Brand-New and Shiny

Last week a raw, chilling rain followed eddying snow on the flat frozen prairie north of Detroit. It fell on the just and the unjust, and also on a 113-acre tract between Eleven and Twelve Mile Roads. There the rain, sifting through the steel skeleton of a sprawling, one-story building, gathered like dew on the rough jackets of workmen, stiffened red hands that had to be warmed up before the glowing maws of smoking salamanders. The rain did not slow up the work, any more than the snow had: on & on went the chatter of pneumatic hammers, the shouts of glaziers and concrete workers, the huff-puff of switch engines. Work had to go on. For that building, 500 feet wide, more than a quarter-mile (1,380 feet) long, was to be the first quantity-production source of a most important weapon: medium tanks.

Farm to Factory. Four months ago the site of the Detroit Tank Arsenal was a farm, turning brown and sere under a hazy autumn sun. During the summer Big Bill Knudsen had called bulky K. T. Keller, president of Chrysler Corp., and asked him, as one motormaker to another: Could Chrysler build the Army a medium tank? "K. T." said, sure. Could he see one to get an idea what it was like?

Four days later, "K. T." and a few technicians were at Rock Island Arsenal looking over a medium tank (one of about 200 now on hand, mostly out of date). Day after, he was back in Detroit with 186 pounds of blueprints of an improved 25-tonner and a brand-new production problem. To work on the blueprints went 197 Chryslermen, led by Staff Master Mechanic Edward J. Hunt. Their first job: to go through the blueprints, get out a production line and a tool list, calculate production processes and finally lay out the building where the 25-tonners would be made. Driven by hardboiled, big-jawed Eddie Hunt, a mechanic and production man ever since he was old enough to hold a wrench in his big paws, they worked seven days a week, had things in shape by Aug. 15, when Chrysler and the U. S. Army finally signed the contract.

The contract called for a $20,000,000 arsenal to be built by Chrysler (Chrysler's fee: $1) for the Government, an initial order of 1,000 tanks at $33,500 apiece. Eddie Hunt said he could roll the first tank off the line within twelve months from contract date: that was Chrysler's promise.

The tank factory site was firm and dry when workmen began to clear it on Sept. 11. By early December it was a marshy morass. Mud-stained steelworkers slopped around in boots, sometimes worked up to their thighs in mud to get the arsenal's skeleton started. When the snows came they skinned along icy girders in biting wind, grinned back at the constructing quartermaster, bald, sunny Major H. R. Kadlec, when he asked them if the going was getting too tough. The few complaints they made were settled by their business agents and Kadlec (Detroiters called him Cadillac).

Last week the northeast quarter of the arsenal was glassed in, the floor was laid and the first of the equipment was rolling into the building on railroad flatcars. The steelwork was about 90% complete and glaziers were on the heels of the steelmen in the rest of the building. Major Kadlec could proudly announce that the arsenal, complete with powerhouse, office, hospital building and test track, would be ready on schedule, April 1.

On Feb. 10, Eddie Hunt and his workmen will move in with their tools to the completed quarter of the factory, will go into production of parts for the 25-tonners while the rest of the building is still under construction. On a big table on the eighth floor of the Dodge plant Eddie Hunt and his 197 Chryslermen have laid out the plant in miniature, every tool and machine put down in scale on its surface. They have worked down every operation to its last detail, have found many a new basic in the lore of tank production. Example: the big transmission of the new tank will take 1,000 man-hours of work, more than it takes to put a whole automobile together.

They have laid out and ordered thousands of tools and gauges, and the first to be delivered are already on the floor of Chrysler's Highland Park plant, where toolmen are checking them over under power to have them ready to go to work the minute they are installed. Some of the small parts of the tank are also being made, just to have a supply on hand, and 200 foremen are in training. Hunt and his men need all the start they can get, for the medium tank is no little item that can be whipped up in a few weeks.

Factory to Field. An ugly, asymmetric monster topped by a power-operated turret, the medium tank is nine feet wide, nine feet high, 20 feet long. Powered by a 400-horsepower, air-cooled aviation engine, it will carry a crew of seven. Armament: three .30-calibre machine guns, one 37-mm. cannon, one big 75, which is housed in a mount alongside the driver. The new tank will be more powerful than anything the U. S. Army has ever had, as good as anything the Germans have, and maybe better.

Last week Eddie Hunt stuck to his prediction that the first medium would roll off the line by Aug. 15, but many an Army officer thought he was on the conservative side, that the first one might go over to the test field for its acceptance run as much as a month earlier. In early fall, when the plant hits full production, Chrysler has promised a production rate of five for every eight-hour shift. Under the push of a six-day week, if it proves necessary, the plant can turn out 30 between Monday morning and Saturday night, can double that production with two shifts (but it would run into diminishing returns on three shifts).

In 44 eight-hour days at full production, the factory could turn out all the 220 medium tanks needed by the two divisions of the Armored Force. But Chrysler's order is for 1,000--and Army men know that is only a starter. Eddie Hunt and his 5,000 workmen may well be told to step up their output before next fall. A bigger order than that will be no great problem to Productionman Hunt. He is like a boy with a new mechanical toy. "Think of it," says he, walking around the new plant. "Everything, even the tools, will be brand-new and shiny."

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