Category: This great Nation & Its People

Smedley Butler was a complicated man but an exemplary Marine and an officer who truly led men and certainly has a place in the Marine Corps hall of fame. He also spoke against war and the government’s involvement in two books, Gangster for Capitalism and War is a Racket. He might be one of the most interesting men ever to live. Let’s explore some of the more interesting aspects of his life.

Likely rated a third Medal of Honor

Smedley Butler is one of the few men to ever earn two Medals of Honor, but he likely rated a third. In Tienstin, China, he witnessed another Marine wounded, and he charged out of the trench to rescue him. Butler was shot, as was a third Marine who attempted to assist them. Despite being shot, he escorted the wounded Marine for many miles, some say as many as 15, to get him to treatment.

Four of Smedley’s men received the MOH, but at the time, officers were not eligible for the award. Instead, he was given a brevet promotion to captain at the age of 19. He was later eligible for the Brevet Medal and is one of only 20 officers ever to receive such an award.

Smedley would later earn two Medals of Honor. His first was in Veracruz and his second was in Haiti. He is one of three Marines to earn a MOH and a Brevet Medal and the only Marine to earn the Brevet Medal and two Medals of Honor.

He held two patents

Smedley was both a warrior and a thinker, enough so that he was granted two patents. The first one was for an Infantry Fire Control Scale that was patented in 1918. His invention was essentially a range finder using a variety of scales to determine range in relation to the line of sight.

According to the Intercept, his second patent was a stable means to carry machine guns by donkey or mule.

He was a spy

In January 1914, Smedley Butler was ordered from his home in Panama to a Battleship Group off the coast of Mexico since a revolution was occurring in the country, and the American military needed to keep an eye on it. Butler and Navy Lieutenant Fletcher went ashore and Fletcher proposed they go deeper into the county to develop a detailed invasion plan should it be needed.

However, Butler would not go as a Marine but as a spy. With approval from Washinton, he took the train to Mexico City posing as a railroad official by the name of Mr. Johnson.

U.S. Marines onboard the USS South Carolina at Veracruz, 1914. (Creative Commons)

His cover was that he was searching for a lost railroad employee as he scoured the city. He gathered various pieces of intelligence on the Mexican Army including the weapons it used, its unit sizes, and their states of readiness. He also updated maps and verified railroad lines.

He even appears in a book written by Edith O’Shaughnessy, a wife to a diplomat in Mexico, who described him as “eager, intrepid, dynamic, efficient, unshaven!”

He cleared Philadelphia of corruption

In 1924, the mayor of Philadelphia contacted President Calvin Coolidge, asking for a military general to clear corruption out of the municipal government. Butler was granted leave from the Corps to assume the title of director of public safety in Philadelphia. He couldn’t fire corrupt officers, so he began switching entire units from one part of the city to another. This undermined and prevented protection rackets and corruption.

Philadelphia’s city hall in 1936. (Creative Commons)

Within his first two days on the job, Smedley Butler raided 900 speakeasies and locked them down or destroyed them. He was not one to pick and choose what areas he targeted and he shut down the Ritz Carlton and Union League, which catered to the social elite. He also gave the police uniforms and created armored car units carrying sawn-off shotguns to chase bandits.

His tactics were military and at times heavy-handed, for example, set up checkpoints and stopped citizens without cause. This created some issues, but he had enough support from the city to remain for a second year.

At the end of the second year, he resigned after being pressured by the city’s major. He was later quoted as saying, “cleaning up Philadelphia was worse than any battle I was ever in.”

The first general officer to be arrested since the Civil War

In 1931 Smedley Butler, who was then a major general, was giving a speech to the Philadelphia Contemporary Club and shared an anecdote told to him by Cornelius Vanderbilt IV who, when he was in Italy, rode with Mussolini in his car and interviewed him. The car was driving at high speed when it hit and killed a child. Mussolini kept driving and said, “What is one life in the affairs of a state?”

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. (Creative Commons)

Butler’s relating of the story caused a political uproar in both Rome and Washington with the secretary of state apologizing to Mussolini, who denied the story, and Butler getting arrested. President Hoover ordered a court martial for Butler, however, public opinion was on Butler’s side. A cabinet officer told Hoover he could “see no profit in putting the Admirals up against a dashing Marine with a unique flair for publicity.”

