/

WE (;UEEBED TOO S{OON

•

COPPER COMMANDO is the officialnewspaper of the Victory Labor-Manage-ment Production Committees of the Ana-conda Copper Mining Company and itsUnion Representatives at Butte, Ana-conda, Creat Falls and East Helena, Mon-tana. It is issued every two weeks •••COPPER COMMANDO is headed by ajoint committee from Labor and Man-agement, its policies are shaped by bothsides and are dictated by neither .•••COPPER COMMANDO was establishedat the recommendation of the War De-partment with the concurrence of the}Var Production Board. Its editors ar~Bob Newcomb and Ma'rg Sammons; itssafety edit~r is John L. Boardman; itschief photographer is AI Cusdorf; itsstaff photographer is Les Bishop ••• ItsEditorial Board consists of: Denis Mc-Carthy, CIO; John F. Bird, AFL; Ed Re-nouard. ACM, from Butte; Dan Byrne,CIO; Joe ~4arick, AFL; C. A. Lemmon,ACM, from Anaconda; Jack Clark, CIO;Herb Donaldson, AFL, and E. S. Bardwell.ACM, from Creat Falls .••• COPPER"COMMANDO is mailed to the home ofevery employee of ACM in the four loca-.tions-if you are not receiving your copyadvise COPPER COMMANDO at 112.Hamilton Street, Butte, or better still.kirop in and tell us. _This is Vol. 3, No.It4.

.2.

\ .

T.HEY EAR 1944 was important for the fact that the tide of the war,for the first time, swung in the direction of the United Nations. To markit, the forces und!,r Ceneral Eisenhower steam-rollered, from practicallyall directions, toward the gates of the enemy.

•

-Post-war plans got going. Reconversion talk was in th e air. Th e

word went around that soon the boys would be home, that shortly wewould have new homes and new ca ~s, and butter without points.

'In December the great Allied offensive ground to a stop. The Nazismounted a counter-offensive that staggered us, sent us re_elingbackwardand backward.

Whatever great Allied strides have occurred since, and wh a teve rmay happen in the future, let's learn a lesson from that. The- war isn'tover.

1

Because oopper is such an essential metal, because the war cannotbe won without ~opper, your editors journeyed once again to the- mills ofThe American Brass Company, a subsidiary of the Anacon'da Copper Min-ing Company, to see in what ways your Montana copper is now gqing towar. Readers. those mills are roarin g; all of productive America has grit-ted its teeth and hissed at the Axis, ".You can't do that to us!"

•

This issue, then, is given over to great scenes of battle actio.n on theproduction front i~ Connecticut. There's where your copper is ·going.And all of us know where it goes from there - into the hides of theenemy.

MARCH 2, 1945

These are the copper slugs being put into the oil-heated furnace to get them red hot. Trays of slugsare shown on the pans in the left foreground.

T HE MOOD in Connecticut, and allthrough the East these days, is strictlybusi ness. The country was caught wi thher plants down, at a=tirne when we wereall figuring the mess was as good as over.That taught the big rnanufacturing plantseverywhere a lesson. It taught Washing-ton a lesson. It taught a lesson to ourmilitary leaders who predicted, off andon during 1944, that last Christmaswould see the finish of the war in Ger-many.

At Christmas time, 1944, we werebeihg pushed back much faster than wehad advanced. We were losing men rightand left. We are paying for our optimism,for our zeal to return to peacetime opera-tion, with the lives of thousands of fineyoung A~ericans, and with the unendinggrief of their parents, their widows andchildren.

Back East, though, where the shockwas greatest, they. don't point the fingerof scorn at anybody except the people.What's the sense of ,damning a generalwho hadn't taken the weather into ac-count? What's the use in griping aboutanother who might have figured 'Russiawould move right into Berlin from theEast earlier than she did?

Because thi\_ is written some days inadvance of publication, we can't tell youwhat the war news was yesterday, or wasthis morning. We certainly can't tell youwhat it will be tomorrow. The radio isburdened wi th second guessers and the

Flash or surplus forging is remo\fed in the trim-ming die. This surplus metal is sliced off and theforging is ready for the next operation.

.This is a view of the other side of the furnace,showing the red hot slugs coming out. These arecopper slugs to be forged into terminals for mak-ing batteries for submarines. Tongs are used totransfer the slugs from the furnace to the die. .Operator must hold the slug at an angle properfor good forging.

*FORGINGFOR WAR

*In the Pressed-Metal Deparlment at An-sonia, Connecticut, of the American BrassCompany, an Anaconda subsid·iary, partsare being forged for many types of combatequipment. This Js a small department,but it is a vital cog 'in the Allied war ma-chine. These folks are busy forging forwar, and for an early peace. .

'.

*news analysts of the newspapers havebeen known to make mistakes. We'vemade a few ourselves.

But the thing to remember is this:No matter how good the news is, eachdaily victory is only a link in a chain. Wedon't have the Axis down until we havethem out.

The big manufacturing plants in theEast, in the middle West-all through thecountry-are now grimly determined tosmash this thing right through until finalvictory is won. Let's forget the talk, theysay, about new cars and new refrigeratorsand new homes. We got stuck once onpeace talk; let's not get stuck again.

