Sicilian Sidelight

When Lieut. General George S. Patton Jr.'s U.S. Seventh Army splashed up the beaches of Sicily, the innards of much of its motor equipment were protected from the sea with a thick, gummy substance that was the result of a near-miracle of production back home. Last week Standard Oil Co. (New Jersey) proudly let the miracle out of the bag.

Late one Friday, Army Ordnance telephoned Jersey Standard in Manhattan. Said Ordnance: General Dwight D. Eisenhower had just cabled, asking for immediate delivery of 45,000 lb. of a special water-repellent compound never before made in the U.S. Eisenhower had just heard of the new compound from the British, who had used it with great success. The goo was sketchily described. By Monday enough machinery had been thrown together to fill the order; materials had been rushed by police-escorted Army trucks to Standard's Baltimore grease plant.

Then the fun began. First off, a sample of the real goo (flown in from North Africa) turned out to be different from the Army's original description, and more hard-to-get materials had to be commandeered. The goo was so unusual and heavy that Standard's grease equipment had to be jacked up with Rube Goldbergian extra belts, pulleys and paddles. But by the following Sunday the order was done, four hours before the promised delivery time. By that time the plant was half-wrecked, as equipment collapsed under the strain. Then the Army asked for another 200,000 Ib. by the following weekend. At that point Standard threw in its big Pittsburgh grease plant, while more Army trucks dashed all over western Pennsylvania gathering up extra drums and materials.

The Pittsburgh plant, as well as the limping Baltimore factory, worked night & day, while their supervisory staffs took cat naps on the floor. Army bombers took the last 22,000 lb. of production to the seaboard. By 11:45 a.m. on Friday, June 11, just two weeks after the first Army phone call and only seven hours after it left Standard's Pittsburgh plant, the final vat was stowed away and North Africa-bound. The whole thing happened so fast that no one even thought to talk about contracts and cost. But by last week, with the new invasion an amphibious success, the cost of Standard's Sicilian sidelight seemed academic.

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