Chapter 17: The New Depot System
The first postwar Congressional investigation into the operations of the War Department took place shortly after the Revolutionary War. On 2 October 1788 an investigating committee reported that most of the arms and ammunition left over from the War were stored at the three permanent Army arsenals1—Springfield, West Point, and Philadelphia. Some matériel remained at four temporary depots and at furnaces where the shot and shell were cast. The committee recommended that temporary depots be abandoned and that all stores be placed in the permanent arsenals.
Facilities at the arsenals were not ideal. The buildings at Springfield were in good condition, but those at West Point, constructed of unseasoned wood, were decaying fast. The so-called arsenal at Philadelphia consisted of rented buildings unsuited for ordnance storage and scattered inconveniently throughout the city. The construction of proper and permanent arsenals and magazines plainly demanded the serious attention of the Government. But the investigators concluded that “as the expense of erecting suitable buildings for this purpose will be great, it will perhaps be thought advisable to defer it for the present.”2
After succeeding wars the Government repeatedly adopted a similar policy of contraction and economy. The dangerous concentration of ammunition in Atlantic Coast depots following the Armistice in 1918 made necessary the construction of two new depots in the interior in 1920, Savanna in Illinois and Ogden in Utah. But this gain was more than offset by the loss in the early twenties of nine of the Ordnance reserve depots that had been marked for retention under the National Defense Act as amended 4 June 1920.3
In the mid-twenties a major disaster brought the subject of ammunition storage forcibly to the attention of the public. Late in the afternoon of 10 July 1926 a bolt of lightning struck a magazine at the Naval Ammunition Depot at Lake Denmark, New Jersey. The resultant explosions killed a number of people, wrecked the Navy depot, and partially demolished
neighboring Picatinny Arsenal.4 As a result, Congress directed the Secretaries of War and of the Navy to make a survey of ammunition storage, with special emphasis on the likelihood of danger to nearby communities. The Army section of the joint Army-Navy board appointed to make the survey reported that with minor exceptions there was ample safe and properly located storage to care for all Army ammunition in the continental United States. It asserted that preventing a repetition of the disaster and generally improving unsatisfactory conditions was almost entirely a matter of redistribution and rearrangement.5 Its recommendation that a permanent Joint Army-Navy Ammunition Storage Board be appointed to serve as adviser on ammunition storage to the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy was promptly accepted.6
An important feature of the 1928 rearrangement program was the construction at several depots of a new type of magazine. Called an “igloo” from its resemblance to Eskimo shelters, it was a low, earth-covered structure of reinforced concrete, its sides arched to form a semicircular roof. The shape directed the power of an explosion upward rather than outward. It was the best type of storage yet devised for such dangerous ammunition as loaded bombs and large-caliber shells. To take care of East Coast ammunition the Ordnance Department built twenty-four igloos at Savanna, Illinois, which was considered ideal because of its isolated situation. By building igloos in lesser numbers at Aberdeen, Delaware, and Benicia, Ordnance made those depots safe for limited amounts of larger caliber ammunition. The igloos were all completed by March of 1929.7
Very little other new construction was possible in the lean years of the twenties and early thirties. As a result, depots became run down. Buildings were old, railroad trackage rusted and inadequate, highways patched and narrow, docks dilapidated, and equipment insufficient and largely obsolescent.8 It was not until the mid-1930s that the War Department gave serious attention to any considerable expansion of Ordnance storage facilities. Mobilization Regulations 4-2 of February 1935 provided for increased production of munitions, and a proposal by the Baker Board in 1934 to build up the Air Corps had brought a demand for more space for bomb storage. Moreover, the money available for the program of public works organized to combat the effects of the depression could defray some of the cost.9
Late in 1936 the Chief of Ordnance submitted requests amounting to approximately $21 million for new construction and repair at various Ordnance
establishments, including manufacturing arsenals as well as depots.10 This request, and a recommendation by the Chemical Warfare Service for rehabilitation of chemical manufacturing establishments at Edge-wood Arsenal, led Brig. Gen. George R. Spalding, Assistant Chief of Staff G-4, to the decision that, before any large sums of money were spent, the War Department ought to draw up a plan for an ideal system of manufacturing and storage facilities. The most important considerations were, in order of importance, strategic location to avoid destruction by enemy attack; proximity to vital raw materials; nearness to probable theaters, assuming that the most probable theaters were in the West and Southwest; economy of operation; and, finally, climate. On General Spalding’s recommendation, the Secretary of War ordered the Chief of Ordnance, Maj. Gen. William H. Tschappat, to submit such a plan for his own installations. General Tschappat delegated the job to a board of five officers, headed by Col. Norman F. Ramsey.11
The Ramsey Board dismissed considerations of climate and economy of operation as relatively unimportant; it concentrated on strategic location and proximity to probable theaters. As to strategic location, the Secretary of War had laid down the policy that, generally speaking, after M-day there would be no construction for the storage of wartime reserves on the eastern seaboard of the United States, the area between the Atlantic Coast and the eastern slope of the Appalachian Mountains; or on the western seaboard, in the area lying west of the Cascade and Sierra Nevada ranges.12 The Board proposed as an additional safety measure that depots be located at a reasonable distance from the northern and southern boundaries of the United States.13 and concluded that the best locations for storing war reserves were Rock Island, for general supplies, and Savanna, for ammunition.
