FreedomForge

• http://wiki.keithl.com/FreedomForge

Freedom's Forge

How American Business Produced Victory in World War II

• Arthur Herman . 2012 . Bvt Lib 940.531 HER .

• p003 PROLOGUE

• p014 Ch01 THE GENTLE GIANT

• p009 Henry Morgenthau George Catlett Marshall

• p020 Model T traversed the line start to finish in 90 minutes, 500 per day

  • When William S. Knudsen arrived at Ford Detroit in 1913

  • 10 hours per day, 6 days per week, so 50 cars per hour, 3000 cars per week
  • 4500 hours of work in 60 hours, ...
  • Soon to 8 hours per day, 5 days per week

• p029 Knudsen showed a muffler with two minute assembly time to purchasing agent Donald O'Keefe, turned down

• p029 Two weeks later, Knudsen is Chevrolet VP
• p031 Knudsen: Speed produces nothing, accuracy is the only straight line to production. From workshop mentality to modern manufacturing. Sales went from 72K to almost 250K in 1922
• p032 Knudsen: "I vanr vun for vun!" (Chevrolet sales up to Ford sales)
• p033 "flexible mass production", constant modification and change
• p034 1927 Chevy forced Ford to replace Model T with Model A, stopping production for almost a year
• p035 Chevy outsold Ford almost every year until 1986

• p037 Ch02 THE MASTER BUILDER

• p052 Hoover Dam The Six Companies

• p058 Ch03 THE WORLD OF TOMORROW

• p066 Ch04 GETTING STARTED

• p085 Ch05 CALL TO ARMS

• p088 instead of P-40 fighter copies, North American Aviation "Dutch" Kindleberger offers better in 120 days, delivers P-51 Mustang in 102 days

• p103 Packard Model B first foot pedal speed control, Model C first steering wheel

• p103 Jesse Vincent Liberty V-12Key-Bak aircraft engine, also 4 wheel brakes, power brakes

  • James Ward 1995 .. The Fall of the Packard Motor Company .. PSU Lib HD9710.U54 P39 1995

• p105 Rolls-Royce Merlin engine Packard V-1650

  • author mentions mechanical unit differences; Both UK and US used inches. 64ths to thousandths? Imperial to US gallons?
• p105 Packard built 55,000 Merlin engines

• p107 Ch06 ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACY

• p108 Republic Steel . Tom Girdler fought unions

• p109 "I've never done it before, but I can do it again" Jesse Jones about Henry Kaiser

• p111 Machin .p173 e gun production tools, belt driven, 20 to 70 years old
• p112 Knudsen: complete retooling of most American factories in 18 months
• p112 first appropriation 4,247 aircraft, second appropriation 14,385 aircraft, Roosevelt expecting 50,000
• p113 autos hard-cast dies, aircraft flexible soft dies

• p114 Billy Mitchell staffer Jimmy Doolittle

• p114 Car body makers Briggs Manufacturing , Fisher Body , Murray Corporation

• p115 suspended annual automobile model changes when less than 25% of Americans supported war involvement
• p115 General Motors made 10% of everything during WWII
• p116 National Aviation Board decisions made by labor, government, business

• p117 Reuther labor plan failed, car companies and unions made parts, not airplanes

• p118 plenty of tasks and growth for subcontractors, the war would create more than half a million new businesses

• p119 Kaiser and the Six Companies

• p120 Eliot Janeway "a victory small enough to be organized is too small to be decisive"

• p126 Lend-Lease

• p129 novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald heart attack 1940 age 44, "the party is over"

• p130 Ch07 SHIPS, STRIKES, AND THE BIG BOOK

• p130 Kaiser Shipyard Richmond. experts predicted six months to build solid ground, Kaiser's men took three weeks, 300,000 cubic yards of rock and gravel

• p132 "Oregon was settled by Missourians who didn't want to work" from Cooke, "Home Front"

  • Bullshit. Cooke's Home Front describes life at home during the US Civil War. Not many Oregonians fought on either side of the Civil War; indeed, they formed militias in Oregon after US regulars (from the east) returned east to fight.

  • https://de .p173 pts.washington.edu/moving1/Oregon.shtml shows Oregon birthplace by decade; Missouri was 14% in 1850, 8% in 1860, 11% in 1870, 6% in 1880, 4.3% in 1900, 3.6% in 1910 (Illinois was 4.7%).

    • In 2022, Oregon was 45% Oregon-born, 14.9% California born, 5% Washington born, 3.5% Mexico born ... with Missouri in 19th place, 0.55%
    • Missouri was the start of the Oregon Trail; rail lines did not connect to Oregon to the east before 1883, or through California before 1887. Presumably many eastern US emigrants traveled to Oregon incrementally, spending a few years in Missouri, earning the money necessary for a wagon and supplies for an Oregon Trail wagon train.

