium, find two principal uses in the steel industry : (a) in making ordinary large- tonnage carbon steels, and (b) in making special steels, or alloy steels . The first use depends on the ability of some metals (manganese, silicon, aluminium and zirconium) to remove oxygen and sulphur from steel—t o act as deoxidisers . For these purposes ferro silicon and ferro manganes e are most effective ; without an adequate supply of both these alloys the

8 Much of the information for this section came from D . O . Morris, "A Review of Wartim e Activities of the Newcastle Steel Plant of B .H .P. and its Associated and Subsidiary Industries ", Proceedings of the A/sian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, New Series No . 146 (1947) .

RAW MATERIALS : STEEL 75 whole of the steel industry, and with it the munitions program, would have been jeopardised . The ferro alloys used in making special steels were scarcely less important. That they had not previously been made in Aus- tralia was due more to economic than to technical difficulties . Most ferro alloys were made in electric furnaces that consumed unsually large amount s of electric power. For this reason their manufacture had been concentrate d in countries endowed with ample supplies of cheap hydro-electric power : Canada, Scandinavia, the United States and Japan . Foreseeing the danger s of a failure of the supply of ferro alloys, B .H.P. began negotiations in 1939 with an American firm specialising in their manufacture for information, drawings and equipment . This was none too soon . Installation of electric furnaces at the Newcastle steelworks was pushed ahead vigorousl y and the production of ferro alloys was begun towards the end of 1940 . The manufacture of ferro alloys brought with it problems of power supply . In order to avoid drawing on supplies of power provided by municipa l authorities, which were already heavily taxed, the power station at th e steelworks was extended. Operating mainly on blast-furnace gas as a fuel , this station, which also acted as a reserve against the possible destruction of the municipal station, provided all the electric power used throughout the steelworks, including the ferro alloy plant . Two separate plants were built : one housing three large electric furnace s of the submerged-arc type with a nominal power input of 4,500 kilowatts , for making alloys required in large tonnages (such as ferro silicon and ferr o manganese) ; and a second for alloys required in only small amounts o r for alloys whose preparation was carried out by means other than the electric furnace . Alloys of two metals were frequently made by first liquefying the metal with the higher melting point and then gradually adding the second metal in the solid state so that it dissolved in the first . Many of the metals used in ferro alloys were not easy to extract from their ores, and moreover ha d melting points that were too high for alloying with iron in the way just described. It was more convenient not to isolate the alloying element a s a separate step, but to release it from one of its compounds by high - temperature reduction with coke, and simultaneously to allow it to alloy with molten iron . Ferro silicon, for example, was made by melting a mixture of scrap iron, quartzite (silicon dioxide) and coke in an electri c furnace, when the silicon liberated by the reduction of the quartz immediately alloyed with the molten iron . Some of the raw materials for ferro alloys had to be imported ; for instance, manganese ore from India and South Africa, and chromium fro m Rhodesia or New Caledonia. No adequate deposits of these minerals had then been found in Australia .) In spite of the fact that stocks had been built up before the war, Australia became seriously short of some ores , especially nickel, and it was only by improvisation and considerable ingenuity on the part of metallurgists that the situation was saved . The extent

I A small amount of manganese ore was produced in W . Aust.

76 THE ROLE OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTR Y and variety of the wartime production of ferro alloys are shown in th e accompanying table . Ferro silicon, 50% Silicon 29,919 tons 75% Silicon 323 „ Ferro chromium, High carbon 6,510 „ Low carbon 1,503 Ferro zirconium (zircon sand from Byron Bay) 463 „ Silico manganese • 1,808 „ Ferro manganese, High carbon 1,014 „ Low carbon 1 1 Chromium silicide, 2% Carbon 255 „ 1% „ 108 „ 0.2% „ 322 „ 0.1% „ • 1,586 „

The output of ferro alloys required only in relatively small amounts— those whose production was given in pounds rather than in tons—was as follows : Ferro molybdenum . 45,914 lb Ferro titanium2 . 348,504 lb Ferro vanadium . 2,240 lb Ferro tungsten . 476,302 lb

Owing to the smallness of the quantkies required and the extremel y high temperature needed to effect reduction, it was found more convenien t to make the last three by the alumino-thermic method. A mixture of the oxide of the alloying element—titanium dioxide, for example—finel y powdered aluminium and scrap iron was placed in conical steel pots line d with calcined magnesite and fired by magnesium . The heat generated b y the reaction between the titanium dioxide and the aluminium was sufficien t to melt both the titanium liberated by the reduction and the scrap iron . The only essential difference between this and the electric-furnace method was in the means used to produce the high temperature necessary to melt the alloying metals. In practice it was found that the alumino-thermic method caused smaller losses of material through volatilisation . Very finely powdered aluminium used in these alumino-thermic reductions was mad e by "atomising" a stream of molten scrap aluminium in an air blast.3 Aluminium alloys required by the Australian Aluminium Company, Ltd- aluminium-titanium used for refining the grain structure of duralumi n alloys for aircraft construction, and aluminium-manganese alloys require d as hardening additions for casting magnesium—were made by the sam e method of reduction . Of the large number of different steels used in commerce, more tha n 100 were made at Newcastle. A broad general classification would divid e them into two main classes : ordinary high-carbon steels, and alloy steels . Alloy steels contained, in addition to carbon, quantities of such element s as chromium, molybdenum, nickel, manganese, tungsten and silicon intro -

2 Titanium dioxide for this alloy came from the beach sands of northern N.S.W. 8 Ingot aluminium from the Department of Munitions was used after supplies of scrap had been exhausted .

