Marston Matting - Steel roads and Runways.

[old man emu]

How do you make roads and runways in a battlefield? You just throw a few sheets of steel on the ground.

 

 

[onetrack]

2 millions tons of the matting! It makes you wonder where it all ended up? A lot still corroding away on tropical islands, I suppose.

 

PSP and jerrycans were the two indispensable winning items of WW2. But the jerrycan was actually invented by the Germans! - and the design was so good, the Allies simply copied the entire design.

 

I didn't realise that the Allies actually offered a small reward to local civilians and children to pick up abandoned Axis jerrycans, and to return them to troop headquarters for reuse.

 

 

 

 

 

[old man emu]

6 hours ago, onetrack said:

2 millions tons of the matting!

Once again I am staggered by the industrial production of the USA in such a short time. The mind boggles at the volume of steel that must have been produced in order for the production of everything from nuts and bolts to Liberty ships.

 

And then I think of the current state of US manufacturing. How the mighty have fallen!

[onetrack]

The U.S. still produces a lot of steel, but it's nearly all sourced from scrap today, and smelted in electric arc furnaces. They don't have huge hematite reserves any more, they ran out of easily-accessed hematite at the end of WW2, and had to turn to taconite for their iron after WW2. Taconite is only 30% iron content, as compared to around 60% for hematite - and taconite requires a lot more processing to get the iron out of it.

 

It was only due to the work of one clever U.S. scientist, that enabled U.S. taconite to be processed economically. Prior to 1945, taconite was treated as waste or overburden, and cast aside.

 

https://eros.usgs.gov/earthshots/taconite#:~:text=The rock being mined now,century made taconite mining profitable.

[facthunter]

It was their Industrial Capacity that enabled them to win the war. What tonnage of ships were sunk? Nev

[old man emu]

2 hours ago, facthunter said:

What tonnage of ships were sunk

Just to clear up some differences in meaning.

 

Tonnage is a measure of the capacity of a ship. Tonnage (volume) should not be confused with displacement, the actual mass of the vessel. In this little discussion of steel production, Nev's question relates to how much weight of steel was sent to the bottom. 

[facthunter]

I was only relating to the Vessels which were all steel as a comparo to the relatively much less mass of steel  used for temporary runways and roads in mostly high rainfall areas like PNG.  Nev

[old man emu]

And I was only clarifying the difference between "tonnage" as applied to ships and the "displacement" which relates to the amount of water a hip displaces when it floats. 

 

However, on reflection upon your last posting, am I correct in thinking that you were saying that more weight of steel was sunk than was used to make sheets of Marston matting? 

[facthunter]

When ships sink you do know the weight of the ship from readily available data. Nev

[old man emu]

I don't think that you understand the difference between 'tonnage" and "displacement".

 

Gross tonnage is a nonlinear measure of a ship's overall internal volume. Gross tonnage should not be confused with measures of mass or weight such as deadweight tonnage or displacement. Displacement tonnage, or simply displacement, is the weight of water a ship displaces when it is floating. Remember Archimedes in his bath? This weight is directly equal to the weight of the ship and anything it's carrying (cargo, fuel, etc.).

 

Therefore the same ship has a different displacement if it is loaded or unloaded, but the tonnage always remains the same. The tonnage of a ship is known from its registration details if it is a commercial ship, or from released if it is a military ship, or by referencing Janes Fighting Ships. Janes Fighting Ships is an annual reference book of each country's navy and coast guard, along with their weapons and aircraft. Included are ship names, construction data, size, speed, range, complement, engineering, armament, and sensors. 

 

 

[facthunter]

I completely understand it but the other figure was used in the WAR. and is available from Building DATA that anyone could have obtained. Why disclose the Amount of Cargo to the enemy? I had a friend who was in the British Merchant Marine. Nev

[old man emu]

15 minutes ago, facthunter said:

Why disclose the Amount of Cargo to the enemy?

It's got nothing to do with the actual cargo being carried.

 

Tonnage is a VOLUME. A ship whose volume (tonnage) is filled with feathers has a different displacement (weight) from one whose tonnage is filled with lead.

And I do know which is heavier, a pound of feathers or a pound of lead.

[facthunter]

I have NO idea where you are going with this. I was Only EVER referring to the amount of steel steel used in the construction of the ships that were sunk. Nev

[old man emu]

What part of my earlier post can you not understand?

 

And I was only clarifying the difference between "tonnage" as applied to ships and the "displacement" which relates to the amount of water a ship displaces when it floats. However, on reflection upon your last posting, am I correct in thinking that you were saying that more weight of steel was sunk than was used to make sheets of Marston matting? 

[onetrack]

The U.S lost 733 Merchant vessels to enemy action during WW2 - mostly U-boats. The total shipping tonnage of these 733 vessels lost was 3.1M tons - and the tonnage was measured, using the pretty standard maritime measure - Gross Tonnage.

The weight of steel used to make one Liberty ship (and I'm using the Liberty ship as an example, as over 2,700 were built during WW2, making it the most common U.S. freighter) is estimated as between 8,100 and 9,180 tons.

 

Using 8000 tons as a rounded number, and multiplied by 733 lost ships, the steel weight lost in the shipping was 5,864,000 tons. However, many of the ships lost were smaller than Liberty ships, so the actual tons of steel lost would probably be far lower. 

