**[CHAPTER FOUR]{.underline}: WORLD WAR II**

As Nazi Germany launched its heaviest air raid yet against London late
in 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed the nation on
December 29th with his \"Arsenal of Democracy\" fireside chat. He
presented his argument to the American people that, as a matter of
national defense, the United States must rise to Britain\'s aid by
manufacturing and delivering the munitions and supplies Britain needed
to defend itself against Hitler\'s aggression. Most of Europe had
already fallen to the Germans, Germany and Italy were conquering much of
Africa, and Japan was conquering parts of Asia. If the U.S. did not help
stem the tide of that aggression, the Axis powers would not only control
several continents but the high seas as well, putting the Axis in
position to launch an attack on the U.S. and the western hemisphere. In
January 1941, Roosevelt would ask Congress for authority to lend or
lease munitions and supplies to Great Britain and other allies, and soon
Congress authorized a formal Lend-Lease Program that helped to sustain
the militaries of the England, the Soviet Union, and China in the face
of onslaughts mounted by German and Japanese forces. Thus began, after a
slow start in the late 1930s, the rapid mobilization of America\'s
industrial might. When the U.S. entered the war in December 1941, the
expansion of the United States\' capacity to produce munitions was
therefore already well underway. According to historian Kent Roberts
Greenfield, this use of America\'s industrial might was the cornerstone
of Roosevelt\'s grand strategy to win the war through material
superiority and thereby with the minimum loss of Americans\' lives.[^1]
Historian Alan Gropman says that Roosevelt\'s grand strategy is what won
the war:

It\'s an old story, but bears repeating. The United States used a
logistic strategy (as opposed to Hitler\'s *Blitzkrieg* strategy) to
build armaments in depth rather than in width. Hitler, who expected to
win his wars quickly, did not invest in infrastructure\--that is, he did
not use his raw materials to build new munitions factories; he used
materials to build new munitions. When he discovered that the war was to
be a long one, he had to begin building factories after the United
States had completed its factory construction. Germany mobilized more
men for its army that did the United States (with a much smaller
population), spent a greater part of its gross national product on the
war than the United States, and had a higher percentage of its women
producing in industry than the United States, but it did not produce
sufficient armaments and was drowned in a sea of allied munitions.[^2]

Ford\'s Richmond assembly plant was part of the gigantic American system
of industrial production that helped to drown Hitler and the Axis powers
in a sea of munitions. This chapter describes the activities that took
place at the Richmond plant in support of the United States\' war
effort. The Richmond plant operated during the war under a contract the
Ford Motor Company had with the U.S. Army\'s Ordnance Department to
assemble jeeps and to process tanks for shipment overseas. Called the
Richmond Tank Depot during the war, it was still owned and operated by
the Ford Motor Company, but it was officially under the command of an
Army officer in the Ordnance Department.

To help understand the activities at the Richmond Tank Depot during the
war, this chapter also provides some historical context for several
features of the environment within which the Richmond plant operated.
First, there was the overall set of programs the Roosevelt
Administration put in place to try to insure that the nation\'s
industrial infrastructure could meet the challenge of war without
running short of raw materials, without exploiting workers, without
profiteering by individuals or corporations who might try to take
advantage of the wartime market, and without wreaking havoc on the
economy through dramatic price increases. Then there was the specific
set of programs that the Ordnance Department put in place to procure the
necessary weapons, ammunition, vehicles, and other supplies needed by
the U.S. Army\'s fighting forces and by America\'s allies. There was
also mobilization of the Ford Motor Company generally to participate in
the nation\'s war production effort. Finally, the chapter provides some
historical background on the development of the jeep, the one kind of
vehicle that was actually assembled at the Richmond plant. These bits of
historical context are interwoven with descriptions of what actually
took place at Richmond.

Another theme that is important to consider while examining the history
of the Richmond plant is the growth of large-scale technological systems
in the United States. Such systems came into public consciousness during
the post-World War II period with the advent America\'s Atlas and
Polaris missile programs, the celebrated effort by National Aeronautics
and Space Administration (NASA) to put a man on the moon, the emergence
of think-tanks like RAND that contracted to perform complex systems
analyses, the use of computers in support of those projects and
programs, and the widespread efforts by businesses and all levels of
government to apply the systems approach to solve social problems.[^3]
Since that time, several historians have explored the history of the
development of systematic approaches to the design and management of
large-scale technological systems within firms in the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries.[^4] What set the giant post-World War II
projects apart from the earlier examples of the systems approach is that
the war-time projects went beyond the individual firm.

The post-World War II projects like Atlas and Polaris were giant
government-sponsored projects that required the skills and manpower of
several private firms working simultaneously on interdependent facets of
the project. The scientists, engineers, and management specialists who
devised the techniques for designing and managing such large and complex
projects like Atlas and Polaris got their initial experience during
World War II. The Manhattan Project was famous for developing and
building the atom bomb in an amazingly short time, but seeds of the
systems approach really sprouted in the wartime necessity to coordinate
the procurement, production, shipment, and distribution of an
unprecedented volume of ordnance and other military supplies and to
build the facilities to do so. Participants in the development and
management of America\'s successful ordnance production programs in turn
credited the successes of their efforts to experiences gained on the
large federal dam construction projects of the 1930s, which were also
government sponsored and involved the work of several firms all working
simultaneously toward the completion of the larger project.[^5]

The Richmond assembly plant has an interesting tangential connection to
these developments by dint of its being part of the Ford Motor
Company\'s technological system. As described in the previous chapters,
Ford had already developed its own complex system within the firm.
During the war, Ford participated with many other firms in the much
larger government-sponsored projects aimed at supplying the Allied
armies, navies, and air forces with the supplies needed to emerge
victorious. One young systems manager came out of that experience to
take a job at Ford and develop a reputation sufficient to entice
newly-elected President John F. Kennedy to name him Secretary of Defense
in 1961. Kennedy chose Robert McNamara to be Secretary of Defense in
order to apply systems analysis and systems management to the entire
Department of Defense. From there, the methods spread to other federal
bureaucracies, to state and local governments, and fostered the
short-lived belief that, if

America could put a man on the moon, the nation could use the same
methods to solve its pressing social problems.[^6]

McNamara graduated in the late 1930s from the University of California
at Berkeley with a degree in economics and minors in mathematics and
philosophy. He then went to the Harvard Business School, finishing a
graduate degree in 1939. McNamara was serving as a junior faculty member
at Harvard when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Shortly thereafter,
President Roosevelt challenged the nation to build 50,000 airplanes per
year to fight the war. To manage such a drastic increase in its forces,
the Army Air Corps needed to train statistical control officers, and it
asked Harvard to help. McNamara worked with Charles B. Thornton, a
lieutenant and statistical whiz in charge of the Air Corps\' statistical
control program that was intended to allow central command to know and
respond to information about the status of airplanes, the conditions of
the men, and the state of operations. An example of the influence
Thornton and his young team of statisticians had on military
decision-making came as the end of the European war approached, and the
American military was planning to move many of its B-17 bombers from
Europe to the Pacific. Thornton\'s team examined the costs involved and
made a convincing argument to their superiors that it would be more
cost-effective to build new B-29s in the U.S. and fly them to the
Pacific than it would be to try to fly the B-17s to the Pacific. And
late in the war, McNamara used his statistical expertise to help Curtis
LeMay\'s XXI Bomber Command plan the logistics of fuel supply necessary
to fly B-29s from India to bases in China and then on to targets in
Japan. McNamara\'s statistical methods were credited with increasing the
flying time of planes in the XXI Bomber Command by 30%.[^7]

Immediately after the war, Thornton asked McNamara to join a team he was
assembling from the statistical control unit to find work together with
a large, private corporation. Thornton was able to get his team,
including McNamara, hired by the Ford Motor Company. Because of their
youth and their intellectual approach to decision-making, the team
earned the name \"Whiz Kids\" shortly after they moved to Dearborn.
Thornton left Ford in two years to work for Hughes Aircraft, and in 1953
he left Hughes to form Litton Industries. Meanwhile, McNamara emerged as
the member of Thornton\'s team at Ford with the most talent and drive.
The Whiz Kids\' methods ruffled some feathers among the old-timers at
Ford, who were steeped in the ethos of non-college-educated genius
embodied in the company\'s founder. Nevertheless, the Whiz Kids, and
especially McNamara, had the respect and support of Henry Ford II,
president of the company since the war. To improve the performance of
the company, McNamara\'s team had to effect major changes in the
manufacturing division, headed by Max Wiesmyer. McNamara insisted that
management decisions in manufacturing be based on statistical analysis,
not on the personal relationships Wiesmyer had established with his
branch plant managers. McNamara was so insistent on the new management
approach, and it so went against Wiesmyer\'s personality, that Wiesmyer
suffered a psychological break-down in the mid-1950s. McNamara emerged
victorious from the restructuring of Ford management, and the Ford Motor
Company named him president in 1960.[^8]

Seven weeks after McNamara became president of Ford, on December 6th,
Robert Kennedy called to ask him to meet with John F. Kennedy, the
President-elect, who then asked McNamara to become the Secretary of
Defense. Once in office, McNamara brought like-minded systems analysts
into top positions in the Department of Defense, including men like
Charles Hitch and Alain Enthoven from RAND. McNamara, Hitch, and
Enthoven were as disruptive of traditional ways of doing things at
Defense as McNamara and the Whiz Kids had been at Ford. Based on their
systems analyses, they halted many of the military\'s favorite new
weapons projects, plowed additional resources into new weapons they
believed were better suited to the needs of a modern military, and
implemented new methods for managing the military services and their
ever more complex weapons systems. One of the key tools of the new
management methods was the computer, a technology that had been born at
the end of World War II to perform the tremendous mathematical
ballistics computations the Army needed in support of its artillery. The
computer seemed to give the systems analysts and systems engineers new
powers. With these apparent new powers, many of the Defense
Department\'s experts and contractors moved to apply their methods
elsewhere in government to solve pressing social problems. They soon
learned that problems in society are less easily solved by quantitative
analysis that than are the problems of designing and managing complex
weapons systems, or of managing automobile manufacturing companies, for
that matter.[^9]