RAW MATERIALS : STEEL 77 duced into the steel in the form of ferro alloys . The physical properties of steel are greatly influenced by the nature and amount of alloyin g elements : manganese imparts toughness ; tungsten hardness, which is retained at high temperatures ; chromium and nickel strength and ductilit y and a tendency to resist corrosion ; zirconium and molybdenum endow steel with great hardness combined with toughness . The list could be greatly lengthened and elaborated but it will suffice to show the importanc e of alloying elements in exploiting the great versatility of steel . Most of the carbon steels were made in the open-hearth furnaces of the Newcastl e Steelworks and of the Australian Iron and Steel Company at Port Kembla , but alloy steels were produced in other more specialised plants . The maximum output of ordinary carbon (or tonnage) steel was achieved in 1941 when 20 open-hearth furnaces yielded 1,624,936 ingot tons ; average yearly production was 1,412,913 tons, making a total for the war year s of 8,477,478 tons . The output of special alloy steels was of course muc h lower, averaging about 65,000 tons a year or a total of 390,000 tons . The manufacture of alloy steels had been pioneered in Australia by Commonwealth Steel Products Ltd (later known as the Commonwealt h Steel Company) which built the first electric arc furnace for the purpos e in 1919. At first the company, whose technical practices were based extensively on those of the English firm of Firth Vickers, concentrated on the manufacture of stainless and heat-resisting steels, and by means of its clos e contacts with leading oversea makers of special steels was able to keep abreast of modern developments in alloy steels and to build up an organisation possessed of technical knowledge not available elsewhere in Australia . The Committee of Empire Defence which met in London in 1937 (sit- ting as a separate committee of the Imperial Defence Committee) pai d particular attention to the question of Australia 's self-sufficiency in th e production of special steels . The committee was well aware that an inter- ruption to the supplies of those kinds of special steel not made in Aus- tralia—especially tool steels—could have a disastrous effect upon th e country's industrial development . The Secondary Industries Research an d Testing Committee sounded a similar warning . If for any reason, it said , the supply of tool steels was cut off, the greater part of the engineerin g industry in the Commonwealth would be brought to a standstill . Depend- ence on outside sources for the kinds of steel indispensable for high-speed cutting tools and for forges and stamping presses made the defence industries vulnerable indeed.4 Shortly after the discussions in London and the appearance of the report of the Research and Testing Committee, the Commonwealth Steel Company made its first batches of high-speed (tool ) steel. In addition to tool steels there were others equally important fo r defence : alloy steels for gun forgings, armour-piercing shells, armour plate , aero-engines and torpedoes, and for chemical industry .

'Tool steels were of two main kinds : carbon steels and alloy steels . Steels in the latter group, con mining as much as 20 per cent of tungsten, were specially important .

78 THE ROLE OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTR Y Plans were therefore drawn up by the Commonwealth Steel Compan y for the extension of its works by the installation of additional furnaces — one open hearth, one electric arc and two high-frequency induction—for making special steels, together with large and fully equipped bloom, ba r and sheet rolling mills . Construction of the massive, complicated rollin g machines and the erection of a very large building to accommodate the m was begun in April 1939 and completed at high speed . The first sections of the new extension, known as the Special Steel Plant, to come into operation were the rolling mills, in August 1940 ; the electric furnace was completed in February 1941, but it was not until twelve months later that th e large 50-ton open-hearth furnace was ready for operation. Three shift s a day, seven days a week, was the rule in almost every section of th e alloy-steelworks. The alloy-steel plant required a large force of skilled operators, many of whom underwent additional training in handling the new materials . The sources from which employees of this type could be drawn were, by comparison with highly-industrialised countries overseas, distinctly limited, an d the successful surmounting of this obstacle was by no means the leas t of the industry's achievements . Similarly, semi-skilled and unskilled men were needed in large numbers, and the rapidity of development may b e judged from the fact that the labour force increased by some 500 per cen t during the war years. Workers were drawn from every walk of life—from retail stores, delivery waggons, sheep stations and shearing sheds . Some recruits came from small businesses rendered uneconomic by war, others from clerical and similar occupations . Most employees in this rapidly- growing force had to be trained for their various jobs ; all had to be trained in safe working because of the many hazards which were insepar- able from the operation of a steelworks and to which they were totall y unaccustomed. This plant, together with smaller ones at Port Kembla and in Melbourn e (Melbourne Iron and Steel Mills Pty Ltd) combined to make Australi a to all intents and purposes self-sufficient in regard to special steels. The uses of these steels were legion : for munitions, where they were indispensable in making guns and small arms ; in food factories, textile mills , chemical plants, aircraft, ships, transport vehicles, hospitals, and in pre- cision instruments . Only a few of the 140 different special steels, many of which were made in Australia for the first time, can be mentioned here . The importance of tool steels lay in the fact that they were essential t o the shaping of other steels. High-speed steels contained as their mos t important added element, tungsten or cobalt in proportions varying wit h the purpose for which the steel was intended . Possessing great hardnes s even at high temperatures, these steels were used mainly in lathe tools and shaper tools, milling cutters, twist drills and reamers. They made it possible to construct plant, machines and equipment of all kinds . In the same category were the hot-die steels used in making the dies for drop- forging and the special tungsten steels used in punches and chisels .