On this page are pictures from the. Pressed Metal Department at AnsoniaConnecticut, of The American Brass Com~pany, a subsidiary of the Anaconda Cop-per Mining Company. We re-visitedthese Connecticut mills because we want-ed to see at fi rst .hand, and to tel I youwith pictures, what this production warlooks like when it goes into high gear.

In peacetime you probably wouldn'thave given this department, which· issmall, more than a passing glance. But

Forgings must be very carefully inspected. Afterthe forging has been dunked in cold water to coolit, the sub-foreman gives it a good examination.

today it is shoving out essential parts foraircraft, landing craft, guns, submarjnes

/ and dozens of other pieces of vital warequipment. The. parts being made theday we were there, and shown on thispage, are hot-forged terminals for Alliedsubmarines. Sure, the submarines are do-ing a job, and in all oceans. .

About eighty people" in a depart-ment with over 'two thousand dies, aregetting out the rush orders here for UncleSam. Your copper is in every piece. Theseare all men who, like you and 'l"'U andus, figured this war was pretty well seta~d we could start looking ahead to peace-time.

Now they know, and we all shouldrealize, that we spoke too soon. The hotforgings from this department will dotheir share to turn the tide against theAxis for good. :

Everywhere throughout the East, notonly in the brass mi lis of Connecticut, butin rnanufacturiug plants turning out waressential parts, the spirit is the same. It isno easy job to whip together the full pro-ductive effort of our factories in the faceof over-confidence on the part of the peo-ple. But the job is being done; workersin plants are now more war-consciousprobably than they were a year ago. Thew~r will be over sooner, and the' boyswill be back faster, if we all feel the sameway about it.

*The trimmed forging now complete, the finishedterminal i. ready for final inspection. Here thechief inspector a~d assistants look them over.

This is basket-weave wire braiding-the finishedbraid has many wartime uses, one of them beingto

eliminate electrical disturbances on radio systemsof pfanes. Your Montana co'pper is in every strand.

Here is another view of wire braiding-the fin-ished product. has many uses for the Armed

Services. This operator has a brot"er who is ali ai,photographer; his life may depend upon her.

t

Here steam hose is tested for battleships. Thishose is made almost entirely of your copper, with

less than two per cent tin. This hose is testedfully according to specifications of the U. S. Navy•

•4. ,

,

...

T EWABNEEDSMETALDOSE \

*'..Metal hose was on the job in the latestsea battle with the Japs, ·in the latest tripover Nazi territory. Your Montana cop-

per is going into this metal hose which is

a key product in this war.

.'. * ,

REMEMBER that big sea skirmish withthe Nips a short time ago, when UncleSam's battle-wagons chewed up a fewof the "sons of Heaven"? Remember thatrecent foray over Germany, when our,planes unloaded thousands of bombs onNazi fortifications and factories? You do?Well, your copper from Montana wentthe whole route. Copper was in everybattleship and in every plane.

If these great raids are to continue,if our battleships, tanks, planes and sub-marines are to carryon, then flexible met-al hose and tubes must be turned outnight and day. By producing these neededsupplies, the Metal Hose Branch of TheAmerican Brass.Company does its part intaking a sock at the Axis. ~

The first operation is basket-weavewire braiding-look at the two upper pic-tures at the left. It's an electrical opera-tion, but the girl operator must be on thealert to see that not a single strand of wireis cut off. This braided ttrbing, when fin-ished, is used for one thing, to eliminatenoise disturbances in radio systems onplanes. It is used to hook up the nervecenter of the plane, and is the mechanicalprotection for electrical wiring. In someinstances the bronze inner tube with cop-per wire braid is used for carrying highpressure steam on battleships.

All tubing is tested, of course,against Navy specifications. The steamhose being checked .in the bottom picturecomes in twenty-five foot lengths withpacked on heat-proof couplings, and isused to blowout boi lers and for emer-gency work on Navy vessels. The hose is983/4 'per. cent copper and 1V4 per centtin, which is the best known corrosion re-sistant for steam.

You can paste it in your hat thatthe folks at the Metal 'Hose Branch arehustling to get this war over with. Mostof them have close relatives in the service,and this war can't end too soon for them.

MARCH 2, 1945

s: FBEN(;UTUBE

*

..

One of the main arteries· of The AmericanBrass Company in Connecticut is the

IFrench Small Tube Branch. Founded byFred W. French and his son, Leon, in1906, it has become one of the bestknown tube' mills in the whole world,with a .reputation for getting as close to .perfection as one could hope. This fa-mous plant, which produces civilian es-sentials in peacetime, is turning out tubetoday for countless war uses ••• Back ofFrench Tube is an interesting and stimu-lating story and your editors want to re-count it for you. Co":,e along with us onth,;s tour of the French Small Tube Plantand see for yourself what a tremendouswar job is being done there. When peaceis assured this branch will return to thejob of providing tube for American indus-try. While we move through this plant,,let us bear in mind that these people ~howork here are well aware of the impor-tant war job they are doing. This Branchhas many former employees in service,and many fathers and mothers and broth-ers and sisters of service men are busyhere today, doing everything th~y Can tospeed the _!layof final victory.

*

French tubing for the battlefronts-for manyuses, for sea-water distillation unitsj for oxygenpressure gages, instrument, oxygen, fuel and hy-draulic li"neson airplanes, airplane radiators, oilcoolers and engine intercoolers, fuses and torpedoparts for radio and radar. Below, cups are ham-me.-ed into each end of the tube to keep out allthe moisture. Coils shown are about fifty feetlong; following this operation, the ends of thecoils are dipped and soldered for protection.