On the second point, proximity to theaters of operation, the Board assumed that the best system in time of peace was one that would function best in time of war. On this basis, the mountain and Pacific Coast states (IX Corps Area), and Hawaii would be best served by Ogden in Utah and Benicia in California; the Central United States (V, VI, and VII Corps Areas) by Rock Island and Savanna, both in Illinois; the Southeast (IV Corps Area) by Augusta Arsenal, Georgia. These were all existing depots. For the Southwest (VIII Corps Area) ideally there should be a new depot in Texas, but practically San Antonio Arsenal could be built up to serve. For the Northeast (I, II, and III Corps Areas) the best solution was a new depot in central Pennsylvania; but the cost was prohibitive. The Board felt that the expense was not justified and that Raritan would be adequate to serve the northeast area and also provide overseas supply of Panama, if Delaware assumed some of the
ammunition load. The Board recommended that Curtis Bay, Nansemond, and Charleston be abandoned, by a process of attrition rather than immediate transfer of the ammunition to other storage.14
In submitting this report to the War Department, General Tschappat suggested that a new ammunition depot might be built in the East, perhaps in West Virginia or Pennsylvania, for the ammunition stored at Curtis Bay, Nansemond, and Charleston. But he urged that the East Coast depots should be retained, if not for ammunition for some other purpose, because they were so well adapted to water shipments.15 Thus the result of this early prewar planning did not change very much the distribution pattern that had developed in World War I, and, when G-4 in the summer of 1938 made a study of the supply depot network from the standpoint of its adequacy to serve the Protective Mobilization Plan, the investigators considered that there was still a “faulty concentration of many Ordnance establishments along the Atlantic seaboard.”16
At the outbreak of the war in Europe in 1939 Ordnance planners reviewed the ammunition storage situation and found that roughly 65 percent of the space was in the East, 27 percent in the central portion of the United States, and only 7 percent in the West. These figures showed that the War Department’s policy of 1937, to store 25 percent in the East, 60 percent in the Central United States, and 15 percent in the West, had not been followed. Savanna and San Antonio could be expanded to bring the Central area up from 27 to 39 percent, reducing the East from 65 to 55; but further than that it seemed impossible to go by expanding existing depots.17 Money was scarce, even for storing the ammunition needed under the Air Corps Expansion Program and Initial Protective Force Program.18 It was not until the summer of 1940, when the fall of France brought about mounting appropriations for defense, that any considerable expansion of storage facilities was possible.
