Previous Features

MG first on D-Day ?

It’s a little known fact that on D-Day, June 6 1944, the first to arrive in occupied France, was an MG. An MG? Sure, but the story is a bit complicated. In 1941 Cecil Kimber, Managing Director of MG, obtained a contract to manufacture the front end of the Albemarle bomber aircraft at the Abingdon factory. The Albemarle was Britain’s first nosewheel bomber. It could be built in sections by different factories. The front end of the bomber contained the cockpit with all its controls. To manufacture this nosepiece proved far more complex than any car ever produced by MG. Yet the workforce at Abingdon succeeded to construct 653 of these nosepieces. On D-Day the fast Albemarle planes were the first to drop airborne troops on the Continent so it seems fair to say that MG arrived there first.

It is interesting to note that when Cecil Kimber had secured the contract for the Albemarle nosepiece, he had done so at his own initiative. Officially this ?policy of non-conformity’ led to his dismissal by Sir Miles Thomas, Chairman of the Nuffield Organisation. However Jean Cook, daughter of Cecil Kimber, stated that: “My father said that a directive came from Morris Motors to centralize the issuing of unemployment and insurance stamps, which would have meant sacking a faithful employee, a single woman who supported her widowed mother. My father refused, and the next day Miles Thomas arrived to demand his resignation.”

Sources:
Fairfax, Ernest (pseudonym of Miles Thomas): Calling all arms, page 145-146
Thomas, Sir Miles: Out on a wing, 1964, page 210-211
McComb,Wilson: MG by McComb, 1978, page 147-148
Allen, David: an article in Safety Fast, 2000
Knowles, David: MG, the untold story, 1997, page 40

The photo of the MG-workforce with the 100th Albemarle nosepiece comes from the book “Calling all arms”, written by Ernest Fairfax, about the war efforts of the Nuffield Organisation. (image courtesy Random House (UK) Ltd.) (RB)