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Title (Dublin Core)
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How you can use surplus war material?
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Article Title and/or Image Caption (Dublin Core)
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Title: How you can use surplus war material?
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extracted text (Extract Text)
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THE Biblical injunction to beat swords into
plowshares and spears into pruning hooks
was fairly easy to follow when wars were
fought with swords and spears. But what
are you going to do with a General Sherman
tank now that it is no longer needed on the
battlefield? Of what use is a bazooka to a
peaceful civilian? Those re-
sponsible for disposing of sev-
eral billion dollars’ worth of sur-
plus war material would be glad
to hear the answers.
They aren't worrying too much
about tanks and bazookas, which
are relatively unimportant en-
tries on the long surplus-prop-
erty lists. Take a few lots at
random: 39,000 china sugar
bowls, 24,000 door pulls, 24,000
jungle kits, 42,800 miscellaneous
hand tools, 11,500 kerosene-lan-
tern globes, 2,000,000 laboratory
spoons, 500,000 miscellaneous
truck ‘and auto parts, 70,000
horseshoes. Go down the line
and you see how total the war
really was.
Many of the items can be sold
virtually out of hand. Most of
the clothing, for instance, is almost per-
fectly adapted for any outdoorsman. Take
the Army's battle jacket. Full-cut for free-
dom, made of multiple-weave poplin, it is
warm, roomy, and comfortable. Any jacket
that can stand up to jungle weather and
‘barbed wire can laugh at briers and duck
weather. The price of surplus jackets sold
through retail stores can only be guessed
at, but in the Army post exchanges they sell
for $1600.
Practically all excess Army clothing—
boots, trousers, socks, shirts, mitts, parkas
—will fit into the needs of farmers and out-
doorsmen. So will much of the smaller
equipment. Collapsible rubber rafts and
boats, particularly in the smaller sizes, will
be ideal for fishermen and vacationists, who
are already clamoring for a chance to buy
them. Jungle and survival Kits are on the
“must” lists of hunters and Boy Scouts.
Not many firearms are yet on the market,
though they are in high demand—with the
carbine topping the list just now. For those
who wish to restock that or any other rifle,
walnut gunstock blanks can already be
bought in some places. They are priced
around $1 apiece, cheaper in quantity lots.
Not all those now available, however, are
first quality, and anyone wanting to buy
had better choose with care. A good many
of these surplus blanks are being turned on
down into dummy guns for use
by school drill corps and similar
organizations.
Among the bigger items,
Quonset huts have a strong ap-
peal. Some want them for va-
cation cabins, while others would
use them for chicken houses,
small cow barns, tool houses,
workshops, and garages. Trail-
ers are in demand—every type
from light ones to be used as
itinerant homes to the heavy
giants now fitted out as mobile
repair shops. And jeeps, of
course, are still at the very top
of the list, both among men still
in the service and among ci-
vilians.
Jeeps, in fact, were listed in
one out of every three entries in
the contest for the best letters on “How I'll
Use Surplus War Goods,” announced in the
March 1945 issue of POPULAR SCIENCE.
Next in demand among the hundreds of en-
trants were rubber rafts, listed by 11 per-
cent. Then came airplanes, particularly
lightplanes; radios, including walkie-talkies;
assault boats, power tools, hand tools, tents,
firearms, trailers, electrical equipment.
Other items on the list included flame throw-
ers to be used as weed burners, smoke gen-
erators for orchard smudge pots, hand gre-
nades to clear brushy ground, and a B-20
fuselage to be made into a roadside diner.
First prize-winner Pvt. Arthur P. Ives, of
Fort Benning, Ga., plans to set up a small
airport and equip it with jeeps, trailers,
telephones, radios, and small planes, all from
war surplus. Second prize-winner C. A.
Wold, of Togo, Minn., hopes to convert his
farm into a rest camp for returning vet-
erans and wants sports equipment, jeeps,
rubber boats, tents, insecticides, maybe a
small airplane. Electrician's Mate C. M.
Newman, of Camp Shoemaker, Calif., third
prize-winner, expects to buy one of the
Navy's 50-foot liberty launches and convert
it into a coastwise cargo vessel to serve
British Columbia and southern Alaska fish-
ing villages.
Lasalle L. Nolin, of Woonsocket, R. I,
would equip an amphibious jeep as a life-
boat and first-aid vehicle for use on rivers
and lakes; Howard L. Smith, of Brockton,
Mont., wants an amphibious jeep to haul
grain from his ranch to market when the
restless Missouri puts the ferries out of
commission.