 

A vast amount of steel produced during WW2 went into construction machinery and armoured equipment. The tank factories turned out thousands of tanks, and the construction equipment manufacturers went full speed ahead on construction machinery. Caterpillar provided 98% of their output to the War effort, producing mostly Cat D7 and D8 bulldozers and Cat 12 motor graders, which were the primary machines of the U.S. Forces.

 

The wartime D7 weighed about 15 tonnes fully equipped, the wartime D8 weighed about 23 tons, and a Cat 12 grader weighed around 10 tons.

Looking at just Cat production figures, they built around 10,000 x D7 tractors, 9,500 x D8 tractors, and around 6,000 x No. 12 graders during the War period.

That makes a total of 428,500 tons of steel that just went into Cat tractors and graders alone. There were also substantial number of other tractor manufacturers and equipment manufacturers who built a wide range of war/construction equipment as well, so the total amount of steel required for manufactured equipment was colossal.

The 2,000,000 tons of steel used in Marsden Matting was probably a low percentage of overall U.S. steel production during WW2. Machine tools were produced by the tens of thousands, and vast tonnages of steel would have been consumed in that area.

 

I have a copy somewhere on a computer hard drive of the history of the USACE (U.S. Army Corp of Engineers), and it gives the background and order figures of steel production during the War years - and the production orders for steel were just mind-boggling - and they changed weekly, as War orders were delivered. The figures bounced all over the place and reality and priorities had to be balanced.

The appointment of Bill Knudsen (from GM) as Head of War Production was deemed crucial to instill some orderliness into both civilian and military Wartime orders and production.

 

Edited 14 hours ago by onetrack

[onetrack]

There's a good video below on U.S. War production during WW2. It's long, at 43 mins, but it's very interesting to see how the U.S. went from an isolationist stance and very little War production in the late 1930's, to a position of "the World's Arsenal".

 

https://www.google.com/search?q=Bill+Knudsen&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:62a21db5,vid:2YIuuJQH6Sc,st:0

[rgmwa]

1 hour ago, onetrack said:

The U.S lost 733 Merchant vessels to enemy action during WW2 - mostly U-boats. The total shipping tonnage of these 733 vessels lost was 3.1M tons - and the tonnage was measured, using the pretty standard maritime measure - Gross Tonnage.

The weight of steel used to make one Liberty ship (and I'm using the Liberty ship as an example, as over 2,700 were built during WW2, making it the most common U.S. freighter) is estimated as between 8,100 and 9,180 tons.

 

Using 8000 tons as a rounded number, and multiplied by 733 lost ships, the steel weight lost in the shipping was 5,864,000 tons. However, many of the ships lost were smaller than Liberty ships, so the actual tons of steel lost would probably be far lower. 

 

A vast amount of steel produced during WW2 went into construction machinery and armoured equipment. The tank factories turned out thousands of tanks, and the construction equipment manufacturers went full speed ahead on construction machinery. Caterpillar provided 98% of their output to the War effort, producing mostly Cat D7 and D8 bulldozers and Cat 12 motor graders, which were the primary machines of the U.S. Forces.

 

The wartime D7 weighed about 15 tonnes fully equipped, the wartime D8 weighed about 23 tons, and a Cat 12 grader weighed around 10 tons.

Looking at just Cat production figures, they built around 10,000 x D7 tractors, 9,500 x D8 tractors, and around 6,000 x No. 12 graders during the War period.

That makes a total of 428,500 tons of steel that just went into Cat tractors and graders alone. There were also substantial number of other tractor manufacturers and equipment manufacturers who built a wide range of war/construction equipment as well, so the total amount of steel required for manufactured equipment was colossal.

The 2,000,000 tons of steel used in Marsden Matting was probably a low percentage of overall U.S. steel production during WW2. Machine tools were produced by the tens of thousands, and vast tonnages of steel would have been consumed in that area.

 

I have a copy somewhere on a computer hard drive of the history of the USACE (U.S. Army Corp of Engineers), and it gives the background and order figures of steel production during the War years - and the production orders for steel were just mind-boggling - and they changed weekly, as War orders were delivered. The figures bounced all over the place and reality and priorities had to be balanced.

The appointment of Bill Knudsen (from GM) as Head of War Production was deemed crucial to instill some orderliness into both civilian and military Wartime orders and production.

 

Makes you wonder whether the US today would have any hope of matching the organisation and determination needed to repeat that performance if we ended up in another world war. Obviously a war today would be fought differently using different technology but I don’t think they would have any chance. 

[old man emu]

2 hours ago, onetrack said:

There's a good video below on U.S. War production during WW2. It's long, at 43 mins, but it's very interesting to see how the U.S. went from an isolationist stance and very little War production in the late 1930's, to a position of "the World's Arsenal".

 

https://www.google.com/search?q=Bill+Knudsen&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:62a21db5,vid:2YIuuJQH6Sc,st:0

It's a shame that America's display of manufacturing might is now simply museum exhibits. Recall, also that England has very many abandoned factories now. 

[nomadpete]

13 hours ago, onetrack said:

see how the U.S. went from an isolationist stance and very little War production in the late 1930's, to a position of "the World's Arsenal".

Aha!

So the USofA has proved it can reverse the T rump isolationist policy!

 

(Way back when it got threatened by a world war)