,

ONE OF THE really 'gre~~war produc ..tion jobs is being done in Connecticut il1the French Small Tube Branch. They callit French Tube for short, but there isnothing short about the job they're do-ing, and that's -a long but interestingstory. Sit back and listen to it.

First, you ought to know somethingabout the plant itself and its history. It'sone of those success sagas that could hap ..pen only in this country. It starts in 1906with a condemned building built of redbrick. This apparently useless' buildingwas purchased, for a small amount, byFred W. French and his son, Leon. Thebuilding was carefully torn down, and thebricks hauled to the present site of theFrench mills. Here they were used toconstruct a new building. The Frencheshired Italian masons to do the work, butwhen the bui Iding was finished, the father.and son and one other man equipped it,They assembled a steam engine anderected a forty-foot steel stack, installedtwo draw benches and with nothing muchleft but native courage, skill and a wholelot of confidence in themselves, they wentinto the brass business as The FrenchManufacturing Company.

The specialty of the company was,and still is, small diameter, tnin gagetubing.

The French-made tubes were better.than any other tubes on the market-ifdidn't take people long to find that out,

Nobody else seemed able to make them.The word got around, and the industrialworld soon beat a path to the door of thissmall plant. The company grew and pros-pered. but it never got a big head as aresult of self-satisfaction.

Fred W. French. the father, had twooutstanding manias. One.was cleanliness.He insisted that his. mills be in spotlesscondition at all times. Cold drawingtubes of tough metal called for large

Here at the left, the coils have come from the end of the chain belt, and thisoperator is seen dipping and soldering the ends of the coils to make themair tight. One of tubes made at the French Tube Branch is for radiator tub-ing in airplanes. which is expanded and shaped'with six sides, all in thesame operation. In the picture above, the operator is annealing the tubes-that is, softening them up for the machine which will not expand themand shape them into a hexagon. There are many women and girls at workin the Connecticut brass mills. Most of them have close relatives in theservice. It is interesting also to note how many members of a single familyare engaged entirely in war work, apart from those in the Army or Navy.This is a tribute not only to the patriotic spirit of many people in the East-.native-born and foreign-born alike, but also to the French Tube Branch.A survey of the plant discloses an excellent spirit among the workers there-they are devoted to the Branch and to the vital war job they are doing.Not a large plant, it still is turning in a great performance for Uncle Sam.

quantities of greasy lubricants. and theaverage tube mill is a greasy, slimy place.But the French miJls are kept as clean andbright as a food processing plant. Mr.French's second mania was for doing theimpossible; he was the victim of an urgeto do something people told him couldn'tb~ done. Even when he could afford tobuy equipment he. could profitably use,he still preferred to design and bui Id ithimself. Many complicated and highly

We have just been telling you about the machine which expands the tubeand at the same time puts six sides on it. This tubing, as you know, is usedfor radiators in airplanes. It is nine inches long •. 004 ga8e, with a .210 inch -outside diameter and is made of copper. The operator you see in the pic- .. ture at the right is working the machine. Like other women in the plant,she is doing her best to help get the war won; a mother. she has a son-in.law in the South Pacific. In the picture below you see one of the tests-this.girl is submerging the tubes in a test tube for leakage. If there is a leak,the test will show it, under this air pressure of 120 pounds. If there is aflaw, the tube is rejected. This is only one of a number of telts the tubesmust undergo before they are finally passed. Here again is a woman in theFrench Tube Branch doing her share for Uncle Sam, in addition to the onewhich members of her family are already doing in uniform. She has twobrothers in the service, and she is wel( aware that the radiator tubes for air-craft which she inspects must be all right, or lives will be endangered •.

.6.

specialized' tube products which are nowstandard equipment today throughout allindustry, are the result of. Fred French'sinsistence upon making things thatcouldn't be made.

When The American Brass Companybought The French Manufacturing .Com-pany. in 1929, and re-named it the FrenchSmall Tube Branch, it wi.sely left its con-trol in the joint vice presidency of FredW. and Leon French. Upon the father's

~.II

, MARCH 2, 1945

Th-e first step in finishing a tube to specificationsis called "pointing." Pointing prepares the tubefor drawing, which lengthens the tube and gages

death a short while ago, the Branch cameunder the direction of Leon whose son,Fred W., 11, has recently come into theplant to carry on. the family tradition.French Branch retains all the individualityof its early days, and still designs andbuilds much of the machinery it uses toturn out products which. no one else canduplicate. Even under the driving stressof war production, departments in theFrench mills are all as neat as pins.

Uncle Sam'doesn't forget outstand-ing jobs, and when World War II loomedbefore him, the French Small Tub eBranch was immediately called upon tomake tubing of many sizes, not only tomeet unusually exacting specificationsbutalso in quantities far in excess of anyprevious record. One order from UncleSam was for more than 34,000 miles ofcopper radiator tubes, tubes so small andthin that it took as much as 137 feetto make a pound. Other orders have in-eluded sea-water distillation units andcondensers, oxygen pressure gages; in-strument, oxygen, fuel and hydraulic lineson ai rplanes: ai rplane radiators, oiI cool-ers and engine intercoolers, radio and ra-dar equipment, fuses and torpedo parts.Over 7,000 miles of intercooler tubesalone, sufficient to equip upwards of 10,-

...