Appropriations for Storage in 1940
The main trouble about planning for depot expansion in June 1940 was that nobody could say how much matériel there would be to store. Figures on the size of the army-to-be fluctuated from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour;19 and even when a definite figure was set, there was difficulty in determining, first, how much equipment was needed and, second, how much of this equipment should be placed in storage. On 29 June the Assistant Chief of Staff G-4 asked the Ordnance Department to prepare a list of critical items for an army of two million men, and also requested estimates on the money that would be needed for storage. An answer was required by four o’clock of the same day.20
The estimates for ammunition storage were prepared by Lt. Col. Robert N. Bodine, Chief of the Ammunition Supply Division of Field Service, and they were necessarily very rough, because Colonel Bodine did not know the basis on which ammunition requirements for the 2,000,000-man program were computed. He estimated $81,208,000 for igloos, magazines, and auxiliary buildings, and $12,750,000 for the procurement of land—85,000 acres at $150 per acre—making a total of $93,958,000.21
For general supplies, Field Service’s storage planners had a figure of $1,310,900,000 worth of items on which to base their estimates. But how much of this matériel would require permanent storage in specially built warehouses? The first estimates, prepared by Col. Everett S. Hughes, Chief of the Equipment Division of Field Service, were based on storing $105,000,000 worth of items, about one-twelfth of the total amount, at a cost of $6,449,576 in warehouses and $250,000 in land. These figures seemed too conservative to the Chief of Field Service, Colonel Crain, whose World War I experience had taught him the wisdom of planning ahead. He raised the sights considerably: the estimates that went to the General Staff were based on storing approximately $655,000,000 worth of critical items, half the total amount. The warehouses were to be built of reinforced concrete, and were to be bombproof, well equipped, and strategically well located in cities like Memphis, Tennessee, where water and rail transportation was available, and where city power, lights, and roads could be used. The cost of such warehouses was estimated as $20,000,000; the land at $1,000,000. For the labor and warehousing equipment needed to receive and store the stocks, $2,225,000 was added. The total estimate for general supply storage was therefore $23,225,000.22
For all this planning, the General Staff, acting on a basis unknown to Ordnance, put into the Munitions Program of 30 June 1940,23 a lump-sum estimate of $42,000,000 for all Ordnance storage, whether ammunition or general supply, and $7,125,000 for the acquisition of land. By agreement between the Chief of the Ammunition Supply Division and the Chief of the Equipment Division these amounts were apportioned between ammunition and general supply storage in the same ratio generally as had appeared in the estimates for the 2,000,000-man program, about four for ammunition to one for general supplies.24 But the exact figures that would appear in the breakdown for defense of the estimates required careful planning by Ordnance storage experts to produce a program that would be acceptable to the General Staff and at the same time would be practicable for the special needs of ordnance storage.
Nowhere was there sharper differentiation between the two types of Ordnance matériel, explosive and inert, than in the question of storage. Because of its explosive
nature, weight, and extreme sensitivity to strategic considerations, ammunition demanded special methods, including storage in igloos or magazines, ample acreage to allow for safety distances between igloos, isolation from neighboring towns, and location related to possible theaters of war. There was little doubt that new ammunition depots were needed. Strategic, supply, and local considerations argued against expansion of any existing depots, except for relatively small expansion of Ogden and Benicia. Taking all these factors into consideration, Ordnance ammunition experts came up with a figure of $32,000,000 for 2,286 igloos to be located in four new depots and Benicia Arsenal, and $6,325,000 for the acquisition of land for ammunition storage depots.25 The amount for construction fell far below later estimates for storing the $994,000,000 worth of ammunition provided for in the program of 30 June, but with possible economies in igloo design, it would do. The amount for land seemed ample, perhaps excessive if much of the new construction could be located on military reservations or on cessions from national forests, as seemed possible.26 The total was approved by G-4 and carried in the Second Supplemental National Defense Appropriation Bill, Fiscal Year 1941.27
Ordnance plans for storing general supplies had rougher going. Unlike ammunition, such supplies as weapons, tanks, and spare parts could theoretically be stored in leased commercial facilities or in temporary structures. This type of storage was contemplated in the Protective Mobilization Plan under the assumption that upon mobilization troops would move as soon as possible to a theater of operations.28 In discussions of the Munitions Program of 30 June, President Roosevelt asked the War Department for assurance that full use would be made of commercial storage.29 Leasing was a quick and flexible way of expanding or contracting storage space to meet uncertain needs, and G-4 favored it.30