**A. The Roosevelt Administration Mobilizes Industry for War**

Much has been written about the new set of government programs and
agencies the Roosevelt administration put in place to mobilize American
industry for war. A mere summary will suffice here. One thing that must
be noted about these programs and agencies at the outset is that
Roosevelt created them on the heels of the New Deal, during which the
federal government gained valuable experience in working with firms in
private industry. The experience of managing multiple firms working
together on giant projects has already been described. In addition the
government gained valuable experience during the New Deal in protecting
its programs against excess profits by firms trying to take advantage of
the situation and in establishing wage and price safeguards in the face
of inflationary pressures that could ensure from massive injections of
government funds into certain sectors of the economy. The potentials for
inflation and excess profits would be even greater during wartime, as
government and industry had learned during World War I. Another pitfall
both government and industry wanted to avoid was the havoc that befell
the U.S. economy following World War I, when reconversion of industry to
peacetime pursuits was poorly planned.[^10]

Several government organizations for stimulating or coordinating
mobilization already existed as war approached. For example, the
government had created the Army and Navy Munitions Board in 1922, but it
had little money or authority until 1939, when Roosevelt put it under
his direct control, giving it a greater role in planning industrial
mobilization programs and setting priorities for procurement contracts
let by the Army, Navy, Coast Guard, and U.S. Maritime Commission. And
the Maritime Commission had already begun to expand the nation\'s
ship-building capacity in the late 1930s. In May 1940, following the
surrender of several European nations in the wake of Hitler\'s
*Blitzkrieg*, Roosevelt issued an Executive Order creating the Office of
Emergency Management, intended to coordinate the activities of the many
government agencies that the government was creating to implement
various facets of the mobilization program. He also asked Congress to
authorize hundreds of millions of dollars to manufacture fighters and
bombers and to build additional bases, depots, hospitals, and other
physical plant needed for the anticipated expansion of the military. The
burst in mobilization agencies and contracts yielded increasing
dissatisfaction among industry, labor, farmers, and Congress, leading
Roosevelt to try to reorganize matters. He issued a new Executive Order
in January 1941, creating the Office of Production Management (OPM). In
the face of continuing squabbles among top Army and Navy officers,
industry leaders, and other interests essential to the successful
mobilization of the economy for war production, Roosevelt issued another
executive order on 16 January 1942, abolishing the OPM and establishing
the War Production Board (WPB), to be headed by Donald Nelson, a former
executive at Sears & Roebuck who had joined the Roosevelt Administration
late in the New Deal.[^11]

To set the tone for the new agency, which he had not yet announced, and
to inspire American citizens and companies to rise to the challenge,
Roosevelt addressed the nation through his State of the Union Address to
Congress on January 6th:

The superiority of the United States in munitions and ships must be
overwhelming, so overwhelming that the Axis nations can never hope to
catch up with it. In order to attain this overwhelming superiority, the
United States must build planes and tanks and guns and ships to the
utmost limit of our national capacity. We have the ability and capacity
to produce arms not only for our own armed forces, but also for the
armies, navies and air forces fighting on our side.

This production of ours in the United States must be raised far above
its present levels, even though it will mean the dislocation of the
lives and occupations of millions of our own people. We must raise our
sights all along the production line. Let no man say it cannot be done.
It must be done\--and we have undertaken to do.

Only this all-out scale of production will hasten the ultimate all-out
victory. Speed will count. Lost ground can always be regained\--lost
time, never. Speed will save lives; speed will save this nation which is
in peril; speed will save our freedom and civilization\--and slowness
has never been an American characteristic.[^12]

In his speech, Roosevelt called on the nation to expand its production
goals for ordnance, increasing the goals for airplanes built in 1942
from 50,000 to 60,000 and to 125,000 in 1943, and increasing the goals
for tanks to 45,000 in 1942 and to 75,000 in 1943. To arrive at those
figures, Roosevelt had arbitrarily revised them upward from levels his
advisors had thought attainable. Commenting on the speech, *US News &
World Report* said that the figures in Roosevelt\'s production goals
\"reached such astronomical proportions that human minds could not reach
around them.\"[^13] Reflecting on Roosevelt\'s speech, Donald Nelson
later wrote:

The meeting at which these figures were first mentioned was
inspirational, but also rather awesome. We thought that the goals set by
the President were out of the question. But the records will show that
he knew his country better than we did.[^14]

According to a tally by the Automotive Manufacturers Association after
the war, the automotive industry by itself made 3,250,000 airplane,
marine, tank, and truck engines during the war; nearly 6,000,000 guns of
various kinds (about 50% of the nation\'s total production); more than
200,000

tanks and other combat vehicles; 2,600,000 military trucks; 22,160
airplanes; and numerous other items like ammunition, rockets, helmets,
water and gas cans, electric motors, etc.[^15]

During the war, the Roosevelt administration created a plethora of
special agencies and government-owned corporations to manage and engage
in facets of the economy. Other umbrella agencies were created to
coordinate the activities of agencies managing interdependent facets of
the economy. For example, the Office of Price Administration had the
authority to control prices in the economy as necessary to prevent
inflation. The War Labor Board had the authority to approve or
disapprove any wage increases or decreases. The Metals Reserve
Corporation purchased ores and metals from neutral countries and then
resold those commodities to U.S. manufacturers engaged war production.
The Defense Plant Corporation built plants for processing certain
strategic materials, like aluminum, manganese, synthetic rubber, and
tungsten, and then leased the facilities to private entities who
operated them.[^16]

One result of all those government programs aimed at diverting materials
and supplies to war production, coupled with price controls, was that
some goods needed by the civilian population were in short supply. In an
effort to keep the shortages from wreaking instances of chaos in the
market, the federal government rationed some commodities, like sugar,
tires, and gasoline. Although rationing placed some hardships on the
U.S. population during the war, it also should be stated that the U.S.
applied a smaller proportion of its gross national product to the war
effort than any of the Axis powers or our major allies. It was the
position of the War Production Board that Americans were \"subjected to
inconvenience, rather than sacrifice.\" During the peak years of war
production for the U.S., 1943 and 1944, the nation devoted 42% of its
gross national product to war purposes (up from 1.4% in 1939). In
comparison, Great Britain, Canada, and Japan each spent 51% of their
respective gross national products on war purposes in 1944.[^17]

**B. Military Production as War Approaches**

The Ford Motor Company\'s Richmond assembly plant, although a fairly
large building in its own right, was but a small cog in the United
States\' immense homefront system of production that supplied the
nation\'s soldiers, sailors, and airmen with the fighting equipment
needed to win World War II. That system was mobilized and managed by the
ordnance programs of U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy. The Richmond plant
worked under contract to the Army\'s Ordnance Department, an exhaustive
history of which is beyond the scope of this report. A few features of
that history are summarized here to provide narrative context for the
work accomplished at the Richmond plant.[^18]

As the United States entered the 1940s, much of the rest of the world
had gone to war. Hitler had attacked and conquered Poland in 1939, and
by the end of 1940 Nazi Germany controlled most of the rest of western
and central Europe, including France, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, and the
Netherlands. Only Great Britain remained as an obstacle to Hitler\'s
dream of dominating all Europe. In Asia, Japan had conquered much of
Korea and much of China and southeast Asia. The United States was still
trying to emerge from the Great Depression, but it appeared to many in
the federal government and the U.S. military that war against the Axis
powers was unavoidable. Among the populace, however, feelings of
isolationism were strong. Many Americans opposed going to war, and they
opposed the military taking steps to prepare for war. In the face of
these circumstances, American military planners knew that they had to
make preparations for war, should it come to the U.S. They knew, among
other things, that they needed to begin mobilizing the nation\'s
manufacturing capacity to produce ordnance, the equipment armies and
navies need to wage war.

Several factors made the task more complicated in the U.S. than it had
ever been before. Warfare had become much more mechanized. In addition
to rifles and artillery, armies now needed tanks and other fighting
vehicles, trucks of all sizes, a wider array of communications devices,
and for the first time airplanes would play a dominant role in warfare.
Moreover, the United States government did not sponsor private
companies, such as Vickers Armstrong in England or Krupp in Germany that
specialized in designing and manufacturing munitions. In the U.S.,
responsibility for design and development of ordnance for the Army fell
to the Army\'s own Ordnance Department, which then contracted for most
production with private companies as necessary. The Army maintained six
permanent arsenals, each of which specialized in a particular class of
arms or ordnance, engaging in research and development of future
ordnance systems as well as production. The arsenals could meet demand
during peacetime, but they did not have the production capacity to meet
wartime needs. They did, however, have the capacity to provide technical
assistance to private companies producing ordnance under contract.
Another matter was the scale of the impending war was much greater.
During the American Civil War, the U.S. Army had had to equip and supply
about 1.5 million soldiers. In First World War, the U.S. Army had about
4 million men to equip. It appeared that the scale of the Second World
War would be much greater. Finally, America\'s Army had fought only on
the North American continent in the Civil War, and its battles were
confined mainly to northern Europe during the First World War. But the
Second World War was being fought on several continents. The ordnance
the U.S. Army needed to supply its troops had to function reliably under
several extremes of terrain and climate.[^19]

**1. History of the Ordnance Department to 1941**

During the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress kept to itself
the responsibility for procurement of munitions, assigning the
inspection, storing, and distribution of ordnance to particular officers
in the Continental Army. The colonies did not produce much ordnance, so
the Continental Congress had to rely on purchases from France, on
American privateers who pirated supplies on the high seas, and on the
militia and Continental Army, which captured British stores. Other the
Keeper of Military Stores, the new nation maintained no ordnance
function after the British surrender in 1782 and until 1794, when
Congress authorized the President to establish two federal arms
factories. They were the Springfield Armory, which began producing
muskets in 1795, and Harpers Ferry Armory, which began the next year. To
supply the Army and the militia with guns, the government also
contracted with private contractors, the most notable of whom was Eli
Whitney, who convinced the Army that he could manufacture muskets using
interchangeable parts, a concept he and others in the U.S. had learned
from French practice. Although Whitney was never able to perfect his
concept in practice, the Ordnance Department, established as a permanent
part of the Army in 1812, embraced his concept, and it eventually
revolutionized armory practice as well as the way the Army maintained
soldiers\'s weapons in the field. Whitney\'s concept also carried into
the private sector, where manufacturers of items like sewing machines
and the McCormick reaper perfected a method that Europeans called the
\"American system\" of manufactures. U.S. Ordnance policy thereby
contributed significantly to the Industrial Revolution in the U.S.[^20]

