Chapter 14: Procurement of Defensive Materiel
In addition to large quantities of service equipment, toxic agents, and raw chemicals the CWS in World War II procured a variety of defensive and offensive munitions. Included among the defensive items were the gas masks, impregnite, impregnating plants, protective ointment, detector kits, decontaminating apparatus and such miscellaneous items as shoe impregnite and dust respirators.
Gas Mask Procurement
During the years between the wars the Army manufactured gas masks for troops in its own production facility at Edgewood Arsenal. It was on this production line that the Chemical Warfare Service developed the basic tools and techniques for mass production of the service mask. But CWS planners were aware that in time of war a fully mobilized citizen army could not possibly be equipped with gas masks from a single small production line. From the early 1930s onward they assumed it would be necessary to bring private industrial firms into the gas mask program on a large scale as soon as mobilization became likely. Between 1934 and 1941 the War Plans Division at Edgewood Arsenal completed arrangements for private production facilities capable of turning out 900,000 masks a month. As already noted, the first assembly plant established in an industrial facility was set up by means of an educational order.1 Completed just as the armed forces were beginning to expand to war strength, the educational orders for gas masks were promptly replaced by full-scale
production contracts which were to yield more than thirty million industry-produced gas masks before the end of World War II. By the end of 1940, mass production of gas masks was well under way.
Mass production of the gas mask gave rise to a number of problems.2 The mask and its major components were specialized military items unfamiliar to private industry; moreover, as equipment which might mean the difference between life and death to the individual soldier, the Army required a high standard of precision in its manufacture. The first need of the contractors was for skilled and experienced workmen. There was but one place, Edgewood Arsenal, from which to draw them; accordingly men and women from Edgewood’s gas mask plant joined the assembly lines at the factories as instructors and inspectors. In some cases they remained to form the nucleus of permanent inspection teams.
Without the assistance of the experienced employees from the gas mask plant at Edgewood Arsenal, the contractors would not have been able to operate, for as just indicated, nowhere in industry were there workers with the necessary skills. After picked employees of the contractor had learned to perform their tasks, they in turn became instructors to other selected employees.
The training of skilled and semiskilled workers was only one of the perplexing matters that the gas mask contractors faced. Like many other wartime procurement difficulties, this problem was not confined to a particular item or a particular contractor. Another problem was the impact on manufacturing operations resulting from changes in production schedules. The fact that such changes were inherent in the system of wartime supply did not lessen the impact. A change in a gas mask schedule made it necessary for the contractor to cut back the number of workers on the assembly line. These workers were often employed elsewhere in the plant, and under company policies they were usually not obliged to return to their former jobs. If a demand arose for increased production of gas masks, the contractors had to train new workers. The situation became particularly complicated when a contractor had several contracts on the mask running simultaneously.
Both the CWS and the contractors assembling gas masks had trouble procuring components. Under the educational order program the CWS had
procured components from relatively few contractors, but once full-scale production got under way the service had to add many additional sources for such noncommercial items as faceblanks, valve parts, canister parts, treated charcoal (whetlerite), and eyerings. In many instances the components furnished did not prove satisfactory and the CWS had to station inspectors at the plants of all major manufacturers of components.
Another difficulty in the manufacture of the gas mask resulted from slight variations in the faceblank molds of the different mold manufacturers. Because each mold maker used a slightly different pattern the face-blanks also had slightly different patterns and could therefore not be successfully assembled with the same tools. Many faulty assemblies took place with resultant delays in production.3
The mask which industry began to produce in 1940 was the standard Army service mask, M1A2-9A1-4, together with its economically priced counterpart, the training mask, M2A1-1-1. In some respects these items proved difficult to adapt to assembly line techniques. The M1A2 facepiece not only needed careful handwork at such points as its eyering assembly, but it also had a potentially vulnerable chin seam, which had to undergo an elaborate process of repeated cementing, taping, and baking to meet specifications. One contractor, Firestone Rubber and Latex Products Co. of Fall River, developed an automatic chin seam vulcanizer to speed the work.4 The ultimate solution to the problem however, was to replace the M1A2 faceblank altogether by getting the simpler, seamless, all-rubber molded faceblank into production. It took some time and care to produce the molds in the needed quantities and within the close tolerances required. The first attempts to produce molded faceblanks in quantity for the service masks were undertaken late in 1940. A number of changes in the rubber composition and molding techniques had to be worked out before the process could be depended upon to turn out the intricately shaped forms without having a large percentage unacceptable because of cracks or other
flaws.5 By June 1941 the fully molded faceblank was ready to replace the M1A2 on the assembly lines.