FOLKS ATFRENCH TUBE

it-the man in the upper left is pointing. In thesecond picture, the operator is drawing smalldiameter tubes, and in the third picture, the tubes

000 four-motored airplanes, have beenproduced by the men and women at theFrench Tube Branch.

Pointing is the first step in finishinga tube to specifications. Pointing pre-pares the tube for drawing, which length-ens the tube and gages it. It is important. to support the tube as it goes .throughthe die in drawing. There are ninety-three draw benches in all. Then comesthe annealing, the pickling and thestraightening-they have to be straight-ened before they can be shipped. Thetests against government specificationsare most thorough, and the tests comprisethe last step. At French Tube there is no"spot" testing. Every tube is tested beforeit is shipped. We hope that our pictures,which accompany this section on theFrench Tube Branch, will give you a goodidea of how great a volume of wartimetraffic is pouring through this plant.

French Tube has performed almosta production miracle. Thanks to the gen-ius of Fred W. French, Sr., and to thoseof the French family who are carrying'on the tradition, Uncle Sam is getting thecountry's pest-and probably the world'sbest-in tubing necessary to get this warwon.

And that's the story of French Tube

We met many fine, hard-working people. Belowat the left co-editor Marg Sammons learns fromFred French II a few of the many thousand shapesof tubes made at the plant. That's a typical oHiceIcene in the second picture, where much of the

. ,are shown after they have been annealed andpickled. The tubes are shown 'being raised herefr~ their cleansing bath in sulphuric. acid.

Tubes for hydraulic lines, planes, landing geat' andturrets are Made in the Fre"ch Tube Plant. In thj.picture, tubes are being tested under pressure.

-at Jeast part of it. When the war isfinally won, French Tube will go back topeacetime production and will start againsetting peacetime records. That-s theAmerican way

•planning goes on to insure steady, top-speed pro-duction in our war to beat the Axis. Sure, theyhave women crane operators. In the picture at theright, two operators pause to say hello in a French.designed'and built crane.

:rhis is the instrument panel on an annealing fur. -.-ace, with operatCH'checking the temperature.

.. *FUNNY THING, how much a man'slife can depend on a detail. He raises hishead a second too soon and the song isended. He slips in the mud of France andfalls, and the bullet that had his nameon it speeds harmlessly over his helmet..He survives three attacks by Nazi sub- . ,marines crossing the Atlantic, and a weeklater he stumbles on a tennis court andbreaks his ankle.

Here is another one of the operationstaking place today, and in high gear, atThe American Brass Company. This onedeals with thin sheet metal and if- that

Metal is passed through the high speed precisionroll. This is a machine which presses the metalClown to the required thinness. It works in the

THINSHEETMETAL

*,While the production of vital materialsat the American Brass plants representsa single gigantic operation, still when youlook at it closely, it is actually made up of• great number of small operations. Theyare all hitched together, each doing itspart. For the demands for copper are sogreat and so varied that its wartime usesrun literally into the hundreds with nomajor piece of war efluipment lacking it••• Another one of the departments whichis doing its great share in the ConnecticutValley is this one, which produces thinsheet metal for various military requ,ire.ments of your Uncle Sam. Here, day inand day out, a crew of loyal and de-voted workers are turning out metal ae..cording 'to Uncle Sam's rigid specifica ..tions. They do not know to what com·plete use their products are put any morethan we in Montana do, but they arewell aware that their products are par ..celled out for vital mmtary needs.

* I

same way your wife rolls out dougli with a rollingpin, only there are four of them,.and each com-presses the metal as it passes through. Here you

sounds like something that doesn't haveto do with .the war, then you have a sec-ond think coming. For the major job ofthis department at American Brass is de-voted to the production of timing fusesfor bombs. Montana copper is in thesetiming fuses. It comes right out of theButte mines, is moved to the smelterat Anaconda, on to Great Falls, into themills' of American Brass and from thereto arsenals and on to the battlefronts allover the world. At Butte the boys beginthe job. On fighting fronts from Berlinto Tokyo the boys ace finishing it.

Bombs, with Montana's copper inthe fuses, are raining down probably atthis very minute on military locations ofthe Nazis and the Japs. They are beingunloaded on war production plants inGermany and Japan. They are beingdropped in the laps of the Krauts and theNips on every major battlefront.

In Montana, 'copper may sometimesseem far removed from the scenes of ac-tion. But when you go through thesevarious departments at American Brassand see Montana copper supplying part~for planes, essential metal for landingcraft and the shells they unload afterthey get' where they're going. you beginto get a bigger notion of the part we inMontana are playing.

Thin sheet metal is used for timingfuses. but it's used for many other thingstoo. The metal doesn't go into final mili-tary form. you understand, at these brassmills in Connecticut. It moves on to ar-senals and to factories all over the coun-try. at the direction of the War or NavyDepartment. In Montana we give UncleSam what he asks for, and he sends itwhere he needs it most.

see the metal after it has been coiled. Here is yourMontana copper on the way to do a big league jobfor Uncle Sam, who needs copper plenty.

Here at the left we see hot Tobin Bronze billetscomin~ out of a heating furnace to be. rolled. Inthe second picture we see tough Tobin Bronze

NATIONS AT WAR need a sea-goingmetal, something that will stand the gaffof salt water. The United States, deep atwar, needs the best it can get in metalsfor use under water, metals that will bearup under the attacks that sal t watermakes on them.

