Ruby Loftus became Britain’s Rosie the Riveter, on posters throughout the war.
It started with this Laura Knight painting, commissioned by The War Artists' Advisory Committee to recruit more women to ordnance factories.
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It was painted in the Royal Ordnance Factory in Newport, South Wales, and shows a young woman, Ruby Loftus, performing a highly skilled piece of work on an industrial lathe. The component being worked is the breech ring of a double-barrelled, anti-aircraft gun designed to fire twenty rounds per minute. Any lack of precision in forming the breech ring could result in the gun being destroyed when fired. In peace-time this task would only be performed by a man with eight or nine years' experience but the 21-year-old Loftus mastered the technique after only a year or two of training.
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The painting is titled, “Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech Ring” and I have a problem with that.
She’s obviously boring the ring, maybe she’ll cut an internal thread later but not in the painting.
Maybe they called it that to convince women if they work in ordnance they’ll get a little.
Or maybe like everything in Britain during the war, the terms were meant to obfuscate reality for spys.
The other things are no glasses and she should have one hand on the carriage feed lever at this point.
But Ruby was really screwing Lance Corporal John Green whom she married that year.
She became an oxymoron… Ruby Green.
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