The principal obstacle to earlier Torpex deployment was producing enough RDX. Britain had developed the Woolwich method, but war arrived before the wider industrial base planned for the early 1940s was ready. The 1941 Tizard Mission shared the method and wax stabilization with the United States and Canada while describing a requirement for 220 tons of RDX per day. That immense daily target shows why laboratory success was not the same as supplying a modern war. Experience scaling the system helped drive continuous-flow production associated with the Bachmann process.
Chapter · 29:35-31:19
Woolwich, the Tizard Mission, and RDX scale-up
War forced Britain and North America to turn a workable batch method into industrial RDX output measured in hundreds of tons per day.