The transition to mass production by industry brought new ideas as well as new problems to the gas mask assembly line. These ideas were introduced after some of the methods and devices which through the years had met the needs of the small pilot plant at Edgewood Arsenal were found inadequate for the demands now made upon them. For example, the firms that were turning out training masks (an item which differed from the standard service masks principally in its use of a simple cylindrical canister) soon became dissatisfied with the machine Edgewood Arsenal had designed to fill the canisters. They felt that it did not meet the standards of current commercial technology, and lost little time in arbitrarily replacing it with a more up-to-date filler borrowed from the food canning industry.6
By December 1941 the mass production of service and training masks by industry had been under way for a year. Despite the many problems of inexperience and adjustment, well over two million masks had been delivered to the Army, and production capacity had already exceeded ten thousand masks per day.7 The nation’s entry into active warfare only accelerated the existing program. There was, however, one major change of emphasis. The training mask, whose principal virtue lay in the fact that it was cheaper than its regular service counterpart, had never been intended for use in combat. Training mask production lines were therefore gradually shifted to service mask assembly, and by mid-1942 the training mask had been virtually dropped as a production item.8
But if one gas mask program was marked for conclusion after war came, another was suddenly and vigorously resuscitated. The period of educational orders had witnessed a small-scale trial production program for noncombatant gas masks. In 1940 the Chemical Warfare Service selected five firms, none of them experienced in such items, and contracted to set up complete noncombatant mask production lines in each for turning out a single educational order of gas masks. On the basis of this experience
the CWS after Pearl Harbor began mass production of civilian masks. For once, the service had no difficulty attracting potential producers. Several hundred applicants, hearing of a defense item which would be made by a comparatively small plant, solicited contracts. The CWS planners reckoned that for optimum production efficiency an individual plant should be capable of turning out 125,000 masks per month. This led to the conclusion that about twenty good sized producers would be preferable to a large number of small fabricators, and production contracts were ultimately assigned on this basis. Three of the original five educational order contractors were considered capable of undertaking full-scale production and over a dozen additional contractors were obtained to fill out the program. The selection was such that each of the six CWS procurement districts had two or more suppliers within its jurisdiction.9
By midsummer of 1942 the full-scale production program for noncombatant masks was under way. From the outset there were difficulties. The CWS, as a result of experience gained in educational order production, was convinced that the fabric facepieces needed a coating of natural rubber in preference to synthetic plastics if they were to have a firm, leakproof fit.10 This requirement at once ran up against the sudden crisis in the nation’s rubber supply, and though a limited amount of rubber was at last made available for the program, the CWS and its customer, the Office of Civilian Defense, had to accept a production ceiling of 8,500,000 masks. On the production line itself, shortages of materials and components hampered scheduling. The outlet valve case proved a particularly troublesome bottleneck until the molds needed to make it could be hurried to completion.11 Despite difficulties the program reached its assigned goal approximately on schedule. In 1943 production of noncombatant gas masks came to a halt, and thereafter about half the production lines were maintained on a standby basis.
During 1942 the program for service gas masks was vigorously carried forward to meet the demands of the rapidly increasing Army. Since the service mask formed part of every soldier’s equipment, the rate at which
the mobilization of military manpower was proceeding required full use of all available production facilities. To those already at work on the service mask the CWS added a new end item assembler by converting Sprague Specialities Co. of North Adams, Mass., from a training mask line to the more urgently needed service mask. In 1943 the west coast was brought into the program when the San Francisco district set up service mask production at the plant of the Simmons Co. That same year the Dallas district began contracting with B. F. Goodrich Co. for production of the service mask in Clarksville, Tenn. By November 1943 service mask production had reached its peak rate, nearly a million a month, as compared with a prewar monthly rate averaging about two hundred thousand.12
The service mask that was being turned out at the end of 1943 was the new lightweight model, the M3-10-6, which had been developed in 1942. The first essay at putting the new mask into production was entrusted to the Pittsburgh district’s end-item contractor, the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. of Akron, Ohio, which set up a pilot line for it in January 1943, without interrupting its regular production. The contract called for an initial production of 150,000 lightweight masks, but barely a tenth of that number had been assembled when the program was temporarily halted. So many practical difficulties had arisen in meeting the original specifications that these had to be altered somewhat before production could continue. Among the trouble spots singled out for special notice were the canister assembly and filling operations, the crimping of eyerings in the M3 facepiece assembly, and the sewing of the M6 carrier. The carrier turned out to be the main bottleneck, and the district ultimately had to call a conference of the CWS officers stationed at the plants of the carrier contractors before a standard design meeting both CWS requirements and production needs could be worked out. But by the end of May 1943 product engineering had advanced to a point where the CWS was able to negotiate full-scale production contracts with Goodyear and its other prime contractors. By August the new mask, with its nosecup, 18-inch hosepiece, cylindrical canister, and carrier, had replaced the old on all existing production lines and was being turned out by the new facilities at San Francisco and Clarksville as well.13
Though Goodyear’s pilot plant experience had served to correct some major difficulties, problems still remained at the assembly line level. The principal distinctive feature of the new facepiece was its nosecup, almost a mask within a mask, which had to be carefully vulcanized into place, simpler methods of attachment having proved impractical.14 This process was speeded up after Firestone Rubber and Latex Products Co., one of the end-item contractors in the Boston district, developed and put into use a machine that vulcanized the nosecups to the facepieces automatically. A large surplus stock of old style 27-inch hosepieces ceased to be a problem when the contractors successfully demonstrated that a satisfactory 18-inch hosepiece could be fashioned from two 9-inch remnants, thereby making every two old style hosepieces a potential source of three lightweight pieces.15 The problem of handling the recently developed whetlerite on the canister line called for some new techniques and a good deal of care to prevent overexposure of the impregnated charcoal to the atmosphere.16
The Pittsburgh district bore most of the burden of keeping the gas mask program supplied with charcoal. Early production contracts were for nutshell and wood charcoals. The major source at this stage was the Barnebey-Cheney Engineering Co. of Columbus, Ohio, a pioneer in the field, which operated not only charcoal activating kilns but also a Zanesville, Ohio, plant where charcoal was converted to whetlerite. A CWS contractor-operated plant in Fostoria, Ohio, used a zinc chloride process to produce a wood charcoal which met standards at first, but which later proved comparatively expensive and unsuited to the manufacture of the ASC form of whetlerite in use by 1943. In that year the Pittsburgh Coke and Chemical Co. opened up a new domestic source, bituminous coal, for the mass production of whetlerite. After the company had demonstrated the practicability of making charcoal from bituminous coal, the government built two charcoal plants for the Pittsburgh company.17 A little later, the CWS acquired the plant at Zanesville for the Pittsburgh Coke and Chemical Co. to operate. The elaborate test procedures required for the effective inspection of ASC whetlerite led the Pittsburgh district’s chief
inspection officer to urge that the CWS set up a central testing laboratory in the Pittsburgh area. The service adopted the suggestion, and by mid-February of 1944 a central laboratory was in operation at Carnegie, Pa., near the contractor’s plant, and beginning the process of taking over the major responsibility for whetlerite inspection.18
The Rubber Crisis
The most difficult problem confronting the gas mask program was the critical wartime shortage of its principal ingredient, crude rubber, as noted earlier. In peace or war the United States had to have an annual rubber supply running to upward of half a million long tons just to keep its rubber tired vehicles operating. The source of nearly all the crude rubber used in America was the plantations of Southeast Asia. The onset of a Pacific war, followed within weeks by the loss of most of the rubber regions to the enemy, left the United States facing a major emergency in rubber supply by the spring of 1942. The government quickly imposed rigid limitations on the use of the country’s existing rubber stockpiles, while a tremendous new production program for synthetic rubbers was rushed into being.
