Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 21 November 1942 — Page 9

"SATURDAY, NOV. 21, 1942

Hoosier Vagabond

LONDON, Nov. 21.—Yesterday we ended with the survivors of a torpedoed British warship being picked up, after eight days at sea, by a passing ship. Today we'll finish the story. #Lieut. Comm, Oliver Watson, the senior surviving officer, has told it to me. It was an. American freighter i that accidentally sighted them : and picked them up. They were on that ship for nine days before making port. The ship had no doctor, and several of the men died after being rescued. Comm. Watson himself was very close to death. “After we were picked up,” he says, “they put me on a couch in the skipper’s cabin, behind the bridge, © We discovered that my leg was terribly swollen, and we found a deep wound running clear from the foot to the knee. It had healed over, and gangrene had set in beneath. “I know the leg was all right on our second day on the raft, for I remember rolling my socks down to scrape the oil off my legs. I-had an idea that the oil might have some harmful effect. “I remember sort of inspecting my legs, and there wasn't a scratch on them that second day. And at no time later did I feel any wound or anything. How that wound got there is still a mystery to me. There wasn't anything on the raft that could possibly have caused it.”

Leg Still Stiff and Cold

DURING THOSE nine days on the rescue ship Comm. Watson was in a semi-coma, and he remem-

Inside Indianapolis By Lowell Nussbaum! : {

PROFILE OF THE WIEK: Mark Waugh Rhoads, lawyer, enthusiastic fishetman and flower gardener, Sunday school teacher, przsident of the Washington Township Republican club world war I veteran, former state securities comm: ssioner and motor vehicles commissioner; and the man who will preside over the destinies of juvenile court for the next four years. Maik Rhoads is a tall and slender, dignified and seriouslooking man whose friendly nature is betrayed by his wrinkly 2yes. He ha: a genuine interest in and liking for people, enjoys sitting down and helping others with their problems. In five minutes those problems are his problems. He's 50, stands just a shade under 6 feet, weighs 140 or 145 pounds. His hair still is fairly dark, but thinning on * top. His eyes are gray, his complexion fair and his cheeks ruddy. He combines lots of nervous energywith a calm, even disposition. It's seldom that he's ever ruffled. When he is, he doesn't say much. The |judge-elect is the sort of man who likes nothing (better than working around his home—4500 Carrollton ave.—unless it might be fishing,

Studies Seed Catalogs

HIS FLOWER GARDEN is.a showplace of the reighborhood. Every winter he pores over seed catalogs and orders right and lc ft. Asters and snapdragons are probably his favorites Ih the spring and summer, he arises about 5 a. m, daily and works in the flower garden, digging and puttering around, until time to go to the office, H: hurries home in the evening and putters aronud gain until dark. His all-consuming haliby is fishing. He works - hard at it, likes to fish anywhere, any time. His favorite spot is above the Tel river dam, near Cloverdale. He likes to spead his vacations at Tippecanoe. When he’s not fishing, he's busy getting ready

Mr. Rhoads

Washington

WASHINGTON, Nov. ! l.—Lend-lease is now being put to a new use as a met 10d of reconstruction in lib- . erated places in North Af1ica. : X The policy is even briader than that. President Roosevelt, in announcing his decision’ the other day,

said lend-lease help would be given [0 peoples in any territory where the axis is driven out. They will be supplied not only with food and clothing but with arms, where they organize to fight the axis. That means that if we get into Italy ind France, and any other places the people can count on immeciiate help and also on a chanc: to ear? their freedom by resuming the fight. ; Lend-lease is one of the major inventions of this war. Some peo-

ple have thought of it as a grandiose piece of loose

. Charity. But it is nothing of the kind. It is a real-

+ istic substitute for American lives. It is a method of enabling other people to (lo their part in defeating the axis, the common enemy. Before we went into t1e war we knew that an axis victory would endanger America and we used lend- - lease to supply the Britisa, who then were carrying on the fight alone. When Russia went to war we applied lend-lease to Russia.

Back Again, Boots and Saddle

AFTER PEARL HARI3OR lend-lease ran into troyble. Some ip the army thought we should send little or nothing abroad but should hold it to build up our own army. President Roosevelt was absorbed in immediate war measures, ¢nd this idea of an all-Ameri-can war, fought by us while allies stood around for lack of weapons, gained some headway. There was some neglect of Russian lend-lease. Russia needed gasoline refining equipment, and nothing was done here about it {or months. Bit the president is back again, bocts and saddle; riding lend-lease. The

My Day

good talks.and one canie back on the train with me,

so I had a very pleasant day. It is wonderful what a lift to one's spirit it is to spend a few hours with people with whom one is happy to be. I felt enormously repaid for the hours spent on the , train, because I was able to read. so 1nany things which otherwise migiit have stayed for a long time unre ad. I want to speak particularly of a litle booklet called “War Jobs for Women,” which the office of war information is getting out. I - reac it through and found the inyo formation very well pit together. The pictures of Piierto Rico, which accompany ; Martha Gellhorn’s me gazine article, which I have ~ Just read, took me bick to my own visit to that ‘rather over-populated: island, which is at present te sublect of some controversy. She told me that Governor Tugwell was doing a remarkable good piece

explosion.