RAW MATERIALS : STEEL 79 Until 1939 the knowledge of how to make bullet-proof steel and armou r plate was confined—in the British Commonwealth at least—almost ex- clusively to a few British firms, the best known of which was Hadfield s Ltd, who specialised in the production of steels of this kind . Just before the war, Australian metallurgists gained some knowledge of processin g the famous Hadfield "Resista", a complex nickel-chrome-molybdenu m steel formulated to meet the requirements of the British Army Ordnance . Small quantities of this steel had been made by the Commonwealth Stee l Company for Bren Gun carriers and other armoured fighting vehicles . Hadfield ' s "Resista", because it contained substantial percentages o f nickel, molybdenum and chromium, was a fairly intractable steel to for m and shape. In fact the only satisfactory way of doing this was to anneal the steel after it had been rolled into sheets. This put the steel into suc h a condition that the operations of drilling, planing and slotting could b e easily carried out . When these operations had been completed, the shaped parts were hardened in oil and tempered to yield physical properties com- bining maximum hardness and toughness . After the steel had been finall y hardened and tempered, several pieces were taken at random from eac h batch and subjected to a ballistic test, the nature of which varied accord- ing to the thickness of the plate . If a piece failed to withstand the test, the whole batch was likely to be condemned and all the work and money put into it entirely wasted . In 1940, when Ordnance Production Directorate's extensive requirements of bullet-proof plate were made known to Essington Lewis, hi s chief metallurgical adviser, Mr Clark,5 pointed out that there was in- sufficient nickel, chromium and molybdenum in the country to permit the use of "Resista " steel, and it was imperative to find a substitute . Mr Bishop,6 who was coopted from the B .H.P. by the directorate to tackle the problem, was told that a substitute bullet-proof plate was require d in thousands of tons, and that it must not only meet the normal ballisti c tests of the British Army, but also be capable of being welded . This last provision was made because it had been found that riveted armour vehicles under attack, particularly from ball ammunition, were vulnerabl e at the rivets, which were eroded by what was thought to be vapourise d lead. Crews of riveted vehicles were often severely burned by lead vapour . The proposal to weld armour plate was made with the idea of eliminating this hazard and at the same time of expediting manufacture generally . "Resista" steel owed its extreme toughness to the presence of nicke l which caused it to assume a fine-grained structure. Bishop therefore directed his attention to finding another metal which would produce th e same effect . The conventional method of inducing a fine-grained stee l was to add aluminium. Its use for bullet-proof plate was considered un-

6 D. Clark, Chief Metallurgist, C' wealth Steel Co Ltd, 1926-41, 1944-48 ; Metallurgical Adviser, Ministry of Munitions, 1941-44 ; Chief Research Officer C'wealth Steel, 1949-52 . Of Newcastle ; b . Glasgow, Scotland, 25 Jan 1883 . 6 G. H . Bishop. Successively Service Superintendent, B .H.P . Ltd, Steel Superintendent, Asst Production Superintendent, Production Superintendent, Assistant Manager . Of Newcastle, NSW ; b . England, 29 Mar 1906 .

80 THE ROLE OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTR Y desirable in view of the fact that it could, under certain circumstances , cause the formation of soft areas and certain types of non-metallic inclusio n which because of their weakening effects were highly deleterious . A second possibility was to use vanadium, but since ores of this metal could not be imported (none had been found in Australia) it also had t o be ruled out. In the end it was decided to try zirconium, since the mineral zircon was indigenous to New South Wales and Queensland and its supply would therefore present no problem . To offset the absence of molybdenu m which was also in short supply it was decided to add larger percentages than usual of chromium and manganese to confer depth hardness an d at the same time to keep down the carbon content of the steel in orde r to make it reasonably weldable . In due course a composition based on th e foregoing considerations was devised and a batch of 30 tons of steel was made in the "basic" open-hearth furnace of the steel foundry at the works of B.H.P., Newcastle. At this stage it was expected that the resulting stee l would have to be subjected to the usual process of hardening and tem- pering, but it was hoped that the tedious business of annealing to facilitat e machining, drilling and planing operations might be avoided. The inten- tion was to eliminate these operations altogether by using profile oxy- acetylene torches for cutting the plates to shape and then assembling the m by the process of welding . The first ingots from the experimental batch were rolled into slab s and plates were examined . It was found that the steel in its "as rolled " condition was not only hard, as it would need to be if it were to satisf y a ballistic test, but was, most fortunately, also extraordinarily tough . "As rolled" plates were set up for proof testing and found to perform satis- factorily. It was thus evident that the steel had properties which rendere d unnecessary any further heat treatment, and all efforts were directed to - wards its production. Having pioneered the production of Australian bullet-proof steel, th e B.H.P. now found that the extraordinary demand for armour plate greatl y exceeded the company 's rolling capacity for plates, and arrangements were therefore made with Lysaght' s Newcastle Works Pty Ltd to undertake the rolling and fabrication of the finished plates from slabs produced o n the B.H.P. Company's 28-inch mill . At this stage it was evident that, in order to develop the bullet-resistan t properties of the steel to the fullest extent in the wide range of section s required, and in order to cope with normal variations in composition , special rolling conditions and techniques for controlling the rate of coolin g were necessary. After a period of intensive investigation under the direc- tion of Mr Parry Okeden, 7 Manager of Lysaght's Works, and Mr . Hawkins, 8 Technical Superintendent, methods were evolved for the production of bullet-proof plate ranging in thickness from one sixth of an inc h

