History UsefulNotes / TheHomeFront

Recognizing their distinct population disadvantage against the Axis Powers, the UK moved as quickly as possible to full military and industrial mobilization, something the FascistButInefficient Germans failed to achieve until 1943, the Japanese until 1944 and the Italians never did (and even then women were distinctly underrepresented in the German armed forces, handicapped as they were by a fundamentally reactionary political philosphy.) By contrast, women had been serving in the the Royal Air Force since the 1920s and the Army and Royal Navy since 1938 and the British made full use of as many women as possible in administrative and support positions. Initially it was done primarily in the name of freeing men to fight, but it soon became apparent that these women had undeveloped talents and important skills to contribute, and an entire generation of young women (including the future Queen Elizabeth II) learned to drive as part of the war effort.

Britain's full mobilization also extended to the arts and sciences. Unlike FascistButInefficient Germany, where the research efforts were often uncoordinated and scattered amongst various competing interests, England mobilized Academia for the duration. Their first task, a comprehensive review of old lab notebooks to see if anything useful had been overlooked, produced penicilin -- the original experiment being written off in the 1920s as a failure. Anything promising was promptly re-investigated; Promising research they lacked the time or resources to follow up on was sent to the United States -- national survival trumping national interest for the duration. The brilliant codebreakers at Bletchley Park are justly famous: less well known but no less important were the the brilliant scientists of the Meteorological Office, whose weather forecasting gave the Western Allies a huge advantage throughout the entire war. Their crowning achievement came when they identified the narrow lull between two storm fronts that allowed the D-Day landings to proceed. Radar was rapidly developed from meter to centimeter and ultimately millimeter bands, allowing allied aircraft to go from spotting submarines to periscopes, ASDIC (soon re-christened with the more descriptive acronym [=SONAR=]) installations were made better, smaller, and more reliable. A huge range of weapons, from effective to wacky, were designed and tested. One of the best examples came shortly after D-Day, when it was found that the dust from dirt airfields in France was damaging the powerful Napier Sabre engines on Hawker Typhoon fighter bombers, a collection of aerodymamicists and engineers, designed, tested, and fielded an effective cyclonic air filter in just 24 hours. But perhaps their greatest achievement was the "Wizard War", where British radio and radar specialists engaged their German counterparts in an ever-escalating battle of spoofing, jamming, counter-jamming and other electronic countermeasures and soundly defeated them at virtually every turn.

For many Britons, in particular the young ones, it was their first exposure to another culture. Some things, like American music and American egalitarianism were to have significant influence on postwar life. (But not, as the legends would have it, baseball, which was actually more popular in interwar Britain than it is today.) It was also their first exposure to some less welcome things, like overt racial segregation and sexually transmitted diseases. For the Americans it was a pleasant respite or interlude between or before the unpleasant realities of combat, and a useful introduction the the people they'd been sent to help. Nor was the exchange entirely one-way, as tens of thousands of Royal Navy, Royal Air Force, and Fleet Air Arm personnel were sent "stateside" for training, taking advantage of America's weather and wide-open (and enemy free) skies and harbors.

-->-- [[UsefulNotes/JosephStalin Vyacheslav Molotov]], to Joachim von Ribbetrop, while taking shelter from British air-raid.

* ''HenryV'', the Olivier version.

They could be shot down by radar-guided anti-aircraft fire using proximity fuses or intercepted by fighters, with one Spitfire pilot reportedly flipping one over with his wing, though reports of this becoming a standard tactic were greatly exaggerated.[[labelnote:*]] This is referenced in ''TheUnit'', when Bob tries it on a plane carrying a chemical weapon. It doesn't work.[[/labelnote]] Eventually London was protected by a nearly impenetrable three-ring defense, with an outer ring of the fastest long-range fighters (Tempests and Mustangs) an middle ring of short ranged Spitfires and and inner ring of AA guns that collectively accounted for nearly 80% of the V1s launched towards the end of the campaign.

