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HOW SwungKingsport PlantTPut Powerful RDXOn Assembly Line3j EiHen CrawfordBj Mnfspnrt■Xlrpda-jS PWji,Ch»pl«r I In th* fail of 1941, as Europe entered It* third winter of the war and the United States moved inevitably toward a place in the battle array, RDX was the world's most1j * |powerful explosive.Carrying an explosive effect 50 jsphere of the Sun. Wake 1*1 and had fallen, and Manila,Twelve days had passed since a Nazi wolf pack, sweeping down from Nova Scotia to Cape Hatteras, struck savagely and without warning against Allied shipping, serving notice that a new phase of the Battle of the Atlantic had begun. Within those 12 clays, 12 shipspar cent greater than TNT, it wujhad been attacked, 135 seamen hadknown by another name* (Cy cl on Itc) ;dled off the coast of Canada and'90 in U. S. waters, some within 75miles of New York harbor.after World War lf and had been the study of scientists of many nations for nearly 50 years. The British had learned to handle it by 1938, and by 1939 they were producing it by the traditional batch method, at the rate of about 10. per cent of what H.O-W. was later to achieve.A Canadian plant, located near Bhawinigan Falls, Quebec, wai also preparing to produce RDX, in a mail amounts, but the needs were so desperate that the decision was made to produce the explosive In the United States.Could 'Feel* NazisTEC chemists and chemical engineers could almost sense the evil eye of a Nazi periscope stalking their experiments, so bold were the raiders' attacks, so desperate the need of a weapon that would kill, and not merely scratch, the U-Boat.TNT, long the Army-Navy staff of death, was of little effect against I j the super-subs' the Germans were j nances, i building at an estimated rate of 20mrn' + V. (ndersea Navy-before Allied life lines on four fronts were strangled.To meet this challenge, a little group of research and production men—some 20 supervisors and 30 operator* nt the start—worked night and day to perfect a continuous process, which would guarantee the manufacture of significant amount of explosive within the shortest possible time.They did the job In about two months.(Secretary of tbs Navy Frank Knox announced that in the first54 day* of 1942 Nazi auba had attacked 11-4 Allied ships In the Atlantic, while only three of the marauder*, had been sunk and four probably^ damaged.)The pilot plant was an efficient madhouse during those early days, Research workers, operators, supervisors, trainees, visiting experts were all crowded in somehow, to the last possible man allowed under safety Regulations.Idea after idea was born, studied, tested, discarded or accepted and included in the pilot plant pattern. Hardly -a day passed without some change being made in operations.Many of the men worked IB and 18 hours a .day. Someone remarked j later that anybody who got more | than five hours' sleep was a drone,\ Obstacles to a rapid solution of ;the problem were not permitted, The story 1* told of a telephone call made by H. G. Stone to Washington one day early in the pilot plant's existence, before the government had delivered a letter of Intent, and while Eastman was continuing the project on its own fi-aeAl* mAvoImpatientsirW(th
Newspaper Details
Kingsport Times News
Kingsport, Tennessee, US
Sun, Dec 09, 1945
Page 8
Full Page
Clipped by
Kingsport P.
TN, USA 31 Mar 2022
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