Since 1907, Camp Perry on the Ohio shores of western Lake Erie has hosted the NRA National Rifle and Pistol Matches. But few people today realize that, for several years during the mid-1940s, Camp Perry served a very different purpose. It was a prisoner-of-war (POW) camp, housing some 6,000 German and Italian prisoners in America’s heartland.
During World War II, the United States maintained 511 base camps and 175 branch camps within its borders, containing nearly 430,000 prisoners. There were more camps in the eastern half of our nation than the west, and all but three states—Nevada, Montana and North Dakota—had POW camps.
The camps were established to help alleviate the overcrowding of POWs housed in Great Britain. Had just Italian (50,273) and Japanese (3,915) POWs been shipped to the U.S., American camps could have easily handled those numbers. But when an additional 371,683 German prisoners began debarking from troop ships onto America’s shores late in the war, the POW prison system was soon overwhelmed. U.S. military leaders went scrambling to find suitable camp locations, construct facilities, train guards, interpreters and other support personnel—a monumental task.
Camp Perry was considered a major POW base camp, and had several smaller branch camps located in or near seven Ohio cities, as well as Fort Wayne, Indiana. Italian soldiers captured on European battlefields began arriving at Camp Perry in 1943, followed by German soldiers in 1944. A small portion of the Germans, an estimated 10 percent, were hardcore Nazi sympathizers. Most of those were former Rommel Afrika Korps members who still firmly believed that Germany would ultimately win the war. As a result, they often intimidated the other German prisoners who were less enthusiastic toward Nazi beliefs, through verbal and physical abuse.
The prisoners at Camp Perry were housed in small, wood-framed, tar-papered-covered buildings, groupings of which were called “hutments.” Measuring 16’X16’, each building was a single story constructed on a concrete slab, double-walled with double-pane windows, and heated by a wood-burning stove. Five prisoners were assigned per building. A nine-strand, barbed-wire fence 9 feet high, with 11 guard towers, enclosed the entire encampment.
Prisoners were required to work while at the camp, doing daily routine maintenance of the many buildings, cooking, cleaning and other chores, as needed. As a result, they earned a small number of coupons per day which they could then redeem at the prison “canteen,” what today would be known as the camp PX, or Post Exchange. Officers were exempt from working if they so chose, but many worked to help pass the time and ease the boredom of routine prison life.
An interesting aside is that the German prisoners did not think much of the American 3.2 percent alcohol beer they could purchase at the camp PX for 10 cents per bottle—it was just too bland and mild for their tastes. However, they did like the Coca-Cola that sold for four cents per bottle.
Some POWs worked offsite of Camp Perry, employed at area businesses or planting and harvesting farm crops; overseen, of course, by armed camp guards. Northwest Ohio has some of the most productive farmland in the world, but due to the ongoing war effort able-bodied American farmhands were in short supply in the 1940s. As a result, POWs were often pressed into service, and this decision was not always popular with local civilians. They claimed that POWs were filling paying jobs that should have gone to them.
There was also cultural resentment of the POWs. For instance, at one canning company German prisoners worked alongside American civilian women whose husbands and sons were fighting German forces overseas.
Another complaint heard from civilians was that prisoners were being coddled. As part of the war effort, food rationing of meats and canned goods was in effect for all Americans. Yet they saw prisoners being provided three meals each day, sometimes eating the brand-name foods citizens couldn’t readily obtain.
On the other hand, certain civilians took the food disparity issue and the fact that they had a POW camp in their backyard philosophically. A story in the October 1, 1943, Port Clinton Herald and Republican newspaper quoted an area resident as saying, “This is war, and we’ll just have to make the best of it.”
Some civilians went out of their way to interact with the prisoners, while others refused to have anything to do with them. One Ohio resident, who chose to get to know some of the men at Camp Perry, commented, “You could tell the Germans from the Italians because the Italians were laid-back and so friendly, while the Germans were stoic and stern and did not talk much, although they worked hard.”
Did any POWs ever escape from Camp Perry or any of its satellite camps? There were several attempts. In January 1945, a prison guard shot and killed a German prisoner who had threatened him. The guard lost his footing on icy ground and was rushed by the prisoner, whom he then shot. The guard underwent a court-martial for the shooting, but was found not guilty.
If a prisoner tried to escape and was caught, or purposely violated any other major rule, he was placed in solitary confinement and put on a diet of bread and water three times per day. (At the time, such treatment of prisoners was in alignment with the Geneva Convention of 1929.)
Suicides were less common than escape attempts, but a few did happen. One POW who slipped away from a work detail near Defiance, Ohio, was found a few hours later drowned in the Maumee River. Another prisoner, who had allegedly escaped from Camp Perry, was found hanging from a tree near Port Clinton about a week later. Camp officials described him as mentally imbalanced and, until his body was discovered, the only German prisoner who had successfully escaped from the camp.