Butler’s lawyer, another China Marine veteran, and Butler went to war with the State Department. Very quickly, the government agreed to drop charges and offer various deals. The two rejected all of them and eventually proposed their own which was that Butler would be reprimanded, but he would write his own reprimand. The State Department agreed but asked for a formal apology to Mussolini. While it seems that Butler agreed he never got around to that apology.

Exposing the Business Plot

The most famous action of Butler was exposing the Business Plot which was a supposed conspiracy by a group of American industry titans to overthrow the government and install a fascist dictatorship in the 1930s.

Butler was contacted by a man named Gerald MacGuire, a bonds salesman, about leading an army of half a million former soldiers. Smedley reported the information to the authorities and an investigation ensued. Although no evidence of a plot was found, the Business Plot remained a long-lasting conspiracy theory.

A complicated man

Smedley Butler was a complicated and fascinating man. He did some truly great things but also some self-admitted terrible things. I’m sure he remained conflicted about his life of service and the deeds done. He is a part of American history that certainly shouldn’t be forgotten.

All About Guns The Green Machine This great Nation & Its People

5 Amazing Artifacts in the National Museum of the U.S. Army by EVAN BRUNE, EXECUTIVE EDITOR

Post author By Grumpy
Post date July 28, 2024
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After years in the making, the National Museum of the United States Army opened its doors on Veterans Day 2020. Located in Ft. Belvoir, Va., off Liberty Drive, the museum spans 185,000 square feet and represents the effort of more than 30 different organizations led by the U.S. Army and the Army Historical Foundation.

Main galleries of the National Museum of the U.S. Army.

The five-story structure sits on 84 acres of ground and contains nearly 1,400 artifacts spread across 11 galleries that tell the story of the U.S. Army from its founding to its position in the modern world. The heart of the museum and where most artifacts are found lie in seven large galleries that span the history of the Army and highlight key roles it played in the development of the United States.

American Rifleman staff had a chance to view the museum during a media event a week prior to the museum opening its doors. Here are five amazing artifacts you can see when you come down to the National Museum of the United States Army:

George Washington’s Newburgh Address

In March 1783, the fledgling United States faced a moment of crisis that almost ended the American experiment before it began. While the nation engaged in peace talks with Great Britain, the soldiers and officers of the Continental Army were reaching a breaking point. They hadn’t been paid in more than a year, and the promise of a lifetime pension for the officers still had no source of funding. An anonymous letter circulated the army camp in Newburgh, NY, which stirred talk of rebellion and a possible military coup against the Continental Congress.

When George Washington heard these rumblings, he knew immediate action was required. What followed on March 15 was one of Washington’s finest hours and a defining moment in the early history of the nation. Washington told his men to be patient, saying that doing so would prove their “unexampled patriotism…rising superior to the pressure of the most complicated sufferings.” After the address, Washington stirred the emotions of his men as he struggled to read a letter from Congress. After faltering, he paused and said, “Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country.”

Green steel helmet worn by Sgt. Alvin York in World War I.

Sgt. Alvin York’s Helmet

In October 1918, then-Corporal Alvin York of the 82nd Division of the U.S. Army joined a group of American soldiers with a mission to take out a machine-gun position in the German lines during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. While wearing the helmet pictured above, York and his men suddenly came under fire from a German machine gun while dealing with a group of captured German soldiers. To deal with this threat, York embarked on a series of incredible actions that would see him awarded the Medal of Honor.

Likely armed with an M1903 Springfield rifle, York lowered himself and began “touching off” the German machine gunners as quickly as he could. Then, six German soldiers with bayonets fixed charged York, who had expended all the rounds in his rifle. York then drew his M1911 pistol and shot each German soldier, from back to front. Ultimately, through his individual actions, York silenced all the machine-gun positions in the area and captured 132 German soldiers. French Marshal Ferdinand Foch remarked that it “was the greatest thing accomplished by any soldier in all the armies of Europe.”

The blue-painted Higgins Boat in the National Museum of the U.S. Army, shown with U.S. soldiers climbing down rope netting into the landing craft.

D-Day LCVP

As part of Operation Overlord, the beach landings in Normandy on June 6, 1944, represented one of the largest seaborne invasions in human history. More than 150,000 soldiers supported by nearly 200,000 naval personnel aligned themselves off the northern Channel coast with the aim of cracking Hitler’s Atlantic Wall and establishing a beachhead. The Allied invasion assembled the largest fleet of ships ever gathered.