7 R. G. C. Parry Okeden. Chairman and Managing Director, Lysaght' s Works Pty Ltd since 1940 . B . Blandford, Eng, 25 Dec 1900. J. Hawkins . Technical Superintendent, Lysaght 's Works Pty Ltd . Of Newcastle, NSW ; b. Hill- grove, NSW, 16 Aug 1908 .

RAW MATERIALS : STEEL 8 1 to one inch and a quarter. An essential part of their process was that each plate, as part of the production-line processing, was subjected to a triple ballistic test, the marks of which were carried by the finished armoured vehicle and no doubt inspired its crew with confidence . After having been tested, the plates were rapidly and accurately cut to shape by a series of oxy-acetylene profile machines and assembled i n complete sets for each particular type of vehicle or piece of equipment fo r which they were designed . Sets were despatched to various centres in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane, where they were assembled by a method of fusion welding adapted to this particular type of steel . Despite the many problems involved in the handling of the heavy plate s in furnaces and rolling mills designed for much lighter work, som e 23,780 tons of Australian bullet-proof plate was rolled by Lysaght 's between 1940 and 1944. The plate was used principally for armouring large numbers of Bren gun carriers, mortar carriers, guns, light armoure d cars and aircraft. The chronic shortage of fuel with which the steel industry had to contend was a challenge to its engineers . In response notable advances were made in the use of blast-furnace gas in the various steel-making operations . Claims were made that improved methods of using blast-furnace gas brought about savings in coal consumption of about 40,000 tons a yea r in the Port Kembla Steelworks alone .° In this condensed account of the steel industry, where the emphasis is of necessity on what was achieved rather than how it was achieved, it is difficult to avoid giving the impression that its activities consisted of a n unbroken sequence of straightforward manufacture . In fact, of course, many obstacles presented themselves, and they were not always easily overcome ; some were not overcome—at least during the war years . The production by the three major steel makers of more than 7,559,000 tons of pig iro n and 8,477,000 tons of steel, the latter including 500,000 of alloy an d other special quality steels, which often had to be made in plants tha t had not been designed for them, was in itself a major achievement . Diffi- culties and failures were inevitable in an undertaking of this magnitude, but whatever they were the steel industry never failed to supply the stee l the munitions industries asked for . In an address during 1943 the Minister for Munitions, Mr Makin,'') said : "I feel particularly fitted to speak o f B.H.P's work. . . . Millions of tons of steel have been made available at prices below those paid by other countries . For munitions factories and the equipment of the fighting forces steel has been supplied at cost price ." Steel for war had to be of the highest quality. For this reason th e proportion of the output used was smaller in war than in peace . Only the best portions of an ingot of steel were acceptable—the middle thir d of an ingot was used for the larger gun barrels and for the pressure

9 See H . Escher, Developments in the Use of Blast-Furnace Gas at the Port Kembla Steel Works , Journal of the Iron and Steel Institute, Vol 156 (1947), p. 1 . 10 Hon N. J . O . Makin . MHR 1919-46 and since 1954 . Minister for Navy and for Munitions 1941-46, for Aircraft Production 1945-46 ; Aust Ambassador to U .S .A. 1946-51 . B . Petersham, NSW, 31 Mar 1889.

82 THE ROLE OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTR Y vessels of torpedoes ; the remainder was discarded . Greater production of the necessary high-quality steel in wartime was therefore brought abou t not so much by increased efficiency in processing as by an increase in man - power, plant and steel-making capacity . It was in the manufacture of steel for the young Australian aircraft industry that the steel manufacturers were put to their most exacting test . Steel for highly-stressed parts of aircraft needed to be as near perfectio n as it was humanly possible to make it. No steel was subjected to more exhaustive testing than that used in aero-engines . Early in the war chromium-molybdenum steels for aero-engines were made in the electric - arc furnaces of the Commonwealth Steel Company, but as the deman d grew these supplies proved inadequate and the work was transferred t o the larger, though less suitable, open-hearth furnaces at the Newcastle Steelworks . One of the principal difficulties was to make a "clean" stee l —that is, one of the requisite homogeneity, free from cracks and blemishe s and non-metallic inclusions . In order to learn how best to achieve thi s objective, Messrs Bishop and Stephenson' were sent to study the manufacturing details and standards of inspection at the works of the Bethlehe m Steel Corporation in the United States . Much timely assistance was given to B .H.P. by this organisation and also by the North American Aviatio n Corporation . Inspectors approved by the Aircraft Inspection Directorate were poste d in the steelworks, and the different aircraft manufacturing authoritie s later carried out check inspections of aircraft steels on their own account . The magnetic flux method for detecting fine cracks and flaws in steel wa s extensively applied . Notwithstanding all efforts to ensure that only the best-quality steel reached the manufacturers, alarmingly high percentage s of finished components were rejected . This represented a serious wast e indeed. So much dissatisfaction among aircraft manufacturers arose from this cause that it became imperative to call in a third party to investigat e the whole problem. An eminent authority on aircraft steels from Britain , Mr T. R. Middleton, of the English Steel Corporation, Sheffield, was consulted and asked by Lewis, as Director-General of Aircraft Production, to make a report . Steel manufacturers had at first little real understanding of the standard s of quality required by the aircraft industry, and to make matters wors e the aircraft industry itself had in its early days little to offer in the wa y of guidance . To some extent it was a case of the blind leading the blind . Very high rates of rejection of components led to mutual recriminations : steel manufacturers accused aircraft authorities of demanding impossibl y high standards, of inconsistency in their standards, and even of not know- ing what they wanted; aircraft manufacturers countered by criticising the adequacy of inspections made in the steelworks . There were faults on both sides ; neither system of inspection was free from shortcomings . Middleton was able to assure the steel industry that the aircraft manu -