May 8, 1945, V-E Day (Victory in Europe), marked the end of World War II in Europe, with Japan surrendering in the Pacific a few months later that same year. As a result, POWs held in American prison camps, including Camp Perry, began to be sent home to their native countries. Interestingly, a number of German and Italian prisoners eventually returned to America to live permanently and become citizens. Impressed by how well they had been treated as POWs, they wanted to experience the opportunities and freedoms they had seen while in America that their home countries did not offer.
Today, three-quarters of a century after the last POW marched out of Camp Perry, there is still much tangible evidence of that era remaining, thanks to ongoing historic preservation efforts. For instance, the brick buildings known as “Commercial Row” that house firearms vendor displays during the annual National Matches were once the mess halls of the POWs of World War II.
Categories
King Colts By Bart Skelton
It’s one of those prolific points of discussion when it comes to guns, one that can be very touchy with some folks, and it seems that everybody who fools with guns has an example. The ones that got away. My own cases in this unfortunate study are disheartening, and I generally attempt to avoid serious thought of them as the grieving can be embarrassing. But now and again something will trigger thoughts of a fugitive firearm that I slipped up and let go, and the pining starts, regardless.
The most recent episode involved a visit with one of my brush-beating compadres, midwestern land baron, NRA Board Member, and wildfowl conservationist Lance Olson. A renowned collector and expert in firearms, Olson frequents the Southwest and other areas of the country in search of various collectibles, occasionally permitting me to catch a glimpse–or even handle–some of his acquisitions.
During his latest sortie, I discovered Olson had landed a fine Colt Single Action Army in one of my all-time favorite calibers, .44 Special. A 1st Generation Colt, the revolver had been highly customized. Upon closer examination, it was clear the gun had been modified by late gunsmithing legend Dean King. I generally cringe at the sight of a good 1st Generation single action that’s been modified–such behavior is villainous in my book–but I do find modifications by King to be much less offensive.
Olson’s revolver was a 4¾-inch single action with original Colt hard rubber grips featuring the famous eagle. The finish was of bright blue, no casecolors. The barrel had been fitted with a ventilated rib, which ran from the front of the gun’s frame to the end of the barrel, one of King’s signatures.
The revolver’s sights were another King touch. Gunsmith King invented the famous mirror front sight, which was basically a ramped sight with the blade set high. The ramp featured a small, round mirror that had been inset into the top of the ramp in front of the sight blade at an angle. This permitted available light to be reflected directly upon the front sight for maximum clarity. The rear sight was fully adjustable and looked similar to a Smith & Wesson rear sight.
It was after World War I when Mr. King began his famous gunsmithing work. Back then nobody really thought twice about wrecking the value of a Colt Single Action Army, heck they were still in production. King’s modifications were executed tastefully and really enhanced the shootability of a handgun. While most of these modifications were done on Colts, Mr. King experimented with other firearms as well.
As I looked over Monsieur Olson’s King Colt, it brought back memories of a couple of guns that I’d let get away from me, including one of my dad’s personal favorite revolvers. Dad had a respectable compilation of firearms, though he never considered himself a real collector.
He had a number of favorites that remained constant; otherwise he never felt much emotion about trading anything off. One of the main handguns always by his bedside was a Colt SAA 1st Generation in .45 Colt. The revolver had been customized to his personal specifications and was a finely timed piece of work. The action was silky smooth, and the trigger pull was one of the lightest I’d ever felt on a revolver.
While the Colt had no ventilated rib, it was fitted with a King mirror front sight, and the rear sight was what I always thought was a Smith & Wesson adjustable but could have likely been a King as well, though I never thought to ask. The revolver’s backstrap had the bluing polished away to natural steel and was finished off with a beautiful set of Herrett’s French Walnut grips. In all, it was a fine sixgun–one I should have figured out how to have kept after my dad’s untimely passing.
As luck would have it, I was contacted by an old friend of our family’s a few years back, one Mrs. Bennie Dean. Her late husband, Tom, had been a dear friend of my dad’s; they had worked together as U.S. Customs Investigators in South Texas in the late 1960s. Tom was a shooter and gun enthusiast, and he had told my dad that he had always wanted a Colt Bisley. He, too, admired King’s stuff and was fond of Dad’s single action .45. The old man scrounged up a Bisley–they weren’t too hard to come by back then at a decent price–and went to work on a custom sixgun for Tom.
Upon getting in touch with me, Mrs. Dean advised that she had something of Tom’s that I needed. This gracious lady and I struck a deal, and I walked away with that Bisley. The old shooter was marked Colt Single Action Army .45 Colt, yet it had been converted to shoot .45 ACP. The front sight was a ramped and mirrored King with the adjustable rear sight. I’ve always been fond of the Bisley, and I found the gun to be a real prize. Shortly after acquiring the old beauty, I entered in a cowboy action shoot down in the Texas Big Bend and placed decently using the old hogleg. It is definitely one revolver that I’ll not let get away, and while it’s not my dad’s old .45, it’s almost as good.
