Complex sentence: Things soon changed when the factory was selected to build the Hawker Hurricane for the RAF, and quickly expanded from about 500 workers to 4,500 by war's-end, half of them women.
Split into simpler sentences: Things soon changed when the factory was selected to build the Hawker Hurricane for the RAF. The factory quickly expanded from about 500 workers to 4,500 by war's-end, half of them women.