1 H. Stephenson. Metallurgist to Tullochs Ltd, and Hadfields to 1933 ; Steel Superintendent, C ' wealth Steel, from 1933. Of Newcastle ; b. Bradford, Eng, 22 Nov 1898 .

RAW MATERIALS : STEEL 83 facturers had not in general set the standards too high and that th e majority of rejections of finished steel components were in fact fully justified.2 What caused him a great deal of concern was the atmospher e of distrust between the inspection systems of the two industries. Apart from a few instances he found that no real effort was being made to establish a better understanding by close collaboration . Steel manufacturers were rarely given an opportunity to examine finished components which had been rejected on account of material defects. Middleton's advice was "that those responsible for metallurgical examination and inspection a t the steel plants should take an opportunity of visiting aircraft plants . . . to develop a better understanding of the problems with which the aircraft manufacturers are faced" . Middleton examined steel at both works and satisfied himself that the majority of heats being manufactured in 1944 could be classified a s "reasonably clean". At the conclusion of a report submitted in April 194 5 he stated that although steel manufacturers had progressed very considerably towards satisfying the high standards of the aircraft industry , they had still not reached the stage where they could be regarded a s completely "aircraft-steel-minded". He warned that satisfactory progress could not be expected unless a better understanding was developed between experts of the aircraft and the steel industries . One of the most difficult of all steels to make and to fabricate was armour-piercing steel, a medium carbon-nickel chrome steel . With the help of some information on production techniques obtained from th e Woolwich Arsenal in England the Commonwealth Steel Company bega n to build a special annexe for making armour-piercing shells in 1940 . The steel, made in electric furnaces of both the arc and inductio n type, was cast into specially-designed iron moulds . After solidification the cast, solid shell bodies were stripped from their moulds and toughened by annealing . The shells were then continuously heated under carefull y controlled conditions and passed on to a 300-ton press where they wer e forged. The forgings were annealed, machined and finally hardened unde r carefully-controlled conditions of heating to give the necessary hardnes s gradient from the nose to the base . From this annexe came the firs t armour-piercing shells (6-inch and 4 .7-inch shells for the navy) to be made in Australia . Their manufacture was considered to be one of th e outstanding achievements of the steel industry, which had to a large exten t been thrown on its own initiative in working out the details of an intrinsic - ally difficult technical process . In a similar annexe for producing smaller armour-piercing projectiles— 25-pounder and 17-pounder shot (solid shell)—built by B .H.P. at the Newcastle works, the manufacturers displayed a good deal of initiativ e in devising methods of handling the steel . Much of the equipment used in forging, annealing and specialised heat treatment was of an origina l character and was completely designed, manufactured and installed by the

2 T. R. Middleton, Report on Steels of Australian Manufacture for use in Aircraft Construction

84 THE ROLE OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTR Y company. Sufficient progress had been made by December 1941 to begi n operations in a small way and to start with hardening of the shot—a vital part of the manufacturing process . Great difficulty was experienced in machining the resulting shot on account of the toughness of the steel . No one in the works had had any experience in the handling of suc h material in large quantities . To make matters worse the machines avail - able were not rugged enough to stand up to the heavy work entailed . However, the effort was persisted with and proofing of the first mass - produced shot showed that it performed as well as shot that had bee n made by hand. This was an achievement of some merit, because hithert o in the British Commonwealth the manufacture of armour-piercing sho t had been virtually a "made on the knee" process . The Newcastle Steelworks made a wide variety of alloy steels : chrome- zirconium for bayonets, chrome-silicon for car and truck springs, nickel steels for aircraft and a special steel for the air vessels of torpedoes . Large quantities of the last steel, which as will be seen in a later chapter was one of the most closely specified of all, were also made by the Common - wealth Steel Company . When the manufacture of protective steel helmets was first considere d in Australia, no firm had had any experience with this material, but it was known that manganese steel would be difficult to roll. The production procedure was developed by Commonwealth Steel in conjunction with John Heine and Son Ltd of Sydney, who built the press in which all thes e pressings were made . A similar material, an austenitic non-magnetic steel which had to b e quenched from unusually high temperatures, was developed for use in th e vicinity of ships ' compasses. In all, some 2,000 tons of helmet steel an d 700 tons of non-magnetic armour plate was produced as ingots and partl y processed at Commonwealth Steel, and finally sheet-rolled at Lysaght 's. About 2,000,000 helmets were made for Australia, New Zealand and India . Besides supplying raw material for the munitions industry and main- taining and renewing its own plant, the steel industry also carried ou t a great deal of the fabrication of the steel, other than for ammunition, shaping some of it into rough castings and forgings and much of it int o finished components : gun barrels and breech rings, and cylinders for air - craft engines . Large hollow cylinders capable of withstanding unusually high pressures were made by the Commonwealth Steel Company for chemical industry, particularly for the production of synthetic ammoni a and methanol . Their manufacture involved the moulding and casting o f an ingot mould weighing 76 tons, the largest ever attempted in the Com- monwealth. In this mould were made the large ingots which were to be forged into cylinders capable of withstanding pressures of 525 atmospheres . Similar large cylinders were required for making the air vessels of torpedoes. Many thousands of tools, gauges and fixtures needed for the manufacture of the cylinders of aero-engines, Bren guns and Owen guns wer e made in the toolroom of the Newcastle steelworks. In another chapter the (B .H .P . ) The iron ore deposit at Iron Monarch, South Australia's main source of the Australian stee l industry's requirements .