It was more than the British citizenry and the Commonwealth being impressed by (or suitably dubious of) the Ministry of Information's StiffUpperLip portrayal of the British people's general reaction to the whole affair; the Americans, whom Winston Churchill desperately hoped would help, were watching this grand drama themselves. At first, people like US Ambassador Joe Kennedy brusquely wrote off the UK as doomed and American isolationists like Charles Lindbergh did everything in their power to persuade Americans that the British were going to be a bunch of Jewish duped pushovers to the unstoppable Nazi war machine, so the USA should just let them fall. However, great American reporters on assignment in the UK like Edward R. Murrow knew better as they breathlessly sent back inspiring stories of the indomitable British character determined to endure war's trials and then strike back. Slowly, Britain learned that Americans were more and more coming on to their side as US President FranklinDRoosevelt got the political ammunition he needed to send help.

* The [[{{SOE}} Special Operations Executive]], created by Churchill and part set up by Chamberlain while he was in the war cabinet, with the mandate to "Set Europe Ablaze" with every last act of sabotage and dirty trickery that the trainers could think of. Trained and dropped spies over Europe to help the resistance groups, ordinary men and women risking life and limb sending secrets back the British Government. They were also responsible for Operation ANTHROPOID, training and inserting the two Czechoslovakian nationals who assassinated Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the SS and major architect of the Holocaust. We won't know the full story of what they did and where until after all of their agents are dead as the files are sealed until then.

The Germans had a known chemical weapons capacity (they first weaponized sarin) and Italy had used gas in Abyssinia. The British government were afraid of the impact German gas attacks might cause (they'd all seen the effects in UsefulNotes/WorldWarOne).

There were a more than a few embarrassing instances when they where deployed as opponents in training exercises against the regular army. They had a lot of men from [[WorldWarOne the previous war]] in their ranks and a very good understanding of local terrain, leading to a nasty habit of winning.

They could be shot down by radar-guided anti-aircraft fire using proximity fuses or intercepted by fighters, with one Spitfire pilot reportedly flipping one over with his wing, though reports of this becoming a standard tactic were greatly exaggerated*. Eventually London was protected by a nearly impenetrable three-ring defense, with an outer ring of the fastest long-range fighters (Tempests and Mustangs) an middle ring of short ranged Spitfires and and inner ring of AA guns that collectively accounted for nearly 80% of the V1s launched towards the end of hte compaign.

* This is referenced in ''TheUnit'', when Bob tries it on a plane carrying a chemical weapon. It doesn't work.

For many Britons, in particular the young ones, it was their first exposure to another culture. Some things, like American music and American egalitarianism were to have significant influence on postwar life. It was also their first exposure to some less welcome things, like overt racial segregation and sexually transmitted diseases. For the Americans it was a pleasant respite or interlude between or before the unpleasant realities of combat, and a useful introduction the the people they'd been sent to help.

In January 1940 Britain introduced rationing, since 70% of its foodstuffs were imported and the Germans were attempting to implement a blockade of their own. All of Europe, including the neutral countries, implemented rationing for the duration of the war. The severity of rationing varied greatly: Germany, for example, imposed a strict but very generous rationing law until 1943, in order to keep up civilian morale. Germany herself had imported half her food before the war, and the German-occupied territories a tenth, so the food situation in occupied Europe became progressively more desperate as the war dragged on. Most famously, by autumn 1941 the situation in Germany's oldest colony (Hans Frank's Generalgouvernment) had become so dire that it was thought absolutely necessary to euthanize some of the natives to forestall food riots or even general rebellion. By all accounts the measure seems to have been a resounding success, with [[UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust the removal of two almost universally disliked ethnic minorities (which together accounted for a tenth of the population of 20 million)]], allowing the official ration to be raised to survivable levels once more. Germany's own rationing situation changed in early 1943, when in the wake of Army Group A's destruction (at Stalingrad and in the eastern Ukraine) Germany mobilised her country's entire economic resources for war.

* Fish was not rationed, but very hard to get hold of. New types of fish were introduced, but generally unpalatable.

* Rubber (for tyres) was increasingly unavailable and became virtually unobtainable after The Fall of Singapore (and the consequent drying-up of most of the world's natural rubber supply). The expensive synthetic rubber (Buna, etc, all produced from coal) was reserved for military use. Civilians got by in much the same way they had pre-war - patching - but after a certain amount of wear-and-tear no further patching was possible and so the unavailabilty of new tires began to bite as the war wore on [[note]] Interestingly, Jardine & Mathesons' desire to safeguard their rubber plantations in the immediate post-war period caused the naming of the 'Malayan Emergency', the name the Malaysian government gave to their guerilla/Civil War so the company could continue claiming insurance for damages incurred by the fighting [[/note]].