• p133 Henry Kaiser demanded much from son Edgar, made them an inseparable team

• p133 "... you pile it on and they do more and more. Pretty soon you have men you can rely on absolutely"
• p133 Portland operation: 7500 components from 600 suppliers, from ... switches ... to engines
• p134 Edgar Kaiser built first Portland shipways in two months

• p134 Clay Bedford and West coast shipbuilder Edwin W. Hannay

• p134 Todd and the Six Companies shipyard in Portland Maine

• p135 William Francis Gibbs Gibbs and Cox in New York, largest naval architecture firm in the US

• p135 Kaiser's men never boarded a ship, much less built one
• p136 Seagoing boxcar, 8000 tonnes cargo, not comfortable
• p136 Richmond yard built 747 Liberty ships over 4 years

• p137 Kaiser's partner Stephen Bechtel

• p139 Labor unions "biggest obstacle to war production"

• p142 Strikes cost months of progress, "Communist-dominated" CIO Congress of Industrial Organizations

• p145 Ch08 COUNTDOWN

• p146 Saginaw Steering Gear supposed to supply 280 machine guns by 1942 March, actually shipped 28728 guns

• p146 year for tooling and setup, 6 months to full production
• p147 Mitsubishi and Kawasaki aircraft factories used American machine tools

• p148 Fred Geyer Cincinnati Milling Machine

• p149 Geyer purchased boring machine for 16 inch naval guns, smuggled out of Third Reich through Switzerland and Italy
• p151 1941 June 9 Roosevelt sent troops to end North American Aviation strike, workers marched with a flag back to work.

• p152 1941 August 28 Roosevelt creates Supplies, Priorities. and Allocations Board SPAB director Donald M. Nelson

• p153 Leon Henderson Office of Price Administration and Civilian Supply, formerly at the Securities and Exchange Commission

• p155 1941 June - Oil embargo on Japan, July assets frozen, a casus belli

• p155 1941 October, 2000 Japanese-Americans evacuated from west coast

• p155 Frank Knox Navy secretary: "The United States is ready" at December 4 dinner

• p156 Ch09 GOING ALL OUT

• p158 Merrill Church "Babe" Meigs "astounded" by 1942 60,000 airplane production forecast, 125K for 1943

  • actual 47K 1942, 85K 1943, 96K 1944

• p159 Meigs taught Senator Truman to fly

• p162 Knudsen blamed for not forcing (how?) Detroit to convert to war production faster

• p163 Knudsen castigated by Eleanor Roosevelt for not protecting (temporarily) unemployed workers
  • by D-Day (June 1944) Detroit area employment would double, worker shortage as Detroit workers moved to Kaiser shipyards
• p164 Knudsen fired by Roosevelt January 16 1942

• p166 Knudsen appointed 3-star general, Director of Production by Under Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson

• p167 US munitions 3X first year, 7X second year, third year limit materials and labor
• p167 Axus powers could not catch up, bureaucratic waste and meddling
• p169 Pearl Harbor battleships wedged in concrete debris
• p169 half-finished fuel pit served as mass grave for hundreds
• p169 Henry Kaiser stockpiled cement since December 1940, in response to 1938 Navy plans

• p173 Japanese seize Wake Island

• p173 Wildcats on Wake sink the Kisaragi on December 11, last Wildcat gone December 22

• p173 Marines stop first landing against 5-to-1 odds, killed most of them retreating into the surf.
  • message to Hawaii "Send us more Japs."
• p174 48 construction workers died, 47 Marines. 208 others would die as POWs
  • When Japanese evacuated in June 1945, they shot 20 remaining slave laborers

• p176 Ch10 SHIPS FOR LIBERTY

• p184 Portland Yards AFL Boilermakers Local 72 boss Tom Ray corrupt, bigotry and sexism, spent $250K on parties
• p186 Prefab yards, ships were 95% pre-assembled, construction time fell from 220 days to 43 days for Hull #230

• p187 September 23 Joseph Teal finished in 10 days, Roosevelt watches christening

• p190 November 12 Robert E. Perry launched 4 days 15.5 hours after keel laid; logged 42k miles in Pacific

• p191 Perry loaded 10,500 tons of cargo in 35 hours, worked until June 1963 Baltimore breaker's yard

• p192 Ch11 THE PRODUCTION EXPRESS

• p192 Donald Nelson chair of War Production Board 1942-1944

• p193 Nelson could force a contract on a manufacturer, requisition provate property and stop production of some consumer goods
• p196 Nelson defied newspapers, congress, labor, and military leaders

• p197 Hindered the trustbusting attempts of Assistant Attorney General Thurman Arnold

• p198 Leon Henderson, national defense higher priority than antitrust enforcement
• p198 Draconian antitrust rules versus maximum results
• p199 70% of the 300 dollar-a-year men were engineers, managers, research leaders, not board chairmen
• p199 inundated executive signs letter rejecting his own application

