Document Type: Book (Historical Study). Purpose: Informational. Authority: Author Expertise. Series: This is the third of three books in the history.

Scope: Historical study of the Rolls-Royce company, written by Ian Lloyd, an independent historian.

From the dust jacket: "The history of the Battle of Britain, which will certainly rank as one of the decisive battles of British, if not world, history, will be rewritten by many authors. In this book, the third in his history of Rolls-Royce, lan Lloyd has greatly enlarged the knowledge of the vital part played in that battle by the V-12 Merlin, the aero engine which powered the Hurricane and Spitfire, the Lancaster and Mosquito, the Mustang and, in one marque or another, most of the operational aircraft of the R.A.F. in the Second World War. Tens of thousands of these engines were produced by Rolls-Royce in England and Scotland and by Packard in the United States. Their production and performance was a key factor not only in the Battle of Britain, but in the maintenance of air supremacy over the British Isles and in Europe."

Contents (from the dust jacket): "This book surveys the critical technical development and production of the Merlin, as it spread out from Derby and Crewe to the great Shadow factories in Glasgow and Manchester, to Detroit and hundreds of subsidiary factories in Britain and North America. Drawing on its experience of Eagle manufacture in the First World War, Rolls-Royce controlled, under the British Ministry of Aircraft Production, what was one of the largest and most complex examples of high-technology mass production in the Second World War. The relationship between the company's management, under the redoubtable Ernest Hives, its controllers in Whitehall, under a series of equally redoubtable Ministers, including Lord Beaverbrook, the Air Marshals and other British and American companies, provides the basis for further intriguing study of industrial evolution at a critical period of British history.

From the company's archives and from interviews with many of those involved the author has distilled the story of Rolls-Royce's involvement in the production of engines for Britain's main battle tank in the Normandy invasion, the Cromwell, and of its contribution in such diverse fields as 40-mm cannon and the then novel gas-turbine. The book concludes with a survey of what the author believes to be some of the lessons of the Rolls-Royce experience for British industry and its students.

The secrecy of much of the material, which has delayed its publication for many years, adds to the fascination of a study which includes a powerful analysis of the limits of the power of human beings to plan and control great events and complex systems, even when there is full agreement on the objectives."