(B .H .P . ) The charging side of the blast furnace plant at the B .H .P . steelworks, Newcastle . (Stewarts & Lloyds ) Shell forging plant . The bottle is sleeved over one of the forging machine mandrels .

( .Ste murt .s & Llord s Stages in the manufacture of an aircraft cylinder . Left to right : rough forging : rough machined forging, as removed from the lathe : individual rough machined cylinder barrel ; barrel after second rough machining operation ; the finished cylinder . Stewarts & Lloyd s carried out the first four stages.

RAW MATERIALS : STEEL 85 story will be told of how the machine shops of the steelworks helped to relieve what might otherwise have been a calamitous shortage of machine tools by making high-speed milling machines, planers, optical grinders , file-making machines and presses, ranging in capacity from a few hundre d to 3,000 tons, for forging gun barrels and aircraft parts . From the machine shop came electric colliery locomotives, ships ' boilers, marine engines and stem frames for ships . "No department of the steel works played a more vital role than the machine shop, and no order placed o n it was beyond the ingenuity of its engineers and tradesmen . Its contribution to solving the technical problems of armament production cannot be rate d too highly." 3

The fabricating industries, concerned as they were with producing steel in three fundamental shapes—wire, tubes and sheets—contributed many articles that could not be classified as munitions in the narrow sense of that word but which were nevertheless essential for the purposes of war . Wire drawing in Australia was pioneered by the Austral Nail Compan y which first began operating in Melbourne in 1911 . 4 Some years later it transferred to Newcastle . In 1921 a second firm, Rylands Brothers of Warrington, England, decided to establish in Newcastle works for makin g wire netting . The two firms merged and in 1925 were taken over by B.H.P. By 1939 the wire mill of Rylands Brothers (Australia) Pty Ltd was one of the most complete of its kind in the British Commonwealth , and second only to the parent mill in England . It had, in fact, developed wire-drawing machines that operated at two and a half times the speed s then developed overseas . Every item of plant and machinery used wa s designed by the firm and in .most instances manufactured in its ow n workshops. It is of interest to note in passing that this firm was, as fa r as can be discovered, the first in Australia to introduce the use of tungste n carbide in dies for wire drawing . Owing to its extreme hardness tungsten carbide enabled wire to be drawn at great speed and accuracy and wit h few interruptions since the die did not have to be repaired or replace d so often. Each year from 1939 to 1945 more than 60,000 tons of steel of different kinds were converted into wire, 90 per cent of which was used , directly or indirectly, for munitions or essential national services . Millions of steel pickets and thousands of tons of barbed wire and netting foun d their way into the defences of the Middle East, Malaya, Netherlands East Indies, New Guinea and other islands of the Pacific . Rylands made wire for mooring mines (11,000,000 feet), minesweeping (3,000,000 feet), for submarine and torpedo nets and harbour booms ; wire for kites to prevent dive bombing of ships ; 50,000,000 square yard s of wire netting for use in camouflage and the construction of roads ove r sand or quagmire; rust-resisting wire for hospital beds, troopships and

"Foundations of Steel—the B .H .P. Story" by Neville Wills; unpublished manuscript 1955. *F. Jenks, "Steel Wire " , Journal of the Royal Aust Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, New Series No . 145 (1947), p . 337 .

