Chris Webber finds out about the incredible effort of North-East industrial workers in the build up to D-Day.

WHILE the men fought for freedom with guns and bullets the women back home were using hammer, nail and flame.

In the months and years leading to D-Day it was overwhelmingly women who built the planes, guns and ammunition for war.

And the industrial workers of Teesside did as much as workers anywhere in Britain to make D-Day and 60 years of freedom a reality.

On the famous industrial river were made ships, pipes, pier heads, floating docks, storage tanks and untold other heavy metal engineering.

Workers toiled round the clock as companies that had been rivals in pre-war days came together to give the Tommies of D-Day their best chance.

Of all the industry perhaps the most famous was Teesside's vital part in the harbours, codenamed Mulberries.

Mulberries were the huge portable floating edifices designed to enable thousands of men, tanks and machinery to flood into France in the days following D-Day.

A total of 20,000 workers, a large number from the banks of the Tees, were involved around Britain in creating two of the Mulberries, one for the British area of Arromanches, between Gold and Juno beaches, and one for the US Omaha Beach.

The structures, which used more than two million tons of steel and concrete, were pulled by tugs across the Channel and sunk to provide a harbour.

The list of factories on the Tees that made a serious contribution in creating the Mulberries is impressive.

There was Ashmore, in Bowesfield Lane, Stockton, which made many of the 150 caissons and floating bridges with the direct help of Head Wrighton at Thornaby and Stockton.

Cleveland Bridge, of Darlington, also made harbour bridges, William Gray at Hartlepool made two piers for Mulberries alongside a further nine built at Normanby Wharf.

Dorman Long, of Middlesbrough, also made pier heads and floating docks and Pickering Lifts, in Stockton, made Bailey bridges parts and pontoons.

Each of these companies undertook the work on the Mulberries, often using Teesside steel, along with much else throughout the war.

To all that effort can be added the work on the hundreds of ships, of all shapes and sizes, and made on the Tees, Wear and Tyne, which pulled the mile-long harbours that stood 30ft above sea level to France.

Of course, the entire project was designed in the first place for other ships, many of which were built on North-East rivers, to unload their cargoes.

Yet, for all the workers' hard work as they laboured under the constant threat of bombs and on increasingly rationed food, much of their effort came to naught when the Mulberries were put into place.

At first everything went well. An incredible feat of co-ordination after months of planning meant both Mulberries were successfully installed in the days following D-Day on June 6.

But then disaster struck when the worst Channel gales for 40 years battered the harbours mercilessly between June 18 and 22.

Both Mulberries were badly damaged and the American harbour was never used again.

Nevertheless the concept had been sound and the British harbour continued to be used to the end.

Stockton historian Bob Harbron takes pride in the work of the Tees factories in defeating Hitler.

"It was truly epic, any glance at the list of what was made here can tell you that," he says.

"It was hard work that did it, much of it by women."

In his book about the RAF aerodrome at Thornaby, David Brown makes the point that it was not for nothing that the Tees suffered such terrible German bombing.

"The value to the war effort by industry on Teesside was one reason why the area attracted the attentions of the Luftwaffe and warranted such severe defensive measures by RAF men."

The contribution by North-East workers to making D-Day possible went much further than ships, huge harbours and ammunition.

Hills, of Stockton, made steel track mesh for using on aircraft landing grounds, and Head Wrighton was heavily involved in the fabrication of the Pipeline Under The Ocean (Pluto) undersea oil line, which led from a wartime-constructed facade ice-cream and holiday centre in southern England to Normandy, in France.

Then there was the well-planned movement of troops and goods across North-East Britain.

This helped to convince the Germans that the invasion might be heading for Norway from northern Britain.

That work of deception kept vital German armies in Norway and away from Normandy on June 6, 1944.