By Ernie Pyle

bers little about that period. He and others were finally landed at Port of Spain, Trinidad, and Watson was in a hospital for 10 weeks.

For a long time they had no hope for his life, he But he says. he never felt awfully bad, and|

says. they eventually told him that they hadn't expected him to live he couldn't believe them. Finally he was well enough to ask to be allowed to go- to England, for he wanted to see his wife. He has been there now for some months. His leg is stiff and cold, but he can walk, ‘and electric treatments may some day fully restore it. While Comm. Watson was telling me his story he would stop for long intervals and say, as though he were far away, “It's sort of hard to talk about.”

The Hardest Part of All

YOU COULD SENSE the horror of his memories, and two or three times I said, “Commander, I don’t want yor to tell me about it if it is too painful for you.” . He would reply, “No, it isn’t. I'm sure I'm not affected by it. I really don’t mind talking about it. In fact, I think it probably helps. I've written it all down, but so intimately that I wouldn’t want anybody ever to see it, and I think maybe writing about it helpsgtoo.” Comm. Watson says the hardest part is when you see the families of the men who were on the ship. Only one in seven survived. You meet the families and they ask pitifully what happened to their men. And the awful part is that you can’t tell them. For most of the men you never saw at all after the And anyway you can’t ;remember just who did what, or how certain ones died. You can’t tell their folks about it, for you just don't know. That's the hardest part.

to fish—maybe digging bait. He likes to go out in a rowboat, bait six or eight hooks, and then try to keep an eye on them and row at the same time. He's even been known to go up to Columbia City and fish through the ice all night.

No Time for Golf

BORN AT Columbia City, he was graduated from Wabash college, taught 11 the northern Indiana pubbe schools, served as Whitley county treasurer aud as G. O. P. county chairman there, moved to Indianapelis 17 years ago, cbtained his law degree at the Benjamin Harrison law school. He was overseas 13 months in the other war. He's 2 member of the Carrollion Avenue Evangelical and Reformed church, whare he teaches a class. He has one son, John Mark, 13. + Mark Rhoads loves to read—particularly history. He enjoys listening to the radio, with Abie’s Irish Rose as his favorite. At the movies, he prefers historical films. He seldom has time for golf but does enjoy footbail games, especially Walash college games. He finds bridge a pleasing recreation, plays an average game. He smokes cigarets.

No Spinach for Him \ \

NOT PARTICULAR about food, he will eat most enything but spinach. H= likes picnics and steak fries, greatly enjoys an outing in Brown county. He only drinks coffee on special occasions, and then it seems to loosen his tongue. He gets fairly talkative. He has an odd habit of pulling his napkin through one hand, over and over again, while talking at the dinner table. His collection of curios includes everything ‘from unusual coins he obtained while serving overseas to Indian arrowheads, flints, tomahawks and other relics picked up on his father’s farm—scene of a great Indian battle, Half of the attic of his home is taken up with a vast layout of electric train equipment, and it's hard to tell who gets more pleasure out of it—13-year-old John Mark, or the judge-elect.

By Raymond Clapper

whole organization has been jacked up. Dean Acheson, assistant secretary of state, is devoting a great deal of time to expediting lend-lease to Russia. Paul Appleby, undersecretary of agriculture,

“is devoting a great deal of his time to lend-lease ad-

ministration—and probably is preparing for the use of lend-lease food and supplies to rehabilitate liberated populations so that they can begin producing and fighting for our side. More definitely than ever, lend-lease is’ now regarded by the administration as a means of using our production and resources to enable the Russians, the British and the Chinese to fight harder. It also takes gn the new usefulness of strengthening liberated terriry.

