Baker Perkins Historical Society - Virtual Books

BAKER PERKINS AT WAR

Conclusions

The performance of Baker Perkins during both world wars, as described in the first half of this "book" demonstrates that a people-orientated and humanitarian business can, when provoked, perform at a world class level in a new environment. There are few environments more hostile than the theatre of war.

Examples of Baker Perkins using its inherent strengths during WW2 include:

Use of the company's great wealth of food process knowhow culminating in the mobile bakery.
Use of its production knowhow to achieve a significant reduction in the time, complexity and cost of making the famous 25-pounder field gun.
Frequent clashes with government inspectors which demonstrated the company's superior skill in design and manufacture for performance.

Two statements stand out from A.I. Baker's book - "Wartime at Baker Perkins"

"Now we are making guns – then more guns – then bigger and better and more and more guns"- A fierce determination to defend Britain's way of life?
"There was, however, one important item of war-making equipment - not in itself an engine of destruction - in which our own particular genius was applied, viz., in the design and manufacture of the Mobile Bakery - The capability to use existing technology and knowhow to solve new problems?

That the company succeeded in achieving a balance between these two, despite the enormous pressures that the war imposed, is plain to see.

It is impossible to overestimate the importance of the breakthrough in developing a fully automatic bread plant. It is said that if Johnny Pointon or John Callow were able to visit one of today's process engineering companies producing the very latest machinery, he would instantly recognise the similarity with the solutions they arrived at in the opening days of the twentieth century - more than one hundred years ago. Perhaps the same could be said about Paul Pfleiderer and mixing, Angier and Loftus Perkins and baking; and, surely, the Baker brothers and F.C. Ihlee would recognise how much ahead of their time was their approach to motivating the workforce?

Is it wrong - while we bask in the glories of the past - to wish that there existed a Company of Baker Perkins Mobile Bakeries on call ready to be sent to the increasing number of trouble spots - both man-made and "natural" - around the world? Does our past teach us nothing?

A large amount of relevant material exists on the internet; for example, inserting "Mobile Bakeries in World War II" into Google yields a significant haul, but you might find that including "RASC" in your search brings many highly detailed personal stories.

It is not acceptable simply to copy large chunks of text (unless attributed), nor resort to elegant précis. This applies in particularly to the information in Augustus Muir's 'The History of Baker Perkins'. It was tempting to empty into this website, most of Muir's Chapter 20, in which a great deal of detail about production engineering developments at Westwood Works during WW2 may be found. We have resisted that temptation and suggest that copies of this volume are readily available on the second hand market. It is intended to make contact with the authors of some of the more interesting and informative memories we have come across whilst compiling this project to seek permission to at least link this website with theirs. It is hoped that this exercise will bear fruit in the near future.

Last Words

In conclusion, let us return to the first thought articulated in our "Preface" above. The "tree" that became Baker Perkins was fed by many "roots", the company being fortunate in its rich heritage of very strong-minded men shaping the future of the company; men who were concerned for the lot of their fellow men who drove themselves to find solutions to seemingly intractable problems and in doing so changed the lives of millions of people, creating the keystones of food processing technology recognisable to this day.

Dick Preston September 2015

Epilogue

Back to Contents