Despite the fact that the Chemical Warfare Service for the time being had a large enough share of the overall military allotment of rubber to continue its service mask programs as planned, the post-Pearl Harbor procurement of noncombatant gas masks was in trouble from the outset. The item, being specifically nonmilitary, had no proper claim on military allocations of strategic materials. Moreover, civilian authority as represented by the newly organized War Production Board (WPB) tended to discourage the issuance of rubber allotments for the mask. Concern over the immediate and dangerous rubber emergency outweighed concern over a hypothetical gas attack on continental United States. The expressed intention of CWS officers to aim for a total program of fifty million noncombatant masks, involving the probable expenditure of some ten thousand tons of rubber, met with opposition firm enough to force a compromise. The WPB agreed to supply 1,360 tons of reclaimed rubber, sufficient for five million noncombatant masks for domestic use plus an additional three and a half million destined for Australia. Officials of WPB hoped that the CWS would soon be able to standardize a noncombatant facepiece using
some substitute plastic as a fabric coating. Though work on such a product was being carried on it had not yet produced a facepiece meeting the requirements.19 When later in 1942 it developed that the original allocation would not be large enough to complete the masks on order, WPB reluctantly granted an additional allocation of 750 tons of reclaimed rubber, over the objections of its own Office of Civilian Supply.20
Notwithstanding that by 1943 the rapidly increasing output of synthetic rubbers was beginning to have its effect on the rubber emergency, the stock of natural rubber continued to dwindle. By the spring of that year it was becoming plain that mass production of the natural rubber service mask could not go on indefinitely. The CWS had already improvised measures to stretch its rubber allocation for the time being, first by reducing the percentage of latex in the prescribed compound and then by authorizing increased use of reclaimed rubber. But a change to an all-synthetic mask was fast becoming a necessity.
The Office of the Rubber Director, WPB, brought matters to a head early in June 1943 by setting up a committee, representing gas mask producers, the CWS, the Navy, and the WPB, to plan the change-over. The committee, under the chairmanship of J. J. Allen of the Firestone Rubber and Latex Products Co., met monthly beginning in June. Though the CWS was doing most of the necessary development work through its laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a great deal of technical information on mixing and handling compounds based on synthetics was exchanged through the committee by the industry representatives. It was the general conviction that butyl rubber was the synthetic that would be best for the purpose, and throughout the summer the planning and experimentation was based on this conclusion. Planners expected a butyl service mask to be in production by early fall. Then in September they realized that the expected output of butyl rubber could not be counted upon, and they quickly decided to proceed with the conversion plans using neoprene instead. In October the CWS placed educational orders for pilot lots of
synthetic components (faceblanks, hose tubes, and nosecups) with its principal contractors, and on 1 November the Rubber Director’s order limiting gas masks to 50 percent crude rubber in November and none subsequently became effective.21
For more than a year thereafter the Army’s standard service masks—both the M3 lightweight mask standardized earlier and its shortlived successor, the M5 combat mask—were made of neoprene. As in the case of any major change in specifications, there was an occasional hitch on the production lines. Some of these hitches were caused by the fact that batches of neoprene compound were not always uniform.22 A more critical problem arose when one contractor attempted to produce faceblanks for the complicated optical gas mask from neoprene. The neoprene stock refused to take molding acceptably, and nearly all the first batch of one thousand faceblanks failed to pass inspection. The contract had to be terminated.23 But with these exceptions, production of neoprene masks proceeded smoothly enough.
Not until the neoprene masks had reached the troops in the European Theater of Operations and experienced cold weather—that is, not until the winter of 1944–45—were the shortcomings of neoprene fully appreciated. The “black rubber” masks, as they were called, were likely to stiffen into deformed shapes at low temperatures, making it impossible to obtain a gastight fit. The theater let it be known that it wanted no more of them. This tendency of neoprene to develop “cold set” was not unknown in 1943. According to a WPB historian the output of neoprene had been reduced in the spring of 1943 because its unreliability at low temperatures limited its usefulness.24 The Gas Mask Industry Technical Committee, which had coordinated the work leading to the adoption of neoprene, had been aware of the difficulty. The committee, when considering formulas the contractors were preparing to use, had apparently left approval of the neoprene
compounds to the CWS Laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.25
The Latter War Years
At the time the shift to synthetics was made, the production rate for gas masks was just passing its wartime peak. With the completion of the Army expansion program, there was a leveling-off in gas mask requirements. By February 1944 the cutbacks in scheduled production were extensive enough to justify a substantial reduction in assembly facilities. Accordingly, Goodyear was dropped from the program that month, and Sprague Specialities of North Adams, Mass., ceased production when their current contract was completed in Apri1.26
The cutback coincided with the start of production on a new service mask, the M5-11-7 combat (or assault) mask. The CWS meant to ultimately replace this new item, a hoseless mask with a cheek mounted axial-flow canister and a new waterproof carrier, but at the outset scheduled only limited production with a single assembler, Firestone of Fall River. The principal production difficulties were in the assembly of components. New seaming and filling machines had to be installed for the M11 canister, an item radically different from the radial-flow canisters that had preceded it. The filters took the form of elaborately pleated shells of specially treated absorbent paper. Although a comparatively simple shell pattern was available, the CWS had also developed a pattern involving concentric pleats and wanted comparative field reports on the two types. Consequently, both types were produced. The concentric filter was considerably more troublesome to assemble. The M7 carrier, a complex item made of butyl coated duck, was a source of trouble from the start. The specifications, especially those for the waterproof closure, were such as to make for an inherently awkward assembly job.27
The Dallas district brought its principal gas mask contractor, the B. F. Goodrich plant at Clarksville, Tenn., into the combat mask program in September 1944, but the program itself was nearing a sudden end. Though the problem raised by the assemblers of canisters and carriers were not unusual, the difficulties which the combat facepiece itself presented were
another matter. The attempts to convert faceblank molds to M5 production had not been successful, and the faceblanks themselves had so high a rejection rate that by the end of August the CWS was ready to admit that continued production of the M5 was not worth the trouble. The contracts were terminated accordingly, with the M3-10A1-6 resuming its status as the standard service mask.28
The M3 was not the only service mask in production at the end of 1944. A salvage and reconditioning program of steadily increasing proportions had brought into being the lightweight service mask M4-10A1-6, which was manufactured by adding the nosecup, hose tube, canister, and carrier of a lightweight mask to a reconditioned M2A2 rubber facepiece. The M4 had been developed and approved late in 1942 as a stopgap item to be turned out while the production difficulties of the new M3 were being remedied.29 It was not produced in any substantial quantity, despite the original plan, until the beginning of 1944. From then on it ranked as an important factor in the nation’s gas mask output, and several major contractors were kept busy dismantling used heavy service and training masks so that the M4 assembly lines could be kept supplied.
