The Battle of Britain Five Months That Changed History, May—October 1940 by James Holland (z-lib.org).epub

accept the job, which was officially announced two days later. On 17 May,
the new Ministry of Aircraft Production, with a fanfare of very welcome
publicity, came into being. It helped create the sense that something
dramatic and dynamic was happening; that Churchill was immediately
ringing the changes.
And so he was. It was true that shadow factories had already been set
up; it was also true that back in April 1938 the Air Ministry had created a
Supply Committee, which had effectively the same remit as the new
Ministry of Aircraft Production. At the same time the post of Air Member
for Research and Development (AMRD) had also been created with much
the same responsibilities as the new minister. And it is also true that the
Supply Committee had very sensibly been, since August the previous year,
building up stocks of Swedish iron and steel, Perspex sheeting and other
key aircraft materials. Furthermore, the Government’s announcement of
‘Scheme L’ in April 1938, its latest programme for aircraft production, had
been conceived without regard to financial limitations, the like of which
had stymied production up to that point. In other words, no matter what it
cost, the 12,000 aircraft planned in the scheme were to be built by the
spring of 1940.
While these changes all made a huge difference, however, it was an
altogether different kettle of fish bringing someone like Beaverbrook in at
the top and unshackled from the Air Ministry, most of whose members still
favoured the bomber as the best means of defence rather than the fighter.
Beaverbrook wasted no time in going to see Dowding and immediately told
him quite emphatically that his priority was to build aircraft for what was
needed right now, in Fighter Command, to get Britain out of its immediate
jam, rather than to continue with plans for the future. The two would speak
every day. Beaverbrook would ask Dowding what he needed and would
listen carefully to the answer. Whenever Dowding visited him, Beaverbrook
would always personally walk him out of the Ministry building to his car
below. The only other person he showed such attention to was Churchill.
On the 15th, Beaverbrook, in discussion with Sir Charles Craven, one of
the old AMPD department men to remain in the new ministry, and the Air
Ministry, agreed that production should be concentrated on five types of
aircraft only, with immediate effect: the Hurricane and Spitfire, the
Blenheim, and the Whitley and Hampden bombers. Nothing was to stand in
the way of the maximum production of these types. Financial