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

allowing nothing to get in the way of that single goal: more aircraft. Red
tape was dispensed with; so too were niceties. If there was a bottleneck
anywhere, a senior member of MAP would be sent to the relevant factory
and whatever the problem – such as mismanagement, lack of workers,
shortage of parts – it would be assessed and resolved with extreme haste
and the bottleneck cleared. He got rid of Lord Nuffield, whom he
considered complacent and too full of his own importance, and sent Sir
Richard Fairey, the eminent aircraft designer, up to the new specially built
shadow factory at Castle Bromwich to assess why it was still not operating
effectively nearly two years after building work had begun. Fairey found
mismanagement was rife, that the workforce was slack, undisciplined and
often poorly trained, and that many of the machine tools were the wrong
ones for the job of building Spitfires. Paperwork was non-existent. The
place was, frankly, a shambles. Vickers took over the running of the factory
from Nuffield and matters soon began to improve. There would be no more
slackness, not at Castle Bromwich, nor at any other factory working for
MAP: workers were expected to toil seven days a week with a disregard for
all labour regulations. That was how Beaverbrook worked himself and he
expected everyone else to do the same. It was a wonder what could be
achieved when everyone involved was focused entirely on the main task in
hand.
But while new production figures were impressive, so too were those of
repaired aircraft. Repair and salvage of aircraft had been outsourced from
the RAF and was run by the Civilian Repair Organization (CRO), headed
by Lord Nuffield and managed by Morris Motors. Needless to say, Nuffield
went as soon as the Ministry of Aircraft Production took over. The principle
of the system was a good one, with a chain of Civilian Repair Units, which
were major repair workshops, but also depots at airfields, training schools
and other warehouses.
Beaverbrook took the existing set-up but quickly made a number of
changes. Before, aircraft damage had been categorized: 1, repairable by
squadron; 2, repairable by contractor or at depot; or 3, recommended for
parts salvage. Beaverbrook now re-categorized damage as 4, 5 or 6.
Category 4 applied to aircraft that could be repaired within thirty-six hours.
Category 5 was given to those aircraft safe to fly lightly, and which became
known as ‘fly-in’ repairs; if a category 5 aircraft was repairable within
twenty-four hours, for example, then the pilot could wait and fly it back.