The Ordnance Department of the Army had several responsibilities during
the nineteenth century. One was the design and adoption of new weapons.
In this regard, Army conservatism tended to delay the acceptance of new
weapons systems, such as the breech-loading rifle, which the U.S. Army
did not adopt until after the Civil. Another responsibility was the
inspection of arms and other ordnance produced by contractors for the
military. A third was to supply Army units in the field with the
ordnance they needed. In part because of the United States\' location on
the North American continent, the capabilities of the Ordnance
Department were not severely tested until World War I, when the American
Army had to pit its weapons against the Europeans.[^21]

When the European war erupted in 1914, most Americans did not believe
the United States would become involved The Chief of Ordnance was
concerned that should the U.S. be drawn into the war the government
arsenals were ill-equipped to produce conventional ordnance on the scale
that would be necessary, and the American arsenals had little capacity
at all to make tanks, large artillery, and other new kinds of ordnance
that were appearing on the battlefield. Congress refused, however, to
contract with private manufacturers unless they could beat the costs at
the government arsenals, something that rarely happened. The only reason
that American manufacturers were prepared to aid in the American war
effort, when the U.S. finally entered the war in 1917, was because they
had taken orders from European governments for ordnance, and those
contracts yielded only limited preparedness. Moreover, the Ordnance
Department did not have enough trained officers to implement a program
for the supply of America\'s war effort. Thus, with the exception of
rifles and rifle ammunition, the American Expeditionary Force depended
mainly on British and French suppliers for its ordnance needs. Toward
the end of the war, though, the Ordnance Department was able to greatly
improve its procurement of ordnance from private manufacturers. This
improvement came as a result of two new approaches: the decentralization
of authority to eleven district offices around the country, and putting
civilians in charge of those district offices.[^22]

The man put in charge of organizing the new system of ordnance districts
was Col. Guy E. Tripp, who before the war had been chairman of the board
of directors at Westinghouse Electrical and Manufacturing Company. He
chose local industrialists to head the districts. Although the legal
work and final approval had to take place in Washington, DC, the Army
gave the district chiefs authority to conduct the preliminary
negotiations leading to contracts with manufacturing firms in their
districts. The district chiefs also supervised the work done under
contract and then inspected the ordnance delivered. Because the district
chiefs were acquainted, if not personally then at least in terms of
professional culture, with the managers of the firms with which the
Ordnance Department was doing business, the chiefs were able to foster a
sense of cooperation with industry. Shortly after the Ordnance
Department had put the system of district in place, military production
began to increase markedly. Although the district chiefs were not solely
responsible for that performance, the Ordnance Department was impressed
enough with the success of the plan that it created two more ordnance
districts before the war ended. Following the end of the war, the
ordnance districts brought their activities to a close and ceased to
exist in 1919. Over the next few years, as the Army review its programs
during the war, it realized that the system of ordnance districts had
been one of the more effective developments of the war. The Ordnance
Department re-established the districts in 1922.[^23]

Brig. Gen. Clarence C. Williams became the Chief of Ordnance in May
1918. In the aftermath of the war, he and other national leaders
recognized that the nation had been poorly prepared for war. He
determined to improve the organization of the Ordnance Department after
the war. Yet other segments of society sought to insulate the United
States from future foreign entanglements, leading in the short term to
Congress refusing to join the League Nations, and leading over the
ensuing twenty years to minimal investment in new military equipment. In
the period between 1919 and 1939, under the system of organization
created by Williams, the Ordnance Department had three divisions:
Administration, Manufacturing (or Industrial Service), and Field
Service. The Manufacturing Division was in charge of design,
development, testing, production, procurement, and inspection of all
ordnance acquired by the Army, whether made by the arsenals or produced
under contract by private industry. When re-established in 1922, the
ordnance districts fell under the direction of the Manufacturing
Division. Field Service had charge of the storage, maintenance, and
distribution of ordnance owned by the Army. There was also a Technical
Staff, comprised of officers and civilians who kept abreast of both
domestic and foreign ordnance developments and who advised all the
divisions, working most closely with the Manufacturing Division,
especially in the testing of new equipment at the Aberdeen Proving
Ground. Williams served as Chief of Ordnance until 1930. Meanwhile,
planners elsewhere in the government determined that surplus ordnance
produced during and after the war as well as enemy equipment captured
during the war should be stored to maintain a level of preparedness not
previously sought.[^24]

Budgets for Ordnance Department between the wars are a gauge of the
agency\'s levels of activity. In 1920, 1921, and 1922, Congress
appropriated \$21 million, \$23 million, and \$13 million, respectively,
for the Ordnance Department. Annual appropriations then dropped to about
\$7 million for the years 1923-1927. For the next eight years,
appropriations held fairly steady at about \$12 million per year before
rising to \$17 million and \$18 million in 1936 and 1937, respectively.
Those appropriations rarely rose above 4% of total War Department
appropriations for the years 1920-1935. Another gauge of Ordnance
Department activity between the wars is employment. In 1921, as post-war
activities were still drawing to a close, the department had about 4,000
military workers and over 14,000 civilian employees. The following year,
those figures declined to about 3,000 military and 8,000 civilian,
respectively. From 1923 until the mid-1930s, the number of military
workers at the Ordnance Department held steady at about 2,500, while the
number of civilian workers dropped below 5,000 in the mid-1920s and then
gradually rose to about 10,000 in the mid-1930s. A third measure of
Ordnance Department activity is the extent to which it met its ten-year
plan, launched in 1925, to equip the Army with new weapons. The Army had
set itself fairly modest goals, for example, to re-equip itself with
artillery. By 1933, however, it was only halfway to its goal for the
75-mm howitzer and the 3-inch antiaircraft gun and a third of the way
there for three other kinds of artillery. For five other kinds of
artillery, the Army had yet to receive any weapons or, in some cases,
even receive appropriations to have the weapons made.[^25]

As noted above, appropriations for ordnance began to increase somewhat
after 1935. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was growing concerned by
hostile conditions brewing abroad, and he began to forcefully urge
Congress to appropriate sufficient funds to allow the Army to correct
the ordnance deficiencies it had identified. Congress authorized \$24
million for fiscal year 1938, during which year the situation in Europe
appeared to grow even more grave. FDR sent Congress a special message in
January 1938 itemizing additional weapons and other ordnance the
nation\'s military needed to prepare for possible war, and he also asked
the Army to prepare a mobilization plan, accompanied by an estimate of
what it would cost to implement. Congress appropriated \$112 million for
fiscal year 1939, which the Army was able to begin spending in July
1938. The funding allowed so great an increase in Ordnance Department
activity that Assistant Chief of Ordnance, Brig. Gen. Earl McFarland
recalled in 1950 that the war had actually begun for the Ordnance
Department in 1938. Based on the Army\'s estimates, Roosevelt requested
and received from Congress in 1939 an appropriation of \$477 million for
fiscal year 1940, most of which was allotted to the Army Air Corps to
help the aircraft industry expand its industrial plant. As mentioned
above, Albert Kahn designed several of the new airplane factories.[^26]

In preparing for possible war and the necessary mobilization of the
nation\'s industrial infrastructure, one of the Ordnance Department\'s
most important tasks was to plan how it would procure needed arms,
ammunition, and equipment. The department based its procurement plan on
data supplied by the arsenals and the ordnance districts (now thirteen
in number). Even though the ordnance districts each had only three or
four people on staff during most of the inter-war period, one of their
most important tasks was to survey the capabilities of firms in their
districts in terms of physical plant, labor, and engineering and
managerial expertise. The districts had to assess the suitability of
firms\' resources to meet various ordnance manufacturing needs, and the
districts had to up-date their surveys periodically. Some districts were
better at keeping their surveys up-to-date, with the New York district
having one of the best records. Among the data the districts collected
were informal agreements from manufacturers, in the form of schedules,
stating how much orders for specific quantities of military weapons or
equipment would cost. By 1937, the districts had negotiated with more
than 645 industrial plants to generate 2,500 such schedules. The 1939
appropriation gave the Ordnance Department the funds to allow the
ordnance districts to greatly increase their staffs, which jumped from a
handful of employees to dozens, and as many as 51 in the case of the
Philadelphia district. The districts immediately set to work up-dating
their surveys. The surveys, coupled with expanded staffing,

allowed the districts to achieve impressive results with the greatly
increased number of procurement contracts they let in 1939 and
1940.[^27]

Another governmental entity, the Army and Navy Munitions Board, also
worked with the National Machine Tool Builders Association to monitor
the nation\'s capacity to produce machine tools. The nation\'s
manufacturers of machine tools usually operated at below capacity. That
capacity was large enough to supply industrial needs during small
peacetime booms, but it could not meet the anticipated demand of full
industrial mobilization for war. For example, a 1937 estimate showed
that with mobilization the Army would require more than 20,000
additional lathes, 16,000 of which would be needed by the Ordnance
Department. With their increased staffs after 1939, the ordnance
districts began to report shortages of machine tools at the plants
producing weapons, ammunition, and equipment under the new contracts of
1939 and 1940. The nationwide shortage of machine tools was the major
bottleneck preventing contract schedules being met under expanded
program of ordnance production in 1939 and 1940, and the problem
continued for some time after the U.S. entered the war following the
attack on Pearl Harbor.[^28]

Another program that helped the nation\'s industrial firms prepare to
mobilize for war was the Educational Orders Act of 1938, in which
Congress appropriated \$2 million in additional funding for the Ordnance
Department to place small orders with companies, principally to give
them experience in manufacturing munitions. The Act authorized the
Secretary of War to solicit bids from firms for educational orders and
to award orders to firms not on the competitiveness of their bids but
rather on their capability, in the Secretary\'s judgement, to be able to
undertake large wartime contracts. The Ordnance Department awarded the
first four educational orders in 1939 to Winchester Repeating Arms
Company of New Haven for M1 rifles, to R. Hoe & Company of New York for
recoil mechanisms for 3-inch antiaircraft guns, to S.A. Woods of Boston
for machining 75-mm artillery shell casings, and to American Forge
Company of Chicago for casting 75-mm artillery shell casings. In 1939,
Congress authorized an additional \$32.5 million for educational orders.
In 1939 and 1940, the Ordnance Department placed 76 more educational
orders, most of them for ammunition. After February 1940, the department
also started awarding contracts for production studies. These were
smaller contracts, and they gave firms the opportunity to study what was
involved in producing ordnance for the military.[^29]