Shortage of household equipment is re-
flected in the number of people who want to
buy electric power plants, heating equip-
ment, laundry units, sewing machines,
plumbing, and even secondhand lumber. Re-
frigeration units are also in demand, and
air-conditioning units. Most of the air-con-
ditioning, heating, refrigerating, and power
units are of a size not suitable for private
use. So, too, with much of the furniture,
Kitchen equipment, and laundry units. These
belong in large camps or hotels and restau-
rants.
And for those who think hopefully of get-
ting used planes at bargain prices, a clear
warning should be given that most of the
planes will have seen hard service and will,
at best, be expensive to recondition and to
fly. They are warplanes, built for maximum
performance, not economy. Prospective pur-
chasers should be wary and well advised,
particularly about CAA licensing and in-
spection requirements. For that matter,
most of the surplus jeeps will have taken a
beating and will be in considerably less than
first-class condition. That goes as well for
trucks, tractors, and bulldozers.
But a great deal of the other material is in
good shape. Hardware and hand tools, for
instance, will find a ready market. There's
also a good deal of lumbering equipment,
ranging from chain saws to axes, cant hooks,
and wedges. The chain saws have a strong
appeal to farmers and owners of small
wood lots who lay by a few cords of fire
wood every fall. Some of the men in the
service who have used those saws plan to
get an Army truck, a chain saw, a few good
axes, and a partner and set themselves up
in the firewood business.
A good many of the service men look for-
ward to having their own small business,
based on skills they have learned or ex-
panded during the war and outfitted with
surplus war material. Prize-winner T/4
Paul R. Leonard, of Brooklyn, N. Y., ex-
pects to equip a trailer with machine tools
and follow the outboard-motorboat racing
enthusiasts from meet to meet, servicing
their boats and motors. Several airborne
engineers plan to use the lightweight air-
borne equipment—the versatile compressor
units stand in particular favor with them—
to do power jobs
on small farms and in semisuburban areas.
A good many electricians and radio men
dream of having trailer shops in which to
do on-the-spot repair and service work in
their home areas. David M. Wilkinson, of
Norwalk, Conn., believes that one of the
Army's land-mine locators would be of great
help in the plumbing business; he would use
it to trace underground water pipes and
sewer lines.
Any number of items, of course, can be
sold in small quantities to the ingenious
owners of home workshops. Pottery bowls
and jugs can be made into decorative lamps. -
Airplane pistons can be cut down into at-
tractive ash trays, and airplane connecting
rods need only a little imagination to be
converted into beautiful, modern andirons.
There's no end to the possible uses for plastic
windshields and windows from junked
planes. All kinds of metal tubing will go
into door chimes, vases, flower stands, racks,
book ends, and ultramodern furniture. Air-
craft sheet metal will be spun and ham-
mered into bowls and trays of every size
and shape. And the home craftsmen, of
course, will be avid purchasers of the sur-
plus tools, both power and hand, and of
whatever hardware and small supplies may
be available to them. Not the least of their
demand will be for the compact, high-
powered electric motors developed for air-
craft use; those motors will seem specially
designed for their basement or back-room
shops, where space appears to be always at
a premium.
© Obviously, the Government cannot sell
| this surplus material piecemeal to indi-
vidual purchasers; that would take years
and hundreds of retail salesrooms. The
policy has been to sell it in as large lots as
possible, preferably to small retailers. Ex-
ceptions have included farm machinery, sold
at public auction in farming areas, and air-
planes, sold to individual purchasers under
a special setup. But the great bulk of this
material will be made available only through
established retailers.
From the Government viewpoint, the
problem is to dispose of this material as
quickly and as simply as possible and with
the least disruption of private business.
There is no doubt that the ultimate con-
| sumers, ingenious Americans everywhere,
| will find good use for most of these figura-
tive swords and spears of modern war. Yes,
even for the bazooka, which may be firing
salvos of display rockets into the skies of
freedom next July Fourth.
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Contributor (Dublin Core)
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Hall Borland (article writer)
B. G. Seielstad (Illustrator)
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Language (Dublin Core)
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Eng
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Date Issued (Dublin Core)
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1945-10
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pages (Bibliographic Ontology)
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74-77,270
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Rights (Dublin Core)
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Public domain
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Archived by (Dublin Core)
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Sami Akbiyik
Popular Science Monthly, v. 147, n. 4, 1945
