The Story of 'The Angels'

                   

 The Aycliffe Royal Ordnance Factory, ROF 59, (1941-1945)

The huge munitions factory employed some 17,000 workers, mostly women, between 1941 and 1945 and was an extremely important part of the country's war effort.

The work was highly dangerous as the women filled bullets and bombs for the boys in the battlefield. There were a number of serious and fatal explosions, with eight women being killed in one blast.

Few official records of these accidents exist, perhaps because of the secrecy surrounding the plant, which was infiltrated by several German spies during the War.

The Aycliffe factory, ROF 59, was mainly a filling and assembly plant, putting powder into shells and bullets, assembling detonators and fuses.

Many of the component parts were manufactured in other places in the UK and shipped to Aycliffe by rail.

Some of the ammunition casings were manufactured at another nearby ROF at Spennymoor, County Durham.  The Spennymoor ammunition was then filled at ROF Aycliffe. Spennymoor is known to have produced .303 cartridges in: Ball Mk 7 and 8Z, Blank L Mk 5, Incendiary B Mk 6, B Mk 6Z, B Mk 7 and B Mk 7Z.  According to a book published in the late 1940s by HMSO, written by Ian Hay, detailing the history of the Wartime ROFs, Aycliffe produced some 700,000,000 (700 Million!) bullets during it's period of operation.

The work was extremely repetitive, fragmented and boring, but high levels of companionship existed amongst the women as they risked their lives on a daily basis filling the bombs and bullets.

Many of the women started work at 18, not having experienced factory work before, but the average age at the factory was 34. Over 1,000 of the 17,000 workers were aged over 50.

Workers were supposed to be under the age of 50 to work at the factory, but many lied about their age.