Nearly 7,000 vessels from eight different navies made up the fleet, and 4,126 landing craft were the largest part of the assemblage, all designed to ferry fighting men from the ships to the five invasion beaches. Of these landing craft, one of the most famous is the “Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel” (LCVP), more popularly known as the “Higgins boat” after its designer, Andrew Higgins. More than 23,000 Higgins boats were produced during the war for use in the Atlantic and Pacific theaters. Few survive today, and even fewer are known to have been used in the Normandy landings. The Higgins boat at the National Museum of the U.S. Army is one of six known survivors from D-Day.

An M1 Garand with M. Teahan engraved on the buttstock.

Pvt. Martin J. Teahan’s M1 Garand

At 2:15 a.m. on June 6, 1944, the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment (PIR) of the 82nd Airborne took part in the opening phase of Operation Overlord, jumping behind German lines. The 508th PIR’s objectives were to capture the French town of Sainte-Mère-Église, secure Merderet River crossings and establish defensive positions in preparation for the Normandy landings. Among those who jumped from the skies that morning was 21-year-old Pvt. Martin J. Teahan.

He joined his comrades in the heavy fighting on D-Day, and while scouting near Picauville, France, Pvt. Teahan was shot in the leg, captured and later killed by a German soldier. Several days after the landing, a French farmer found an M1 Garand engraved with the name “M. Teahan” and held onto it for 72 years until its discovery in 2016. Pvt. Teahan is one of 9,388 American soldiers who lie in the Normandy American cemetery near Colleville-sur-Mer, France, but the rifle he fought with has an honored place in the U.S. Army’s National Museum.

The Sherman tank “Cobra King” is shown painted in its wartime finish in a winter display that highlights its role during the Battle of the Bulge.

M4A3E2 Sherman “Cobra King”

During the winter of 1944, Allied armies were making significant progress against the Nazi war machine. The combined forces of the British and Americans on the Western Front of World War II had brought them nearly to the border of Germany itself. Hitler and his command staff had only enough men and materiel to mount one last offensive. Known today as the “Battle of the Bulge,” the German blow pushed through the Ardennes Forest with the aim of splitting the Allied lines. The Germans hoped this would destroy the Allied armies in northwestern France and prevent the use of the Antwerp port, forcing them into a surrender settlement.

While the German advance accomplished none of its aims, the assaulting force managed to surround the 101st Airborne in the Belgian town of Bastogne. With heavy cloud cover preventing any reliable means of air support or resupply, the men of the 101st Airborne held out against the odds during five days of heavy fighting. On Dec. 26, 1944, lead elements of the 37th Tank Battalion of the 4th Armored Division broke through German lines, effectively ending the siege of Bastogne. At the head of the column was “Cobra King,” an M4A3E2 Sherman tank that held the honor of being the first unit through the lines.

These are just five of the nearly 1,400 artifacts visitors can see in the National Museum of the U.S. Army, and there are many more priceless artifacts that tell the story of the nation through the eyes of its soldiers. From the rifles of the American Revolution to an engine recovered from one of the helicopters immortalized in “Blackhawk Down,” there’s something for everyone to see.

Museum entry is free, but timed-entry tickets are required and can be reserved on the museum’s website. The museum is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and is closed Christmas Day. Parking is free, and the museum is located 25 minutes from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. For more information, visit thenmusa.org.

All About Guns Gear & Stuff This great Nation & Its People

Stephanie Louise Kwolek: The Frustrated Physician Who Invented Kevlar BY Will Dabbs

Post author By Grumpy
Post date July 28, 2024
1 Comment on Stephanie Louise Kwolek: The Frustrated Physician Who Invented Kevlar BY Will Dabbs

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.

Table of contents

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

who could have guessed that this sweet little girl would grow up to save thousands of lives?

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.

Stephanie Kwolek was always an exceptionally serious student.

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.

Stephanie Kwolek was blessed with a superb mind. She got into polymer research at the perfect time.

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

This is the Nylon Rope Trick. It is actually pretty cool, at least by chemistry lab standards.

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.

Kevlar starts out looking something like this.

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.

It is extraordinary the kinds of things are made out of Kevlar these days.

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…

The state-of-the-art in soft body armor marches on even today.

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

Um, yeah…in addition to bulletproof vests, Stephanie Kwolek brought us Spandex workout clothes as well.

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.

By all accounts, Stephanie Kwolek was a truly great American.

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.”

This sweet-looking grandmother figure went on to save literally thousands of lives.

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.