The reconditioning program assumed a new importance in January 1945, after the using arms had declared the neoprene facepiece unsatisfactory From then onward the CWS mask program depended on the output of natural rubber facepieces from the reconditioners. By the summer of 1945 an elaborate process was under way of recalling neoprene masks from overseas, exchanging them for rubber masks in use in the zone of interior, and shipping the latter in turn to the reconditioning plants for ultimate use overseas. The reconditioning program also played a part in supplying a substitute for the hoseless M5 combat mask withdrawn from production in 1944. In the summer of 1945 the gas mask industry began turning out the M3-11-10 snout-type mask, in which the assault-type M11 canister was attached directly to the front of a reconditioned rubber facepiece. Over 300,000 of these masks were produced before V-J Day halted the assembly lines.30 The M8 snout-type mask was the last of the series of masks produced during the war for general issue to troops.
Special Purpose Masks
The production history of the gas mask program would not be complete without reference to the special purpose masks manufactured by the CWS or its contractors between 1940 and 1945. In terms of magnitude, the most important of these special programs was the one for the diaphragm mask. Although this item was never entirely satisfactory, the CWS hoped that eventually a greatly improved diaphragm mask would come off the assembly line. Plans in May 1942 called for supplying the Army with five million or more of these masks.31 A program of this size obviously required the participation of industry. Edgewood Arsenal alone produced two million diaphragm masks in the two years between February 1941 and March 1943. By the latter date plans for industrial production were complete, and the first diaphragm masks to be turned out by private contractors were accepted in April 1943.32 But by June this type of mask was rejected by the using arms and production was stopped.33
The program for the optical mask was less ambitious. Edgewood Arsenal turned out about 116,000 in mid-1941, and no further production was undertaken for three years. Then in 1944, in response to an ASF demand, the CWS undertook to produce another ninety thousand though it had not yet completed development of the item. The development laboratory provided a master form for the facepiece, and the rubber blanks were manufactured by the Sun Rubber Co. of Barberton, Ohio, after an attempt by the Acushnet Process Co. of New Bedford had demonstrated that neoprene would not meet requirements. The masks were assembled by a Chicago district contractor, Eureka Vacuum Cleaner Co. of Detroit.34 An optical mask developed and requisitioned by the Navy was produced on short notice in 1943-44 by the New York district, despite the fact that the district had not shared in the CWS gas mask program except for its part in the nationwide procurement of noncombatant masks.35
Procurement of such other special purpose masks as were not turned out solely by the CWS pilot plant at Edgewood Arsenal was generally accomplished through the Boston Procurement District. The headwound mask was produced in the district for a short time in 1944-45, with the Firestone Co. of Fall River making the final assembly. Facepieces for
collective protectors were also procured in 1944-45, the prime contractor being the Electrolux Co. of Old Greenwich, Conn. This company, which had taken part in the development of the item, continued to assemble face-pieces until the war ended.36
Inspection of Gas Masks
At the start of the war the CWS had compiled very little literature to assist its inspectors in carrying out their day-to-day operations. To fill this need the Inspection Division, OC CWS, inaugurated the practice of writing a Standard Inspection Procedure (SIP) for each CW end item. The SIP described the item and its use, how it was made, and how it functioned. It went on to specify the parts of the item to be inspected, the tools or instruments to be used in carrying out the inspection, and it finally outlined such matters as proof testing, surveillance procedures, and packaging. The bulk of the SIP’s on the CW items were prepared and circulated by the summer of 1944.37
The SIP on the gas mask which the Inspection Division wrote in 1943 called for end-item inspection by the government of each lot of masks coming off the assembly line. If the CWS inspector rejected a lot the contractor’s inspectors had to recheck each mask in that lot. All defective masks then had to be reworked. Later the CWS modified this procedure by having its inspectors check the masks as they were moving along on the conveyor line, and if the CWS inspector rejected a certain number, the contractor’s inspectors reinspected all the masks remaining on the line. Meanwhile the contractor held up all production until the particular defect was eliminated. The latter system proved more satisfactory than the former because it prevented the incorporation of undesirable features into the mask.
After World War II the contractors who had assembled gas masks during the war almost invariably complained of the CWS system of inspection. Their complaints came under two headings: first, that the inspectors by and large were inadequately trained, and secondly, that the 1943 SIP was impractical for purposes of quantity, and simultaneously quality, production of gas masks.38 While many gas mask inspectors were doubtless deficient in background and insufficiently trained, this complaint was per - haps too sweeping. The condition was partially the result of the tight labor
market existing at that time. The second complaint would also seem to have a basis in fact. When the government took the position that there should be a 100 percent of inspection of certain munitions—and such insistence was unquestionably legitimate—it could not at the same time consistently place primary emphasis on mass production of the item. It was mass production, plus haste in designing masks and components, that was at the root of the difficulty. The fact that there were many minor discrepancies in specifications and acceptance standards for components from different suppliers tended to produce rejections of finished masks for causes beyond the control of the end-item assembler.