86 THE ROLE OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTR Y field stretchers . Thousands of tons of wire were also made for reinforcin g gun emplacements, for tracks, and bridges . They made wire for million s of bolts, rivets, nuts, screws, nails, buckles and clips . There was hardly a piece of equipment used by the Services that did not contain wire i n some form or other. Wire for springs formed an important part of Rylands' output. These ranged from heavy springs for tank shock absorbers to tiny steel springs for ammunition fuses. Fuse springs, ten thousand of which will fit into a large cigarette packet, are said to represent steel in its most costly form , enhanced to £750,000 a ton . Springs for aircraft engines—springs of the highest reliability—were important contributions to the aircraft industry . An unusual kind of wire made only after considerable technical difficulties had been overcome, was the specially drawn core wire, consisting of a core of hardened steel sheathed with successive layers of lead and nickel, a structure used to give great penetrating power to .303 armour- piercing bullets . Seven hundred tons of this wire, sufficient for 80,000,00 0 rounds, were made . As the pressure of war increased it became necessary to speed up methods of fabricating steel structures by welding the parts wherever possible instead of riveting them . This called for a greater output of the wire electrodes used in the welding industry ; wire made for this purpose amounted to as much as 30 tons a week . Nearly all forms of wire mentioned so far were made on the sam e machines and by essentially the same methods as were used before th e war. One task, however, which presented many new problems to Rylands and several associated industries was the manufacture of field telephon e cable. When substantial orders for cable which, on the outbreak of war , had been placed overseas, failed to materialise, Australia was oblige d to make her own telephone cable . There being no single organisation capable of doing the job, a conference of defence authorities and repre- sentatives of interested firms was held in Melbourne in October 1940 . It was decided to proceed immediately with the design and constructio n of the necessary plant and equipment for mass production . The project was to be shared by the following firms, whose roles were :

B.H .P. Newcastle Steelworks—to produce rods of the appropriate steel. Rylands Bros Ltd—to draw these rods into about 1,500,000 miles of wire, an d tin it. Metal Manufactures Pty Ltd, Port Kembla—to make and tin copper wire. Australian Wire Rope Works Pty Ltd—to strand the steel and copper wires . Olympic Tyre and Rubber Co Ltd, Footscray (Vic)—to cover, insulate, an d test the cable .

The firms had to start virtually from scratch, designing and building their own equipment, yet within only a few months their coordinated efforts resulted in the output of more than 1,000 miles of cable a week . The cable had to be capable of withstanding the wear and tear of the battlefront—it had to be tough, strong and flexible and resistant to deterio- ration by the weather, capable of withstanding wide ranges of temperature

RAW MATERIALS : STEEL 87 (54 degrees Fahrenheit below and 158 degrees Fahrenheit above freezin g point), and to possess the necessary electrical characteristics . The success of the whole scheme depended in large measure on the continued supply of extremely hard and accurate dies for the drawing process . Success was assured in January 1942 when B .H.P. succeeded for the first time in Aus- tralia in making cemented tungsten carbide, supplies of which could no longer be obtained from overseas . The stranding of seven tinned-steel wires and one copper wire, probably the most complex operation in the whol e of the work, was followed , by the final operation of providing a coating of rubber and cotton and paraffin wax . A total of 233,000 miles of completed cable (enough to reach fro m the earth to the moon) was made, at prices well below those in Great Britain and the United States . The whole project was one of man y instances of the pooling of resources and productive skills which charac- terised Australian industry during the war years . Another of the more specialised tasks undertaken by Rylands was the making of control cables for aircraft—the Beaufort bomber, Beaufighte r and others. This cable had to be light, flexible, but yet tough enough to withstand the terrific loads imposed on an aircraft's control surfaces durin g sharp manoeuvres in combat . Rylands provided a special fine wire o f very high tensile strength—from 130 to 170 tons per square inch accord- ing to size, which ranged from 0 .007 to 0.021 inches in diameter—for stranding into seven-strand cables . Australian Wire Rope Works Pty Ltd , which did the stranding, supplied some 3,220 miles of this cable . Another important job undertaken was the making of the Sommerfel d landing mat, a heavy netting designed to permit the rapid constructio n of air strips in the jungle and in advanced posts .

Tubes. There are two important methods of making steel tubes . One by a welding process (continuous weld) in which a length of hot steel stri p is passed through rolls and formed and welded into tubular section wit h the edges abutting so that they weld together. This method, adopted in Australia by Stewarts and Lloyds at Newcastle in 1934, served to provid e pipes up to three inches and a half in outside diameter for gas, water , steam and other services . Continuous-welded tubes found many structura l applications in war : in pipelines for carrying water across the North African and Australian deserts; in supporting camouflage nets ; for stretchers and bunk frames ; in jungle carts for carrying men and stores ; in portable structures used by the United States Army in the Pacific Island s as workshops and storage huts; and in the fabrication of bridges, pontoons and army huts . The engineering applications of welded tubing were limited by th e inherent weakness of the seam formed in the course of its manufacture ; for many purposes, particularly where high pressures and temperature s were concerned, seamless tubing was essential . It was therefore most for- tunate that in 1939, just before war broke out, Stewarts and Lloyds installed a "push-bench mill" for making seamless tubes, as this plant was

