its wartime peak, ROF Chorley had over 28,000 employees – a staggering figure at a time when there were only around a dozen factories in the whole of Britain with a workforce each of more than 19,000 people (four of these being the Royal Arsenal, ROF Bishopton, ROF Chorley and ROF Bridgend). ROF Chorley was the site where the bouncing bombs, designed by Barnes Wallis and famed for the Dambusters raid, were filled, the main site for the filling of large-capacity aircraft bombs being ROF Glascoed. The overall cost of the plant was £13,140,000. The factory was protected by anti-aircraft artillery that surrounds the facility. One mount that once held the gun with a pillbox was found in Lucas Green near Whittle-le-Woods, refurbished as part of new housing in 2017. The factory was on few occasions in 1940 and 1944 a target for the Germans, but because of its rural location, the Germans would end up bombing its surroundings instead of their main target, hitting a few farms with one time striking a chicken coop. Post-war production During the slack period between 1945 and the Korean War ROF Chorley, like ROF Bridgwater and ROF Glascoed, manufactured the concrete components for Airey two-story pre-fabricated concrete houses. ROF Chorley also manufactured concrete railway sleepers and manufactured clothing. Until the mid-1990s, in the interests of security, British Ordnance Survey maps omitted the ROF sites and showed the location as it existed before the ROF's construction. There was a persistent tale from the 1970s that the town center of the Central Lancashire new town was penciled in to be built on this "empty" site until it was discovered by the planners that the site was owned by the Ministry of Defence and was a licensed high explosive site. More recent editions of the maps show the detail of the buildings, road and rail links, labeled simply as "Works". Privatisation After privatization, the headquarters of Royal Ordnance plc was moved to ROF Chorley and was accommodated in a new office block on the "administration site" created out of a former warehouse. The registered office of Royal Ordnance plc, however, remained in London. The site continued to be known as Royal Ordnance Chorley, or RO Defence, Chorley for some twenty years after privatization; but then lost its name, eventually, becoming a BAE Systems Land Systems site and then a BAE Systems Land and Armaments site. The