Production of Impregnite (CC-2)
The plant for producing the impregnite CC-2 which the CWS built at Edgewood Arsenal in the 1930s began to operate on a production basis in October 1940. Among the plants it erected at Edgewood in the emergency period, the CWS included a new impregnite plant utilizing a new process of manufacture. This plant got into production early in 1942. The two Edgewood plants continued to operate until the start of 1943. Meanwhile, the plant at Niagara Falls got into operation in the fall of 1941 and in early 1942 the plants at St. Louis and Midland.39
A number of manufacturing difficulties soon presented themselves. At the Niagara Falls plant, corrosion of equipment by the highly reactive materials used in the process became a major problem, so much so that Du Pont made it the subject of an extended research project during 1942. Early production yields were disappointingly small when measured against the yields known to be available. Furthermore, the quality of the product left much to be desired. Batch after batch failed to meet specifications and had to be washed free of impurities if not reprocessed altogether. By March 1942, when the Du Pont plant had been over five months in operation without a substantial advance in yield or quality, the CWS was voicing concern.40 Production ills were meanwhile besetting the Midland and St. Louis plants, operated by Dow Chemical Co. and Monsanto Chemical Co., respectively. But in the months that followed, the results of accumulating experience and production research began to tell. By the late
autumn of 1942 the plants were approximating their rated capacity of five tons per day apiece, and the worst difficulties were past. In 1943 the rated capacity was substantially exceeded by actual production of specification-grade materia1.41
In the impregnating process CC-2 was dissolved in acetylene tetrachloride, a highly toxic solvent. Since the use of such a solvent was both difficult and dangerous, officials placed a requirement for a water soluble impregnite. Technicians met this need by reducing the individual particle size in CC-2 to micron proportions. Production of micronized CC-2, redesignated XX-CC3, began in the spring of 1943 after the installation of micronizing equipment in the plants. During the next eighteen months the greater part of the CC-2 turned out was converted at the plant to XX-CC3. At the beginning of 1944 the impregnite plants were delivering 700 tons of impregnite a month to the CWS.42 With the peak period of military build-up already past, the CWS had to plan early cutbacks in output. In March 1944 the ASF authorized the CWS to place the Midland plant on standby status and to reduce production in the remaining two plants. By May impregnite production was accordingly down to a level approximating 250 tons per month. Micronizing operations were halted entirely by the CWS after October 1944, but CC-2 production was increased somewhat in the early months of 1945. Production continued until hostilities ended. From first to last, over 18,000 tons of impregnite were produced for the CWS between 1940 and 1945.43
Procurement of Impregnating Plants
As important as the development of the protective clothing was the problem of maintaining a global supply of the item against the threat of gas warfare. Large stores of protective clothing had to be kept in readiness in all theaters of war and maintained in effective condition. Since the protective capacity of CC-2 in clothing gradually diminished with long storage and deteriorated even more rapidly when the clothing was in use, a kit had to be developed to assess the CC-2 content of protective clothing.44 Rapid resupply of storage stocks which might be called for issue
on very short notice demanded the installation of impregnating facilities at storage points both at home and abroad. With the outbreak of gas warfare, vast quantities of contaminated clothing would have to be decontaminated and laundered, with consequent diminution of its CC-2 content. This potential need made it imperative that large-scale semifixed plants be developed and installed near resupply points.
Three types of impregnating plants, based on American Laundry Machine Co. models, were developed and standardized by 1943: (1) The M1 plant (zone of interior), a fixed type with a capacity of 9,000 units of clothing each 24 hours; (2) the M1 plant (theater of operations); and (3) the M2 plant (theater of operations), which was a semifixed type with a capacity of almost 4,000 pounds per 24-hour day or 13,300 sets of clothing weekly. Both of the M1 plants were designed for the standard solvent process of impregnation in which CC-2 and chlorinated paraffin as a binder were dissolved in acetylene tetrachloride, applied to the clothing by uniform saturation, and the solvent then evaporated.45
The size and weight of M1 impregnating equipment presented difficulties in zone of interior installations, and in theater of operations plants gave rise to major problems. Theater plant equipment included two 400-gallon solution tanks; three modified laundry washing machines, two with solvent recovery units; a modified laundry washing machine, called the impregnator; a steam generating unit; an electric generating unit; and various auxiliary items such as fuel tanks, pumps, and tools. Depending upon the model the packed plant weighed from 80,000 to 105,000 pounds and was approximately 6,000 cubic feet in volume. Thirteen vehicles were required for its transportation. Skid mountings and special packings were developed to facilitate handling.46
Each zone of interior M1 plant cost $358,000 and each theater of operations MI plant approximately $79,000.47 A total of thirty-four MI theater of operations plants was procured in 1942 and 1943 from the American Laundry Machinery Co. and Proctor and Schwartz, Inc., under the
supervision of Edgewood Arsenal and the New York procurement district. Two M1 zone of interior plants were procured.48
The M2 plant used a water suspension method, developed in 1942 by a group under Dr. P. L. Salzberg at the Du Pont chemistry laboratories, involving micronized CC-2, chlorinated paraffin, and suspension and dispersing agents. This process, through the elimination of the toxic solvent, was simpler, safer, and more economical than the solvent process and was standardized for both the Army and Navy in mid-1943.49
Although clothing treated by the new aqueous method proved highly satisfactory when worn in temperate climates, in the tropics the clothing caused excessive skin irritation to troops wearing it for long periods of time. The hazard was traced to the zinc oxide stabilizer that had been incorporated in both the solvent and suspension processes by the Du Pont group to prevent deterioration of impregnated cotton clothing in storage in the tropics. The CWS withheld issue of the M2 plant from Pacific theaters until researchers found that replacing the stabilizing agent zinc oxide with calcium carbonate eliminated the hazard without affecting the storage life of the clothing.50
