Memories of Working on the Dambuster's Bomb

My mother, Winne Murfitt (nee McCabe). At the start of WW2 Winnie McCabe was 19 years old. Soon girls had a choice whether to join the ATS, WAF, Land Army, or Munitions works and Winnie chose Munitions. She went to work at the Lainchbury's factory at Kingham, Oxfordshire. Lainchbury's was a small agricultural engineering company before the war employing about 50 people. She learned how to use a lathe and machine metal parts for munitions.

I've brought in a dummy munition that belonged to my Mum. The workers used to take these home with them and use them as doorstops.
She said "I was proud to be put on a special piece of work that was very hush-hush. There were only two of us chosen to do this work. There was a huge piece of steel that was lifted on and off the lathe by a crane. We hadn't got a clue what we were working on until the day of the Dambusters raid, May 17 1943, when our boss came to tell us that we had been making parts for the Dambusters bomb (Upkeep). I wasn't excited about it at the time as we had lost so many of our brave young men in those Lancasters during the raid."

For many years we had no idea about the projectiles used in the Dambusters raid but my mother had a visit from a historian trying to find a lost diary from the Second World War. He was fascinated by my mother's story and did quite a bit of research. He confirmed the Dambusters story and that the dummy munitions object was a projectile head used by a 2-inch UP target rocket.

Winnie was very proud of her work and was disappointed that most women working in munitions during the war were not as recognised as in other areas of service, like the ATS, WAF, etc. She talked about it a lot after the war to Terry. I don't think anything was embellished, I found everything she told me was true based on my research.