Real men This great Nation & Its People

A look back before the Decline started

Post author By Grumpy
Post date July 20, 2024
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Soldiering The Green Machine This great Nation & Its People War

Tunnel Rats: The Vietnam Wars Worst Job

Post author By Grumpy
Post date July 20, 2024
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https://youtu.be/K_RwepSsm_E

All About Guns This great Nation & Its People War You have to be kidding, right!?!

Patchwork Plane: Building the P-47 Thunderbolt by Cory Graff

Post author By Grumpy
Post date July 19, 2024
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Roughly 100 companies, coast to coast, helped Republic Aviation Corporation manufacture each P-47 Thunderbolt.

Top Photo: Over Italy, a formation of Republic P-47s prowl for targets, each one hauling a pair of 500-pound bombs and an external fuel tank. National Archives

The P-47 was a behemoth. Before it was loaded with three tons of fuel, bombs, and ammunition, it was five tons of aluminum, steel, magnesium, and rubber. The Thunderbolt was America’s biggest and most expensive single-engine fighter of the war. Making just one was an epic feat; doing it over and over again was a small miracle.

Republic Aviation Corporation built over 15,200 Thunderbolts in two factories. At their height, they finished 28 of the monster machines every day. Curtiss-Wright Corporation added 354 more.

But they had help. The famous photos you often see of a line of fighters or bombers being assembled in the expansive factory building show only the last step in a very long process. One of the basic rules of the assembly line, perfected by Henry Ford years before, was to never let the product get too big too fast. The cars Ford was making before the war usually had around 5,000 parts. A typical fighter from the era had roughly 36,000, along with 25,000 rivets.

At Farmingdale, on New York’s Long Island, loads of new P-47 fuselages await their turn to receive their wings in the production process. National Archives

Every aircraft producer relied upon a multitude of skilled subcontractors. While Republic designed and built the airframes, there was no time to have in-house experts who had the know-how to make distortion-free Plexiglas canopies, durable decals, or accurate altimeters. All of that was farmed out to firms that were comfortable (or sometimes not-so-comfortable) with supplying their niche product to the war effort.

Flawless new canopy for a Thunderbolt is readied for installation

Republic didn’t make Plexiglas, they left that to the experts. Here, the glistening and flawless new canopy for a Thunderbolt is readied for installation at the factory. National Archives

Their parts and pieces came in by train or truck and were then shuttled off to rooms, warehouses, or even “feeder factories” that are commonly out of sight in those famous assembly photos. Behind the scenes, these airplane fragments were built up into subassemblies for weeks or even months by thousands of men and women in New York and Indiana. Only then did a new Thunderbolt come together on the factory floor.

Owing to the location of the main plants, most subcontractors resided in the American Northeast and Midwest, but some specialized components came from as far away as California.

After a long trip across the North Atlantic, a new P-47, swaddled in protective tape and coverings, arrives in England to be pressed into service with the Army Air Forces. National Archives

A few subcontractors were no-brainers. The burly body of the Thunderbolt came into being with the help of Pennsylvania’s Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA). ALCOA supplied tons of stock, tubing, and acres of Alclad skin for not only the P-47, but for almost every major aircraft builder. American Magnesium Corporation, also from the Pittsburgh area, supplied magnesium and special alloys used in engine cases, wheels, and propeller parts.

The Thunderbolt’s engine came from Connecticut-based Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Company. The famous R-2800 Double Wasp powered many acclaimed WWII combat aircraft, including the F6F Hellcat, F4U Corsair, P-61 Black Widow, C-46 Commando, B-26 Marauder—and, of course, the P-47 Thunderbolt. Pratt & Whitney itself was so overburdened by the demand for their 18-cylinder dynamo that they too subcontracted. An R-2800 installed in a fighting plane could come from the parent company, or Ford, Nash, Chevrolet, Buick, Continental, or Jacobs.

A P-47 is readied for a mission at Duxford

Snugging the cowling around the P-47’s Pratt 7 Whitney R-2800 engine required a multitude of latches and fasteners—each of which was delivered to Republic by a subcontractor. Here, a P-47 is readied for a mission at Duxford. National Archives

Tires, logically, came from a big tire manufacturer. Akron’s B.F. Goodrich supplied Silvertown tires by the truckload. When they couldn’t keep up, the United States Rubber Company, based in New York City, added US Royal Aircraft Tires.

Out of the plethora of gun-makers turning out M2 machine guns as fast as they could, Republic partnered with Colt Firearms of New Haven, Connecticut, to supply the eight .50-calibers that made the Thunderbolt so destructive over the battlefield.