The M2 plant was less complicated than the M1 and was considerably less expensive to procure, the cost being about $47,000 per plant.51 The packed plant weighed from 10,000 to 30,000 pounds less than the M1, but the volume was 500 cubic feet greater principally because of the addition of a large but lightweight solution mixing unit. The M2, like the M1, required a firm foundation of timbers or concrete and a weatherproofed shelter.52 In 1942 Edgewood Arsenal produced one M2 plant and in the following year the CWS procured ninety-four additional M2’s from the American Laundry Machinery Co.53
The major portion of these M2 plants replaced M1’s or provided initial equipment for the thirty-nine processing companies activated between 1941 and 1945. All but one of these companies saw service overseas.54 In the absence of gas warfare, the companies were given secondary missions, in
addition to their primary function of maintaining theater stocks of impregnated clothing, of providing dry cleaning (the M1 plant) and laundry services to troops in the field. Once a suitable water supply was located the equipment was easily adapted to these tasks. In the tropics and semitropics the equipment was put to good use in impregnating clothing with insecticides as a preventative for scrub typhus and malaria.55
To provide advance company units in the field with means for impregnating clothing in an emergency, Dr. Salzberg’s group developed a small field set weighing 52 pounds, capable of processing 24 suits of clothing.56 Finally, a helmet impregnating set, to be carried in the pack or gas mask carrier and weighing less than half a pound, was experimented with to permit the individual soldier to impregnate his uniform, shorts, and socks, using his helmet and water from his canteen. A later requirement for a highly mobile unit capable of handling 1,400 pounds of clothing (approximately 200 suits) each 24 hours was relinquished when it was found that the Quartermaster mobile laundry units in the field could be adapted, by means of a special kit, as temporary water-suspension impregnating plants.57
Next to the gas mask, protective clothing was the soldier’s most important defense against gas warfare and every individual moving overseas received a complete issue. In the theater of operations this individual issue was maintained either in the hands of the soldier or in readily available supply locations. In addition, theater reserves were stocked in the early part of the war on a 100 percent reissue basis and later in the war on a descending scale according to the vulnerability of each area to the initiation of gas warfare. ,Protective clothing was actually worn in operations in which the enemy’s initiation of gas warfare appeared possible, such as the Normandy invasion.58
Protective Ointment59
The CWS awarded a development contract on protective ointment, the antigas decontaminant for use on the soldier’s body and personal weapons,
to Wallace and Tiernan Products, Inc., in February 1941.60 Under that contract the company produced M1 and M2 ointment on a pilot plant basis until September when it suspended production in order to put the knowledge and experience gained into practice. Wallace and Tiernan set up a manufacturing plant for M1 ointment in one of its buildings in Belleville, N.J., and this plant was operating in December 1941. In the fall of 1941, meanwhile, the CWS awarded a research contract to Evans Chemetics, Inc., of New York City. This was followed by a production contract in January 1942. To manufacture the ointment Evans Chemetics built a plant in Hoboken, N.J.
The M1 was unlike any ointment that had ever been produced commercially. One of its chief ingredients was chlorine, which reacts adversely on ordinary production equipment. The nature of the ingredients made it difficult to obtain a uniform mix and it was impossible to pump this mix from the kettle to the tube filling machine. To overcome these difficulties, Wallace and Tiernan, the first contractor in production, developed glass lined kettles and power driven agitators to mix the ingredients, used inert metals such as platinum or tungsten for valve seats, valve stems, and metallic parts of tubing machines, installed an air pressure transfer system, and devised glass and ceramic piping to carry the mix from the kettle to the tube filling machine.
Another serious complication encountered in early manufacture was that the lead tubes into which the ointment was filled contaminated the product. Tubes made from aluminum or even from tin would have been preferable, but those metals were in short supply. The Dewey and Almy Chemical Co., Cambridge, Mass., developed a satisfactory lining for the tube, consisting of a combination of wax and synthetic rubber. This tube was put into production by several manufacturers, including the Peerless
Tube Co., Bloomfield, NJ., and the Sun Tube Co., a subsidiary of the Bristol Myers Co., Hillside, N.J.61 In August 1942 the CWS contracted with a third firm to produce the ointment, the Lambert Pharmacal Co., St. Louis, Mo. This company, which continued in production until November of the following year, produced more ointment than either of the other contractors.62
In the fall of 1943 the NDRC began sponsoring conferences between manufacturers of the ointment and representatives of the CWS and the Navy. One of the chief objectives of the conferences was improvement in the packaging of the ointment. As a result of these conferences the contractors generally became much freer in exchanging ideas on all phases of the program. This they generally did through telephone calls or visits to one another’s plants.
An outstanding accomplishment connected with the procurement of the ointment was the development of an excellent brand of triacetin, an ingredient of glycerol triacetate, by the Tennessee Eastman Co. of Kingsport, Tenn. This company produced a high grade product and sold it to the manufacturers of the ointment at a reasonable price. The same company also furnished the cellulose acetate butyrate used in the ointment.
From February 1941 until December 1943 the CWS procured over 58,000,000 2.54-ounce tubes of M4 ointment and from May 1944 until June 1945 over 26,000,000 packages, each containing 4 3/4-ounce tubes of MS ointment.63
Detector Kits64
The CWS procured over 40,000 M4 vapor detector kits for detection of toxic agents in 1942 through contracts in the New York and Chicago procurement districts. No unusual problems arose in the procurement of this relatively simple item. In mid-1943, as indicated elsewhere, the M4
was replaced by the M9, a kit containing nearly 200 small tubes of reagents for detection of various war gases.65
The M9 proved much more difficult to produce than did the M4. As one of the chief wartime contractors later put it, “this item was typical of the new development, characterized by immature specification.”66 Commercial laboratories continually face situations such as this in day-to-day operations, but they do not attempt to put items into full-scale production until the items have reached an advanced state of development. With government wartime contracts it was different. The M9 kit was but one of a number of items on which the CWS awarded production contracts before mature development had taken place.