But leasing had many serious disadvantages. Commercial buildings were scattered, so that efficient depot management and movement were difficult; many of the most desirable warehouses in late 1940 were already occupied by the Navy or other Government agencies and most of those that were left were too old or too small to be of much use. These drawbacks were recognized by the Quartermaster Corps, whose perishable stores were better adapted to leased storage than was Ordnance matériel.31 In the case of Ordnance, an immediate consideration was that most commercial warehouses were multistoried rather than one story. More than half of the equipment under the 30 June program consisted of tanks and combat vehicles that required storage at ground or car level. Important in the long-range view was the fact that artillery guns and carriages, fire control
instruments, tanks, rifles, and machine guns were expensive and long-lived. Ordnance storage experts believed that this equipment ought to be stored in permanent, fireproof buildings, to which it could be returned after the emergency and be kept as a reserve for the future. From the standpoint of economy, leasing for a long period of time would be more expensive than construction.32
Strong representations by the Ordnance Department convinced G-4 that leasing ought to be held to a minimum.33 The FY 1941 appropriations carried $7,244,000 for the construction of general supply warehouses and only $245,000 for leasing.34 For land, the sum of $800,000 was allotted. Ordnance storage experts had computed 80 acres as the space necessary for the 2,068,900 square feet of storage required under the FY 1941 program, 1,207,900 of which had to be one-story construction. If the two projected depots were located near a city, such as Memphis, the land would be expensive, about $10,000 an acre.35 Excellent choices for two depots of 40 acres each were Memphis, close to the great maneuver area of the South, and Toledo, Ohio, in the heart of the manufacturing area. But the Ordnance proposal to establish a depot at Memphis was denied by higher authority,36 and Toledo was also ruled out, as being outside the zone that the War Department had determined to be strategically safe.37
As planning progressed in 1940, with no guidance from the past for such an unprecedented situation as full mobilization in time of peace,38 the one certainty seemed to be the need for returning the equipment to storage after the emergency was over, and holding it as war reserves. Ordnance planners concluded that the best solution was to build permanent warehouses for general supplies at the projected ammunition depots; for this purpose more than six million dollars’ worth of land had been appropriated.39
The First Prewar Ammunition Depots
Within the strategic limits set by the War Department in the late 1930s the Ordnance Department planned to place the first ammunition depots roughly in the four corners of the United States, for support of forces repelling attacks from any direction. In the southwest no purchase was required because old Fort Wingate in New Mexico, which was rapidly being cleaned out of its bulk TNT by an American corporation buying for the British, could be used. In the northwest, the Montana-Idaho region was favored; in the northeast a site near Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania was considered, and in the southeast the Atlanta-Birmingham area seemed the best choice. This plan would have reduced the percentage of ammunition stored in the east and central United States and sharply increased the percentage in the
west.40 When the proposal for western sites was presented to the War Department, the Assistant Chief of Staff G-4 objected on the grounds that the war was in Europe, that nearly all manufacture of munitions was east of the Mississippi, and that location of depots in the west would mean long, roundabout railroad hauling. But Ordnance planners stressed the possibility that the war might extend to the Pacific. They also pointed out that experience had shown that rusting of metal was much less in the dry atmosphere of the west. Convinced by these arguments, the General Staff approved the western sites.41
To make the surveys necessary to determine exact locations within the general areas, Colonel Crain brought in from the field two ammunition storage experts, Lt. Col. Ittai A. Luke, commanding officer of Ogden Ordnance Depot, and Maj. Lemuel P. Crim, and gave them certain criteria to guide their investigations. He stated that a site for an ammunition storage depot should be on a railroad line, be at a safe distance from towns and cities, and have topography and soil that would reduce construction and operation costs; it should cover from six thousand to twelve thousand acres of land, depending on the shape of the tract and the number of magazines to be constructed.42 These were the most important considerations, but there were other qualities that were desirable, such as a cool climate to promote safety, and nearness to a loading plant, for economy.43
The latter was one of the factors in the substitution of Ravenna, Ohio, for Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania, as the site for the northeast depot, later named Portage. There was to be a loading plant at Ravenna, from which ammunition could be put in permanent storage at minimum cost; also, depot and plant could use in common one safety distance zone, an economy in land.44 Good transportation was the deciding factor in the selection by Colonel Luke of Umatilla, near Hermiston, Oregon, as the northwestern depot; it was directly on one railroad, the Union Pacific, and had ready access to four others.45 Fort Wingate needed only the removal of all the old TNT and the withdrawal from the Department of the Interior of some nine thousand acres which that agency had been licensed by the War Department in 1925 to use as an Indian School.46 The selection of Anniston, Alabama, as the site for the southeastern depot came after an investigation by Crim revealed that land within the Talladega National Forest was too rugged and that a site near Ft. McClellan lacked room for expansion and would place magazines too close to troops in training.47 On all the new depots
construction began early in 1941. Umatilla was completed in January 1942 and the others in April and May 1942. Ammunition was being shipped into all four by November 1941.48
