History of MSM continued...1947-1957
After the war, in the late 1940’s much aircraft work disappeared, and amongst many other programmes, MSM transferred to manufacturing motor car trafficators for the Lucas Company in Burnley. These were soon to be replaced by the current flashing indicators we still see today, but we certainly made many thousands of “Lucas Lollipops” . These were projection welded levers which pushed the trafficator arms out of the vehicle door pillars to indicate a change of direction. The Lucas Gas Turbine Company also asked us to help with the welding of Nickel Alloys for the combustion chambers of their new jet engines, together with spot welding the aluminium alloy shrouds which surrounded the hot jet pipes. The new propulsion technique and it’s associated sheet metal fabrications would soon be desperately needed for our military aeroplanes in the Korean conflict of the early ‘50’s, and MSM was proud to manufacture these very special components.
AVROs were busy developing the magnificent Vulcan Bomber, for which we produced many assemblies such as aluminium Navigators Tables and tubular seats, it’s splendid Air Intakes and many other ducts in both light alloys and stainless steels. Towards the end of the fifties, when the Vulcan and Victors presented a Nuclear Deterrant to the Soviet Powers, MSM made a series of stainless steel fuel pipes for the HTP Powered Blue Steel Stand Off Weapon, which was slung underneath the aeroplane. We also produced a number of Telemetry Tanks during the Weapon Development stages to control the flight path and attitude of the Blue Steel once it had been launched. It seems the Vulcan was a very successful deterrent, as the weapon was only ever launched under trial testing!
English Electric Canberras & Glosters Meteors and Javelins also contained many MSM Fabrications such as Oil Tanks and the associated Pipework, Jet Pipes and Blankets, as well as the external components such as Dive Brakes and wing & tail trailing edges including ailerons & elevators.
During the fifties we also made winch assemblies for the Blackburn Beverley, fuel & water tanks for the AVRO Shackleton, together with many small components for the Hawker Hunter, meanwhile keeping our spread of work in the Textile Industry to include glass fibre dyehouse carts and trolleys, not to mention a “one off” batch of Bumpy Cars for the Blackpool Pleasure Beach! Much later in our history, we were pleased to have had experience in composite manufacture some fifty years ago, as the Aerospace Industry became vitally interested in Carbon Reinforced Plastics for some of today’s aeroplanes. But once more, THAT is another story!