The CWS awarded contracts in the summer of 1943 to two firms for production of the M9 kit, Evans Chemetics, Inc., of New York City, and Raymond Laboratories, Inc., of St. Paul, Minn. Because of the stream of specification changes which the CWS laboratory at MIT issued on the various items in the kit, neither contractor was able to produce a single finished kit for at least six months. Meanwhile, both contractors had devised methods for mass production, set up assembly lines, and made valuable suggestions relative to certain features of the kit. Raymond Laboratories was particularly prolific with suggestions. In peacetime this company had manufactured appliances for beauty parlors and it applied some of its experience with this type of item to the production of the M9 kit. For example, original specifications called for the use of lighted matches as a source of heat for producing chemical reactions. On the basis of its experience in making heating pads for waving hair, Raymond Laboratories suggested the use of a foil wrapped pad which would produce flameless heat upon the addition of a liquid chemical. This suggestion the CWS gladly accepted-. Again, original specifications called for packing the small glass tubes of reagents in cellophane straws and then sealing the ends of the straws by a heating process. Raymond convinced the CWS to substitute aluminum foil for cellophane. Finally, at the suggestion of Raymond Laboratories, the CWS made several changes in the design of the air sampling pump of the detector kit.
The CWS procured over eighty-two thousand M9 kits between April 1944 and July 1945.
Decontaminating Apparatus67
In carrying out its gas readiness program the Army was able to find no quicker or more effective destroyer of liquid mustard or contaminated areas or structures than the bleaching powder or chloride of lime used in World War I, and large quantities of it were stored in depots here and abroad as part of the Army’s gas warfare readiness program. The CWS procured over thirty-eight million pounds of bleaching material through private contract and obtained over thirty-one million more from the British on reverse lend-lease.68 The American bleach (known as Grade 3) which the CWS first procured had a high moisture content which caused chemical reaction leading to rupture of the containers. The British product, known as super tropical bleach, developed by the Imperial Chemical Industries, was a much more satisfactory product. The U.S. Government arranged to have the British Imperial Chemical Industries assist the Pennsylvania Salt Manufacturing Co., which supplied bleach to the CWS, to construct a plant for the manufacture of tropical bleach at Wyandotte, Mich. This plant had been built and in production only a short time when a fire destroyed it in August 1944. Since the U.S. wartime requirements had been met by that time the CWS let no further contracts for bleach.69
For decontaminating vehicles, planes, weapons, fire control apparatus, and similar finished metal surfaces, DANC, the standard decontaminating agent, non-corrosive, was used.70 Because this decontaminant caused some damage to paint, plastics, and bare metal surfaces and because there were objections to the toxic solvent in its composition, the NDRC at the request of the Naval Research Laboratory initiated a contract study under J. E. Kirby of the Du Pont Laboratories to find a better agent. No clearly superior decontaminant was developed.71
The CWS modified fire extinguishers and garden sprayers for the application of DANC, and adapted commercial orchard sprayers for the discharge of volumes of bleach water mixtures (slurry) over large contaminated areas. Every vehicle going overseas was equipped with a 1½-quart decontaminating apparatus and every company in the Army was furnished a 3-gallon unit. The Army issued power driven apparatus to CWS decontaminating companies and to the Armored Force and Air Force squadrons.
In the spring of 1941 the CWS contracted with the F. E. Myers and Brothers Co., Ashland, Ohio, a manufacturer of pumps and orchard sprayers, for six power driven models: On the basis of these models, which the company delivered in June 1941, the CWS wrote specifications for the power driven decontaminating apparatus. After the outbreak of war the Myers Co. continued to manufacture the item. In March 1942 two additional companies, Friend Manufacturing Co., Gasport, N.Y., and John Bean Manufacturing Co., Lansing, Mich., got into production. Later A. B. Farquhar of York, Pa., was awarded a contract. These companies found the item so difficult to manufacture that the CWS Inspection Division deemed it advisable first to approve numerous changes in the specifications and eventually to authorize a performance-type specification for the item.
The apparatus (M3 and M3A1) which these companies manufactured for the CWS in 1942 and 1943 consisted of a 400-gallon wooden tank mounted on a 2½-ton truck with a pump and slurry agitator powered by a take-off from the engine of the truck. It was capable of spraying 400 gallons of the mixture in twenty minutes.72 For more efficient spraying a separate portable water heater was furnished in 1943.73 Each manufacturer applied a pump of his own design to the apparatus which in effect put four models instead of one into the supply system. The item went into production before the CW Board had carried out extensive tests on the possible corrosive effects of the slurry. Upon investigation the board found that the slurry corroded not only the wooden tanks but also the pumps. The tanks could be cleaned—a difficult task to be sure—but there was nothing left to do with regard to the pumps but to require that they be made of noncorrosive materials. Friend Manufacturing Co. already had a pump with ceramic cylinder lining which was satisfactory. But Myers, Bean, and Farquhar had to change their pumps, an undertaking that proved onerous because of low CWS priorities. After the introduction of the hot bleach system it was found that the rate of corrosion became much more
rapid. The practice of heating the slurry was nevertheless desirable since, as already indicated, it made for a much more effective spray. In fact in cold weather heating the liquid was a necessity.
The Quartermaster Corps and later the Ordnance Department furnished the trucks on which the apparatus was mounted. Ordnance experienced so much difficulty procuring these trucks that in the spring of 1943 the CWS standardized a skid mounted apparatus (M4).74 As its name indicates, this model was constructed on skids, and in such a manner that it could be hauled on a 2½-ton truck. The apparatus, with pump and agitator powered by a 22-horsepower gasoline engine, could spray the contents of its tank for about twenty minutes.75 As with the previous model, each manufacturer of the skid mounted apparatus, proceeded to make his own type of pump. In procuring this new apparatus the CWS was faced with the problem of obtaining an engine to run the apparatus pump, because with the elimination of the truck engine, the system of power takeoff was also eliminated. Three of the companies had no trouble obtaining motors of the Continental and Novo variety, but the fourth, A. B. Farquhar, did experience difficulty. For a time the Ordnance Department supplied Ford motors that Farquhar could use, but that source of supply soon dried up. Following a suggestion of the Farquhar Co., the CWS approached Sears, Roebuck and Co. with a request to supply Ford motors. But Sears furnished only Ford blocks into which parts had to be assembled. To accomplish the latter task, the CWS awarded a contract to a St. Louis firm which scoured every conceivable source of supply—junk yards, secondhand stores, auto supply stores—for parts and assembled them into the blocks. These rebuilt motors were shipped to Farquhar and incorporated into the decontaminating unit.
