This is what YOU are making... A Mighty Machine of British Workmanship (The Short Stirling)
A cutaway technical drawing of the Short Stirling bomber, with a lettered key and a specification box (275 mph, 3,000 miles, ten .303 Brownings), sits under the line 'This is what YOU are making'. The headline 'A Mighty Machine of British Workmanship' attaches a virtue phrase to the aircraft (glittering generalities), and the 'YOU' casts each factory worker as the maker of the bomber (identity fusion).
Propaganda techniques used in this poster
- Date
- 1941
- Period
- Second World War
- Made by
- Ministry of Aircraft Production (printed for H.M. Stationery Office by Johnson Riddle & Co., London); drawing by J. H. Clark, copyright 'The Aeroplane'
- Region
- Western and Central Europe
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Medium
- Poster
- Issuer type
- State
- Regime
- Churchill Government
- Leader
- Winston Churchill
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Purpose
- Mobilize or secure compliance
- Themes
- Home front, Science and technology, Labor
- Event
- World War II
- Leader
- Winston Churchill
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Foreign Posters, retrieved October 3, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain (UK Crown copyright, 50 years from publication, expired before 1996; no URAA restoration)
Ministry of Aircraft Production; drawing by J. H. Clark. U.S. National Archives, NAID 44266122 (44-PF-54b).
Text on the object
THE SHORT STIRLING (Four 1,595 h.p. Bristol Hercules motors, D.H. Hydromatic airscrews) This is what YOU are making . . . . . Maximum Speed 275 m.p.h. Range 3,000 miles. ARMAMENT 10 BROWNING .303's Drawing by J. H. Clark. Copyright "THE AEROPLANE" MINISTRY OF AIRCRAFT PRODUCTION A MIGHTY MACHINE of BRITISH WORKMANSHIP PRINTED FOR H.M.S.O. BY JOHNSON RIDDLE & CO., LTD., LONDON, S.E.23
