East Lancashire Road, Liverpool
With the outbreak of WWII Napier needed to expand its engine production facilities as part of the war effort. Acton Vale to the west of London was considered to be a vulnerable site so, by the end of October 1939, the decision was made to build a shadow factory on the East Lancashire Road on the outskirts of Liverpool.
In 1940 some essential engineering staff were moved from Acton Works to Liverpool to oversee the building and equipping of the new machine shops, assembly areas and test facilities. All told the floor area covered over 1 million square feet and was ready for production by the end of 1941 employing a freshly trained precision-engineering trained workforce.
The first fully tested Napier Sabre II engine to emerge from Liverpool Works was delivered in February 1942. This was only 13 months after Acton’s own first production Sabre II. By 1942 the total DNS workforce exceeded 10,000.
Post war the now English Electric owned Liverpool site became the main production factory. In 1950 the site took on the full production of Napier’s turbocharger products reaching 2,000-plus units per annum by 1966. Similarly in the early 1950’s the site was responsible for the production of the Deltic engine. Alongside this EE Co. also produced domestic appliances.
