Powder to Burn

Job of the Army's Ordnance Department is to supply the Army with guns and tanks, powder and explosives. On the business of turning out powder, for everything from pistols to 16-in. guns, Ordnance had to start pretty close to scratch.

Last week Ordnance dedicated with due fuss & feathers the first of its three new smokeless powder plants. Standing in the soggy red clay of southwest Virginia (six miles from Radford), 22,000 workmen who had done the job heard praises for their work from such military bigwigs as Under Secretary of War Robert Porter Patterson, Major General Charles Macon Wesson. Earlier, visitors and workmen had strolled through Radford's 4,400 scarred acres, inspected its 639 small and scattered buildings, seen demonstrations of escape chutes (see cut) for quick slides to safety when fire and powder get together. But what pleased everybody most was that they had beaten a schedule. The Radford Ordnance Works, built and operated by Hercules Powder Co., was going into production three months ahead of plan. When the first of Radford's production lines starts rolling this week, it will turn out smokeless powder at the rate of 100,000 Ib. a day, nearly 50% more than the U. S. was producing on a peacetime schedule. And when Radford's other two lines go into production this summer, its output will be 300,000.

Another new plant at Charlestown, Ind. (capacity 600,000 Ib. daily) is well ahead of schedule, will go into production, operated by Du Pont, in April. And the third, at Childersburg, Ala., will be ready to turn out smokeless powder at the rate of 300,000 Ib. by midsummer. No matter what unforeseen delays might do later, one critical bottleneck was cracked, would soon break. By autumn, the Army and Navy would have a wartime powder supply.

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