For a while the Old Hickory Powder Plant at Nashville, Tennessee,—its daily capacity of 900,000 pounds of smokeless powder making it the largest powder factory in the world,—was retained as a stand-by plant, but later it was sold. The Nitro (West Virginia) Powder Plant, another government institution nearly as large as Old Hickory, was sold after the armistice, with the result that a new industrial city is developing on its site. The War Department’s enormous ammonium nitrate plant at Perryville, Maryland (ammonium nitrate being used in the manufacture of the widely used war explosive amatol), the equipment of which included several hundred model dwellings, was, after the armistice, turned over to the Public Health Service to be used as a hospital for ex-service men. The three government picric acid plants—at Little Rock, Arkansas, Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Savannah, Georgia—were sold. Briggs & Turivas, Chicago steel manufacturers, bought the plant built by the Government at Senter, Michigan, for the production of tetryl, an explosive used as the charge in boosters in high-explosive shell. The Ordnance Department also closed out and sold the facilities provided at Bound Brook, New Jersey, for the production of tetranitroaniline, another booster charge.
In general, plants and machinery used in making powder could be used also to some extent to make the commodities of peaceful commerce, and therefore the Ordnance Department had little difficulty in disposing of these surplus facilities at good prices. The powder-making facilities created during the war by the DuPont Powder Company near Wilmington, for instance, almost at once after the armistice turned to the manufacture of dyestuffs. Another war powder plant, with practically the same machinery, is to-day producing artificial silk, a cellulose commodity similar in chemical composition to smokeless powder. A third is making celluloid and artificial ivory; a fourth, paper.
Photo by Howard E. Coffin
AMERICAN FIELD GUNS ON THE RHINE
Photo by Howard E. Coffin
AMERICAN GUN ON EHRENBREITSTEIN, COBLENZ
Since trinitrotoluol (T. N. T.) was the most widely used of all war explosives, the Ordnance Department was forced to go into the production of the basic toluol itself as well as into the manufacture of its nitrated compound. One war source of toluol was coal gas, and to secure the chemical from this source the Ordnance Department set up stripping plants in the gas works of thirteen American cities. Nine of the gas companies bought this equipment after the armistice. The other four plants were sold on the market, the machinery eventually finding its way into the new industry which is taking gasoline from natural gas. The Government sold out completely its two T. N. T. plants, which were located respectively at Racine, Wisconsin, and Giant, California.
