Rochester 1943 - 1947

1943 March of this year saw the takeover of Shorts by the government under the ‘guidance’ of Stafford Cripps and the compulsory acquisition was completed when the directors of the Company were ‘invited’ to resign. They all did so! 

1946 In June, more than five thousand workers marched through the Medway towns in the biggest industrial demonstration Kent had ever seen. The protest was against the proposal of a complete move of Shorts to Belfast.

Medway was in crisis! Short Brothers, that during the turmoil of World War II had employed, at its’ peak, twelve thousand men and women was now scheduled to close down the Rochester factories and all the production was to move to Belfast.

1947 By this time all the wartime factories had closed down and the move was completed. Some workers moved with the Company, many stayed in Rochester, some joined the Royal Air Force and some sought other employment in the Medway area. 

The 20th Century riverside site now shows little connection to the mighty Seaplane Works aside from a crumbling slipway/launching ramp outside where Number 18 shed once stood. New housing and a grassy bank cover the riverside where aviation history was once made and where thousands of men and women made their living. 

A ‘forgotten’ gem, still in good order, is the three or four miles of tunnels built by Oswald with no expense spared, without planning permission, when he, like many other industrialists saw that war with Germany was on the ‘horizon’.