Discouraging though this procurement program was, the CWS might have continued with it but for general dissatisfaction with the skid mounted apparatus. No one liked its lack of mobility. By 1943, moreover, complaints were coming in from the theater on the lack of interchangeability of the parts of the various apparatus. The CWS therefore decided to standardize the most satisfactory truck mounted model, the unit produced by John Bean Manufacturing Co. From that time until the close of hostilities Bean was the sole manufacturer of power driven decontaminating apparatus.76
Few pieces of CWS equipment saw so much application overseas as
did these large decontaminating units. In the absence of gas warfare they were used as emergency fire fighting apparatus, water haulers, field showers, high pressure equipment cleaners, and later as large-volume spray apparatus in insect control operations. Both the hand operated decontaminating apparatus and the M10 airplane spray tank were also used to spray insecticides.
The 1½-quart hand decontaminator, M2, was essentially a modified commercial fire extinguisher. Several concerns, notably the Fyr-Fyter Co. of Dayton, Ohio, General Detroit Corp. of Detroit, and the Badger Fire Extinguisher Co. of Somerville, Mass., produced the item for the CWS during the first years of the war. There were difficulties in connection with the heavy consumptions of brass sheets and strips required for the M2. Copper and copper alloys were critical items, and the ASF would have welcomed a decontaminator constructed of other materials. But though such an item had reached the design stage by 1943, it did not get into production before the program ended. A major problem, both in the production model and the testing of substitutes, was the corrosive character of the decontaminating material with which the M2 was charged. Pyrex valves replaced steel because of this factor, and new spray nozzles and valve seats had to be designed. Total production of the M2 hand decontaminators reached a rate of over one hundred and thirty thousand per month in the spring of 1943, and more than a million had been turned out when the program was terminated in October of that year. Limited production was resumed early in 1945 and continued until the end of the war.77
The 3-gallon decontaminating apparatus, M1, like the power driven types, was adapted to CWS purposes from an agricultural sprayer. Again, the corrosive nature of the charge made certain design and material changes necessary. More than two hundred and seventy-five thousand M1 decontaminators were procured from industry by the New York and Chicago procurement districts between 1941 and 1943.78
Miscellaneous Protective Items
In 1938-39 the CWS, in cooperation with the Vortexol Co., Sangus, Mass., developed an impregnite to protect shoes against toxic agents. In
the summer of 1940 the chiefs office awarded an educational order contract on shoe impregnite to Baldwin Laboratories, Seagerstown, Pa., a subsidiary of Robinson Industries, Inc. This educational order provided for the contractor (1) to prepare a factory plan and design for CWS approval, (2) upon approval of this plan to procure and install necessary equipment for the manufacture of the item, and (3) to produce 125 tons of the product during a 25-day period in order to prove the design and capacity of the plant. This contract proved very successful and Robinson Industries became one of the chief wartime producers of shoe impregnite. Not only did this concern produce a high grade product, but it also paid close attention to plant safety and cooperated in an exemplary manner with later contractors. Among the most successful of these were the Ernest Bischoff Co., Inc., which manufactured the product at its Memphis, Tenn., plant, and the National Oil Products Co., which produced the material at its Cedartown, Ga., plant. Over seventy million 8-ounce cans of shoe impregnite were procured.79
The CWS procured over six and a half million dust respirators in World War II.80 This item, which was designed to protect drivers of heavy vehicles from dust, consisted of a faceblank with a layer of filtering material, webbing, and inlet and outlet valves. The most critical component was the facepiece, which was manufactured by some half dozen rubber companies and which, because of its peculiar design, gave rise to several molding problems. Another difficulty that arose was the tendency of the respirator to build up high air resistance. This condition was caused by the type of cloth filter material used, and to overcome it the CWS modified the filter material.81
To satisfy the Army demand for eyeshields the CWS procured almost 72,000,000 of them through private contracts.82 The eyeshield consisted of a cellulose acetate sheet (which was either clear or tinted), impermeable cloth, webbing, and metal hardware. The cellulose acetate sheeting and impermeable cloth were die cut and the webbing and hardware assembled to these components. The assembly process was relatively simple. The eye-shields were packaged in packets of 4—2 clear and 2 tinted.83
Other miscellaneous protective items which the CWS procured under contract were gas resistant aprons, made of impermeable cloth and intended for use by certain Medical Corps and CWS troops; gas resistant sacks for shipment of contaminated clothing to decontaminating stations; and various items for detecting such gases as vesicant detector crayons and liquid vesicant detector paper and paint.
Most of the defensive items which the CWS procured were intended for protection against gas warfare, although certain of them such as the decontaminating apparatus and the eyeshield proved useful in nongas warfare situations. Most offensive items, on the other hand, were intended for nongas warfare uses. These included such weapons as the incendiary bomb, the smoke generator, and the flame thrower, all of which the service procured in great numbers. The CWS also procured a considerable number of 4.2-inch chemical mortars and shells. The mortar, though originally designed to fire toxic shells, was used during the war to fire high explosives.
Problems of manufacture of CWS defensive items sprang chiefly from the attempt to put items that had not been fully developed into mass production. Of all these items the gas mask had been developed to the greatest degree, yet the pressure to produce new models during the war gave rise to many manufacturing difficulties. Such items as protective ointments, detector kits, and decontaminating apparatus were at primitive states of development when the CWS awarded production contracts for them. Development of these items proceeded simultaneously with their production.