That need prompted Uncle Sam tocall for the first and one of the greatestscientifically developed copper alloys-Tobin Bronze, named after Lieut. JohnTobin, U. S. N., who years ago developedthis wonderful metal. A useful peace-time material for many purposes, it hasits greatest use today in aiding the Navy..For Tobin bronze has great corrosion re-sistance to salt water. It's aood for shipparts below water, and good for parts ex-posed to ocean weather.

Sixty per cent copper, 39.25% zinc,and .75% tin are used in making theTobin Bronze billets which average from750 pounds to 2.000 pounds each, and alarge part of that' copper and zinc comesfrom Montana. These billets are moved-bv the ov~rhead crane, from the castingshop and loaded onto the platform readyto be shoved into the furnace. Aroundfifty bars or billets are heated at the sametime in the furnace, and you'll usuallyfind the platform loaded with seven oreight billets on hand ready to go in.

When the hot round Tobin Bronzebillet becomes semi-plastic at around 650

At the left below we see the hot billets ready togo to tbe reduci,ng roll. At the right, below, is anextrusion machine, which makes shafting not as

shafting for a landing craft coming through thehot rolls. This is the fifth pass for this shaftingthrough the rolls. In the third picture, back the

*TOBIN

»:

BRONZEAT WAR

*Salt water is an enemy of most metals.

•But lobin Bronze, a product of The Amer ..ican Brass Company, has great corrosion.resistance to salt water. It is good for shipparts below water, and it will stand the..gaff of heavy ocean weather. Today TobinBronze is used chiefly for propeller shaft-ing for landing craft. So as victory comescloser and our landing craft mount moreand more beaches. just remember thatyour Montana copper is helping the boysget there.

*tough as Tobin Bronze. However, the Navy uses itin large quantities. A hot billet is pushed througha round die at ·tremendous pressure to make this

shafting goes again-note how it has thinneddown from the previous pass through the rolls.Each pass reduces it further.

degrees, it will drop out at the front ofthe furnace onto a steel roller conveyor,which carries il up to the reducing. millproper. The red hot billet is reduced tothe required diameter b.ybeing moved bythe men to the various grooves of theroll. There are thirty-two grooves in theroll and a seven inch diameter billet canbe reduced to three inches by this roll.

The boys move the red hot billets tothe various grooves. When the bi llets arereduced to the required size, they arebrought along the steel floor still red hotand the metal is allowed to cool by air onthe floor. From this point it is actuallyTobin Bronze shafting. The shaft is thenmilled 'to obtain a perfect surface. an-nealed and cold drawn through a steeldie to reduce diameter and increaselength. It is pickled or cleaned by dippingin a sulphuric acid solution and drawn tofinish size on a draw bench; straightened'on a Medart straightening machine •.sawed to length and inspected.

It is a long jump from the Anselmomine ..or from the flotation tanks at theSmelter: or from the Electrolytic CopperRefinery at Great Falls-it's a long jumpfrom there to the beachheads of the Pa-cific. where the landing craft are pilingup in each morning's headline to take themeasure of the Nip. But it isn't such along jump when you stop to figure it out,And we must figure it out.

shafting. then drawn down to the proper size fotuse in Navy ships. This plant is all out in produc-ing vital war materials for Uncle Sam.

In the top picture at the left is shown a Medart.fraightener. This machine is straightening a 2V2inch Tobin Bronze shaft for a landing craft. In the

picture at the right, the operator is machining an8 inch Tobin B.-onzeshaft from the forged billetin a lathe. Note the New Haven freight car in the

background ready to be loaded with war materialfor a government arsenal. The rails are heavy'these days with all kinds of equipment.

HERE IS TOBIN BRONZE

Some of the processes in any modern factory stillare done best by hand.•Here at the left we seetwo experts straightening the shafting by actually

bumping it on a wooden block. These men are soskilled at this work that they are superior to anymachine yet known. Over there at the right a load

of shafts is lifted by crane and moved along tothe next operation. This is one of the busiestplaces in Connecticut today.

Here is the proof, shown at the left. This man i.tes-ting, in a very sensitive instrument, the shaft-ing shown above to determine that it i. absolutely

straight. The man in the center picture is "mik-ing" the finished shafts, using the micrometer. Inthe third picture we see another form of this sea-

going metal. This is a 100 inch four-rol] rollingnaval brass sheet for Navy fighting craft, nowbeing produced-in great quantitie ..

No 'Time to Slow Down

T HE country's brass mills to whichflow a steady stream of your copper fromMontana. are humming these days. No-where is this more true than in the Con-necticut Valley mills of the Ameri~anBrass Company, subsidiary of the Ana-conda Copper Mining Company.

As you know, your editors revisitedThe American Brass mills following the

.. reverses in Europe in December when theNazis slashed back at the Allies and up-set our timetable. Cranted. the news hasgotten a little better'since then. At' thetime this is written. we are all pleasedwith the victories in the Pacific and have .noted with pleasure the assaults of theRussians against the gates of Berlin.' Butyour top military authorities, and theyarethe boys who know, will tell you that thecollapse of a single enemy stronghold doesno't spell victory. The collapse of Bataandoes not signal the end of the war. Itis merely one stepping stone on the longroad to victory. Actually we can take

\ Berlin itself; actually'" we can captureTokyo, and still this mess w,on't necessari-I.V be over •.