Hitler\'s Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, and two days later
England and France declared war on Germany. On 8 September, President
Roosevelt declared a state of limited emergency, authorizing the Army to
build itself up to full strength. About the same time, the Ordnance
Department put place a \$6 billion plan to meet its procurement
responsibilities under the Protective Mobilization Plan for the Army. As
the Ordnance Department continued placing orders with private firms for
materiel, those and many other American firms began doing a brisk
business with the French and British armies, which desperately needed
weapons and equipment. Indeed, in 1939 and 1940, American companies
produced more weapons, ammunition, airplanes, and other military
equipment for foreign armies than they did for the United States Army.
Concerned that such a large volume of sales might endanger U.S.
neutrality, Congress passed legislation in November 1939 requiring that
all sales be for cash. In spring 1940, Nazi Germany conquered Norway,
Denmark, Belgium, and the Netherlands, and in May Hitler\'s army invaded
France. Although the American public and Congress still hoped to avoid
war, Congress recognized the growing threat and appropriated hundreds of
millions of dollars for ordnance procurements. With the increased
appropriations, the Ordnance Department also developed procedures to
hasten negotiation and execution of contracts with private firms. France
surrendered in July 1940, and the following June Hitler invaded the
Soviet Union. Each worsening situation in Europe led to greater
appropriations and calls for more speed in mobilizing the Army and in
mobilizing industry to meet the Army\'s needs.[^30]

Several other programs implemented by the United States government also
acted to spur the mobilization of industry and to alter the stores of
ordnance available to the U.S. Army. As the German army approached the
English Channel and the British effected the evacuation of their troops
at Dunkerque, most of the British equipment had to be left behind in
France. President Roosevelt and his military advisers decided to
designate old ammunition and obsolete equipment as surplus so that it
could be given to Britain to replace some of its lost materiel. Within
two months, the U.S. shipped vast quantities of guns and ammunition to
Britain to aid in the island\'s defense. This action made shortages for
the U.S. Army more acute, but the Ordnance Department was intended to
address the problem by accelerating procurement. At the same time,
American firms continued to make equipment for the British Army, which
differed from what the American Army used. By autumn 1940, Britain
agreed to accept American designs for ordnance, thus streamlining
American industries production of materiel for both armies. When Britain
ran out of cash to purchase American ordnance, Congress passed the
Lend-Lease Act, and the United States started financing British
purchases. Even though most items now being produced were standardized,
whether for the Allied war effort or for equipping and training U.S.
troops, the two delivery streams complicated matters for the Ordnance
Department, stimulating more steps to manage production more
efficiently.[^31]

Throughout this period, one of the greatest impediments to American
industry meeting the demand of the Ordnance Department and the British
Purchasing Commission continued to be the shortage of machine tools,
demand for which was about twice what American machine-tool makers could
produce. Shortages in machine tools in turn led to delays in the
delivery of ordnance, especially small arms ammunition. In its effort to
respond to the shortage, the machine tool industry greatly expanded its
capacity in the early 1940s, with half of the financing for expansion
coming from the industry itself. In 1940, the industry produced less
than \$500,000,000 in machine tools; by 1942 it was able to produce more
than \$1 billion in machine tools. Ordnance also worked with industry to
locate existing machine tools that were under-utilized and could be
diverted *in situ* to war production. Ten of the thirteen Ordnance
Districts established Machine-Tool Panels to locate such machine tools
and redistribute (not physically but in terms of task assignments) them
to work on Ordnance contracts, often by means of sub-contracts.[^32]

Overall organization of the Ordnance Department had not changed since
1920. It still featured four sections, the General Office, Technical
Staff, Industrial Service (which supervised procurement and production),
and Field Service (which supplied Army units with what they needed). The
Industrial Service was the largest of the sections, especially with
industry mobilizing for war. In 1940, Maj. Gen Charles M. Wesson was
Chief of Ordnance. As the demands for industrial production grew, Wesson
decided to de-emphasize research and development in favor of bolstering
the management of production. He therefore broke the Industrial Service
into three operating units, putting a Colonel in charge of each. He
named Col. Burton O. Lewis assistant chief for production and
procurement, transferred Col. Gladeon M. Barnes from being chief of the
Technical Staff to serve as assistant chief of the Industrial Section
for engineering, and named Lt. Col. Levin H. Campbell, Jr. assistant
chief for facilities. These three men each held the informal title of
vice president within the Industrial Service, titles in keeping with
Wesson\'s sense that Ordnance had come to resemble a giant corporation.
The vice presidents supervised the expansion of their respective units
from 1940 onward. The Ordnance Department maintained this structure
through 1942 with only moderate change. The most important changes
occurred in July 1941, when Wesson abolished the Technical Staff
entirely, distributing its tasks and staff among the units of the
Industrial Service. Technical Staff functions went primarily to Barnes\'
division, and his title changed to assistant chief for research and
engineering. Wesson also added a division and a fourth vice president:
Brig. Gen. Richard H. Somers became assistant chief for inspection,
having charge of testing at Ordnance proving grounds and of all
inspection work conducted by the Industrial Service.[^33]

**2. The Ordnance Department During World War II**

Gen. Wesson\'s term as Chief of Ordnance expired in spring 1942, and
President Roosevelt replaced him with Gen. Levin H. Campbell. A 1909
graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, he resigned the Navy to work in
private industry before re-enlisting as an officer in the Army. He
served in the Ordnance Department during World War I and then continued
at various Ordnance postings during the 1920s and 1930s working on the
engineering and production of artillery, tanks, and ammunition. He
received praise for successfully introducing automatic machinery to the
artillery ammunition assembly line at the Frankfort Arsenal in 1939 and
1940. Then as assistant chief for facilities in the Industrial Service,
he supervised the planning and construction of new Ordnance plants. When
he was promoted to Chief of Ordnance in May 1940, Campbell not only
shuffled some of the administrators in the department; he also
reorganized it in some significant ways. He appointed an advisory staff
comprised of four prominent industrialists: Bernard Baruch, who had
chaired the War Industries Board during World War I; K.T. Keller,
president of Chrysler Corporation; Benjamin F. Fairless, president of
U.S. Steel; and Lewis H. Brown, president of Johns-Manville Corporation.
He also established three new operating divisions at the level of the
Industrial Service and the Field Service. They were named the Military
Training, Technical, and Parts Control divisions.[^34]

Campbell also reorganized the Industrial Service, now called the
Industrial Division and under the supervision of Maj. Gen. Thomas J.
Hayes. By the time he had become Chief of Ordnance, each of the four
divisions had developed staffs, he believed, that could manage their
responsibilities without needing the supervision of assistant chiefs.
Another change Campbell inaugurated for the Industrial Division was to
decentralize some of its supervisory offices. One such decentralized
office he created was the Field Director of Ammunition Plants (FDAP),
which he located at St. Louis next door to the office of the St. Louis
Ordnance District. The FDAP had administrative charge of some 60
ammunition factories that were owned by the government and operated by
contractors. Another decentralization was even more consequential. In
July 1942, the Army decided to transfer all automotive activities to the
Ordnance Department. Heretofore, development, production, distribution,
and maintenance of the Army\'s cars and trucks and related components
like engines, transmissions, and axles had been the responsibility of
the Quartermaster Corps. Combat vehicles like tanks, armored cars, and
personnel carriers on the other hand had been the Ordnance Department\'s
responsibility. Campbell combined the two streams of procurement under a
new Tank-Automotive Center (T-AC) headquartered in Detroit. The
overhauled organizational structure Campbell gave the Ordnance
Department served to administer ordnance production totalling more than
one billion dollars per month by December 1942.[^35]

Prior to the Army\'s administrative reorganization of tank and
automotive procurement, the Quartermaster Corps had also been in the
midst of a tremendous procurement program (see section below describing
the development of the jeep). Between July 1940, when the Quartermaster
Corps reorganized to create a Motor Transport Division, and August 1942,
when the duties of procurement and maintenance were shifted to
Ordnance\'s T-AC in Detroit, the number of trucks in the U.S. Army
increased from about 20,000 to about 500,000. By that time, the Motor
Transport Division had been reorganized as the Motor Transport Service,
and there was talk within the War Department of making the Service a
separate branch of the Army (a shuffle recommended by Gen. Dwight D.
Eisenhower). Although officials of the Quartermaster Corps argued
against transferring Motor Transport away from their control, the Army
ordered that procurement and maintenance of motor transport vehicles be
moved to Ordnance.[^36]

The transfer of the Motor Transport Service from the Quartermaster Corps
and its merger with the Tank and Combat Vehicle Division of Ordnance\'s
Industrial Division was easily the most monumental change made to the
division\'s responsibilities during the war. The Motor Transport Service
had charge of the Army\'s motor pools, automotive supply depots, and
schools for training auto mechanics. In addition, the Motor Transport
Service was administering more than 4,000 contracts worth about \$3
billion, which had to be folded into Ordnance\'s already mammoth list of
contracts. Campbell established the new Tank-Automotive Center at
Detroit so that it could readily coordinate with the nation\'s auto
industry. Campbell wanted to avoid too much concentration of Ordnance
activities at the nation\'s capital, and he wanted develop the best
possible relationships with auto industry leaders. After a false-start
in organizing the top leadership at the T-AC, Campbell placed Brig. Gen.
A.R. Glancy in charge with Brig. Gen. John K. Christmas as his deputy.
Glancy was an industrialist with experience in military procurement. He
received a reserve commission to become a brigadier general. Christmas
had spent most of his career in the Army designing and engineering
tanks. Glancy organized the Detroit operation into five branches:
Development, Engineering, Manufacturing, Supply, and Maintenance.[^37]

Nearly all the functions of the Ordnance Department were represented in
the Detroit office, a fact recognized during the course of the war by
the renaming of the center as Office, Chief of Ordnance-Detroit (OCO-D).
Campbell was so intent on decentralization that he intended to assign
full operating authority to OCO-D, although some of the divisions in
Washington, DC, had difficulty relinquishing authority. This caused some
inefficiency and discord within the Ordnance Department during the war,
but after the war officers in the department generally considered the
experiment in decentralization of the Tank-Automotive Center to have
been a success, to which the tremendous production of military vehicles
was largely attributable. During the course of the war, nearly half of
the Ordnance Department personnel moved to Detroit. The staff there grew
from 40 officers and about 600 civilians in September 1942 to 500
officers and nearly 4,000 civilians by February 1943. At the peak of
employment, 5,000 civilians worked at OCO-D, which was responsible for
the manufacture of more than three million military vehicles. Almost
half of the Ordnance Department\'s total expenditures during the war was
spent by OCO-D.[^38]