Marshall Favors the Plan

EVEN THOUGH somewhat frowned on by some in the army, lend-lease has contributed a vast amount of help. President Roosevelt listed recently more than $600,000,000 in equipment and supplies that went into Egypt to prepare for the present victorious campaign against Rommel. : That included more than 1000 planes, 20,000 trucks and many hundreds of tanks and pieces of artillery. Mr. Roosevelt said that in giving those tools to our allies we: were aiding ourselves just as surely as if those tools were in the hands of American soldiers. The only difference is that British soldiers instead of American soldiers fought the tanks in Egypt. In spite of some army efforts to check lend-lease volume, it should be pointed out that Gen. Marshall, chief of staff, took the initiative and threw American equipment to the British when they were beaten back by Rommel last summer and were in danger of losing Alexandria and Suez. We even stripped some outfits to replace lost equipment—because we figured rightly that it didn’t matter whether British or American soldiers used our equipment, so long as it went to work against Rommel. That spirit is now dominating lend-lease policy more strongly than ever. :

By Eleanor Roosevelt

of work for the island, but perhaps his plans were not so acceptable to certain people with vested interests of different kinds there, I hope Governor Tugwell will be able ‘to give Puerto Rico a program which will last over a long period, so that we shall be able to tell what its effects are before something new is tried. This morning I made a round of visits, calling on Secretary Stimson and Gen. Arnold. They sent an officer to show me my way around in the new Pentagon building, wliich was certainly an interesting place to visit for the first time. It is much more convenient since all the offices are under one roof, but I think until one gets really to know it well, one might walk several miles before finding the right office. Secretary Knox came to'see me at noon and I was happy to tell him of our visit to Londonderry. A few friends came to lunch and I have been working the whole afternoon on tonight's broad-

‘cast which I hope will give some information to the

women of the country who want to hear about their boys in Great Britain. Of course, many of these boys have moved on and will move on to new scenes, but their spirit will be the same no matter where they go. I have a feeling that even if the natives in Africa can’t understand their words, they will understand their deeds, and those deeds will be kindly.

New Processes Are Perfected In Steel Mills

(This is the fifth of a series.)

By CHARLES T. LUCEY Times Special Writer PITTSBURGH, Nov. 21. —Here at the head of the Ohio valley, where third generation steel men can look into a fiery night sky and tell you casually the precise stage of steel-mak-ing in roaring Bessemer converters below, the industry that is basic to all others has gone to war as never before. - It is making some_of the finest steel ever made—tough and hard to armor ships and tanks. It is doing the job often with only small amounts of critical alloys "once believed so absolutely essential to high-grade steel. It is doing it frequently in mills designed for altogether different purposes. And yet week after week the furnaces at Carnegie-Illinois, Jones & Laughlin and other huge mills along the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio rivers are pouring out white-hot metal to set production records that seemed impossible only a short time ago. The industry was asked to pass a miracle—and has about done it. There's the particular miracle wrought by the metallurgists at Jones & Laughlin, for example. It was about the time of Pearl Harbor that the army called on . Herbert Graham, J. & L. metallurgist with 30 years of mill and laboratory work behind him, for help. With war expanding to new fronts all over the world, and tanks needed not alone for American troops but for all allies, there must be a tremendous increase in armor plate. But supply lines were being cut—nickel and chrome and other alloys which make steel strong were becoming scarcer by the day. There must be steel fine enough to safeguard the lives of American soldiers—but how to do it?

2 n 2 a A Scratch-Pad Formula

SITTING DOWN in Washington with army men waiting for an answer, Metallurgist Graham scribbled ‘on a scratch pad a formula for a tough, special pur"pose steel he had developed in past years, never meant for armor plate but capable now, he believed, of adaptation for just such use. It had been years since he went to work on that steel, when older men said it couldn't be done. He might get a tough steel, they agreed, but one so brittle it wouldn't be workable in machines. But the J. & L. men kept at it. He crossed and recrossed the continent in his studies. For almost a decade his mind was never far away from it. The steel was continually improved and by 1938 he had a steel, without the alloys which were then less scarce but always costly, which would take a terrific beating. To this went his mind when he was asked to do something which once would have

A scene illustrating suspension

lugs being welded to bomb cas-

ings.

seemed almost as making bricks without straw—to make ballistically strong- steel without the scarce alloys. J. & L. knew steel, but armor plate was new. Back to Pittsburgh hurried Mr. Graham to confer with his research manager, Harold Work, and to get experimentation started in their pilot plant laboratory—including a small open hearth furnace—which the concern’s foresight had provided a few years before.