We are shooting away our copperat a staggering rate. Every constructionprogram of Uncle Sam calls for hugequantities of copper.

_In answer to queries from laborabout the critical shortage which has beenannounced in brass strip. D. Allan Stra-chan, Deputy Vice-Chairman, Labor P,ro-duction Office of the War ProductionBoard. Washington. has said: ~'Opera-tion demands require a tremendous ex-pansion of the heavy artillery ammunitionand small arms ammunition programs.This means that unprecedented produe-tion demands will be made on brass stripmills in 1945 •.• Alloy brass strip sched-ules must be increased from 240 to 354million pounds a month and brass rodfrom 94 to 114 minion pounds a month.These are needed for the production ofshells which are badly needed at thefront."

All of us are weary of being proddedto work harder, to give more. but thereis no hope of an early peace or an en-during one if we don't stay right with thejob.

MARCH 2, 1945.

BRASS MILL

e Ie and Pla~es:A S far as we are able to learn from gov-ernment sources, our Montana copper isgoing chiefly into ammunition and elec-trical communication systems. Of coursethere are tremendous quantities of ourcopper being used in planes, notably the8-29 Superfortresses which are lashingaway at the Nips almost daily, and thereis a great deal as well in landing craft andtanks. The interior of a big bomber or ofa tank is literally a network of copperwiring.

The reason for the stepped-up de-mand for copper was because none of ourmilitary people had been able to estimateaccurately how much material would beused. It is an actual fact that for a time!( it may still be the case) we were shoot-ing away at least ten times as much smallarms and heavy ammunition as we hadfizured we would, The day's production.of a Butte miner can be shot away in thiswar in a matter of seconds, You reallydon't get a good grasp of how much cop-per this- war requires until you visit thebrass mills and the Army and Navy arsen-als where the stuff is being molded intofinished form.

Commando in ConnecticutThis doesn't have anything par+leu-

farly to do with our trips through thebrass mills (both Bob Newcomb andMarg Sammons. editors of Copper Com-'

,mando, visited these mills at differenttimes). But we were naturally pleased toknow of the great interest shown in Mon-tana copper production by the brass millworkers back East.

They read Copper Commando withinterest back there and have reported tous tHat they feel they have learned a greatdeal about mining and smelting as are-sult of the picture stories in your ownnewspaper,

Cetting the DopeOne thing your editors like so much

about their work in Montana is the factthat representatives of labor and manage-ment alike show such a willingness to co-operate in giving us the benefit of theirknowledge. /1s a couple of greenhorns,your editors have to grope their way

through many mining and metallurgicalproblems, and it is really swell when'everybody from the top man down helps

I us keep our facts straight.

The same thing holds true at ThEJAmerican Brass Company in Connecticut ..In this picture Marg Sammons is gettingthe dope from Jules jugnez, foreman atthe Pressed Metal Department.

Women on the JobYou would be amazed to see the

great number of women in eastern plants,not only in the brass mills but everywherein eastern war production factories. Onething that struck us during our last tripwas the high percentage of middle-agedwomen who wore service pins. Onewoman, Mrs. Katherine Booth, whom weinterviewed several months ago andwhose picture we used on a front cover,had four sons in the service and we weresorry to learn that one has been lost inaction.

These women, mothers of sons onthe far-flung battlefronts of the world,'are grimly determined to get this war over.with.

There are many fathers of servicemen in these plants too and they waste notime in getting out the day's production,"We could make this war last forever i~we wanted to," one man with two sonsin the Navy told us, "but what sort ofpeople would we be? Every minute's de-lay on the production battlefront meansanother life wasted on the actual battle-front. Our boys are fighting for us and'the least we can do is fight for them ....

\

'. 1·1 •

...

Cartridge brass for small arms and artillery shellcases is produced at the -\nsonia, Connecticut,plant of The American Brass Company, and in

this picture we see castings moving along the rollconveyor to the walking bea", furnace for furtherprocessing.

'~AilTRIDGE BRASS

*Uncle S'am is riding herd on all of us these days to get out copper and one of its chiefuses is for cartridge brass, which is made up into cartridge discs and artillery shell

• cases. The demand for small arms ammun it ion and heavy ammunition today is ter-

rific. Here's the picture story of your metal as it moves in to manufacturing plants

back East and is put to work again'st the Axis, and that means Hitler and Hirohito.

-c *

.. • 12 •

THE story of the production of car-tridge brass by the American Brass Com-pany is certain to become one of the greatproduction stories of this war. For car-tridge brass, in a sense, represents thenecessary follow-up to any air or sea in-vasion:

We can drop block-busters on Berlinand Tokyo but most military men are bynow.agreed that air assaults are chieflyfor the purpose of softening up theenemy. tak'ing his munitions plants out ofoperation and paralyzing. his communica-tions system and supply lines. But, underthe heaviest assaults .that the Nazi Luft-waffe could offer, the people on the"tight little British Isle" stood up. Theyholed in, so to speak: they moved theirfactories underground; they launched asmall but growing counter-offensive andfought the Nazis out of the air.