Another of Campbell\'s important organizational changes occurred at the
level of the ordnance districts. Since WWI, civilian chiefs had headed
the district offices, and that continued to be the case into 1942.
Although the chiefs were prominent industrialists, they were also
volunteers who did not work full time at their district offices. With
industries and their managers being more taxed to meet military
production demands and with the district offices facing greater work
loads in administering procurement at the local level, Campbell decided
to assign experienced Ordnance officers as district chiefs, retaining
the former civilian chiefs as policy advisors.[^39]

Ordnance contracted with firms for many kinds of items beyond combat
vehicles, such as were processed by Ford\'s Richmond branch, or
weapons.[^40] Through the San Francisco Ordnance District, for example,
Ordnance contracted with such firms as Rogers Super Tread Tire Service
of Yakima, Washington. Founded in 1936, the father-and-son firm owned a
small tire recapping plant. Specializing in tires for large construction
equipment, their business grew and was in position to be low bidder on
an Ordnance contract in 1942 to recap tires for the contractors that
were building military installations in Alaska. The Army then awarded
Rogers contracts and sub-contracts for recapping tires for military
vehicles. Rogers processed tens of thousands of tires throughout the
war. During the peak of its work in 1944, Rogers had as many as 80 men
working in its union shop.[^41] Another example was American Box
Corporation, a company representing the merger of several
California-based box and lumber companies, the oldest being the Stockton
Box Company of Stockton, founded in 1910. American Box\'s stock in trade
was wooden boxes used for shipping fresh, dried, and canned fruits and
vegetables. The company also produced some industrial boxes. American
Box\'s first military contract was with the Quartermaster Corps in 1941,
when the company helped the Corps design wooden foot lockers for use in
military training camps and then produced 136,666 of the items. American
Box was soon under contract to build boxes for Ordnance as well,
including more than a million boxes for transporting artillery
munitions, bombs, and small arms.[^42]

The San Francisco Ordnance District created its Historical Section in
1942 in response to Ordnance Department order no. 337 dated 21 September
1942. District Chief Col. Harmon instructed the members of his
Historical Section:

The San Francisco Ordnance District has been charged with compiling a
complete history of the District\'s activities since it inception. This
history will be a factual record and will not only be a laudatory
account, but will include known mistakes, their elimination, and
suggestions for improvement in any phase where the need is
apparent.[^43]

The District Historian wrote and directed the writing of numerous
historical summaries that chronicle the histories of the many activities
the District supervised. These histories, and those of other Ordnance
Districts, comprise several large series of records in the National
Archives\' Record Group 156, the Records of the Office of the Chief of
Ordnance. To compile the histories, the Historian had commanding
officers at installations write monthly and quarterly historical
reports; dispatched employees on assignments, like the trip Fern Hurley
made to the Richmond Tank Depot to interview workers and write a chapter
on the depot in her report, \"Women Man the Battle Stations\" (see
section below on women); and wrote letters to contractors asking them to
write brief histories of their activities under contract to Ordnance
(Rogers Super Tread and American Box are two examples). Actual primary
documents are not always included in the histories, but often the
historian had typed copies of primary documents appended to reports as
exhibits. Official histories of the Richmond Tank Depot comprise a
significant portion of the documents cited in this HAER report. There is
considerable additional information available in the histories on other
aspects of Ordnance activities during World War II.[^44]

**B. Ford\'s Conversion to War Production**

One of Ford\'s first big military contracts was for the production Pratt
& Whitney aircraft engines. The company signed a contract with the
government in October 1940 to build a new facility costing \$23,000,000
at the Rouge plant to build 4,236 engines. In December 1940, as the
building was nearing completion, Ford executive Sorensen reported to the
government that machine tools were slow in arriving, delaying Ford\'s
ability adapt other tools to the new task and ultimately to produce
engines. A year later, as the U.S. formally entered the war, the Office
of Production Management reported that the Ford aircraft engine plant
still had only about 28% of the machine tools it needed. Labor shortages
also prevented Ford from meeting its schedule. Even as Ford was training
young men in the skills necessary to make aircraft engines, draft boards
were taking them into active military service. Increases in production
also left Ford short of experienced foremen. Difficulties with unions
also slowed production, as men facing strenuous production schedules
filed grievances and initiated work slowdowns and strikes. Despite such
difficulties, Ford completed its initial contract for aircraft engines
in October 1942, by which time it was producing about 800 units per
month. Yet the government wanted Ford to increase its output to 3,400
engines per month. The Rouge plant did not have the capacity for
production at that scale. In an effort to meet the government\'s wishes,
Ford assigned the production of some parts to plants elsewhere in the
country, and the company steadily worked to increase productivity. As
the first contract was being completed, it took Ford workers 2,331 hours
to build an engine. By the end of 1944, Ford workers could make an
engine in only 1,028 hours. During the war, Ford\'s Rouge plant produced
57,851 aircraft engines, 7.2% of the national total.[^45]

Perhaps Ford\'s most famous ordnance factory during WWII was the plant
at Willow Run, near Ypsilanti, built to produce B-24 bombers, or
Liberators. Ford began construction of an entirely new plant in March
1941. Cost of the new building and equipment was \$47,600,000. By May
1942, 15,500 employees worked there, 1,874 of them women. The contract
schedule called for the Willow Run plant to make parts for 405 airplanes
per month. Ford would initially ship parts for 100 bombers to a Douglas
assembly plant at Tulsa and parts for 155 to a Consolidated Aircraft
plant at Fort Worth. Ford would assembly the remaining 150 Liberators
monthly at Willow Run. Eventually, Ford was to assemble most of its
planes at Willow Run. The plant shipped its first parts to Tulsa in July
1942. The first assembled plane to fly away from the Willow Run plant
departed two months later. By January 1943, Willow Run employed 30,000,
of whom 10,000 were women. Thereafter, men were leaving Willow Run\'s
workforce at a greater rate than Ford could hire them. Some were
entering military service. Many other men, and women as well, quit
because there was insufficient housing near Ypsilanti and the commute
from Detroit was too taxing. At the peak of employment, the Willow Run
bomber plant employed about 47,000 workers, and outside factories
supplying Willow Run with parts employed another 22,000. Willow Run\'s
peak month of production was August 1944, when it made 428 Liberators.
By June 1945, the plant had assembled 6,791 B-24s and sent parts for an
additional 1,893 bombers to other assembly plants.[^46]

As a company with numerous plants abroad, Ford was involved in war
production elsewhere as well. The Ford Motor Company of Canada, Ltd.,
for example, had begun negotiations with the Canadian Department of
National Defense in 1938 to prepare for possible full mobilization in
the event of war. When the war started in 1939, the Ford plant at
Windsor, Ontario, converted nearly its entire capacity to producing
military vehicles for Britain and its allies, and it quickly became the
largest single source of military transport vehicles for the armies of
Britain and its former colonies, like Canada, Australia, and South
Africa, which soon joined Britain in the war. The Windsor plant employed
11,000 workers, and by March 1941 they had produced more than 50,000
vehicles for the military. They included light trucks, heavy-duty
tractors for pulling artillery and tank carriers, and a tracked vehicle
called the universal carrier, used for transporting troops. One assembly
line at the Windsor plant continued to produce civilian cars and trucks
to help keep Canada\'s industrial capacity moving.[^47]

Although one of America\'s \"big three\" automakers at the time, Ford
did not produce as many military vehicles during WWII as did the other
two. For example, while Chrysler produced more than 20,000 tanks and
tank destroyers and GM\'s Fisher Body produced more than 16,000 tanks,
Ford produced only 1,683 M-4 tanks and 1,035 M-10 tank destroyers.
During the war, U.S. manufacturers produced 2,665,196 vehicles, of which
Ford made 387,737 (14.5%). Ford\'s contributions were not necessarily in
the nature of finished vehicles, as was the case in America\'s peacetime
auto industry. Rather, much of Ford\'s productive capacity was devoted
to other facets of the larger system of ordnance production. In addition
to aircraft engines and bombers, Ford made nearly 27,000 tank engines,
which it then shipped to other companies\' assembly plants. Ford
produced steel armor plate for other ordnance projects. And two of
Ford\'s branch assembly plants, Richmond and Chester, served as tank
depots, receiving tanks from other manufacturers, outfitting them with
communications equipment and armament, and preparing them for shipment
to overseas battlefronts.[^48]

After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the U.S. declared war on Japan,
President Roosevelt asked Americans for an all-out effort to win the
war. From Americans working in industry he asked a seven-day work week.
He asked that existing plants be expanded, and he asked that new plants
be built. Even though Ford and the other automobile manufacturers were
already producing vehicles, aircraft engines, and artillery shells, the
government asked them to speed production on those contracts so that new
contracts could be entered. Government agents also asked companies to
embark on projects to produce new kinds of equipment. For example,
twelve days after Pearl Harbor, representatives of the National Defense
Research Committee showed preliminary plans for an amphibian jeep to
officials of the Ford Motor Company at Dearborn, asking the company to
develop the concept into a workable vehicle. Ford agreed, further
engineered a small three-man vehicle that could travel on land or water,
and tested it to the Army\'s satisfaction in the Huron River. In June
1942, Ford received a contract to produce 5,000 of the novel
vehicles.[^49]

As Ford and the other automakers had been preparing for war by turning
ever greater portions of their productive capacity to military
production, the government also began imposing quotas on the numbers of
passenger cars and light trucks the companies could make. In January
1942, the War Production Board issued an order that all production of
civilian cars and trucks must cease. The last Ford car for private use
rolled off the assembly line on February 10th.[^50]