For maximum safety, the igloo type of magazine had long been preferred by the Joint Army-Navy Ammunition Storage Board (JANASB) and the Ordnance Safety Board for all types of ammunition except small arms. After January 1941 the Ordnance Department required that igloos be used in all future depot construction.49 Uncertainty as to standard igloo design was “one of the most annoying difficulties” encountered in depot construction during 1941.50 Generally, igloos ranged in length from forty to eighty feet and were about twenty-six feet wide and thirteen feet high.51 The 60-footer, with a capacity of 250,000 pounds of explosives, was the type most often built, although a few of the 80-foot size were used. Umatilla, for example, had some 650 of the former and about 100 of the latter.52
In all cases igloos were built in blocks of not more than 100 each, the blocks being 1,400 feet apart. Ammunition depots required a great deal of acreage. There had to be room for a road system, administration buildings, and several aboveground magazines to serve as transfer points for the railroads. For safety considerations, there had to be a distance of 400 feet between igloos. Unless there were earth mounds before the doors to serve as barricades, the igloos had to be staggered so that the front of each was at least 800 feet from the rear of the one opposite. For each 10 igloos there was a foxhole for 10 persons. All doors faced north, to absorb less heat from the sun. Most of the igloos were sodded on the top, but at Umatilla, where wind erosion was a more serious problem than water erosion, the roofs were covered with gravel. The roads afforded some protection against the spread of grass fires. The unit cost of the 60-foot igloo was about $7,000, a figure that was doubled when the necessary roads and barricades were included.53
The Fiscal Year 1942 Program
Construction had hardly begun on the four new depots when ammunition
Igloos at Umatilla Ordnance Depot, Hermiston, Oreg.
production figures made plain the need for further expansion.54 For the fiscal year 1942 the Chief of Ordnance in January 1941 submitted an estimate of $55,000,000 for 5,663,000 additional square feet of ammunition storage. A little more than a million square feet of this space was for expansion at Anniston, Ravenna, and Umatilla. The bulk of it was for new depots.55
There was need for one new depot in the south, to supply troops on maneuvers; for another in the northeast, primarily to serve Air Corps units protecting the coast line and secondarily to back up the ports from Boston to Norfolk; and for a Gulf Coast depot and terminal, primarily as a defense measure. There was at that time no ammunition shipping point on the Gulf. The region seemed important to Ordnance planners, for they did not discount the possibility that the Germans, everywhere victorious, would ultimately move against the United States by way of South America. As the munitions program advanced and lend-lease became a reality early in 1941, additional storage was needed in the East to receive the output of the factories and back up the Atlantic ports shipping ammunition to Great Britain.56 The Secretary of War gave high priority to the acquisition of land for an ammunition
San Jacinto Ordnance Depot dock area. Note three Liberty ships in the background.
depot in the western Maryland—south central Pennsylvania area and another in the eastern Kentucky—southwestern West Virginia area. From both, reasonably rapid transportation would be available to the seaports on the Atlantic Coast.57
For the new depot in the South, a survey by Colonel Luke revealed that Milan, Tennessee, was an excellent choice for several reasons. It was well located strategically, could serve important maneuver areas on the Gulf Coast and lower Mississippi Valley, and had good transportation facilities. Most important of all, its nearness to the Wolf Creek loading plant made possible great savings in freight and in employees for policing the two areas.58
The selection of the Gulf Coast site took a little longer. General Crain ruled out New Orleans because of the vulnerability of the levees to damage by saboteurs, natural causes, or an explosion. A survey of Alabama and Texas ports revealed only one site that had deep water, railroad facilities, highway connections, and enough isolated acreage with satisfactory ground. Investigated by Mr. (later Maj.) John D. Kerr, an Ordnance civilian with railroad experience, it was a tract of about five thousand acres on the Houston Ship Channel, a bayou that had been deepened to connect Houston, Texas, with the Gulf. As the site was less than half a mile from the spot where Texas colonists under Sam Houston had defeated the Mexican forces led by Santa Ana, the depot was named San Jacinto. Construction was
authorized in March 1941.59 To back up San Jacinto and help supply troops in the south central area, Red River Ordnance Depot was authorized in June. The selection of its site, adjacent to Lone Star Ordnance Plant, Texarkana, Texas, was made in a matter of days.60
To find a suitable site in the East, primarily for bomb storage, General Crain had Mr. Kerr make a study of several regions in New York State, and sent Colonel Luke to investigate them. The problems differed somewhat from those encountered in the west and southwest. It was hard to find enough suitable land that was on a railroad yet was not too close to a town, and hard to find a level site that was not prohibitive in price. In every case the purchase meant uprooting some families who had owned their farms for generations. Some of the land bought for Seneca Ordnance Depot in New York, for example, had been granted by the Government to soldiers in Sullivan’s Expedition of 1779 and was still owned by their descendants.61 The Seneca site consisted of about ten thousand acres in the Finger Lakes section, between Lake Cayuga and Lake Seneca, ninety miles east of Buffalo and approximately two hundred west of New York City. The price required was about twice the normal value of the land, but low-cost construction made possible by the level site made the purchase feasible. An airfield could be built if necessary on neighboring land. There was less opposition locally than Ordnance was to encounter with Kentucky and Pennsylvania sites.62