Restaurants were not subject to rationing, but limits on meals were put in.

In addition to driving trucks and ambulances, women served vitally important roles in the data collection and analysis efforts which made the British war effort so effective. Britain's highly sophisticated antiaircraft defense network and the Royal Navy's western ocean frontier equivalent were staffed primarily by members of the Women's Auxiliary Air Service and Women's Royal Naval Service. England's success in both the Battle of Britain and the Battle of the Atlantic depended largely on the efforts of hundreds of women who processed, analyzed, and plotted incoming reports and then transmitted the resulting orders back down to the sea and air defenses. The famous codebreakers at Bletchly Park were largely women as well.

Sometimes referred to as the "Friendly Invasion" or the "Benevolent Occupation", central and southern England played an ambivalent host to hundreds of thousands of US servicemen during the war years, particularly during the buildup to the Normandy Invasion. Some areas of the country that had never even seen a foreigner before were overrun by strangers in olive drab, and the US 8th and 9th Air Forces eventually outnumbered the RAF. Some rural areas actually had more military age American men than British as the locals were all either working in war industries or away serving elsewhere.

For many Britons, in particular the young ones, it was their first exposure to another culture. Some things, like American music and ''middle-class Americans with working-class style egalitarian beliefs'' were to have significant influence on postwar life. It was also their first exposure to some less welcome things, like [=STDs=] and overt racial segregation. For the Americans it was a pleasant respite or interlude between or before the unpleasant realities of combat, and a useful introduction the the people they'd been sent to help.

For the most part people were got along well despite the inevitable misunderstandings, though you would think it was all sunshine and rainbows from the British and American propaganda of the times. Much as you'd expect, there were extra-marital affairs and children born out of wedlock as women succumbed to the attentions of the men they had available while their own served overseas. The Americans also offered serious competition for unattached women, because they were sharply dressed, comparatively well paid, had hundreds of pilots (and even some fighter pilots!) among them, and had access to goods unobtainable on the civilian market (like chocolate and nylon stockings) through the vast American supply system. Not all these relationships were temporary, with a fair few lifelong friendships and enough marriages that the term "war bride" became prominent in the postwar American and Canadian Lexicon. In the end, none of the fuss caused by the Americans was insurmountable and not everyone--particularly the children--was glad to see them go.

They could be shot down with anti-aircraft fire with proximity fuses or intercepted by fighters, with one Spitfire pilot flipping one over with his wings.

Recognizing their distinct population disadvantage against the Axis Powers, the UK moved as quickly as possible to full military and industrial mobilization, something the FascistButInefficient Germans failed to achieve until 1943, the Japanese until 1944 and the Italians never did (and even then women were distinctly underrepresented in the German armed forces, handicapped as they were by a fundamentally reactionary political philosphy.) By contrast, women had been serving in the the Royal Air Force since the 1920s and the Royal Army and Navy since 1938 and the British made full use of as many women as possible in administrative and support positions. Initially it was done primarily in the name of freeing men to fight, but it soon became apparent that these women had undeveloped talents and important skills to contribute, and an entire generation of young women (including the future Queen Elizabeth II) learned to drive as part of the war effort.

Like the USA, the UK was able to censor undesirable and propagate desirable narratives in media without appearing hypocritical by overtly contradicting the principles of 'Free Speech' which it endorsed. This was done by making the production of media contingent on Ministry of Information (MoI) approval, the promotion of self-censorship among artists by appealing to their patriotic and/or anti-Nazi sentiment, and allocating MoI funding to the production of media which propagated desirable messages. Separately, the War Office also gave desirable films free access to military assets and denied access to undesirable ones. The two ministries did not always agree on what constituted a desirable message - famously, the Film/TheLifeAndDeathOfColonelBlimp was approved and funded by the MoI, but denied weapons and vehicles by the War Office (forcing the producers to resort to bribery).

Like its contemporaries in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, by 1942 the MoI had fully come around to the view that a 'pure' entertainment work with a well-crafted and desirable message was better at influencing public opinion than an EdutainmentShow. This was particularly the case with films, which were extremely expensive investments and so subjected to a high degree of scrutiny. Perhaps the most famous film to be approved and funded by the MoI was Film/AMatterOfLifeAndDeath (1945). This was thought useful because it promised to have a high entertainment value and prominently featured life-saving romantic love and friendship between British and American characters, which it was hoped would promote Anglo-American trust and goodwill in the postwar period.

