It is midnight in Britain. The sky is dark and the moon
rides high. The casual observer might be forgiven for
thinking that all Britain was asleep.

But behind the blacked-out windows of the factories,
thousands of workers turn night into day, refusing to
allow darkness to interfere with the production of
arms and ammunition.

Behind those blacked-out windows there is continuous
activity . . . the throb of machines . . . the sharp flight
of sparks . . . the undercurrent of hammering as
more, and yet more instruments of war are completed.
On the roads, on the railways ... all over this
darkened land beneath the night sky where the pure
white fingers of the searchlights flicker there are men
and women in their thousands working as if it
were broad day.

This is a glimpse of the night fighters of Britain. Not
only of the aircraft which range the skies above, but
of the men and women who, by their courage and
determination, hit back each night at the enemy as
surely as if they had their place in a night barrage
on the battlefield.All through the night the bomb and tank factories work at full pressure.Women work shoulder to shoulder with men
throughout the long watches of the night. They
stand up to the work well. One factory inspector
said of them :

“They take better care of themselves than men.
One of the chief problems of night shifts is the worker
who will not take his proper sleep by day	now,

except when they have families to look after, women
don’t do that. Even when they have shopping to do
they seem to get it over quickly and get in a full
eight hours sleep.”

The spirit of a Britain with only one idea in
view . . . Victory ... is typified by these women
night workers. They shirk no responsibilities and
tackle the heaviest job with a light heart. Long before
conscription for women was made law, thousands of
housewives and mothers deliberately chose work in
aircraft factories as their contribution to the war
effort, so that, while our bombers raid Germany, they
could assemble an ever-increasing number of machines
to take the place of those which are lost and achieve
even greater air superiority in the future.

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A year ago it was announced by Mr. Macmillan in the

House of Commons that all explosive factories were

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working on a three eight-hour shift basis.

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Both m-en and women are willing to make the

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sacrifices that night work entails so that never again
shall an Allied advance be held up through lack of
ammunition. During the past year, over 40,000 big guns
were produced and equipped with 25,000,000 shells.

How willing Britain’s workers are is proved by the
fact that in December 1941, one million more men
alone were employed on munition work than at the
end of the 1914-1918 war !

Women were not .left far behind. Although only one
and a half million women come under the compulsory
National Service Act, six and a half million women are
already in industry and the armed forces, and over
a quarter of a million more have volunteered for
part-time work in factories.

Many workers, both men and women, choose the
night shift in preference to the day, and in some
cases output is even higher at night.All through the night shells mount up on the line; Britain's arms works never sleep.The Battle of the Atlantic goes on and is joined by
the Battle of the Murmansk convoys and the Battle
of the Mediterranean.

Shipping is the life blood of Britain. Shipping losses
must be made good. Shipping figures must be
increased. Most shipbuilding yards in this country
now work right through the night, the workers so
absorbed in their job that they are often heedless
of the throb of enemy aircraft in the night skies
overhead. Only danger of immediate attack causes
the internal air-raid siren to wail. Only then is the
clang of the shipyards temporarily silenced.

Acetylene welding . . . riveting ... all shipbuilding
jobs are tough. Robot-like uniform is worn in many
cases to protect the body from fire; but these
workers know that every rivet driven into place is
another nail in Hitler’s coffin. They have the stamina
for the job and the will to win, an unbeatable
combination.’Buses are as essential an armament of war as ships
and tanks.

Without public transport, workers would be unable
to reach outlying factories.

In the hands of two hundred and ninety-seven men
and one hundred and thirty-four women, lies the
maintenance and repair of over a thousand ’buses in
the Birmingham area. These night workers ensure
that at no time shall a shortage of essential transport
be responsible for holding up the maximum war
effort of the district.

All through the night the highways and byways of
Britain shake to the rumbling of lorries carrying
supplies to the war factories and the docks in a
never-ending stream.

Night driving under wartime conditions is exacting.
The masked headlights give only a pencil of light and
in bad weather the visibility is almost nil. * But in
spite of storm or fog the night drivers carry on.All through the night the big transport lorries thunder along the darkened highways and their repair shops never shut

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Railways, too, play their part on the midnight stage.
The worst air raids have proved powerless to daunt
the courage of the men who deliver the goods at
night. During one of the fiercest night raids a bomb
dropped just ahead of the railway engine opposite,
but thanks to the courage and foresight of the driver
and fireman, no lives were lost. After only a few
hours the bomb crater was filled in, the tracks

repaired and the engine was on its way.