• p202 Douglas SBD-4 Dauntless Dive Bomber outclassed the German Stuka and the Japanese Aichi D3A ("Val")

• p207 Nelson blamed for a fictitious shortage 100-octane aviation fuel that suspended overseas military operations

• p209 Ch12 STEEL MEN AND CAST-IRON CHARLIE

• p214 Feb 10, 1942 last day of civilian car production at the Ford River Rouge plant

• p218 Ernest Kanzler oversaw wartime factory conversion, his former Ford employer the most versatile

• p218 CG-4A glider, Ford reduced production cost from $25K to $10K (13900 produced)

• p219 Charles "Cast Iron Charlie" Sorensen Ford's original wizard of mass production

• p219 George Mead Knudsen's aeronautics man

• p221 Sorensen a wild man, Knudsen a mild man
• p221 B-24 500K parts plus 300K rivets, Sorensen "It's the complete plane, or nothing"

• p222 Davis wing for the B-24 "102% efficiency rating" ??

• p222 wet wing fuel tank with DuPont Duprene sealer

• p223 B-24 required constant pilot pushing and pulling

• p223 Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Stewart piloted nearly 60 B-24 missions

• p224 How would Sorensen make B-24s? He worked all night on a production plan, one bomber per hour
• p227 Henry Ford said "by the time you get your first planes finished, the war will be over" (6784 at Ford Willow Run)

• p228 Ch13 AGONY AT WILLOW RUN

• p228 Bulldozers began site prep at Willow Run Michigan 1941 March

• p232 Lindbergh visited 1942 April 7, half hour B-24C test flight: "Controls stiffest and heaviest I have ever handled"
• p233 "Sorensen's ... love of the machine ... crowded out ... the men who must run it"
• p234 Steel dies lasted longer but damaged delicate aluminum surfaces

• p235 frequent design improvements (and new expensive dies) by Mac Laddon

• p237 Knudsen: "Why don't you reverse the center of these three lines, so the work goes down the first line, up the second, and down the third, instead of having to be carried back twice?"
• p239 Airlines volunteered personnel and materials to operate aircraft modification centes
• p241 1944: Willow Run 500 Bombers per month, 200,000 man hours to 18,000 man hours per plane
• p242 Strain of Willow Run: Edsel Ford died March 1943, Alfred Kahn died at his desk in 1942, Henry Ford died April 1947
• p243 Very Long Range Liberators sank many U-boats, convoy losses dropped from 5 per day to 1 in 10 days
• p244 1943 May 24, Admiral Karl Dönitz calls off his wolf packs. Every liberator patrol saved six allied ships, the campaign sunk 72 U-Boats

• p245 Ch14 VICTORY IS OUR BUSINESS

• p246 War Labor Disputes Act passed by Republican Congress, Roosevelt vetoed it, Senate overrode veto in 11 minutes

• p246 1943 work stoppages cost 13.5 million man days
• p247 1944 "only" 8.7 million man days, equivalent of six battleships or 14000 B-24s
• p250 GM war front assembly plant in Iran, 2500 military vehicles a month driven 800 miles to the Soviet Union
• p250 by June 1943, 20,380 trucks to the Red Army
• p253 Eaton Manufacturing of Cleveland collaborated with fierce rival Timken to make axles for trucks and artillery
• p255 "Your Business Goes To War" by the Research Institute of America, copies at UO and Seattle Public Library

• p257 Portlanders Frank Hobbs and George Comstock manufacture 16x30 foot Masonite quonset huts for the arctic in Seattle, 12000 before war ended

  • most survived decades intact and livable

• p258 Ted (not "Tom") Nelson Rocket Gun welder

• p259 Business profits rose, labor wages rose 70%, 15 million American workers moved to new job locations
• p261 1942 February: Black workers moving from the south to Detroit housing development attacked by 300 whites; 30 injured, 100 arrested. Protected by state militiamen
• p261 another attack 1943 June 20, 25 blacks and 9 whites dead, 670 injured

• p264 17yo Norma Jean Dougherty stuffed parachutes in a Burbank aircraft plant, photographed by Captain Ronald Reagan for Yank magazine, led to Hollywood and stage name Marilyn Monroe.

• p264 Augusta Clawson The Shipyard Diary of a Woman Welder . Multco 331.482 C617s 1944 library use only

  • don't wear a watch because the rays of the welding will magnetize its works

• p267 Ch15 THE MAN FROM FRISCO

• p271 The Kaiser yards (Vancouver and Swan Island) brought more than 100,000 workers added to 200,000 residents

• p272 19,000 residents in Vanport by May 1943, desegregated by law

• p275 three Liberty ships split apart February 1943???