On the same basis. while our assaultson' key Nazi centers have been tremen-dous-far greater than any the Nazis everdid to England-e-still you can't force sur-render from the ai r. It takes the arti Ileryand the infantry to mop up. It takes bat-tleships. but it also takes destroyers andsmaller craft, even down to PT boats,down to landing barges which can un-leash fighting men against enemy-heldbeachheads.

Small arms ammunition has playeda major role in this war so far, and thechances are good that it will be a biggerrole from now on. There was a lull fora time in small arms ammunition produc-tion. because it, was felt that we hadreached our needed quota. But Hitler up-set our timetable and changed all that.

Cartridge brass for small arms andarti Itery shell cases is made from seventyper cent copper and thirty per cent zinc,both of which are shipped from Montana.But there is a whale of a difference in itsappearance from the time it is shipped.from Great Falls to the time it is shipped

That is a close-up, at the lower left, of the cast-ings as they enter the furnace. Below we see areduced casting as it comes through a pair ofbreak-down rO,lIs. These break-down rolls arewater-cooled and will roll the casting down toany gage.

MARCH 2, 1945

These break-down rolls are very interesting towatch in operation. We see the heavy castingsseveral inches thick flattened down to thin strips.I _

out from the American Brass Companyat its Ansonia. Connecticut. branch.

Let's follow the operation along, seehow it begins, and how it winds up. Thecastings which are soon to be fashionedinto bullets and shells, weigh from 625to 850 pounds. They are moved by crane

, from the casting shop to a roll conveyor(follow the picrures which illustrate thisarticle and you'll see how the job isdone) . On the roll conveyor they aremoved to the walking beam furnace.Here the castings enter the furnace.

The reason it is called a walkingbeam furnace is because the furnace itselfworks automatically-it" operates like athree-step escalator, for there_are threerows of bars going into the furnace. The

./

top row drops down after the cake hasdropped into the furnace. Automaticallythe castings are pushed off one at a time.There are seventy-two castings in the fur-nace at a time and it take a temperatureof about 700 degrees to make these cakescome from the furnace red hot and plasticenough to roll bars twenty-two feet long.

These bars are put through a pair of

The operators who handle the castings must havean eagle-eye--there's an expert operator to theright a.bove. To the left below we see the cas'ting,

,

MARCH 2. 1945

Here, in the picture at the left, for example, Wesee the strip going thr-ough the break-down rollsfor another reduction. The bars are squared up

break-down rolls shown in these pages.These rolls are water-cooled and the oper-ation will roll the bar down to any gagefrom one inch to .350 gage. As the pic-ture on the next page shows, the bars aresquared up with an edging roll whichkeeps the bar uniform in width for thefrom nine to eleven passages through therolls. When they have been rolled to therequired specifications, thirteen bars arecollected and are moved by a crane to awater' bath tank.

By this time the bars are about twen-ty-two feet long, and after the water bath,they are moved by crane to the millingmachine which mills both sides. .

From the milling machine the barsare conveyed to a set of four-high rollsfor further reduction. Here the bars aregiven two or three passes through therolls for reduction to finished thickness.

But the bars are still hard and sofrom the four-high rolls they are conveyedto the roller hearth furnace for annealing.This process softens the metal. They goin one end and mov~ slowly through thefurnace-it actually takes forty-eight.

rolled to the required specifications and gatheredthirteen at a time, moved by crane to the millingmachine which mills both sides. After annealing

...

., with an edging roll shown in the picture. This

keeps the bars uniform in width, which is mostimportant in this whole operation.

and pickling, the metaf goes to the press whicliblanks -out cartridge case discs. These operationsare detailed on the ned page.

• 13 ••

,

On this page are various views of the cartridge- disc production, showing the discs being stamped

out, then being examined, checked and packedfor shipment to ars_enals. By now all this metalJ-a.s"probably been shot at the Nazis·or Japs.

r

minutes for a bar to go through. Afterpickling or cleaning in a sulphuric acid so-lution, it goes to the press which stampsout the disc at the rate of forty a minute.From four to five million pounds of thesediscs are shipped to arsenals each month.

These discs are made in a stampingpress which blanks out the cartridgecase discs. A Montana housewife wouldbe reminded of a cookie cutter, becausethat is just about what. the machine does-it cuts out a circle of metal, and theunused metal which is left over is re-turned for reprocessing. After inspection,off the discs go to the arsenals and fromthere to the fighti ng fronts.

The operations shown C?nthis pageare among the most interesting of all to beseen at this plant. These women, manyof them with" relatives or friends in theservice, work with lightning speed. Ifyou have any doubts. of the stepped-upAmerican production, visit Connecticut

•today,

.;;.1

The war has gone back into high gearagain. Only a few months ago' the govern-ment felt that we were far enough aheadwith our production of certain types ofammunition that we need not worry. Butour timetable was upset by ~ number ofsituations over which nobody had any con-trol. As a result, there was a productionstampede back to the m.ilfs and factories.Today this cartridge brass operation inConnecticut is one of the major operationsof the production war. With copper onceagain high on the critical list, Uncle Samis clamoring for every single ounce ofcopper he can get. The response on thepart of patriotic New Englanders has beentremendous. They are doing an all-outjob.

*

Copp~r shapes .such as t.hese from Creat Falls aresoon to be converted into commutator copper for •fighting' equipment.

,

COMMUTATOR copper is another oneof the essentials of modern warfare, andMontana copper does its big job in thisconnection, too.