Watching the Experiment

ONE MORNING :n January the pilot furnace was lighted, gas roared across the hearth and pig iron, steel scrap, limestone and other ingredients were measured into the charging door with almost an apothecary’s precision. Hour after hour steel men watched and calculated as temperatures were checked precisely and ladles of white-hot metal were put under searching chemical laboratory analyses. A slight modification here, another there. For weeks it went on. One furnace heat after another. At last the J. & L. men believed they had what they sought and ingots were rolled out into plates for the tough, critical tests of an army proving ground. At virtual point-blank range projectiles pounded into steel plates born of Metallurgist Graham's scratch-pad formula. Rifles blazed away and so did heavy 75-millimeter field pieces. Then the answer came to the research and development of years that had been packed into a couple of months—the new armor plate stood the test. But even now the job was only well begun, of course—production was still ahead. To the already bulging Jones & Laughlin mills— blast furnaces to fuse ore, coke and limestone to make iron. Bessemer converter mills and huge open hearth furnaces to refine it into steel, rolling mills to turn the big ingots into plates—was given this additional urgent job. ” 2 = NOW STEEL MEN who had spent their lives under the furnaces roaring out -their 3000-de-gree tongues of flame took over— Harry Stark, John Murray, Lee

2 2

SECOND

Pouring molten steel into billet moulds to make steel billets.

Lambing, Dan Loughrey and men like them whose tradition of know-how -in steel went back to the days of Andrew Carnegie and Henry Frick.

The figures show what they have dine. Twenty-six out of the last 27 months—antedating, of course, \he new armor plate developmet, '—J. & L. production in its Pittst wrgh open hearth and Bessemer mills has been ahead of the same month of the previous year. So it is, too, at the CarnegieIllinois (U. S. Steel) Irvin Works, near here, where the largest’ continuous strip mill in the world has been converted into production for urgently needed steel plate for ships. This plant, that never rolled the heavier plate— half-inch to an inch thick—until six months ago, produced in August enough steel plate for a large number of new Liberty cargo vessels. ‘When Carnegie-Illinois undertook to swing this giant plant over to ship plate it couldn't go into the market to buy needed machinery—the machinery wasn’t

scour the country over for whatever it could find, and among the antiques it came up with was an ancient steam-driven shearing machine, probably close to a halfcentury old, from the original Andrew Carnegie mills. That machine has been repowered with electricity, and, as an example of American industrial - ingenuity producing in a tight spot, is doing its part today helping to set steel in output records which are becoming almost a commonplace under wartime pressure.

» ” 2 Cooling Process Speeded IRVIN WORKS engineers saw that, dealing in heavier gauge plates, the speed of their whole operation would be governed by their ability to cool the red-hot, plates. The long line of giant rollers, operating at tremendous pressures, would be able to roll down heavy slabs of steel into plates at high speed, but it would be futile if handling at the end of the line couldn't be speeded to match the rolling out. » They found the answer in water

ASSAIL JEFFERS

Western Bloc Demands Rubber Chief Be Called

Before Committee.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 21 (U. P). —Irate Western congressmen fighting a last-ditch battle to delay

nation-wide gasoline rationing demanded today that Rubber Administrator William M. Jeffers be called on the carpet to explain his charge that “people who should know better” are financing opposition to the program. . Rep. Hatton W. Sumners (D. Tex.), chairman of a steering .committee directing the postponement drive, was bitterly critical of Mr. Jeffers’ statenient, contained in his

ing rationing beyond the Dee. 1 deadline.

Seek Basis for Remark

Rep. F. E. Hebert (D. La.) said Mr. Jeffers’ remark was “irrespon-

a statement to be expected from a man in high position.” Rep. Jed Johnson (D. Okla.), who served as chairman of the caucus of 108 Western congressmen who opened the postponement drive, paraphrased Jeffers’ statement that he was “unalterably opposed” to postponement: “We are unalterably opposed to Washington bureaucrats making unreasonable restrictions on the country for the purpose of trying to make the people more war conscious. Our people already are more war conscious than many of the bureaucrats.” Rep. Frank E. Hook (D. Mich.) said that he “doubtéd very much” that rationing was necessary to conserve rubber. Although all committee members refused to discuss their plan of action, there was growing indication that an appeal to President Roosevelt would be made, probably

by the middle of next week.

FOR GAS STAND

“unalterable opposition” to delay-]

sible and certainly not the type of 7

Spent 35 Days

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 21 (U. P.).— John Robinson Baer, 31, kept his fingers crossed today and applied for induction into the army although he spent 35 days in training before he was released by an army post and arrested as a draft dodger.