  • Esso Manhattan 29 march 1943, repaired in New York harbor

  • SS Schenectady broke apart 16 January 1943 while docked in Portland

  • NOT Henry Wynkoop, which collided with a U-boat in 1943, repaired, and was later scrapped in Baltimore in 1958

• p276 1947 report, notches cracked in icy cold water due to rapid temperature change
• p276 8 ships out of more than 2744 made, far more were sunk by enemy action

• p284 Ch16 SUPERBOMBER

• p289 B-29 bomber project by William Knudsen started September 1943

• p291 Boeing aircraft Clair Egtvedt and Ed Wells

• p302 XB29 engine fire 1943

• p302 Crashed into Frye meat packing plant, killed 11 crew, 22 employees, and one fireman
• p302 instrument tubing caught fire from engine exhaust, burned hole and ignited fuel tank

• p304 Ch17 THE BATTLE OF KANSAS

• p305 original B29 prototype, maintenance check reversed aileron control cables, almost crashed the plane
• p306 Bill Knudsen a production man, "knew nothing about airplanes"

• p307 Battle of Kansas project to build and deliver B-29s

• p307 three shifts of 10 hours each

• p308 Bell promised production by September 1942. By March 1943 building incomplete, 3000 workers making tools for other plants

• p309 Still no planes in June 1943

• p309 Colonel Carl Cover

  • died in snow storm plane crash 27 Nov 1944

• p309 riveter Helen Dortch Longstreet was the widow of Confederate general James Longstreet (m 1897, died 1904)

  • she started working at Bell at age 80, and later lived to age 99
  • ran for Governor of Georgia in 1950 at age 87
• p309 first B-29 left plant in November 1943. By fall 1944, 28,000 workers
• p310 Knudsen liked Martin managers Hartson and Willey (first names? bio?)
• p313 Gen. Groves needed a superplane for the atomic bomb, Gen. Arnold helped modify bomb size and shape to fit B-29 bomb bay
• p314 B-29 Plexiglas observation blisters tended to blow out if pressure changed too rapidly
• p315 Building too crowded, final assembly outside
• p316 Wichita plant: 1943 November, 17 planes; December, 31 planes; January 46; March 51.
• p317 This country seems to be able to do more by accident than any other country can do on purpose

• p318 Ch18 FIRE THIS TIME

• p320 B-29 shoots down attacking Japanese "Oscar"
• p322 February 1945, 16 sorties against primary targets in Japan, no targets destroyed by 5000 tons of ordnance
  • 29 B-29s shot down, 21 crashed due to mechanical failure

• p323 LeMay thought for hours at his desk, averaged four hours of sleep a night

• p323 magnesium for aircraft, harder and lighter and more plentiful than aluminum

• p324 Austrian scientist Fritz Hansgirg

• p326 "goop", powdered magnesium and asphalt, M74 incendiary bomb

• p328 1945 March 9 Tokyo firebombing, 2000 tons of incendiaries
• p329 16 square miles of the city destroying 250,000 buildings and killing 83,000 people
• p330 Knudsen resigned after VE day on June 1, 1945

• p330 June 11: modified B-29s begin arriving at Tinian, Project Silverplate

• p332 August 1 bomb parts assembled, August 5, 5 ton 13KT bomb jacked up into Enola Gay
  • killed 50,000 in Hiroshima August 6
  • August 9, Bock's car drops plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, killing 36,000
  • Japan surrenders August 15
• p333 Bill Knudsen "Progress is only made when fear is overcome by curiousity. If you are curious enough, you will not have any fear"

• p334 Conclusion RECKONING

• p336 US consumer good output increased every year of WW2, despite restrictions and rationing
• p337 US economic output doubled, wages rose by 70%. American workers twice as productive as Germans, 4x Japanese
• p337 20x more workers killed or wounded by US industries in 1942-3 than Americans in uniform
  • uh, the big deployments happened after 1943
• p337 189 GM executives died over 5 years, "heart attack" or "brief illness"
• p338 Alfred Sloan predicted huge growth of post-war demand
• p340 Knudsen retired at age 65 (March 25, 1944?), probably LATE aged 65
• p340 Knudsen died of cerebral hemorrhage April 17, 1948 age 69
• p340 New Dealers rewrote business out of the miracle of war production

• p341 Bruce Catton and disciples of John Maynard Keynes

• p343 Henry Kaiser predicted release of pent-up consumer demand

  • closed shipyards, started Kaiser Aluminum

• p346 American high costs and low productivity crippled Kaiser Aluminum
  • author blames two decades of concessions to unions
• p346 worksite ruined by rainstorm, earthmovers submerged in mud. Worker moans "What are we going to do? Just look at this mud!" Kaiser replies "What mud? I see only that big sun shining down. It's going to turn that mud into solid ground."
• p346 See the sun. Smell the dirt.

• p069 Alistair Cooke 2006 The American Home Front

  • Forest Grove Library 940.5373 COO