yes that is one front and this is another front spread over the face of america like the other front it is big and complicated so big that only a few men in the whole nation can understand its real capacity for waging war  here is one small sector of this from one american city a city full of war industries a city full of war workers and the nine hundred twenty six day after pearl harbor in the month of allied invasion one of the factories in this town celebrated an event the manufacture of the quarter million fifty caliber machine gun for the armed forces one machine of hydraulic aircraft control and many other kinds of work product that is what factories are for to produce thing the strange thing is that only a short time before these factories were producers of electric refrigerators the world's largest almost overnight they became the world's largest producers of the in this factory as in so many others in america the people did something which stripped off the thinking of the enemy the enemy do we were manufacturers they knew we had men but they didn't know we could change our way of life enough to about men the tools of war in overpowering quantity the axis didn't count this ability to change among our secret weapons this is the story of what it takes to make such a change a story about ability to change means to all of us now and after the war long before the manufacture of refrigerators was stopped in fact sixteen months before pearl harbor plans were being made for the mass production of war products in a factory how could the experience the capacities the manpower the facilities at this factory best be applied to turning our product of war after considering all important factors such as available factory space machinery workers finances and after the product were agreed upon plant layout engineers made new production layouts and redesigned the factories  out came peace time machine many of them to go into storage until after the war chaos is the word to describe the appearance of the factories while the changes were being made new machinery was located scarce machinery long before the factory was ready to hit its stride the great job of training began the job of replacing many of these men who were called to the fighting front but job not only of replacing but of adding women quiet retirement back to the job from high school and college to the war production from sixteen thousand is what it took to do the job just in this one factory alone and here they are three americans working in a free enterprise and here is what they learned in the propeller plant one of which was entirely new and the other family devoted to making refrigerators the job is to take these rough forging and turn out propellers like the that's the job some of the people at the head of the production line learn to drill this hole in the bottom of the blade where connection is made with a hub from drilling paper bore in shank that's called each one perfectly drilled each one exactly like the next others learned about milling the careful step by step operations which cut away unwanted metals seemingly like butter each milling machine taking off just the right amount of surplus each milling to automatically following an ingenious master pattern to guarantee that thousands of propeller blades would be identical in every detail of co these people learn to grind the surfaces of the blades on batteries of grinding machines they grind them to the smoothness of fine silverware or the smallest nick can grow to spell disaster when the propeller is part of an american plane turning the air over a thousand times and blades must measure exactly right they must be just so thick and not a hairs with thicker specially designed gauges let these people know quickly whether they have to split up a few more hairs to get it right others learned all about the fine art of balancing that plastic shield was developed to protect the balance blade air currents in the factory any error in the wake of these plates is multiplied nearly two thousand times in flight and these people have been taught that any error on this from is failure on this front page or a mission loss of american li while all those people were learning about making blades others found out that propellers have more than blades they have such queer sounding parts as barrels and spiders that sturdy parts that hold the blades in position and double checks there are over fourteen hundred parts that had to be made and brought together and skillfully assembled you're right nobody has to learn to put all fourteen hundred parts together each has his own job and he knows that job almost well enough to do it blindfolded that's the way it is in a big war plant you learned your job and your proud of it but what a stranger you would be if you worked on propellers and walked into the machine gun plant these people know their job just as you know yours but they'd have to go into training to learn how to build propellers all the jobs are different yes but they have a lot in common for most of the jobs are precision jobs just as propellers have to measure and balance just so this machine gun boat must be machined to extreme accuracy the reason lies in the gun itself  addition parts must be identical in measurement so that any one of thousands of parts will fit any one of thousands of guns like peas in a pod is to loose a description for the similarity of these parts they are literally factory made identical twins precision tools precise ways of thinking about their job that was the way the peacetime employees of the factory had to think so precision was no stranger to them the new ones learned quickly under skillful training this is the browning fifty caliber in quantity production something unknown until this war when production men let loose their talents on a problem which had been largely a ham production operation many changes in production thinking or suggested and accepted and the total score of all the new ideas has been a revolution in machine gun manufacture modern manufacturing methods have increased the firing rate of the gun safe other by the war uses replaced critical materials with non critical materials and resulted in production at five times the original schedule in improved quality with only twice as many machines and people and that less than one fourth they are original cause here is a good example of new thinking applied to an old problem preparing guns for shipment to the fighting fronts these machine guns must be shipped to our fighting men all over the world temperature and climatic conditions from the heat of the tropics to the frigid north from desert sand to corrosive salt water guns must be protected against all these elements of nature soldiers in the last war can well remember this scene guns packed in thick heavy grease to provide the needed protection eight hours of snow tedious cleaning they don't do it that way in this factory they seal each gun in a series of transparent moisture proof wrappings like fine food being delivered to your home special drying material sealed inside provides a whole year's protection against the elements in any part of the world these guns can go immediately into action this is typical of the contributions of american industry in supplying american fighters with the best of fighting equipment in this case the result of a manufacturer with specialized knowledge of moisture control applying it to improve the effectiveness of opposing weapons new thinking a new solution to an old problem important in  and opening up new peacetime possibilities in packaging it is not hard seeing these factories to understand the result of the new thinking and the only every one machine gun taking its place on one plane all these gun equipping a giant sky fleet of thousands of planes thundering on over enemy territory you can look at one propeller and see an american fighter plane climbing for advantage over an enemy you can see all these propellers and figure the bombing force they can pull over enemy ground staggering wing adama's including the mighty super for the b twenty nine but there is a hidden meaning to the whole story here in the ability of american industry in the ability of these people of all the people in american industry to meet and conquer a challenging new problem is the secret weapon the enemy did not expect yes and it's only in times of a great crisis that we ourselves fully realize that with our modern convenient way of life we have the imagination that makes change with change the hard fiber that matches effort with us the courage to put our real resources to work that is our secret weapon it's ours for us in