In the summer of 1941 the selection of two sites in the Kentucky—West Virginia—Maryland—Pennsylvania area, of about fourteen thousand acres each, was speeded by the prospect of additional funds for storage in the amount of $84 million included in a supplemental appropriation bill then before Congress, and by the allocation of $12 million in lend-lease funds.63 General Crain appointed Maj. Carroll H. Deitrick to investigate several sites that had survived thinning-out surveys earlier in 1941. After a month’s study, in October Major Deitrick recommended tracts in the neighborhood of Richmond, Kentucky, and Charles Town, West Virginia, as sites for the two new depots. The eastern Kentucky site was chosen over one in southwestern West Virginia because it was less rugged, more economical, and better suited for expansion. The West Virginia land was chosen over a tract in south central Pennsylvania because it was less productive, cheaper, and promised lower
construction costs. The Chief of Ordnance and The Quartermaster General concurred in these recommendations, and early in November the Secretary of War gave his approval.64
Then local opposition developed to both new depots. In the case of Richmond, Senators Alben W. Barkley and Albert B. Chandler and Representative Virgil Chapman requested an investigation into the protests; it revealed, according to an Ordnance report on construction, “that all opposition was from a handful of wealthy landowners whose property was not affected.” Meanwhile, the Governor’s office stirred up favorable sentiment, and the Richmond project went through. The first step in the construction of Blue Grass Ordnance Depot came in mid-December.65 The Charles Town story ended differently. Telegrams and letters of protest poured in to the President, the Secretary of War, and the Chief of Ordnance. Landowners objected to being forced out in the middle of winter, and to losing their homes, livestock, dairies, and orchards. Representative Jennings Randolph led an opposing delegation in person. In the end, G-4 decided to suspend all action with regard to Charles Town and to explore further the south central Pennsylvania area.66
A site of about eighteen thousand acres was found near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. General Crain and Major Deitrick considered that it had some advantages over Charles Town: it was some four thousand acres larger, could more easily he expanded, and was farther from the town—a safety consideration. Although the cost of construction would probably be greater because the terrain was more rolling, the cost of land acquisition would probably be less. On the other hand, there was as much opposition by the local citizens as there had been at Charles Town. Telegrams of protest came from Governor Arthur H. James, Senator James J. Davis, and Representative Harry L. Haines. Not only was the entire area more productive and more thickly settled—with some eight hundred people as opposed to about fifty on the West Virginia site—but also many of the farmers were descendants of original settlers of the area. Many were Mennonites and Dunkards who were opposed to war even for defense. But the military planners had come to believe that there would be protests no matter what site was selected; moreover, Pearl Harbor occurred in the midst of the furor, and the argument of military necessity outweighed all others.67
On 2 January 1942 Secretary of War Stimson refused the request of Governor James for reconsideration, and six days later survey crews were at work on the boundary lines for Letterkenny Ordnance Depot.68 The speed with which negotiations were pushed through was one cause of community resentment against Letterkenny, “the ammunition dump,” as it was called locally. There were others. This depot, one of the largest in the whole Ordnance system, needed more than five thousand workers and drained the countryside of manpower badly needed at sowing and harvesting time. There was no large city near enough to supply a pool of labor. And the antiwar sentiment of the community was hardly conducive to good morale among the workers. One depot employee, an elderly, chin-whiskered gentleman named George B. McClellan Flora, was suspended from his church because he put on an Uncle Sam suit and sold War Bonds. In time, public relations improved, but they were always a problem and hampered depot operations to an extent that had not been foreseen.69
In addition to the Kentucky and Pennsylvania depots, the $84-million program of the summer of 1941 included one large new ammunition depot in the Far West, two on the plateau east of the rockies, and the expansion of facilities at Ogden. First priority in this group went to the project in the Far West, the acquisition of a site in western Nevada or eastern California for an intermediate depot to give closer support to overseas movements from the San Francisco area, and also meet the needs of the Air Corps. Second priority went to the expansion of Ogden and the construction of the two plateau depots, one in the southeastern Colorado—western Kansas area, the other somewhere in southwestern South Dakota or western Nebraska, both for long-time reserve storage. These regions had the high altitude and dry climate that would minimize rusting and other deterioration, and in the more northerly area Ordnance hoped to find a site isolated enough to make possible the storage of gas ammunition.70
Major Deitrick spent most of the fall of 1941 touring the West, often accompanied by members of the appropriate Zone Quartermaster’s office, representatives of the transcontinental railroads, and local
Inside storage of 155-mm. shells at Blue Grass Ordnance Depot, Richmond, Ky.