88 THE ROLE OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTR Y subsequently adapted to produce many wartime requirements . At the time of its installation the mill was one of the most up-to-date of its kind . Seamless tubing was made at Newcastle - in two steps. In the first , known as "piercing", a heated billet of square section was converted t o a thick-walled, short, hollow cylinder by hydraulic piercing; in the second, known as "elongating" , the thickness of the cylinder MANDREL wall was reduced, and th e bloom length greatly in- eorrLE. creased, by pushing it through a series of dies of gradually decreasing bore as is shown in the accompanying diagram .5 Instead of solid ring dies, the Newcastle bench employed cages using idl e rolls. The pushing was done by means of a rack and pinion, driven by a 1,050 h.p. electric motor. The whole process was highly mechanised and capable of high outputs. One of the earliest adaptations of the seamless tubing plant was to th e manufacture of 6-inch howitzer shells, which after some experimenting wer e produced with bores so accurately forged to size that they required n o internal machining. The experience gained in making relatively short, thick- walled, cylindrical forgings on the seamless tube plant was of great valu e when Stewarts and Lloyds began to operate their special shell-forging plant , which had been built to operate on the same principle as the push bench . They became one of the important shell-producing centres in the Common - wealth: their final tally included 3,000,000 25-pounder shells, 750,000 4.5-inch howitzer and 3 .7-inch anti-aircraft shells, and 100,00 0 6-inch howitzer shells . In the special shell plant Stewarts and Lloyds achieved rates of output quite as high as those of any other process . However it should not be concluded that the push bench or its modifica- tion was the only machinery used in forging shell bodies . The B.H.P. and Commonwealth Steel used the Baldwin Omes forging press, a unit importe d from the United States . The usefulness of the technique of making seamless tubes was not limite d to ammunition. Its applications to the manufacture of cylinder barrels fo r aircraft engines were vital to the aircraft industry. Barrels were at firs t manufactured by Commonwealth Steel by the standard forging method , using steel from their electric furnaces . Orders for barrels became so great that they were quite beyond this company's capacity . It was therefore decided to make the steel in the open-hearth furnaces in the Newcastle Steelworks and to develop a method for mass-producing the barrels . In solving this latter problem as they did, by adapting the push bench mill , Stewarts and Lloyds overcame what had become a serious bottleneck i n the manufacture and maintenance of aircraft engines .

6 J. Porteous and P . L . Cotton, " The Manufacture of Hot, Cold Seamless and Welded Steel Tubing", Proceedings of the A/sian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, No . 162 (1951), p. 217.

RAW MATERIALS : STEEL 89 The production, storage and transport of compressed gases—such a s oxygen, hydrogen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen and acetylene—was essential to many industries and to the Services, and necessitated the use of thousands of cylinders capable of withstanding high pressures . When gas cylinders became unprocurable from overseas, they were made in larg e quantities by Stewarts and Lloyds and by British Tube Mills (Adelaide) . Thick-walled tubing, capable of withstanding still higher pressures, was made on the push bench for the chemical industry, particularly for th e production of synthetic ammonia and methanol. Much of this tubing was cold-drawn to finished size by British Tube Mills . The great expansion of the shipbuilding industry created a considerable demand for steel tubes ; they were used for such items as stanchions, masts , cargo-handling derricks, and for ships' pipework. Pipes and tubes t o Admiralty requirements were used in the construction of destroyers an d corvettes. Water tube boilers for marine use, containing many miles o f seamless tubing, also made heavy demands on the seamless mill. The uses of seamless tubes were legion : either hot-finished, as they were at Stewarts and Lloyds, or cold-drawn, as they were at British Tube Mills,0 they formed essential and integral parts of aircraft, tanks, Bren gun carriers, and every type of army transport vehicle ; casings and mount- ings for machine-guns, trench mortars, mortar bombs, depth charges an d mines ; recoil cylinders for naval guns, and tubular forgings for torped o propeller shafts. Had it not been for the development of the technique of making seamless tubes at Newcastle, most of these articles would have had to be made by the lengthy and tedious process of boring from a solid bar. Altogether over 500,000 tons of continuous weld seamless tubin g were produced . Except for armour plate, referred to earlier in this chapter, the rollin g of steel sheets in the works of Lysaght's Pty Ltd continued with very little change in the peacetime technique . There was hardly a phase of war industry where steel sheets were not concerned . Lysaght's rolled about 400,000 tons of uncoated and 380,000 tons of galvanised steel sheets at their Newcastle and Port Kembla plants respectively, about 40,000 tons of which—sufficient for 137,000 Anderson air-raid shelters—wa s sent to the United Kingdom in the early part of the war . Chrome molybdenum steel sheets were rolled for the aircraft industry . Late in 1939 it became evident that the supply of hitherto imported silicon steel sheet s for transformers, electric motors and generators would become restricted and eventually cease . These sheets were extremely difficult to manufacture successfully and production had been restricted previously to a few of the world's leading sheet and steel manufacturers . With the aid of information provided by the English works of John Lysaght Ltd, manufactur e of motor grades was begun in 1940 and transformer grades in 1941 . Another form of steel sheet, though it is not usually described as such- cold-rolled strip made by the Newcastle steelworks—played an important

9 British Tube Mills (S . Aust) used as their raw materials the hot-rolled tubes from Stewarts and Lloyds.

90 THE ROLE OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTR Y part in the manufacture of many different kinds of munitions. Approxi- mately 30,000 tons of cold-rolled strip up to 12 inches in width and ranging in thickness from 0 .187 to 0.010 inch, were used for such widely different articles as military buttons, toe and heel plates for militar y boots, rifle and machine-gun magazines and tail fins for aerial bombs . All these articles of steel, and hosts of others besides, were made possible by the knowledge and resourcefulness of engineers and metallurgists and by the skill and patience of thousands of men and women working against time and circumstances to produce the material which, essentia l in peace, was the country's life-blood in war . Together they achieved things which even the most optimistic would scarcely have dared to predic t in 1939.