The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1918-08-19
BUILDING EAGLE BOATS.

When one has seen warships taking
form like cucumbers in a dollhouse,
says a contributor to Popular Mechan-
les, he no longer wonders whether or
not Americas industrial preparedness
has been estimated conservatively.
There is one place in the world
where such a dramatic spectacle is
being enacte /. 1t is within an enor-
nous glass solarium on a bank of the
River Rouge at Detroit, where the
navy's new Eagle" boats are being
built.
When Henry Ford early this year
agreed to build Eagle boats at Detroit,
the plans and Specifications were yet
to Re prepared by the navy depart
ment,sa model remained to be built
and tested, the present shipyard at
the River Rouge was dream, methods
of high-speed production were unfor-
mulated, important machinery de-
manded inventors. and special tools
awaited designers.
In normal times a capable contrac-
tor might have spent year in erect
ing the assembly plant, a steel and
glass structure 100 feet long. $50 feet
wide and about 90 feet high, but not
only was 1t finished in eleven weeks,
but finished in every detail.
Quoting from the magazine article:
From start to finish the Eagle boat
is a precedent. 1t is being built en-
tirely of sheet steel. No one ever
heard of such a thing before. There
stern, or keel to bridge. Every part
stern, or keep or bridge. Every bart
is fashioned from flat steel plates
Bulkhead angles, deck beams chan
nels and other structural members are
bent into shape; some. like the first
mentioned. manually. others cold
pressed by powerful machines
In an extensive '1umberyard" are
innumerabie stacks of thin steel
plates. Except for the shape of some
or them, they look as If they were
composed of trimmed and orderly ar
ranged layers of rust-colored sole
leather. And when one of the plates
is lifted and swung thru the air by a
crane. or dragged from a stack by a
small army of husky 1aborers, it bends
and sways in leatherish fashion, and
the similarity is all the more striking
Sheets of steel are entering at one
end of long building and Eagle boats
are being launched at the other end.
Each Eagle boat is built on a long
flat car. supported on twelve stand
ard trucks and stationed on one of the
shipways. The cars are 1877 feet.
over all. and suggest to one tremen-
dous black centipedes. On each of
the three shipway tracks there is
room for seven of these cars. Thus
there is place In the plant for the ST.
multaneous assembling of twenty-one
ships.
From the. laying of the keel to the
mounting of the rudder and propeller
boat progressively occupies seven
different positions along its way That
means that the assembling is divided
into seven distinct operations executed
by seven different crews of workmen.
When the first operation is completed,
the car bearing the embryo boat is
moved to the second position. and a
new car is brought into the vacant
berth ready for the keel of another
vessel to be laid Before a boat can
be transferred from the first to the
second position. every other boat
along the way must advance one sta
ton. This mean that each of the
seven operations on seven different
boats must be completed on time to
the minute by seven distinct crews of
workmen- WI the first crew is
ready to lay another keel. the last
crew must be ready to launch a boat
Not an inch of space has been provid-
ed for feasibility In the event of "un-
1yoidable delays" No room has been
left for faiiurei