Arms makers gave each P-47 punch, supplying thousands of .50-caliber machine guns—eight per aircraft. National Archives

Some suppliers’ products are obvious just from their names—like Torrington Needle Bearing Company (Connecticut), Elastic Stop Nut Corporation (New Jersey), Timken Bearing Company (Ohio), Littel Fuse Incorporated (Illinois), and Ideal Clamp Manufacturing Company (New York).

A few others require some digging. Shakeproof Incorporated made antivibration hardware for aircraft in Chicago. Liquidometer Corporation of Long Island City built fuel and oil tank measuring devices as well as their cockpit readouts. And Baldwin Duckworth Company supplied chains and sprockets all the way from in Hollywood, California.

There was another notable California company on the Republic subcontractor list: Inglewood’s Marman Products Company, which contributed ring clamps, commonly used to secure hoses. What is unusual about Marman is its founder, a tinkerer named Herbert Marx, who you might know better as comedic actor known as Zeppo.

Many of the warplane suppliers are recognizable and still in business today. General Electric and Maytag made a whole range of electronic gizmos for Thunderbolts. Kohler supplied drain valves; Purolator produced filter systems. Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, now known as 3M, supplied sticky tapes used in production and painting, as well as a fuming sulfuric acid named oleum.

Aviation geeks will recognize other names like Bendix, Lear, Menasco, and American Bosch. The ever-present Dzus Fastener Company of Babylon, New York, had their quarter-turn spiral cam locking fasteners secured every P-47 engine cowling.

Perhaps the weirdest subcontractor on the list was S. S. White Dental Manufacturing Company of New York City. If this was for a P-40, we could understand, but P-47s didn’t have those famous teeth! In fact, the company had perfected flexible drive shaft technology for use in dental drills, and in wartime, the same systems were adopted by industry and employed by vehicle and aircraft manufacturers.

Filling the deck of an escort carrier, a load of new, long-range P-47N Thunderbolts heads for the Pacific in 1945. National Archives

Lastly, Republic’s long list of suppliers contains a mystery: Huber Manufacturing Company of Cincinnati, Ohio. Huber began making steam-powered tractors in 1850. In wartime, the company built rollers and road graters used to make, among other things, airfields. The only commonality between a brawny piece of construction equipment and a Thunderbolt fighter was their toughness. While the company appears on the subcontractors list, it is still unknown what Huber really supplied to the P-47 project.

In time, the trucks and trains filled to the brim with new aircraft parts arrived at the factory gates, and after thousands of man-hours (often contributed by women), each new Republic P-47 Thunderbolt was added to America’s growing air arsenal, the patchwork planes flying into battle somewhere across the globe.

Many of the suppliers who created “widgets” and “gizmos” for the brawny P-47 Thunderbolt were proud to put an image of the big fighter in their advertisements and flying and trade magazines.
Many of the suppliers who created “widgets” and “gizmos” for the brawny P-47 Thunderbolt were proud to put an image of the big fighter in their advertisements and flying and trade magazines.

Many of the suppliers who created “widgets” and “gizmos” for the brawny P-47 Thunderbolt were proud to put an image of the big fighter in their advertisements and flying and trade magazines.