My gun-trading skills have always been mediocre at best, and Lance Olson knows it, which is likely why he allows me to peruse his trappings. During his last raid, not only was he in possession of the Colt single action, he also produced a fine little Colt Pre-Woodsman .22. Upon examining it, I noticed the adjustable sights were made by King. The front sight wasn’t the mirrored variety; it was the shadow model, which is almost as good. This sight was slightly undercut towards the muzzle, again to maximize the clarity of the sight blade.
Incredibly, that little Colt is now resting in my gun safe, where I intend for it to stay, along with the King Bisley. Next time you happen across an old revolver that’s been modified a bit, be sure to give it a once-over. If it has a King marking, it’s liable to be a keeper.
Holy snap! That is so not cool…
At 7:30 p.m. on 3 July 2023, North Carolina State Trooper Jeffrey Dunlap pulled to the side of Interstate 26 to assist what he assumed to be a stranded motorist. The driver, Wesley Scott Taylor, then inexplicably produced a .44 Magnum Desert Eagle handgun and shot Dunlap in the chest at near-contact range. The massive 240-grain jacketed hollow point flattened on Trooper Dunlap’s armored Kevlar vest.
Despite having been centerpunched by a .44 Magnum round, Dunlap drew his service weapon and killed Taylor in the subsequent exchange of fire. The only reason Jeffrey Dunlap, a distinguished 13-year veteran of the Highway Patrol, got to go home to his family that evening was that he was wearing superb state-of-the-art soft body armor.
- Origin Story
- Catching Attention
- A Visionary
- Kwolek Makes Kevlar
- But What Could You Actually Do With Kevlar?
- READ MORE: Biden’s Joint Speech to Congress: What do you think deer are wearing kevlar vests?
- A Vested Interest in Survival…
- READ MORE: Eberlestock Bulletproof Backpack
- The Rest of the Kevlar Story
- Things End Well For Kwolek
The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) reports that the lives of more than 3,000 Law Enforcement officers have been saved since the first issue of soft body armor began in the 1970s. That’s thousands of kids who got to keep their parents thanks to this extraordinary contrivance. Have you ever wondered where all that began?
Origin Story
Stephanie Louise Kwolek was born to Polish parents in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1923. She was one of two children. Her father was a naturalist, and her mother was a seamstress. Though she was extremely close to her father, he tragically died when she was ten.
Young Stephanie and her dad spent countless hours roaming the Pennsylvania forests. Along the way, Stephanie developed a deep and abiding love for nature. Out of that grew a passion for science. Stephanie outpaced her classmates in school and resolved at a young age to become a physician.
Then, in 1946, Stephanie graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a BS in Chemistry. This seemed a decent path to medical school. However, she took a temporary job in a chemistry lab to make money for her medical training. While there, she met Dr. William Charch who worked at DuPont Chemical. Charch is the guy who invented waterproof cellophane.
Catching Attention
Dr. Charch was impressed with the young woman’s drive and intellect and arranged for her to interview at DuPont for a position as a chemist. She got the job but never intended to stay. Throughout her early time at DuPont, Stephanie really just wanted to use her position as a springboard into medical school.
The late 1940’s was an interesting time in America. Sixteen million American men had recently served in World War 2. One in every thirty-eight died. Many large companies struggled to fill their vacancies amidst the massive economic boom that blossomed out of the war. Stephanie’s project at DuPont involved researching radical new chemical technologies. DuPont had introduced nylon recently, and their research in exotic polymers was cutting edge.
In short order, Stephanie discovered that she actually had a very real gift for chemistry and shelved her plans for medical school. WW2 had served as an engine to expand the body of scientific knowledge at an unprecedented rate. With technology exploding in the Space Age, Kwolek found herself uniquely positioned to lead that charge. Over the course of the next four decades working at DuPont, Stephanie Kwolek made some truly earth-shaking discoveries.
A Visionary
First off, the Nylon Rope Trick is a staple of modern academic chemistry research labs. I’ve done it myself a couple of times. Stephanie Kwolek first defined it. The experiment involves combining an aliphatic diamine with a solution containing aliphatic diacid chloride that is not miscible in water.
The result is a synthetic diamide that propagates as a soft film on the surface of the solution. This process is called interfacial polymerization.
By gently grasping the film and pulling it off of the solution, the resulting Nylon 66 will form a strand that can be wrapped around a stick or similar object. As the film is removed this allows the reaction between the two reagents to propagate further, creating yet more nylon. Lastly, by gently wrapping these fibers around a stick, raw nylon can be harvested.
