In article , Krztalizer
writes

Does anybody know where these pickle barrels came from? Were they Lend
Lease? AFAIK we didn't make pickle barrels in the UK at that time, and
I'm not sure if we do now. You can't get the wood, you know

Of course, the Mosquito figured into all of this. Pickle barrels had been
coopered in the UK for many dozens of years in the run up to the "disagreement
among cousins" (as Goebbels described the conflict between Britain and
Germany). During that rather spirited disagreement, the de Havilland company
created the aerial equivelent of a grand piano in its DH 98, and this new
wooden wonder required every barrel shaper, clog carver, and cabinet finisher
in the realm to bend their oars in production of the Mosquito.

But what of the pickle barrel? Production in the UK ceased abruptly with the
first order to DH - an immediate vaccum was created, a wartime critical
shortage in pickle barrels. Just another damned inconvenience of the war.
Even with the required coupons, there was simply no guarantee a proper pickle
barrel could be found.

The song 'Roll out the barrel' was thought by many researchers to be a
metaphor for the Great Lamentations that took place in the traditional
pickle barrel making towns of Lancashire throughout 1941.

Well, you all are familiar with the story by now. While touring the great
pickel barrel factories that once lined the Mississippi, Japanese
future-Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto could only marvel at America's pickle barrel
production capability. "We're doomed", he muttered. (In Japanese, of course.)
Later he was able to use his acquired knowledge - one captured JN 25 message,
decoded in the days prior to Pearl Harbor, included the exact locations of each
of the pickle barrels on board the Oklahoma and the Arizona - only luck and a
Seaman named Mojo Nixon kept the Nevada from suffering a similar fate; he is
widely credited with having moved the Nevada's pickle barrel to the dock
alongside the battleship, so he could polish it on the early morning of
December 7th, 19 Fo-tee-won. Tragically... well.. you know.

All of this is pickle barrel history, known by most school children.

But not as well documented as it should be. I suggest you undertake a
short monograph on the subject - perhaps Robert Bailey could do the
illustrations? 'Two Minutes to Tea Break' could show a team of barrel
makers clock-watching...

The mystery of the English wartime pickle barrels is solved by checking the
makers mark on the bottom of one of the few wartime survivors - on the Imperial
War Museum's pickle barrel, "Old Smellysides", all of the coopers signed their
names as it was the 5,000th pickle barrel to roll off the production line at
the Cape Girardeau plant. That makers mark, faded by decades of service and
overpolishing, is clearly the mark of Henry Ford. Perhaps most famous for his
innovation in pickle barrel production, he earned the nickname 'the American
Coopernicus'.

Ouch!

Yes, of course they were lend-lease. What a ridiculous thing to say.

No, not all - a point of clarification is required here. It is not
generally known that of the ten percent of conscripts who were diverted
to the coal mines by Earnest Bevin, a full five percent of these were in
turn diverted to the pickle barrel shadow factories. The lend-lease
barrels did of course far outnumber domestic production, the only issues
being the difficulty in cannibalising parts so that the Civilian Repair
Organisation could rebuild damaged ones. (The difference between the US
inch and the English inch made stave interchangeability difficult at
times.) And again, English hand-made vs US machine produced brought the
usual debates about whether the English staves exhibited a proper
hyperbolic profile...

v/r
Gordon
====(A+C====
USN SAR

An LZ is a place you want to land, not stay.

Cheers,

Dave

--
Dave Eadsforth