Defence Industries Limited (DIL) was a subsidiary of Canadian Industries Limited (C-I-L), founded in 1939 to manufacture munitions for use in World War II. The company operated in number of locations in Canada, in the provinces of Ontario, Quebec, and Manitoba. Its Pickering Works shell-filling plant, along with nearby housing, grew into the town of Ajax. [1]
Canadian Industries Limited (C-I-L) created subsidiary Defence Industries Limited (DIL) to manufacture munitions in September 1939, and arranged a contract with the Canadian government to operate two small plants which manufactured TNT and cordite. [2]
In 1940 the Canadian government's Department of Munitions and Supply contracted DIL to refurbish the defunct British Munitions factory in Verdun, Quebec, for the manufacture of munitions. The plant began operations in May 1941. [2] By 1943 the company had constructed about 40 more buildings at the site.
In 1941 DIL also set up a facility in Windsor, Ontario, to manufacture carbamite, a component of cordite; [3] other explosive components were manufactured in Beloeil and Shawinigan, Quebec; Nobel, Ontario; and Winnipeg, Manitoba.
DIL set up facilities in St. Paul l'Hermite and Ste Thérèse, Quebec, to fill shells with explosives. [2]
The company purchased 3,000 acres of farmland in Pickering Township, Ontario, for the purpose of building Pickering Works, a large munitions factory. [4] Construction began, and the DIL plant was opened in 1941. [5] It employed about 9,000 people, including about 7,000 women, and was the largest munitions production factory in the British Empire. [6] By the end of the war, the workers had filled more than 40 million percussion caps, detonators, bombs, anti-tank mines, armour-piercing and anti-aircraft shells. [7] [8] Although the houses built for the DIL employees were intended to be temporary, after the war the occupants petitioned to buy them, and, after permanent foundations were built, the homes became part of a new town, which was named Ajax after HMS Ajax (22), a light cruiser of the Royal Navy during World War II. [9]
DIL's Montreal and Brownsburg plants made small arms. In Cornwall the company manufactured mustard gas. [2]
As World War II drew to a close, most of the DIL plants were shut down. DIL was contracted by the federal government to co-ordinate the construction and operation of Chalk River Laboratories, a pilot plant for the production of plutonium using heavy water as a moderator, which was being built in northern Ontario as part of the Manhattan Project. Temporary houses from DIL's plant in the town of Nobel, Ontario were moved to the area, creating a new town, Deep River, to house the workers. [10]
In 1947, operation of the partially completed facility was taken over by the National Research Council; a number of DIL employees were hired by the NRC to provide continuity in the process. DIL continued to oversee construction in progress. [11]
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Cordite is a family of smokeless propellants developed and produced in Britain since 1889 to replace black powder as a military firearm propellant. Like modern gunpowder, cordite is classified as a low explosive because of its slow burning rates and consequently low brisance. These produce a subsonic deflagration wave rather than the supersonic detonation wave produced by brisants, or high explosives. The hot gases produced by burning gunpowder or cordite generate sufficient pressure to propel a bullet or shell to its target, but not so quickly as to routinely destroy the barrel of the gun.
Amatol is a highly explosive material made from a mixture of TNT and ammonium nitrate. The British name originates from the words ammonium and toluene. Similar mixtures were known as Schneiderite in France. Amatol was used extensively during World War I and World War II, typically as an explosive in military weapons such as aircraft bombs, shells, depth charges, and naval mines. It was eventually replaced with alternative explosives such as Composition B, Torpex, and Tritonal.
A shell, in a military context, is a projectile whose payload contains an explosive, incendiary, or other chemical filling. Originally it was called a bombshell, but "shell" has come to be unambiguous in a military context. A shell can hold a tracer.
Nobel is a village on the shores of Parry Sound, Ontario, Canada. It is in the Municipality of McDougall in the District of Parry Sound. The community is named after Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite.
The Shell Crisis of 1915 was a shortage of artillery shells on the front lines in the First World War that led to a political crisis in the United Kingdom. Previous military experience led to an over-reliance on shrapnel to attack infantry in the open, which was negated by the resort to trench warfare, for which high-explosive shell were better suited. At the start of the war there was a revolution in doctrine: instead of the idea that artillery was a useful support for infantry attacks, the new doctrine held that heavy guns alone would control the battlefield. Because of the stable lines on the Western Front, it was easy to build railway lines that delivered all the shells the factories could produce. The 'shell scandal' emerged in 1915 because the high rate of fire over a long period was not anticipated and the stock of shells became depleted. The inciting incident was the disastrous Battle of Aubers, which reportedly had been stymied by a lack of shells.