The elimination of civilian auto manufacturing freed Ford\'s extensive
system of branch plants for other uses in the war effort. At the
beginning of the war, Ford had 34 domestic branch plants, of which 16
were assembly plants and 18 were units in the parts distribution
network. During the war, Ford operated only 15 of the branch plants,
selling or leasing the rest to the government, which in turn put the
branch facilities to other uses in the nationwide system of ordnance
manufacturing, often to be operated by contractors. Ford also owned
three old branch plants it was not using at the beginning of the war;
these it leased to aircraft manufacturers. On the West Coast, for
example, Ford leased the plant at Long Beach to the government and sold
the plants at Portland and Seattle to government. The only plant on the
West Coast that Ford continued to operate during the war was in
Richmond. Elsewhere in the country, Ford converted the branches at
Kansas City and Memphis to its Pratt-Whitney aircraft engine program.
The Chicago branch assemble armored cars. The Twin Cities branch was
part of both the aircraft engine and armored-car assembly programs. The
Dallas, Edgewater, and Louisville branches made trucks for military
transport, and those three plus the Richmond plant participated in
Ford\'s contract to build jeeps. Ford operated the Richmond and the
Chester branches as tank depots under contract to the Ordnance
Department.[^51]

The Ford branch at Somerville, Massachusetts, had one of the unique
contracts in the Ordnance Department\'s nationwide system. The plant was
the only one in the U.S. to build universal carriers, and it did so
during the entire war. As previously mentioned, the Ford Motor Company
of Canada was already producing universal carriers at the Windsor plant
according to a British design for the British Army. The Windsor plant
could not meet the demand, so the Ordnance Department began negotiations
in February 1942 to convert the Somerville branch to carrier production.
The Ordnance Department gave Ford engineers some latitude in studying
the design of the carrier, both to improve its performance and to
expedite production. At the end of the summer, Ordnance approved Ford\'s
changes and in September contracted with Ford to build 21,000 universal
carriers of the modified design. The original carrier was designed by
Vickers-Armstrong, Britain\'s ordnance manufacturer. It was little more
than a small steel box with a capacity of two soldiers and a machine gun
sitting on caterpillar tracks and powered by a Ford Model-T engine.
Vickers-Armstrong redesigned the vehicle to give it greater capacity and
a new engine, the Ford V-8. The British used the new vehicle in many
theatres of WWII as a personnel carrier, scout car, and mortar carrier.
Ford\'s newer version featured a Ford-Mercury engine with 100 hp. It
could travel at speeds up to 55 mph. British forces used it as a light
armored vehicle to move machine gun and mortar crews into position.
Because the vehicles were much heavier than cars and trucks, Ford had to
completely remove its conventional assembly-line equipment at Somerville
and design, fabricate, and install an entirely new assembly line,
complete with painting systems, ovens, conveyors, and jigs. The
Somerville plant produced its first universal carrier in March
1943.[^52]

Ford\'s two main contracts at the Richmond branch were W-883-ORD-2676,
the tank-depot contract for the processing and modification of combat
vehicles, and W-374-ORD-2862, the largest of the five jeep assembly
contracts at Richmond. The jeep contract ran from February 1942 to July
1945. When Ford originally entered the jeep contract with the Army, it
was under the auspices of the Quartermaster Corp, and the contract
number was W-398-QM-11424 (later revised to W-398-QM-13538). When
responsibility from manufacturing trucks was transferred from the
Quartermaster Corps to the Ordnance Department in July 1942, Ford\'s
jeep contract received the new ORD nomenclature. The tank depot contract
ran from July 1942 to November 1945. During the course of World War II,
the Richmond Tank Depot processed and shipped 55,904 vehicle units, or
17.2% of the total 324,565 vehicle units shipped by all the tank
depots.[^53]

With the advent of war production at the Richmond branch, security
became more serious. Security in and around the plant fell under three
jurisdictions. Security on the water adjacent to the plant was the
responsibility of the U.S. Coast Guard. Security on land beyond Ford\'s
property line was under the jurisdiction of the Internal Security
Command. Ford was responsible for security on its own property, but
Ford\'s security measures had to conform to recommendations issued by
the Army\'s Plant Protection Office, based at the Presidio in San
Francisco. In June 1942, Major Edmund Sawyer of the Plant Protection
Office inspected the Richmond branch, by which time the plant employment
office had fingerprinted all the employees. Sawyer made some
recommendations for enhanced security, including: 1) contacting all
caterers, utilities, and other companies that sent regular visitors to
the plant, recommending that they fingerprint their employees and
provide them with proper identification cards; 2) installing
bullet-proof glass on the guardhouse at the main gate; 3) equipping
guards with badges and side arms; the installation of an air-raid siren
in addition to the existing fire alarm; and 4) that Ford equip its
emergency responders with gas masks and helmets. Because the Richmond
plant was owned and operated by the Ford Motor Company, of course, the
Plant Protection

Foreman at Richmond had to obtain authorization from Dearborn before he
could implement Sawyer\'s recommendations.[^54]

**C. Jeeps**

The jeep is one of the most storied vehicles to come out of World War
II. The brand still exists, and the vehicles Daimler-Chrysler now builds
under the Jeep brand-name still owe some of their stylistic character to
the WWII vehicle developed by the Army\'s Quartermaster Corps. This
section describes the history of the jeep\'s development before
providing details the Richmond Tank Depot\'s role in the production of
jeeps during the war.

**1. The Quartermaster Corps & Motor Transport for the Army**

The history of the Quartermaster Corps goes back to 1775 and the
appointment of a Quartermaster General by the Continental Congress
during the Revolutionary War. Thereafter, the Quartermaster Corps\'
organization evolved during peacetime and wars as it sought to supply
the Army\'s material needs. It was generally responsible for
procurement, storage, and transportation of supplies. It was always
responsible for food, clothing, and camp equipment, and during some
early periods it was also responsible for arms and ammunition. By the
end the 1930s, when much of the rest of the world had gone to war, the
Quartermaster Corps had an extensive infrastructure of supply depots
throughout the nation, and it also had the facilities for making certain
items itself, such as the uniform factory at the Corps\' Philadelphia
Depot. In 1939, the Corps was staffed by about 12,000 military personnel
and 37,000 civilian employees, who supplied a standing army of about
200,000.[^55]

With the fall of France in 1940, Congress authorized the Army to expand
to 1,400,000. More than the Ordnance Department, however, the
Quartermaster Corps was prepared to supply an expanded army on short
notice, so the increase in staffing and procurement by Quartermaster
Corps in the early 1940s, although marked, was not as dramatic as that
of the Ordnance Department, and the effort to mobilize American industry
to satisfy Quartermaster needs was not so remarkable. Because of the
nature of the items needed by the Quartermaster Corps, in fact, the
nature of the mobilization was quite different. Whereas the Ordnance
Department, for example, needed to help facilitate the expansion and
conversion of heavy industry in industrialized parts of the country,
often in the face of severe equipment and labor shortages, the
Quartermaster Corps relied on manufacturers and suppliers who could
fairly easily make the transition to production in support the military.
And the Navy and the Maritime Commission needed to focus their expansion
of shipbuilding on coastal areas, whereas the Quartermaster Corps could
make procurements anywhere in the interior of the country. Therefore, to
help relieve the stresses placed on coastal and industrialized areas by
war production, the Quartermaster Corps preferentially awarded
contracts, when possible, to small manufacturers operating in parts of
the country that still had labor surpluses. At the end of the war, the
Quartermaster Corps had 500,000 military personnel and 75,000 civilian
employees.[^56]

Until 1942, as previously mentioned, the Quartermaster Corps was the
organization within the U.S. Army that was responsible for providing
motorized transportation. The Army had purchased its first motor
vehicle, an Oldsmobile passenger car, in 1903. Four years later it
bought a truck.[^57] Yet the Quartermaster General was not immediately
impressed with those trial vehicles:

Tests made of automobiles for military purposes and reports received as
to their utility and cost of maintenance do not argue in favor of their
substitution for any of the standard means of Army transportation. These
vehicles can rapidly transport persons and supplies over city streets or
well-kept roads, but at the very best the cost of such transportation
for army work is excessive. The high initial cost of these machines, the
liability of damage to their complicated mechanism, tires, etc., with
consequent disabling of the cars and frequency with which breakage or
disabling accidents occur, together with the great expense of repairs,
high wages of the necessary skilled chauffeurs, and their
impracticability of operation over any but the best of roads and the
smoothest of terrain will, it is thought, prohibit use of the existing
types as a substitute for any of the present means of army
transportation.[^58]

The Quartermaster General\'s remarks indicated, however, a recognition
that the capabilities of motor vehicles could change, as indeed they
did, while the Quartermaster Corps continued to purchase cars and trucks
and the Army sought ways to integrate them into its operations. By 1911,
the Army was using commercial trucks to move supplies at several of its
posts, and that year the Quartermaster General put Captain A.E. Williams
in charge of two important new programs. One was to develop a truck
capable of working with troops, thereby replacing horse- and mule-drawn
wagons. The other was to work with manufacturers in an effort to have
them make standardized trucks for the Army. Given the nascent character
of the automobile industry, Williams had little success in the latter
program. Undaunted, he continued to have Army units use various truck
models in experimental field maneuvers to try to find appropriate rolls
for motor vehicles. By 1913, the Quartermaster Corps was ready to issue
general specifications that manufacturers had to meet in supplying the
Army with trucks, and in 1915, some units of the Quartermaster Corps
began to organize motor truck companies, motor car companies, and motor
cycle companies.[^59]

With the U.S. entry into World War I, Army purchases of motor vehicles
increased tremendously and the Army decided to establish a new Motor
Transport Corps. After the war, the Army abolished the Motor Transport
Corps and returned responsibility for motor vehicles to the
Quartermaster Corps. Camp Holabird became the Quartermaster Corps\'
central spare parts depot for Army cars and trucks and also housed the
Quartermaster Transport School to train mechanics for keeping the
Army\'s fleet of vehicles in repair. Because of the huge surplus of
vehicles left by the war, however, the Quartermaster Corps made few
purchases during the 1920s. By the 1930s, most of the Army\'s vehicles
were obsolete. The Army decided to eliminate horses and mules and to
completely motorize its units, and the Army also soon had responsibility
to purchase trucks for the Civilian Conservation Corps. Limited testing
for new kinds of trucks to meet those needs took place at Holabird.[^60]