CHAIN HOME stations were backed by an extensive network of ground observers equipped with optical tracking equipment and later reinforced by a high-frequency radar network called CHAIN HOME LOW that covered the low altitudes that CHAIN HOME couldn't see.[[/note]] But even more important than the radar network was the extremely sophisticated intelligence system that forwarded information from the radar stations (and an even larger network of ground observers) to "Sector Stations" where it was collate and analyzed before being forwarded it to the central station at Bentley Priory where all available information was plotted on large maps. This allowed the RAF manage their resources [[IncrediblyLamePun "on the fly"]] and pick-and-choose which forces to engage, ensuring lower losses and good odds in every engagement. The Germans never even conceived of anything anywhere nearly as sophisticated and it was only matched by the US Navy's Combat Information Centers in the final months of the war.

Britain had a few tricks up its sleeve. One of these their large and relatively advanced CHAIN HOME network of long frequency RDF ("Radio Distance Finding") stations - a technology better known today by the American acronym RADAR ([=RAdio=] Detection And Ranging).[[note]] The RDF designation was specifically chosen prewar to disguise their intentions as was already in common use for "radio direction finding. [[/note]] While most of the world's military powers, such as France and the USSR, had just a few sets Britain had invested in creating several dozen. These gave them near-total coverage of the eastern approaches to their entire (admittedly small) country. Though primitive, these early long-wave stations had more than twice the detection range as sound detecting devices and could also determine range and altitude with a fair degree of accuracy, something no sound-based device could do. But even more important than the radar network was the extremely sophisticated intelligence system that forwarded information from the radar stations (and an even larger network of ground observers) to "Sector Stations" where it was collate and analyzed before being forwarded it to the central station at Bentley Priory where all available information was plotted on large maps. This allowed the RAF manage their resources [[IncrediblyLamePun "on the fly"]] and pick-and-choose which forces to engage, ensuring lower losses and good odds in every engagement. The Germans never even conceived of anything anywhere nearly as sophisticated and it was only matched by the US Navy's Combat Information Centers in the final months of the war.

Britain's full mobilization also extended to the arts and sciences. Unlike FascistButInefficient Germany, where the research efforts were often uncoordinated and scattered amongst various competing interests, England mobilized Academia for the duration. Their first task, a comprehensive review of old lab notebooks to see if anything useful had been overlooked, produced penicilin -- the original experiment being written off in the 1920s as a failure. Anything promising was promptly re-investigated; Promising research they lacked the time or resources to follow up on was sent to the United States -- national survival trumping national interest for the duration. The brilliant codebreakers at Bletchley Park are justly famous: less well known but no less important were the the brilliant scientists of the Meteorological Office, whose weather forecasting gave the Western Allies a huge advantage throughout the entire war. Their crowning achievement came when they identified the narrow lull between two storm fronts that allowed the D-Day landings to proceed. Radar was rapidly developed from meter to centimeter and ultimately millimeter bands, allowing allied aircraft to go from spotting submarines to periscopes, ASDIC (soon re-christened with the more descriptive acronym [=SONAR=]) installations were made better, smaller, and more reliable. A huge range of weapons, from effective to wacky, were designed and tested. One of the best examples came shortly after D-Day, when it was found that the dust from dirt airfields in France was damaging the powerful Napier Sabre engines on Hawker Typhoon fighter bombers, a collection of aerodymamicists and engineers, designed, tested, and fielded an effective cyclonic air filter in just 24 hours.

* The [[{{SOE}} Special Operations Executive]], created by Churchill and part set up by Chamberlain while he was in the war cabinet, with the mandate to "Set Europe Ablaze" with every last act of sabotage and dirty trickery that the trainers could think of. Trained and dropped spies over Europe to help the resistance groups, ordinary men and women risking life and limb sending secrets back the British Government. They were also responsible for Operation ANTHROPOID, training and inserting the two Czechoslovakian nationals who assassinated Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the SS and major architect of the Holocaust. We won't know the full story of what they did and where until after all of their agents are dead as the files are sealed until then. This is a pitty as that means we won't know exactly how awesome Creator/ChristopherLee is until he isn't around for us to be in awe of him.