He told U. S. Commissioner David B. Head that “red tape” was to blame for his plight. Deferred for eight months because of a minor disability, Baer was inducted in October. He discarded all his civilian possessions, and tore up his draft card. ; “I put ‘in 35 days of really tough training at Ft. MacArthur,” he said. “Then out of a clear sky, they kicked me out, saying they had no record of my induction. I argued,

Evasion Charge Dismissed

there. Carnegie-Illinois had to spray installation along the half

in Training;

but they knew ‘the regulations.’ “I managed to get some makeshift civilian clothes and started for Los Angeles. The cops picked me up and Jailed me for not having a draft card and said my draft board reported me as a fugitive from induction. “I don't get any pay for the 35 days because I wasn’t in the army as far as the army was concerned.” The board said it was mixed up. Baer agreed. The charges were dismissed. :

PENSION GROUP 4 MEETS Indiana old-age pension group 4 will meet Monday at 302. Holliday building. Supper will be served from 5:30 to 7 p. m.

FUNNY BUSINESS

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“This is a Wisconsin turkey that lost

off at Chicago as a of the wayl*

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U.S. ALONE TOPS,

AXIS AIR OUTPUT

The Production of 90,000 Planes During 1943 Now

Seen as Goal.

WASHINGTON, Nov, 21 (U. P.). —The United States is turning out more airplanes monthly than the combined oufput of. the axis, and the 1943 goal-—reported to be between 90,000. and 100,000 planes— should give the united nations’ unenemy, sources said today. A rough estimate of the 1943 objective was given by War Production Board Chairman Donald M. Nelson. He told reporters that the current monthly rate of plane production must be doubled to achieve Presi~ dent Roosevelt’s new goal. It previously had been reported that 1942 production would total about 45,000 or 50,000 craft of all types. Best estimates of axis output is slightly in, excess of 3500 planes a month, bit suthorities point out

that the present ratio between the axis and the united nations will change as the allied offensive expands. Axis production, it was stated, will drop in proportion to

responsible

plants by allied bombings. - Meantime, the United States prepared for production of the greatest

non-essential passenger and’

{

questionable air superiority over the|

the damage wrought to their plane |

number of aircraft in the history] over a 12 months’ pe- |

mile of rolling line, cooling it as | it was processed, and cutting the | time of the plates on the end-of-the-line cooling tables from 48 down to 24 hours. So great was the demand for ship plate that this conversion was completed in just 37 days. A few miles up the Monongahela valley, at McKeesport, another United States Steel subsid- - jary, the National Tube Co., has put to work its know-how in pipe manufacture to cut the time of production of 100-pound to 1000pound bombs just about in half. Traditionally, the blunt noses of bombs have been formed with a heavy forging press. But when the government turned to National Tube to make bombs—hundreds of thousands of them and in a hurry —forging presses couldn't be got for love or money. So National Tube adapted to bomb making a “spinning” process that had been used in certain peacetime operations, utilizing in modern practice the ancient methods of the potter and his wheel. A pre-heated red-hot steel tube, turned at high speed, is fashioned quickly and precisely into the nose and main body of a bomb by a huge arm swinging into position to mold the revolving tube into just the desired

shape. »

Spinning Giant Tube

IT WAS an ingenius handling of , production .on the smaller sizes—100-pound to 250-pound— but when it came to spinning the nose of a 1000 pounder, requiring a tube 18 inches in diameter and a half-inch thick, that was something else. Knowing steel men said it couldn’t be done. : But a few years back an alert National Tube executive had’ bought on “spec” — speculation that this spinning process might be more highly developed some day—a machine that could spin a tube of a diameter up to 24 inches. It cost about $15,000—not much for U, S. Steel, to be sure— but when it was bought no one was ‘sure what it could be used for. When a big bombing spinning job came along the machine bought on “spec” was brought out and the time it has saved in turning out these half-ton bomb cases has repaid the investment a hun-dred-fold. But the steel men are just beginning—they are preparing to turn this same process to still another use, impossible to disclose now, which involves manufacture of important parts running into the million. It’s another example of the know-how and ingenuity industry was ready to lay on the line when the nation turned to it to do the biggest war production job ever attempted.

» 8

11-Year-Old Offers His Dog

NEWARK, N. J,, Nov. 21 (U. P.). David J. Ferraro, 11, of Newark, wants his dog, Wimpy, to represent him in the army. Writing to the local headquarters of the office of war information, the boy said: “My big brother is in the Valid States navy. I cannot join as am too young and too small. And the only thing I can do for my country, which is the U. 8. A. is to give my dog. “He is a good watch dog and very smart. I love my dog but my country comes first. Will you help me? Please do not turn me down.” If Wimpy, a Belgian wolfhound, is physically sound and not too old, he will be accepted by dogs for defense, an organization which is gathering dogs for war service.

POSTMASTERS NOMINATED WASHINGTON, Nov. 21 (U. PJ). — President Roosevelt today nominated several postmasters for reappointments. They included: Charles Wolford, Linton, Ind. and Fred W. Mullin, Muncie, Ind.

HOLD EVERYTHING