America's Munitions 1917-1918

by Benedict Crowell; United States. War Department

AVIATION SCHOOLS AND TESTING FIELDS.

The Signal Corps, needing a special type of construction, undertook the work itself at the start of war, but by October, 1917, the Construction Division had proved itself so efficient that all Army building work in the United States, including that of the Signal Corps, was turned over to it. The work for the Signal Corps entailed the construction of the necessary buildings for flying fields, testing fields, aerial photography, and gunnery schools, balloon observation schools, repair and testing shops, and tremendous storage depots that had to be of special fireproof construction because of the inflammable nature of the oil and other materials used by the Signal Corps.

At the aviation fields a special type of portable hangar built of steel, 65 by 140 feet, was adopted. For the big bombing planes larger hangars were required but of the same-type of construction. At each aviation field were barracks for a large number of men, together with water and sanitary conveniences. There were 31 of these fields located principally in the West or Southwest.

In addition to these there were four testing fields for the aircraft service, located in the eastern half of the United States where the flying machines and the engines were being produced. One of these was at Dayton, another at Buffalo, a third at Detroit, and a fourth at Elizabeth, N. J. The aerial gunnery school at Miami, Fla., was one of the largest of the aviation-construction projects. This plant included buildings, target ranges, steel hangars, photographic laboratories and other equipment—all built at a cost of $1,500,000.

The balloon school at Lee Hall, Va., cost $1,000,000, and that at Arcadia, Calif., $500,000. At each of these schools there were barracks for the men, quarters for the laborers, and experimental buildings, not to speak of the huge sheds, 200 or more feet in length, in which the balloons were housed.

QUARTERMASTER BASES AND WAREHOUSES.

Construction for the Quartermaster Department involved the building of warehouses on a scale hitherto unknown in the United States. The warehouse plan was carefully worked out as part of the strategy of conducting the war, the Council of National Defense making the first investigations of the proper locations of supply depots, and these early findings being later amended by the General Staff. Several important considerations determined the locations of these depots and warehouses. In the first place we would require great storage and shipping facilities at tidewater; yet, if these were all to be located in one spot or in one general region, there was a possibility that a submarine blockade off the Atlantic coast could stop the shipment of supplies to the American Expeditionary Forces. Thus the first project was to locate the great supply bases at New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Norfolk. But it was evident that a relatively small number of enemy submarines operating in a comparatively restricted area could block shipment from these four ports. Therefore Charleston, S. C., and New Orleans were added to the supply-base project.

There was another thing to be taken into consideration, namely, the providing of sufficient warehouse space, so that, if there should be any blockade of ocean transportation, the manufacture of supplies could continue at its war rate and still find places to which to ship its important products. Yet if the storage were all provided at the tidewater bases, there would be danger of railroad congestion at the ports. Consequently, as auxiliary to the terminal warehouses, there was provided a system of enormous warehouses built in the interior of the United States.

The system eventually worked out to give seven expeditionary supply bases located, six of them, at the cities just named, in addition to one that had been built at Port Newark, N. J., during the winter of 1917, and nine interior depots located respectively at Baltimore, Chicago, Columbus, Ohio, Jeffersonville, Ind., New Cumberland, Pa., Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Schenectady, N. Y., and St. Louis. These latter were central in various producing districts.