A select list of Republic P-47 Subcontractors

Scovlll Mfg. Co., Waterbury, CT
Torrington Needle Bearing Co., Torrington, CT
Tinnerman Products, Inc., Cleveland, OH
Elastic Stop Nut Corp., Union, NJ
P. R. Mallory Co., Inc., Indianapolis, IN
Minnesota Mining and Mfg Co., (3M), St. Paul, MN
Thomas and Betts Co., Elizabeth, NJ
Dzus Fastener Co., Babylon, NY
B. F. Goodrich Co., Akron, OH
Lear Aviation Corp., Piqua, OH
Boots Aircraft Nut Corp., New Canaan, CT
Baldwin Duckworth Co., Hollywood, CA
Warner Aircraft Corp., Detroit, MI
Adel Precision Products Co., Burbank, CA
Alemite Corp., New York, NY
Pesco Products Co., Cleveland, OH
Parker Appliance Co., New York, NY
Air Associates, Inc., Cleveland, OH
Marman Products Co., Inglewood, CA
Aeroquip Corp., Jackson, MI
Purolator Products, Inc., Newark, NJ
Vickers, Inc., Detroit, MI
Bendix Aviation Corp., Hollywood, CA
William Brand and Co., Willimantic, CT
Neal and Brinker, New York, NY
Micro Switch Corp., Stamford, CT
Cleveland Pneumatic Tool Co., Cleveland, OH
Menasco Mfg. Co., Burbank, CA
A. Schrader, Sons, Brooklyn, NY
M. D. Hubbard Co., Pontiac, MI
Timken Bearing Co., Canton, OH
Chrysler Corp. (Amplex Div.), Detroit, MI
Pratt & Whitney, East Hartford, CT
Jack and Heintz, Bedford, OH
Ideal Clamp Mfg. Co., Brooklyn, NY
Lord Mfg. Co., Erie, PA
Aero Supply Mfg. Co. Inc., Corry, PA
Fafnir Bearing Co., Chicago, IL
Wittek Mfg. Co., Chicago, IL
Lunkenheimer Co., Cincinnati, OH
Thompson Products Co., Cleveland, OH
American Magnesium Corp., Pittsburgh, PA
United Aircraft Products Co., Dayton, OH
Young Radiator, Racine, WI
Koehler Aircraft Products, Inc., Dayton, OH
S. S. White Dental Mfg. Co., New York, NY
General Electric Co., Bloomfield, NJ
Aluminum Co. of America, New Kenningston, PA
Huber Mfg. Co., Cincinnati, OH
Chandler-Evans, Detroit, MI
Colt Firearms Co., New Haven, CT
Breeze Corp., Inc., Newark, NJ
Allen-Bradley Co., New York, NY
Johns-Manville, New York, NY
Cutler-Hammer, Inc., Milwaukee, WI
Grimes Mfg. Co., Urbana, OH
Shakeproof, Inc, Chicago, IL
American Bosch Co., Springfield, MA
Littel Fuse, Inc., Chicago, IL
Harvey Hubbell, Bridgeport, CT
International Resistance Co., Chicago, IL
Ohmite Mfg. Co., Chicago, IL
Clarostat Mfg. Co., Brooklyn, NY
Parker Kalon Corp., New York, NY
Liquidometer Corp., Long Island City, NY
Maytag Corp., Newton, IA

Leadership of the highest kind This great Nation & Its People

Robert E. Lee’s Last Day in Uniform: Civil War Richmond

Post author By Grumpy
Post date July 17, 2024
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This great Nation & Its People War

Civil War Richmond Photography Extravaganza

Post author By Grumpy
Post date July 17, 2024
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A Victory! The Green Machine This great Nation & Its People

Alix Idrache

Alix Schoelcher Idrache is a Haiti-born United States Army helicopter pilot.

Idrache’s father Dieujuste dropped out of school at 14 years old to find work in Port-au-Prince.^[1] Alix Schoelcher Idrache was born in Haiti,^[2] devoted himself to schoolwork at his father’s encouragement, and also saw the United States Armed Forces engaging in humanitarian missions there. After Dieujuste emigrated to the United States, he was able to bring his son in 2009,^[1] who later became a naturalized citizen. In May 2016, the US Army listed New Carrollton, Maryland as Idrache’s hometown.^[3]

After he graduated from the United States Military Academy (USMA) in 2016, an Army photo of a tearful Idrache went viral, and made the freshly-minted officer the target of hateful comments related to his immigrant and naturalized status.^[4]

US Military

Idrache joined the Maryland Army National Guard in 2010^[3]—later joking that they convinced him “because of a free t-shirt!” After completing Basic and Advanced Individual Training, Idrache successfully applied to the USMA with the assistance of his platoon leader and “the unit’s full-time office administrator”. Arriving in 2012,^[1] Idrache graduated from the West Point, New York school (the Maryland Guard’s first, at the top his class in physics)^[2] on 21 May 2016. Second Lieutenant Idrache was scheduled to be assigned to the Army Aviation Center of Excellence at Fort Rucker in July 2016.^[1]

By June 2019, Idrache’s uniform bore the insignia of a first lieutenant and the Army’s 1st Infantry Division. That month he was stationed in Carentan and liaising with French media on the occasion of the Normandy landings‘ 75th anniversary.^[5]

A captain assigned to the 228th Aviation Regiment by September 2021, Idrache joined Joint Task Force Haiti‘s response to the 2021 Haiti earthquake; the UH-60 Black Hawk pilot supported evacuation efforts as well as translating both French and Haitian Creole.^[6]