officials.71 In the eastern California—western Nevada area he found an arid valley of about forty-three square miles in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, just west of the Nevada line near Hackstaff, California, and on the edge of Honey Lake. It was about 50 miles by highway north of Reno and about 250 by highway and 400 by rail from Benicia Arsenal. After approval by the Secretary of War, the site was named Herlong, in honor of Capt. Henry W. Herlong, an Ordnance officer killed in an Air Corps crash the preceding summer. At Herlong was built Sierra Ordnance Depot.72 In the Colorado—Kansas area Major Deitrick recommended a tract of 2 1,1 20 acres of grazing land near Avondale, Pueblo County, Colorado, which became the site of Pueblo Ordnance Depot.73 For the second depot in the plateau country he selected 20,000 acres of sagebrush land in a very thinly populated
Outside storage of 100-pound bombs at Sierra Ordnance Depot, Herlong, Calif.
area in South Dakota. The nearest town, Provo (population 20), gave its name to the site on which was built Black Hills Ordnance Depot.74
Along with the study of these three sites, Major Deitrick investigated the expansion of Ogden Ordnance Depot, Utah. He found that the depot lay in a narrow rectangle bounded by the Wasatch Mountains, the Great Salt Lake, the city of Ogden, and Salt Lake City; within this rectangle it was immediately hemmed in by a neighboring airfield, main trunk
highways, and fertile farm and orchard lands. There was no way to enlarge the site. The best solution was the acquisition of a tract in the valley of the Wasatch Range of about twenty thousand uninhabited acres near the town of Tooele, Utah.75
In forwarding to the Secretary of War the report on the four sites, dated 2 December 1941, General Wesson suggested one change. He thought action with regard
to Tooele should be held in abeyance until the War Department had investigated a site in the Flagstaff—Prescott area of Arizona. On 4 December 1941, at a time of rapidly worsening relations with Japan, The Quartermaster General had suggested establishing water shipping facilities in the San Diego—Los Angeles area. Flagstaff was approximately three hundred miles nearer this area than was the Tooele site.76 By the time General Wesson’s memorandum reached the desk of the Secretary of War, the attack on Pearl Harbor had taken place. The War Department ordered that, without delay, ammunition storage depots of one thousand igloos each be constructed at the sites selected in California, Colorado, and South Dakota; and at a place somewhere in the Flagstaff—Prescott, Arizona, area.77 Late in December Col. Charles M. Steese inspected several sites in the area and found a suitable tract of twenty seven thousand acres in the vicinity of Bellemont, Arizona. It became Navajo Ordnance Depot.78
Taking stock of the ammunition storage situation at the beginning of 1942, the Chief of Ordnance reported to G-4 that, after completion of all ammunition depot construction then in process or authorized, there would still be a shortage of 15,479201 square feet in the amount of space required to support the force contemplated, about 3,635,000 men. Nothing like this amount of additional construction seemed advisable, because expenditures of stored ammunition would make room for the ammunition coming out of the plants. But General Wesson did recommend that about half of the 7,677,410 square feet of ammunition storage in deferred status be constructed at once. He urged the building of two new depots of 1,719,884 square feet each, one at Tooele, Utah, to carry out the long-planned expansion of Ogden, and the other at Sidney, Nebraska. The latter site had been explored at the time the Black Hills depot was decided on but rejected because it was not suited to the storage of lethal gas. Here was built Sioux Ordnance Depot. Ordnance planners considered that its location in the central portion of the United States achieved a proper geographic and strategic balance of ammunition stocks.79 With the enlargement of the old East Coast depots and Benicia Arsenal the ammunition storage program was virtually complete.80
Opening the New Depots
When war came in December 1941 construction was well advanced at eight new ammunition depots, and at four of them—Umatilla, Portage, Wingate, and Anniston—shipments were already being received. But throughout 1941 and 1942, even at the most carefully selected sites, Ordnance encountered problems of construction and operation created by terrain or location. In the East, the Appalachian
foothills made it difficult to grade the roads and railways; in the igloo area, well camouflaged as it usually was with trees and grass and often protected by natural mounds that served as barricades, there was always the danger of brush fires, and the fear of the damage an explosion might do in a more or less thickly settled region.81 The vast Western depots, on the level floor of a high mountain valley or on a wind-swept prairie, with orderly and accessible rows of igloos stretching as far as the eye could see against a background of snow-covered peaks, had the virtue of isolation, an important consideration; yet isolation created a desperate problem of manpower.