Therefore, the Quartermaster Corps greatly expanded its purchasing
program for motor vehicles, but not without a skirmish over the issue of
standardization with the Ordnance Department, which held responsibility
for purchase of combat vehicles. The Quartermaster General believed that
standardization of transport vehicles throughout the Army was essential
to ensure effective maintenance in the field during wartime. The Chief
of Ordnance advocated allowing each organization of the Army to
determine specifications for trucks it needed. The Quartermaster General
prevailed initially, and in 1931 the Army embarked on the purchase of a
standardized fleet. Ordnance and the Corps of Engineers continued to
resist the policy, and some manufacturers also balked at responding to
bid requests citing the new standardized specifications. The Army\'s
Comptroller General ruled in 1933 that the Quartermaster Corps\'
standardized specifications violated the War Department\'s procurement
regulations, so truck manufacturers were allowed to submit competitive
bids on vehicles, responding only to general specifications. By 1936,
when the old fleet of vehicles had been largely replaced, Col. Brainerd
Taylor, the commander at Holabird, reported to the Quartermaster General
that the Army owned and operated 360 distinct models of vehicles.
Holabird could not maintain so many different types of spare parts, so
the Quartermaster Corps\' centralized system for spare parts at Holabird
disintegrated.[^61]

Some truck manufacturers recognized the peril this situation placed upon
the Army. The previous year, the Motor Transport Branch of the
Quartermaster Corps convened a meeting with the Assistant Secretary of
War, the Quartermaster General, several of his top assistants, and
representatives of forty truck manufacturers. Several companies,
including the White Motor Company, Moreland Truck Company, and the
Marmon Herrington Motor Truck Company, agreed with the Quartermaster
General\'s position that the Army needed standardized trucks, but they
were also cognizant of the pitfalls, articulated by a representative of
the Four Wheel Drive Auto Company. He recognized that if the Army
conducted tests on a particular patented device and then decided to
incorporate it in its standard specifications, competitors of the
company that owned the patent would try to use political connections to
have the specifications changed to remove the patented device.
Nevertheless, some means of overcoming that competitive barrier had to
be found for, as A.W. Herrington of Marmon Herrington observed,

if the kind of motor transport recently purchased for the Army were used
\[in the next war\], it would be necessary to abandon any thought of
automotive repair in the field and to adopt a policy of abandoning
unserviceable vehicles and replacing them with new vehicles.[^62]

Col. Taylor was in complete agreement with Herrington, telling the
Quartermaster General that simplifying automotive repair was \"one of
the most important problems in modern war planning.\" Taylor continued
to press his superiors in the hierarchy of the War Department on the
need for standardization, and in 1938 Assistant Secretary of War Louis
Johnson took up his cause. Over the next two years, Congress at
Johnson\'s urging made important progress toward authorizing the Army to
purchase standardized trucks. Germany\'s invasion of Poland in September
1939 helped to stimulate that progress. By mid-1940, many components in
a system of standardization were in place, leading the Army to accept a
couple kinds of truck that were to become well-known during America\'s
participation in World War II: the Dodge 4 x 4 1-1/2-ton truck and the
General Motors 6 x 6 2-1/2-ton truck. The Quartermaster Corps made
all-wheel drive the norm and established five standard chassis types for
1/2-ton, 1-1/2-ton, 2-1/2-ton, 4-ton, and 7-1/2-ton trucks. There would
be certain variation in body types to accommodate particular uses, but
all would be designed to minimize variability in spare parts. In order
not to discourage bidders, however, higher authorities in the War
Department still allowed some minor variations in the trucks bidders
could propose to build.[^63] Against this background, the determination
of the Quartermaster Corps to insist that the jeep be completely
standardized can be better understood.

[^1]: ^?^Doris Kearns Goodwin, *No Ordinary Time: Franklin & Eleanor
    Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II* (New York: Simon &
    Schuster, 1994), 194-195; Alan Gropman, \"Introduction,\" in *The
    Big L: American Logistics in World War II*, Alan Gropman, ed.
    (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1997), xv-xviii;
    Kent Roberts Greenfield, *American Strategy in World War II: A
    Reconsideration* (Malabar, FL: Robert E. Krieger, 1982), 74, cited
    in Gropman, \"Introduction,\" xvi.

[^2]: ^?^Gropman, \"Introduction,\" xviii.

[^3]: ^?^On the application of the systems approach (systems
    engineering, systems management, systems analysis, etc.) to military
    and aerospace projects, see Thomas P. Hughes, *Rescuing Prometheus*
    (New York: Pantheon, 1998); Agatha C. Hughes and Thomas P. Hughes,
    eds., *Systems, Experts, and Computers: The Systems Approach in
    Management and Engineering, World War II and After* (Cambridge, MA:
    The MIT Press, 2000). On the application of the systems approach to
    social problems, see Marvin Berkowitz, *The Conversion of
    Military-Oriented Research and Development to Civilian Uses* (New
    York: Praeger Publishers, 1970); Robert H. Haveman, *Poverty Policy
    and Poverty Research: The Great Society and the Social Sciences*
    (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987).

[^4]: ^?^James R. Beniger, *The Control Revolution: Technological and
    Economic Origins of the Information Society* (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
    University Press, 1986); Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., *The Visible Hand:
    The Management Revolution in American Business* (Cambridge, MA:
    Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 1977); David A. Hounshell,
    *From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932: The
    Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States*
    (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984); Thomas P.
    Hughes, *Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society,
    1880-1930* (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984).

[^5]: ^?^Allen Schick, \"The Road to PPB: The States of Budget Reform,\"
    *Public Administration* 26 (December 1966): 243-258; Dean S. Warren,
    \"Human vs. Hardware\--A Critical Look at Aerospace as an Urban
    Problem Solver,\" *Aviation Week & Space Technology* 94 (7 June
    1971): 62; John E. Bokel and Rolf Clark, \"Acquisition in World War
    II,\" in *The Big L: American Logistics in World War II*, Alan
    Gropman, ed. (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press,
    1997), 102.

[^6]: ^?^See Hughes\' chapter on \"The Spread of the Systems Approach\"
    in *Rescuing Prometheus*, 141-195.

[^7]: ^?^Robert S. McNamara, *In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of
    Vietnam* (New York: Random House, 1995), 5-9; David Halberstam, *The
    Reckoning* (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1986),
    204-205; Fred Kaplan, *The Wizards of Armageddon* (Stanford:
    Stanford University Press, 1991), 250-251.

[^8]: ^?^McNamara, *In Retrospect*, 10-13; Halberstam, *The Reckoning*,
    206-223, 236-244.

[^9]: ^?^McNamara, *In Retrospect*, 13-15; Kaplan, *The Wizards of
    Armageddon*, 252-257; Hughes, *Rescuing Prometheus*, 160-176,
    185-195; David Jardini, \"Out of the Blue Yonder: The Transfer of
    Systems Thinking from the Pentagon to the Great Society,
    1961-1965,\" in *Systems, Experts, and Computers: The Systems
    Approach in Management and Engineering, World War II and After*,
    Agatha C. Hughes and Thomas P. Hughes, eds., (Cambridge, MA: The MIT
    Press, 2000), 311-357; Davis Dye, \"The Limits of Technology
    Transfer: Civil Systems at TRW, 1965-1975,\" in *Systems, Experts,
    and Computers: The Systems Approach in Management and Engineering,
    World War II and After*, Agatha C. Hughes and Thomas P. Hughes,
    eds., (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2000), 359-384.

[^10]: ^?^Bokel and Clark, \"Acquisition in World War II,\" 98-103;
    Burnham Finney, *Arsenal of Democracy: How Industry Builds Our
    Defense* (New York: Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill Book Company,
    Inc., 1941), 5-8.

[^11]: ^?^\"Guidebook to Priorities: How They Operate and Who Handles
    Them,\" *Business Week* (20 September 1941): 43-56; \"Don Nelson:
    The Man from Sears Goes to War,\" *Fortune* 24 (November 1941): 86,
    153; R.A. Winnacker, \"The National Emergency, July 1940 to December
    1941,\" unpublished report in NARA, RG-156, Entry 654J, box 21, pp.
    106-112; Gropman, \"Industrial Mobilization,\" in *The Big L:
    American Logistics in World War II*, Alan Gropman, ed. (Washington,
    DC: National Defense University Press, 1997), 18-31; Hugh Conway and
    James E. Toth, \"Building Victory\'s Foundation: Infrastructure,\"
    in *The Big L: American Logistics in World War II*, Alan Gropman,
    ed. (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1997),
    204-208.

[^12]: ^?^FDR quoted in Nelson, *Arsenal of Democracy*, 186-187.

[^13]: ^?^Nelson, *Arsenal of Democracy*, 187; *U.S. News & World
    Report* quoted in Goodwin, *No Ordinary Time*, 313.

[^14]: ^?^Nelson, *Arsenal of Democracy*, 187.

[^15]: ^?^Automotive Manufacturers Association, *Freedom\'s Arsenal: The
    Story of the Automotive Council for War Production* (Detroit:
    Automotive Manufacturers Association, 1950), 199-201.

[^16]: ^?^For overviews of the various government programs established
    to manage the production of materiel for the war effort, see Nelson,
    *Arsenal of Democracy*; Gropman, \"Industrial Mobilization,\" 1-95;
    Donald L. Losman, Irene Kyriakopoulos, and J. Dawson Ahalt, \"The
    Economics of America\'s World War II Mobilization,\" in *The Big L:
    American Logistics in World War II*, Alan Gropman, ed. (Washington,
    DC: National Defense University Press, 1997), 145-191.

[^17]: ^?^War Production Board, *Wartime Production Achievements and the
    Reconversion Outlook, Report of the Chairman* (Washington, DC:
    Government Printing Office, 1945), 1-2, quoted in Gropman,
    \"Industrial Mobilization,\" 58; see also John Perry Miller,
    *Pricing of Military Procurements* (New Haven: Yale University
    Press, 1949), 24; Losman, et al, \"The Economics of America\'s World
    War II Mobilization,\" 159-160.

[^18]: ^?^For a very thorough history of the Army\'s diverse activities
    during the war, see the Army\'s published multi-volume series,
    \"United States Army in World War II.\" Two volumes in the series on
    the Technical Services are especially useful in documenting the
    history of the Ordnance Department: Constance McLaughlin Green,
    Harry C. Thomson, and Peter C. Roots, *The Ordnance Department:
    Planning Munitions for War* (Washington, DC: Government Printing
    Office, 1955); Harry C. Thomson, and Lida Mayo, *The Ordnance
    Department: Procurement and Supply* (Washington, DC: Government
    Printing Office, 1960).

[^19]: ^?^Green, et al, *The Ordnance Department: Planning Munitions for
    War*, 3-13.