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And so to the docks, where under screened lightsjn the
open and amid the clatter of winches and the squeak
of cranes, a large proportion of Britain’s war pro-
duction is loaded for the war fronts overseas.

When a convoy is due to leave, dock hands work on
through the night, loading the holds of merchant ships
prior to a perilous journey. Quietly, the grey ships
nose their way into the darkened waters. By dawn
they will be away and another chapter of the night
will have been written.



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Linking up the factories with the Royal Air Force and
Royal Artillery, stand the men of the Royal Observer
Corps. With their eyes on the star-speckled sky
they watch nightly for enemy bombers so that they
may give ample warning to the factory workers who
toil through the night; to the night fighter squadrons
who are waiting to intercept the raiders, and to the
anti-aircraft and searchlight batteries who stand ready
to shoot the Luftwaffe from the skies.

Four and a half million firewatchers are responsible
for guarding the factories and the homes of the night
workers. They are highly trained men and women
who cope with German incendiary bombs swiftly
and efficiently. Thanks to these men and women,
Britain will never burn.

Their ranks are being greatly increased by the
Government Order making firewatching compulsory
for most civilian men and women.

Already, firewatchers have smothered millions of
incendiary bombs designed to raze British towns and
villages to the ground.Night after night throughout the year, in rain, in fog
and in snow, the night fighter pilots of the Royal Air
Force wait near their machines for the call that will
send them into the black skies to seek out the enemy
raiders and destroy them.

From the time of the warning, it is only a matter of
seconds before these night fighter pilots are climbing
the skies, hot on the tail of yet another German pilot
who underestimates the speed and determination
of our fighters.

The reverse side of the Royal Air Force night picture
is painted by the bomber pilots who set off at dusk
in their hundreds—sometimes a thousand at a time—to
bomb German industries and hamper production.

As dawn breaks over war-torn Britain the bombers
return to their base from a raid, navigation lights
winking with satisfaction at yet another job well done.All through the night the fighter pilots stand ready and the great bomber airfields are busy.





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m wBacking up the night fighter aircraft of this island

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stand the antiaircraft gunners, their guns pointing

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at the skies, their predictors and range finders

at the alert.







Many mixed ack-ack batteries are now in operation,
the girls of the A.T.S. often doing everything except
actually firing the guns.

A.T.S. girls already have Nazi planes to their 0
credit and are directly responsible for the unwilling
German announcement that “ some of our aircraft
failed to return.”

In the underground shelters of the cities, when

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enemy bombers come, day workers take refuge from

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the blitz apd are looked after by night-working
members of the Women’s Voluntary Service.

Usually these members of the W.V.S. are housewives
with full daytime responsibilities, who , cheerfully
sacrifice a night’s sleep when the occasion demands.
All members of the W.V.S. are unpaid volunteers.All through the night anti-aircraft defences are on the alert and the shelter wardens and attendants are ready.The telephone exchange never sleeps, and during a
heavy raid the operators wear their tin hats and carry
on—the heart of the great artery system of telephonic
communication throughout the country. When enemy
bombers are overhead, tremendous strain is put upon
the telephone operators. Priority calls pour into the
exchange and the girls have to strain every nerve on
the job. Often, during a blitz, telephonic communi-
cation is destroyed and alternate circuits have to
be brought into use.

No praise can be too great for the National Fire
Service men and women. Times without number they
have saved British towns from destruction. Working
fearlessly under almost impossible conditions, they
man their hoses. Time and time again the National
Fire Service have won the battle against Hitler’s fire
raids. They have saved historic buildings and humble
homes, and the number of awards made need only to
be seen to prove how gallantly they have behaved.



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All through the night the telephone wires speed production and Britain's firemen man their posts.At the height of Britain’s worst blitz period, the men
of the stretcher parties proved their worth. There
are many civilians to-day who owe their very lives to
the fearless, cool courage of these men who fight by
night. Many names of stretcher-party men are
inscribed on the Roll of Glory.

On many—too many occasions—hospitals have been a
target for Nazi bombs. It is not always possible to
move all the patients to a place of shelter but there
has never been a lack of volunteers among the nurses
on night duty to stand by and comfort the .bedridden
patients who have to face the brunt of the bombers’
attack on their unprotected wards.

Truly, these night-fighting nurses typify the courage
and determination which is the motif of life in
Britain to-day.