An explosive ROF was a UK government-owned Royal Ordnance Factory (ROF), which specialised in manufacturing explosives during and after World War II. In World War I, the name used in the UK for government-owned explosives factories was National Explosives Factory; the cordite factory at Gretna was known as HM Factory, Gretna.
Royal Ordnance Factories (ROFs) were munitions factories run by the UK government during and after the Second World War. The three main types of factories were engineering, filling and explosives, and these were dispersed across the country for security reasons. ROFs were the responsibility of the Ministry of Supply and later the Ministry of Defence until privatisation in 1987.
A filling factory was a manufacturing plant that specialised in filling various munitions, such as bombs, shells, cartridges, pyrotechnics, and screening smokes. In the United Kingdom, during both world wars of the 20th century, the majority of the employees were women.
Royal Ordnance Factory (ROF) Elstow was one of sixteen UK Ministry of Supply, World War II, Filling Factories. It was a medium-sized filling factory, Filling Factory No. 16, which filled and packed munitions. It was located south of the town of Bedford, between the villages of Elstow and Wilstead in Bedfordshire. It was bounded on the northeast by the A6 and on the west by a railway line. Hostels were built nearby to accommodate the workers who were mostly female.
Canadian Industries Limited, also known as C-I-L, is a Canadian chemicals manufacturer. Products include paints, fertilizers and pesticides, and explosives. It was formed in 1910 by the merger of five Canadian explosives companies. It was until recently a subsidiary of Imperial Chemical Industries until ICI was purchased by AkzoNobel.
The National Shell Filling Factory, Chilwell, was a World War I United Kingdom Government-owned explosives filling factory. Its formal title was National Filling Factory No. 6. It was located near Chilwell, at that time a village, in Nottinghamshire on the main road from Nottingham to Ashby de la Zouch. During the Great War it filled some 19 million shells with high explosives.
The Imperial Munitions Board (IMB) was the Canadian branch of the British Ministry of Munitions, set up in Canada under the chairmanship of Joseph Wesley Flavelle. It was formed by the British War Cabinet to alleviate the Shell Crisis of 1915 during the First World War. The Board was mandated to arrange for the manufacture of war materials in Canada on behalf of the British government.
The Canary Girls were British women who worked in munitions manufacturing trinitrotoluene (TNT) shells during the First World War (1914–1918). The nickname arose because exposure to TNT is toxic, and repeated exposure can turn the skin an orange-yellow colour reminiscent of the plumage of a canary.
The Small Arms Ammunition Factories (SAAF) were ammunition manufacturing plants run by the Australian government. Nearly all of their production was for domestic use by their military, the police forces, and government-appointed agents.
National Filling Factory, Banbury, officially called National Filling Factory No. 9. was a British Ministry of Munitions filling factory, constructed during World War I and located in Banbury, Oxfordshire. The production of filled shells began in April 1916 and ended when the factory closed in 1924
Defence Explosive Factory Maribyrnong is a heritage-listed military installation and former munitions factory at Cordite Avenue, Maribyrnong, Victoria, Australia. It was added to the Australian Commonwealth Heritage List on 22 June 2004.
The memorial to munitions workers of National Filling Factory No.6, Chilwell is a Grade II listed building on the north side of Chetwynd Road inside Chetwynd Barracks, in Chilwell, near Nottingham. It commemorates the workers who died in accidents at National Shell Filling Factory, Chilwell during the First World War, particularly the large explosion on 1 July 1918. The large free-standing pyramidal monument, enclosed by chains carried on shell casings, was unveiled in 1919 and became a Grade II listed building in 1987.
The General Engineering Company of Ontario was a munitions plant located in Scarborough, Toronto, and owned by the Government of Canada. Between July 1941 to July 1945, GECO filled more than 256 million units of ammunition for the Government of Canada. GECO is named after its builder and operator, General Engineering Company (Canada) Limited. The Scarborough GECO munitions plant was also known as "Project No. 24", and "Scarboro". It spanned 172 buildings. Following the Second World War, some of the buildings were used for emergency housing.
Defence Industries Limited (DIL) Pickering Works was a munitions plant owned by the Government of Canada and operated by DIL during 1941–1945, in the Pickering Township of Ontario. The unincorporated community that developed around the plant was named Ajax in honour of the British warship Ajax, and evolved into the town of Ajax, Ontario.
The town of Ajax, Ontario in Canada evolved out of the Defence Industries Limited Pickering Works munitions plant built during the World War II, but its history begins much earlier.