[^20]: ^?^Green, et al, *The Ordnance Department: Planning Munitions for
    War*, 14-16; David Hounshell, *From the American System to Mass
    Production, 1800-1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology
    in the United States* (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University
    Press, 1984): 3, 28-32; Merritt Roe Smith, *Harpers Ferry Armory and
    the New Technology: The Challenge of Change* (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
    University Press, 1977), 106-107; Smith, \"Army Ordnance and the
    \'American System\' of Manufacturing, 1815-1861,\" in Merritt Roe
    Smith, ed. *Military Enterprise and Technological Change*
    (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1985), 39-86.

[^21]: ^?^Green, et al, *The Ordnance Department: Planning Munitions for
    War*, 18-20.

[^22]: ^?^Green, et al, *The Ordnance Department: Planning Munitions for
    War*, 20-27.

[^23]: ^?^Green, et al, *The Ordnance Department: Planning Munitions for
    War*, 26-27; Levin H. Campbell, Jr., *The Industry-Ordnance Team*
    (New York: Whittlesey House, 1946), 18.

[^24]: ^?^Green, et al, *The Ordnance Department: Planning Munitions for
    War*, 26-27, 30-34.

[^25]: ^?^Green, et al, *The Ordnance Department: Planning Munitions for
    War*, 40-47; Gropman, \"Industrial Mobilization,\" 10-12.

[^26]: ^?^Green, et al, *The Ordnance Department: Planning Munitions for
    War*, 48-49; Gen. McFarland\'s recollection is cited on p. 49. See
    also Gropman, \"Industrial Mobilization,\" 12-17.

[^27]: ^?^Harry C. Thomson, \"Organization of the Ordnance Department,
    1940-1945,\" unpublished report in NARA, RG-156, Entry 948, box
    L239, pp. 8-10; Green, et al, *The Ordnance Department: Planning
    Munitions for War*, 53-57.

[^28]: ^?^Lucius D. Clay, \"The Army Supply Program,\" *Fortune* 27
    (February 1943): 96-97, 225-232; Green, et al, *The Ordnance
    Department: Planning Munitions for War*, 56-57.

[^29]: ^?^Green, et al, *The Ordnance Department: Planning Munitions for
    War*, 57-59; Bokel and Clark, \"Acquisition in World War II,\"
    103-104.

[^30]: ^?^Green, et al, *The Ordnance Department: Planning Munitions for
    War*, 65-69; Gropman, \"Industrial Mobilization,\" 18-20.

[^31]: ^?^Green, et al, *The Ordnance Department: Planning Munitions for
    War*, 72-80. For a general overview of the Lend-Lease Program, see
    Marcus R. Erlandson, \"Lend-Lease: An Assessment of a Government
    Bureaucracy,\" in *The Big L: American Logistics in World War II*,
    Alan Gropman, ed. (Washington, DC: National Defense University
    Press, 1997), 265-292.

[^32]: ^?^Green, et al, *The Ordnance Department: Planning Munitions for
    War*, 76; Campbell, *The Industry-Ordnance Team*, 133-143.

[^33]: ^?^Thomson, \"Organization of the Ordnance Department,
    1940-1945,\" 1-2, 11-13; Green, et al, *The Ordnance Department:
    Planning Munitions for War*, 83-88.

[^34]: ^?^Thomson, \"Organization of the Ordnance Department,
    1940-1945,\" 22-23; Green, et al, *The Ordnance Department: Planning
    Munitions for War*, 95-96.

[^35]: ^?^Thomson, \"Organization of the Ordnance Department,
    1940-1945,\" 23-24, 46-57; Green, et al, *The Ordnance Department:
    Planning Munitions for War*, 98, 106-108.

[^36]: ^?^Vernon Carstensen, \"Motor Transport under the Quartermaster
    General, 1903-1942,\" unpublished historical report in NARA, RG-92,
    Records of the Quartermaster General, Entry 2116H, Box 1, p. 75-77,
    167-181.

[^37]: ^?^Green, et al, *The Ordnance Department: Planning Munitions for
    War*, 108-110.

[^38]: ^?^Green, et al, *The Ordnance Department: Planning Munitions for
    War*, 110-113.

[^39]: ^?^Green, et al, *The Ordnance Department: Planning Munitions for
    War*, 105-106.

[^40]: ^?^The National Archives in College Park, MD, RG-156, Entry 646,
    holds an extensive collection of contractor\'s histories prepared by
    the various Ordnance Districts. The summaries following are just a
    small sample.

[^41]: ^?^D.M. Middlekauf, \"Rogers Super Tread Tire Service,\"
    unpublished historical report dated 6 February 1946 in San Francisco
    Ordnance District, Addenda to Industrial Division, Tank-Automotive
    Branch, Contractors\' Histories, NARA, RG-156, Entry 646, box A603,
    contractors\' histories file.

[^42]: ^?^Walter S. Johnson to Col. K.B. Harmon, letter dated 21
    November 1944, and Johnson, \"American Box Corporation Report on
    Army Ordnance Production,\" both in I. Engle, \"Contractors\'
    Histories,\" undated historical report in San Francisco Ordnance
    District, Ammunition - Small Arms Branch, Contractors\' Histories,
    NARA, RG-156, Entry 646, box A603, contractors\' histories file, pp
    10-23.

[^43]: ^?^K.B. Harmon to \"Gentlemen,\" letter dated 10 November 1942,
    exhibit A, p 4 in I. Engle, \"Contractors\' Histories,\" undated
    historical report in San Francisco Ordnance District, Ammunition -
    Small Arms Branch, Contractors\' Histories, NARA, RG-156, Entry 646,
    box A603, contractors\' histories file.

[^44]: ^?^I. Engle, \"Contractors\' Histories,\" undated historical
    report in San Francisco Ordnance District, Ammunition - Small Arms
    Branch, Contractors\' Histories, NARA, RG-156, Entry 646, box A603,
    contractors\' histories file, pp 1-3.

[^45]: ^?^\"Speeding National Defense,\" *Ford News* 21 (April 1941):
    87; \"Defense Projects Progressing Rapidly,\" *Ford News* 21 (July
    1941): inside front cover; Nevins and Hill, *Ford: Decline and
    Rebirth, 1933-1962*, 200-203.

[^46]: ^?^\"Speeding National Defense,\" *Ford News* 21 (April 1941):
    87; \"Ford Looks Forward to 1942,\" *Ford News* 21 (October 1941):
    257; Nevins and Hill, *Ford: Decline and Rebirth*, 208-226.

[^47]: ^?^\"Ford of Canada Aids the Empire,\" *Ford News* 21 (March
    1941): 62-63.

[^48]: ^?^Nevins and Hill, *Ford: Decline and Rebirth*, 204-205.

[^49]: ^?^Nevins Hill, *Ford: Decline and Rebirth*, 197-198.

[^50]: ^?^Nevins and Hill, *Ford: Decline and Rebirth*, 198-199.

[^51]: ^?^Nevins and Hill, *Ford: Decline and Rebirth*, 199; \"General
    Statement of Branch War Time Operations,\" unpublished report (n.d.)
    in HFM Acc. No. 672, Box 1, pp. 2-6.

[^52]: ^?^\"The Universal Carrier,\" unpublished report (n.d.) in HFM
    Acc. No. 435, box 13, pp. 1, 8-11.

[^53]: ^?^\"General Statement of Branch War Time Operations,\" 15; \"San
    Francisco Ordnance District, Vol. I, Part 3, History 1939-1942,\"
    unpublished historical report in NARA RG-156, Entry 646, box A576,
    p. 120; \"Richmond Tank Depot, Vol. VI, October 1945,\" NARA,
    RG-156, Entry 646, box A601, p 6; \"Industrial Service Tank Depot
    Operations (Final Issue), January 1942 thru December 1945,\"
    unpublished report in NARA, RG-156, Entry 962, box L303, tables p.
    2.

    \"Richmond Tank Depot,\" Vol. VI, October 1945, reported that the
    Richmond Tank Depot shipped 30% of the total number of combat
    vehicles that the U.S. sent overseas. The statistic derives from
    verbal communication to the commanding officer at the Richmond Tank
    Depot from the Office of the Chief of Ordnance - Detroit. The
    statistic cannot be verified, however, in tallies of vehicles
    processed and shipped by all the tank depots during the war, as
    presented in \"Industrial Service Tank Depot Operations (Final
    Issue), January 1942 thru December 1945.\"

[^54]: ^?^Plant Protection Foreman to Charles Bernard, Dearborn,
    memorandum dated 2 June 1942, HFM Acc. No. 371, box 16, folder 4;
    Col. John W. Thompson to Ford Motor Company, Richmond, letter and
    attachments dated 25 May 1942, HFM Acc. No. 371, box 16, folder 4.

[^55]: ^?^The early history of the Quartermaster Corps is summarized in
    another volume in \"The Technical Services\" series of the \"United
    States Army in World War II,\" Erna Risch, *The Quartermaster Corps:
    Organization, Supply, and Services* (Washington, DC: GPO, 1953),
    3-7.

[^56]: ^?^Risch, *The Quartermaster Corps: Organization, Supply, and
    Services*, 7-9, 243-282.

[^57]: ^?^Vernon Carstensen, \"Motor Transport under the Quartermaster
    General, 1903-1942,\" unpublished historical report in NARA, RG-92,
    Records of the Quartermaster General, Entry 2116H, Box 1, p. 1.

[^58]: ^?^*Annual Report of the Quartermaster General to the Secretary
    of War for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1907*, 32, quoted in
    Carstensen, \"Motor Transport under the Quartermaster General,
    1903-1942,\" 1.

[^59]: ^?^Carstensen, \"Motor Transport under the Quartermaster General,
    1903-1942,\" 2-7.

[^60]: ^?^Carstensen, \"Motor Transport under the Quartermaster General,
    1903-1942,\" 28-35.

[^61]: ^?^Carstensen, \"Motor Transport under the Quartermaster General,
    1903-1942,\" 33-59; Risch, *The Quartermaster Corps: Organization,
    Supply, and Services*, 141-142.

[^62]: ^?^Carstensen, \"Motor Transport under the Quartermaster General,
    1903-1942,\" 63.

[^63]: ^?^Carstensen, \"Motor Transport under the Quartermaster General,
    1903-1942,\" 59-74; Taylor is quoted on p. 63. See also Risch, *The
    Quartermaster Corps: Organization, Supply, and Services*, 142-143.