However, the semi-official "soldiers' shows" which evolved on an ad-hoc basis as local entertainment for the troops, in which talented servicemen performed to entertain their mates and keep morale up, spawned an entire generation of talent who after demob became the mainstays of British entertainment until superceded in the 1960's and 1970's by the ''Creator/MontyPython'' generation. Artistes who honed their craft on their mates included Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe, Peter Sellers, Tommy Cooper, Norman Vaughan, and many others. The ''GoonShow'', cited as a seminal influence on later British comedy, had its origins in UsefulNotes/WW2 as a satirical reaction to the petty indignities and Colonel-Blimp-like leadership imposed by the armed forces

''However'', the war didn't end with the defeat of Germany... and when the British public realised that, morale and public support for the war sunk to a new low. As May and June dragged on it became crystal-clear that [[UsefulNotes/AtomicBombingsOfHiroshimaAndNagasaki Japan wouldn't surrender just because Germany had]] and that the British public didn't give two hoots whether Britain got to Burma, Malaya, Hong Kong etc back: they were sick of high taxation, they were sick of rationing, they were sick of people dying (especially the specific bits they were dying for), and they wanted political and social reform to build the country anew. And they were ''very'' specific on that last part: they had ''not'' died in the tens of thousands just to get the old Britain back, they wanted a new one - better than before. In short they wanted the findings of ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beveridge_Report The Beveridge Report'']] implemented so that everyone would be fed, everyone would be educated, everyone would have a place to call home, everyone would have a job, and everyone would be looked after when they were sick or unemployed or old. Winston Churchill infamously opposed the implementation of the report, at least until he realised that it was so popular that his party would lose for sure if they continued to do so. Ultimately his refusal to explicitly endorse implementing the report cost him victory in the General Election on the 5th of July 1945... ushering in the Labour Party and a political unknown, the quiet and soft-spoken UsefulNotes/ClementAttlee...

Church bells were silenced for most of the war, with the aim only to ring them as an invasion alarm (this occurred once during the Battle of Britain). Often all but one of the bells would be melted down for the war effort anyway, leaving just a single, lonely, bell in the tower after the war.

Problem 2: There are many British citizens who could in theory fight, if trained, but for one reason or another cannot join the armed forces (too young, too old, reserved occupation such as farming).

There were a more than a few embarrassing instances when they where deployed as opponents in training exercises against the regular army. They had a lot of old soldiers in their ranks and a very good understanding of local terrain, leading to a nasty habit of winning.

Answer: The Local Defence Volunteers, later re-named The Home Guard. Unpaid and, at least to start with, badly trained and equipped, these units were given army surplus and hand-me-downs. They were often the butt of jokes and many did not take them seriously[[note]]One story goes that the reason that the Local Defense Volunteers were renamed as The Home Guard was because the initals "LDV" could also be read as "Look, Duck, and Vanish."[[/note]]. Hitler himself thought they were a cover for something else, and was [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auxiliary_Units partly right]]. But they did valuable work, such as fire-watching, emergency work and assisting in training exercises. Their primary function was to act as an anti-paratrooper force.

Britain had a few tricks up its sleeve. One of these was a large and relatively advanced network of RADAR ([=RAdio=] Detection And Ranging) installations. While most of the world's military powers, such as France and the USSR, had just a few sets Britain had invested in creating several dozen. These gave them near-total coverage of their entire (admittedly very small) country, and moreover the devices had more than half again as much range as sound-ranging devices and a greater degree of accuracy about enemy strengths to boot. But even more important than the radar network was the extremely sophisticated intelligence system that forwarded information from the radar stations (and an even larger network of ground observers) to "Sector Stations" where it was collate and analyzed before being forwarded it to a central station where all available information was plotted on large maps. This allowed the RAF manage their resources [[IncrediblyLamePun "on the fly"]] and pick-and-choose which forces to engage, ensuring lower losses and good odds in every engagement. The Germans never even conceived of anything anywhere nearly as sophisticated and it was only matched by the US Navy's Combat Information Centers in the final months of the war.