Kwolek’s work in the 1950s and ’60s orbited around unconventional applications for exotic synthetic materials. Most of these were aramids, short for “aromatic polyamides.” The resulting fibers, in addition to being extremely tough, could be formed into a wide variety of exotic materials.
Kwolek Makes Kevlar
Kwolek’s mandate was to develop a new, tough, synthetic material that could be used in lieu of steel in reinforcing automobile tires. One of the materials she discovered was a low-viscosity, turbid, stir-opalescent liquid that looked very similar to buttermilk. This solution of poly-p-phenylene terephthalate and polybenzamide formed a liquid crystal and was typically considered a waste product.
On a whim, Kwolek persuaded Charles Smullen, the technician responsible for the spinneret machine in the DuPont lab where she worked, to let her try to extract uniform fibers from this literal garbage. Smullen, for his part, was concerned this new chemical compound would clog up his delicate machine.
Kwolek got her way and was thrilled to find that the resulting fibers were five times stronger than steel at a substantially lighter weight. She discovered that this radical new material could be made even stronger via heat treatment. Kwolek and her colleagues christened this amazing new material Kevlar.
But What Could You Actually Do With Kevlar?
The astronomical casualty numbers that came out of World War 2 showed a desperate need for lightweight body armor that would still leave a soldier sufficiently mobile to accomplish his mission. By weaving Kevlar fibers into sheets, Kwolek found that the resulting material was durable in ways that bordered on the supernatural. Eventually, somebody tried shooting it, and the whole world moved just a little bit.
By weaving Kevlar fibers into tight sheets, engineers can produce amazingly tough materials.
The Kevlar sheets used in bullet-resistant vests are tightly woven and must be protected from the sun. Like most synthetic polymers, Kevlar degrades in direct sunlight. Stopping bullets is a function of efficient energy dissipation. In essence, when struck by a bullet Kevlar fibers will stretch without breaking.
So long as the projectile is not unduly powerful and the material is properly oriented, Kevlar did indeed reliably stop bullets, at least the handgun sort. That observation really got the juices flowing.
Ropes, cables, cell phone cases, race cars, parachute shroud lines, boats, aircraft, and space vehicles all incorporate Kevlar nowadays. The stuff is legit everywhere. By the time Kwolek died at age ninety in 2014, more than one million Kevlar vests had been produced for issue to Law Enforcement personnel.
A Vested Interest in Survival…
Modern soft body armor is divided into several frankly confusing categories. Level IIA and IIIA are expected to stop most handgun rounds such as 9mm Para, .357 Magnum, and .44 Magnum. In the case of the larger calibers, the bullet will not penetrate, but the violence implicit in surviving such a hit can still cause soft tissue injury.
All the cool kids go to war in body armor these days. Those codpieces, while critically important, always look just a wee bit comical.
Level III and IV body armor is rated to stop large-bore, high-velocity projectiles from long guns. As the degree of protection increases, however, the vests typically get heavier and bulkier. When the threat simply becomes too threatening, most soldiers in the Armies of advanced nations as well as tactical teams will use plate armor that is made from either alloyed steel or advanced ceramic materials. Plate armor will reliably stop all but the nastiest armor-piercing rifle rounds.
The Rest of the Kevlar Story
At the time of her death, Stephanie Kwolek held 28 patents. In addition to Kevlar, she was also instrumental in the development of both Nomex and Spandex.
In so doing, Kwolek likely did more to extinguish flaming aviators and support sagging body parts than any scientist before or since. Kwolek’s exotic new materials have become commonplace around the globe.
Because she worked for DuPont, Kwolek relinquished the rights to materials discovered on company time to her employer. As a result, despite the fact that the resulting monetization of her ideas brought in literally billions of dollars, Kwolek herself benefitted minimally from her groundbreaking discoveries. According to Google, her net worth was around $5 million at the time of her death.
Things End Well For Kwolek
Despite her relatively modest financial success, Kwolek was honored with a wide variety of personal and professional awards. She was ultimately granted a further three honorary degrees as well. By all accounts, she led an exceptionally satisfying life. Here are a few quotes—
“I guess that’s just the life of an inventor: what people do with your ideas takes you totally by surprise.”
“I hope I’m saving lives. There are very few people in their careers that have the opportunity to do something to benefit mankind.”
“Not long ago, I got to meet some troopers whose lives had been saved. They came with their wives, their children, and their parents. It was a very moving occasion.”
The extraordinary female inventor Stephanie Kwolek clearly found ample satisfaction with her life’s work. Whether it was flame-retardant clothing for military aviators, bullet-resistant vests that have ultimately saved countless cops, or push-up brassieres and bikini swimsuits, Kwolek’s inventions have legitimately changed the world.
It was obviously a pretty great thing that she never followed through on her plans for medical school.