Prewar planning, based on defense of the continental United States, had intended the use of troop labor in the event of invasion, because the depots would very likely be in the combat zone. As the danger of invasion passed, the General Staff made the decision to operate the depots with civilians.82 In setting up criteria for location, General Staff planners had properly placed highest priority on strategic requirements, including available transportation trunk lines to areas to be served, recognizing at the time that, should these depots ever have to be operated by civilian employees, a tremendous problem of housing and personnel transportation would be posed.83 Sometimes there were Indians in the neighborhood of the western depots who could be mustered into service, as at Navajo, where a bespectacled descendant of Chief Manygoats was driving a truck;84 but at most of these depots labor had to be brought in, housed, and offered the facilities of a town.85
As an example of the problems encountered at the “big unwieldy depots out in the Western desert,” one Ordnance officer cited an instance in January 1943 when the food supply at Sierra was cut off because floods had washed out the railroad tracks and road to the nearest town, thirty-five miles away.86 After Pearl Harbor the shortage of equipment and materials of various kinds affected the new depots. The great size and complexity of these installations soon dispelled the peacetime idea that “a good Ordnance sergeant or warrant officer” could operate a depot. Trained commanding officers were needed and were hard to find. Inexperienced men were given an almost impossible job in meeting the very tight time schedules for opening the depots.87
By 14 January 1943, all of the sixteen new ammunition depots had been activated. They had cost altogether about $367 million. Among the individual depots the costs ranged from $37 million down to $11 million, depending on the size of the installation, the cost of the site, and the cost of construction. There were striking differences in the amounts paid for the sites. Land for Blue Grass Ordnance
Depot, for example, cost about $150 per acre—that for Sierra about nine cents.88
At all the depots the igloo construction was of permanent type, but in other respects there was a difference between the buildings erected at the first eight depots, called the “A” program, and the second, called “B.” At Anniston, Umatilla, Portage, Wingate, Milan, Seneca, San Jacinto, and Red River, all begun in 1941 and nearing completion in the spring of 1942 when materials became critical, most of the administration buildings, warehouses for inert supplies, and like construction were of permanent type; but at the “B” depots, Sierra, Navajo, Letterkenny, Sioux, Black Hills, Tooele, Blue Grass, and Pueblo, most construction was of a type called “mobilization,” designed to last five years, or “theater-of-operations,” designed to last only for the duration of the war.89
In acreage the depots were almost unbelievably vast compared to depots of other supply services. Quartermaster installations generally occupied between one hundred and eight hundred acres.90 The Ordnance Department had six depots with more than twenty thousand acres each.91 An interesting sidelight on the size and location of these great tracts was the amount and variety of the wildlife they contained; as military reservations they afforded protection from hunters. In the East, Letterkenny had quantities of deer, fox, raccoon, opossum, and ringnecked pheasant. The western depots had large populations of deer, bear, antelope, elk, and coyote. At Black Hills there were two prairie-dog towns; at Wingate, tassel-eared squirrels and deer; at San Jacinto, alligators, wildcats, and armadillos.92