->''Who do you think you are kidding Mr. Hitler,\\

If you think old England's done?''
-->--'''Series/DadsArmy'''

[[/folder]]

[[folder: '''Achtung, "[[BlindIdiotTranslation Spuckfeuer]]"! The RAF''']]

'''Whale Meat Again- Rationing'''

'''The Battle of Britain'''

'''Achtung, "[[BlindIdiotTranslation Spuckfeuer]]"! The RAF'''

'''The Blitz'''

'''Where are we again? Signs, or the lack thereof'''

'''A very temporary truce - Class'''

British wartime propaganda only partially succeeded in channelling the hatred and strife of Britain's Class Warfare outward. There were a number of early cock-ups, with the Evacuation in particular resulting in a distinct flare-up as working class children (and the mothers of the very youngest) were sent to live with middle- and upper-class families. Many of these families found that the demands of feeding their new tenants meant that they were unable to eat the kind and quality of food they were used to. Others simply disliked sharing their homes with such 'rude' and 'common' people. The experience as a whole seems to have reinforced rather than break down class prejudice, later Evacuations striving to match children with families of similar socio-economic status wherever possible.

'''"The White Cliffs of Dover"- Entertainment'''

'''The {{Home Guard}}'''

Problem 1: The only normally-armed division in Great Britain is Canadian. It is also, being a mere division, possessed of just 14,000 men as against the invasion force of at least a fifty thousand.

'''[=WAAFs=], Wrens, and Factory Girls'''

'''Overpaid, Overfed, Oversexed and Over Here '''

'''Vengeance Weapon'''

'''The Enigma Variations- Intelligence Operations'''

* Meat - [[OldBritishMoney 4/8]] (24p) worth, which bought around 4lb 12oz (2.15kg) depending on the cut.

On the production front women replaced men on the factory floor, but perhaps more importantly they made up the legions of draftspersons required by the aircraft and shipping industries. Back in those pre-CAD days any new design or changes to an existing design required new drawings to be made by hand, something many women proved to be particularly adept at. Drafting was considered so important that mechanical pencil sharpeners were actually banned, for fear that they would waste too much of the precious drafting pencils. England's remarkable aircraft production -- in particular the dozens of Marks of Spitfires -- would have been impossible without the efforts of the women who translated the ideas to paper. Unfortunately, for some reason Britain's industrous women never received the recognition given their American "Rosie the Riveter" counterparts, although one female engineer did manage to achieve a small degree of fame; [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrice_Shilling Beatrice "Tilly" Shilling]]. The Spitfire's Rolls-Royce Merlin engine did not use fuel-injection, and as a result could become flooded during negative-G manouvers (diving, or flying inverted). Tilly came up with the solution officially designated the R.A.E. Restrictor, a washer-like flow restrictor that prevented flooding; the pilots called it [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Shilling%27s_orifice "Miss Shilling's Orifice"]].

Britain had a few tricks up its sleeve. One of these was a large and relatively advanced network of RADAR ([=RAdio=] Detection And Ranging) installations. While most of the world's military powers, such as France and the USSR, had just a few sets Britain had invested in creating several dozen. These gave them near-total coverage of their entire (admittedly very small) country, and moreover the devices had more than half again as much range as sound-ranging devices and a greater degree of accuracy about enemy strengths to boot. But even more important than the radar network was the extremely sophisticated intelligence system that forwarded information from the radar stations to "Sector Stations" where it was collate and analyzed before being forwarded it to a central station where all available information was plotted on large maps. This allowed the RAF manage their resources [[IncrediblyLamePun "on the fly"]] and pick-and-choose which forces to engage, ensuring lower losses and good odds in every engagement. The Germans never even conceived of anything anywhere nearly as sophisticated and it was only matched by the US Navy's Combat Information Centers in the final months of the war.

* [[SpotOfTea Tea]] - 8oz (227g); that's around 100 cups worth or 4-5 cups per person per day.

* Bacon and Ham - 1lb (454g)

* Sugar - 2lb (907g)
* Butter - 8oz (227g)
* Lard - 8oz (227g)
* Margarine - 1lb (454g)
* Milk - 13 pints (7.4L)
* Cheese - 8oz (227g); vegetarian families could trade in their meat and bacon ration for an additional 12oz (340g)

* Meat - to the value of [[OldBritishMoney 4/8]] (24p), which bought around 4lb 12oz (2.15kg)
* [[SpotOfTea Tea]] - 8oz (227g), or around 100 cups worth

* Milk - 12 pints (6.8L)
* Cheese - 8oz (227g); vegetarian families could trade in their meat ration for an additional 12oz (340g)