The Yorkshire Film Archive collects, preserves, and shows film made in, or about Yorkshire. Our collections are non-fiction, dating from the 1890s to the present day, and providing a rich and visually compelling record of all aspects of lives, cultures, landscape, industries, major events and everyday activities, many of which are available to watch, free of charge, on our website.
This film is part of Free
Women's Munitions Workers, Sheffield
Highly-skilled women defy 1940s gender prejudices and produce munitions in one of Sheffield’s many wartime factories.
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Overview
This film showcases the indispensable contribution that British women made on the home front during the Second World War. The Sheffield women show mastery of complex machinery with little care for their own personal safety. The film also contains an intriguing and unusual mix of black and white and colour film, which seems to have been selected deliberately for aesthetic purposes.
During the war, Sheffield’s munitions factories were a prime target for Nazi Germany. A few short months after this film was produced, Sheffield was severely impacted by a handful of raids from the Luftwaffe in December 1940. In what came to be known as the “The Sheffield Blitz”, over 570 civilians were killed and 78,000 homes were either destroyed or suffered damaged.
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