For commutators are one of the mostessential pieces of equipment in militaryoperations. They are' essential to the op-eration of planes.. tanks and battleships-in fact, everything which operates byelectrical control, including the jeep.

These copper commutator segmentsare elements of necessity in peace or war.The commutator which carries the cur-rent to the armature coi Is of an electricmotor, or conveys current from the gen-erator coils to the electric transmission)ines: is an important link in every elec-trical circuit, whether it runs your auto-mobile, your refrigerator: oil burner orhouse lighting system. -, Commutators, which vary greatly in

size, are made up of carefully drawn andcut shapes of high conductivity copper,fitted together and separated from eachother with an insulation material such asmica. In its commutator copper mill, TheAmerican Brass Company produces mil-lions of commutator segments each cut toan exact design, whether its weight is inounces or pounds. And each is doing itsessential war job today.

Commutators used for small highspeed generators on airplanes generateconsiderable heat and require commuta-tor copper with from fifteen to twentyounces of silver to a ton of copper. Thissmall quantity of silver permits the com-mutator segments to withstand the highoperating temperatures.

Here on this page we see commuta-tor copper as it is manufactured. Thebillets are first moved by crane to a fur-

\ nace to be heated to a red hot stage. After *

This is one of the final drawing operations. Thisoperator, with a thirty-year service record, isdoing his part.

*(;OM.

MIJTATOR.(;OPP·ER

*The boys at ~reat Falls will recognize thecopper bars with which this operationstarts. Because .the miners in Butte getout, the ore, the smeltermen at Anacondacarry the job along and the men at CreatFalls fashion it into different shapes. yourfellow workers in The American BrassCompany mills are able to pick up these •Montana products and turn them into es-sential war products.

This is how the bars are cut to exact lengths. Afoot pedal pulls the saw over to the block beforethe bar is cut to required length.

An exhaustive inspection is made lor surface de-fects. Once okayed they are ready for packingand shipment to various arsenal.. .

This is a draw bench-as the coils are drawn toatraight lengths on this bench, they are cut tomill lengths.

passing through from fourteen to sixteenhot roll passes, the copper comes out incoil form.

These red hot coils are "dunked" ina tank of water for immediate- coqling-the finished coil we saw was one inchwide and about two hundred feet long,It was black due to oxidation caused byexposure of the hot copper to the ai r dur-ing rolling. This oxide is removed andthe coils thus cleaned by a pickling opera-tion which means dipping them in a dilutesulphuric acid solution. The coils movethen to the cold rolling operations whichtransform the coil from a .rectangularshape to a wedge shape, which is the com-mutator shape. After their passing, theyare put into the annealing furnace tosoften the coi Is for further reduction.Once more they are given a sulphuric bathand then taken to the draw benchesto bedrawn to finished size.

These coils must be finished to veryclose tolerance-in other words, theymust be exactly true to specifications. Be-fore these lengths can be shipped to themanufacturers, they must be inspected. for any surface defects. After this thor-oughgoing inspection, they are packedand are ready for shipment. The nexttime you "lear a plane roaring overhead,remember that the copper which you'mined, smelted or refined is used in theparts which keep that plane in the air.

Uncle Sam needs most desperatelyall of the products of the American BrassCompany today. These mills are turningout the essential equipment of war just asfast as it can be done. But they are behindschedule, too, because of the manpowershortages. But they cannot produce thefinished product unless they have the rawmaterials with which to work .

•Commutator copper after hot rolling comes outin coil form. This coiler operates a preliminarycoil roller at Ansonia•

•

Here are our boys approaching the Pacific beachheads, ready to tangle with the Nips. In the picture.above, a Navy 'combat photography unit was on hand when the first wave of American troops was putashore at a Japanese-occupied island, and many of the photographs taken at that tim~ wet'e madeunder heavy Japanese fire. Other ships in the convoy can be seen beyond the deck of this crowdedtransport. In the lower picture the men descend their rope ladders preparatory to landing. And yourMontana copper is in aUof these ships.

ONE thing fill of us must keep in these'trying times is a sense of balance. Wemust try to judge these wartime situa-tions calmly and sensibly.

If the soldier in a Pacific jungleloses his head and exposes himself to ene-my fire, he is just a casualty, a man 'whotried to do something for his country butdidn't.

We civilians have many such cas-Ualties among us, men and women whothink the war is over because some small"Victory has been won. These people ar.eready to drop their wartime jobs and theirwartime obligations and hurry back topeacetime conditions.

The fighting man can't lay down hisgun yet any more than we can lay downour tools. You can't tell a man on K ra-tions that a juicy steak is around the cor-ner because he knows it isn't. You can'ttell him that, because some enemy townhas fallen, he will be home next week.He won't be.

Let's all stay with the job.

THIS WAR

ISN'T OYERI

UNTIL THE.OTHER GUY

"

LAYS DOWNDIS GUN!

*Hitler didn't st~1't tMs wa~ by accident_:.'he started it by design, and it took years ofplanning. Hirohito didn't attack PearlHarbor on an impulse--his miJitary ma-chine had figured it for thirty years. Thesebandits didn't go into the wa,r with theidea of losing it. They will fight to thebitter end, because that is the only choice

. I

left for them. And as long as a Nazi or aJap lugs a gun, we and our families arein danger •

• *I