"Seventy years ago, a Wakefield firm of shop-fitters and joiners made a unique contribution to D-Day – by building Landing Craft, despite being located equidistant from the East and West Coast, and over a mile from the nearest river! Drake & Warters Ltd., founded by Charles Henry Drake and Robert (Bob) Warters in 1925 in an old railway coach on Back Lane in Wakefield, had, by 1939, moved to a purpose built factory at New Wells, Wakefield, with an annual turn-over which would be rated in millions today. The Factory was put over to war work in 1939 and Mr Drake ‘moved heaven and earth’(remembered his eldest daughter, Jeane Cresswell née Drake) to get his key employees registered as ‘reserved occupation’. Large contracts were obtained from the MOD for thousands of fold flat chairs and wardrobes for the RAF, innovative designs by Mr Warters, bedside cabinets, and officers’ folding camp beds. 250,000 bunk beds were also made for the American Army, and the construction of thousands of workbenches and cupboards to equip shadow factories, such as those for Rover. The building department of Drake & Warters (formerly Messrs. Judge & Co who Drake & Warters bought-out) built thousands of air raid shelters in the Pontefract and Castleford area, an army camp at Hessle near Hull, and a huge defensive ditch was dug at Tranby. Several search light emplacements were built near Ripon, and in the Wakefield area. Concrete tank traps and gun emplacements were built on the North East Coast. Surprisingly, beach material could not be used in the concrete, so river sand and gravels had to brought on to the sites. The most unusual contract, however, was for 16 – later 72 – Landing Craft Assault (LCA), in 1943. Prior to 1941 LCAs had been produced exclusively by Messrs. Thornycroft of Southampton, but in April 1941 due to demand outstripping production, the Admiralty sub-contracted a simplified design to boat builders and joiners or cabinet makers across Britain. In total between 1942 and 1944 some 1,694 LCAs were built; in the build-up to D-Day some 60 were produced in a month! In order to fulfil this contract a quick expansion of the labour force was required and 800 girls were taken on. So unique was this development that the BBC Radio interviewed Charlie Drake and a newsreel was made by British Pathé ‘starring’ LCA 1147. LCAs were simple flat-bottomed craft with armour on them, 43feet long, with a 10 foot 6 inch beam, and weighed 12.5 tonnes. Fully laden with 50 troops, and equipped with machine guns and mortars, the craft had a draught of less than 2ft and the propellers were shielded in shallow tunnels to prevent damage upon landing. The engines that were fitted to the original 16 were conversions of car engines, carried out by Harry Warters, often ford V-8’s. The later LCAs were fitted with two purpose-built Austin engines capable of developing 390hp each." http://www.heritagedaily.com/2013/04/citys-link-to-d-day/?
