Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-w5vf4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-09-01T04:48:37.531Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Making “Goop” Out of Lemons: The Permanente Metals Corporation, Magnesium Incendiary Bombs, and the Struggle for Profits during World War II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2015

Mark R. Wilson
Mark R. Wilson*
Affiliation:
History Department, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. E-mail: mrwilson@uncc.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

On May 29, 1945, Charles F. Calhoun, a vice president of the Permanente Metals Corporation (PMC), composed a telegram to his fellow company officers that celebrated a long-awaited triumph. “This is to confirm delivery to Tokyo, May 26th, during high wind, of large Permanente shipment by way Marion, Ohio, and B-29 express,” Calhoun began. “It is reported there was no loss of goods in transit but that considerable damage resulted from cargo being jettisoned within Tokyo city limits.” He could not resist adding, tongue firmly in cheek, “All ... claims of property damage will be forwarded to Permanente claims adjustment department.”

Information

Type
Introduction
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , March 2011 , pp. 10 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2011. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Bibliography of Works Cited

Books

Adams, Stephen B. Mr. Kaiser Goes to Washington: The Rise of a Government Entrepreneur. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Biddle, Tami Davis. Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British and American Ideas about Strategic Bombing, 1914–1945. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Brandes, Stuart D. Warhogs: A History of War Profits in America. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997.Google Scholar
Chemical Corps Association. The Chemical Warfare Service in World War II: A Report of Accomplishments. New York: Reinhold Publishing, 1948.Google Scholar
Connery, Robert H. The Navy and the Industrial Mobilization in World War II.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1951.Google Scholar
Crane, Conrad C. Bombs Cities and Civilians. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993.Google Scholar
Dow Chemical Co. Annual Report[s] for the Year[s] ended May 31. Midland, MI: 1941–1946.Google Scholar
Foster, Mark S. Henry J. Kaiser: Builder in the Modern American West. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Freyer, Tony A. Antitrust and Global Capitalism, 1930–2004. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Heiner, Albert P. HenryJ. Kaiser, American Empire Builder: An Insider’s View. New York: Peter Lang, 1989.Google Scholar
Hooks, Gregory. Forging the Military-Industrial Complex: World War II’s Battle of the Potomac. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Jones, Jesse. Fifty Billion Dollars: My Thirteen Years with the RFC. New York: Macmillan, 1951.Google Scholar
Koistinen, Paul A.C. Arsenal of World War II: The Political Economy of American Warfare, 1940–1945. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004.Google Scholar
Lauderbaugh, Richard A. American Steelmakers and the Coming of the Second World War. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Research Press, 1980.Google Scholar
Miller, John Perry. The Pricing of Military Procurements. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1949.Google Scholar
Mountcastle, John Wyndham. Flame On! U.S. Incendiary Weapons, 1918–1945. Shippensburg, PA: White Mane Books, 1999.Google Scholar
Nash, Gerald D. World War II and the West: Reshaping the Economy. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Russell, Edmund. War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from World War I to Silent Spring. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Schaffer, Ronald. Wings of Judgment: American Bombing in World War II. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Sherry, Michael S. The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Smith, R. Elberton. The Army and Economic Mobilization. Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1959.Google Scholar
Sparrow, Bartholomew H. From the Outside In: World War IIand the American State. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. M-69: The Fire Bomb that Falls on Japan. New York: Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, 1945.Google Scholar
Waddell, Brian. The War Against the New Deal: World War II and American Democracy. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Wells, Wyatt. Antitrust and the Formation of the Postwar World. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Werrell, Kenneth P. Blankets of Fire: U.S. Bombers over Japan during World War II. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996.Google Scholar

Articles and Essays

Bernstein, Barton. “The Automobile Industry and the Coming of the Second World War.” Southwestern Social Science Quarterly 47 (June 1966): 22–33.Google Scholar
Fagerberg, Dixon Jr. “A World War II Cost Accounting Assignment.” Accounting Historians Journal 17 (June 1990): 81–88.Google Scholar
Ferguson, Robert G. “One Thousand Planes a Day: Ford, Grumman, General Motors and the Arsenal of Democracy.” History and Technology 21 (June 2005): 149–175.Google Scholar
Gemery, Henry A. and Hogendorn, Jan S.. “The Microeconomic Bases of Short-Run Learning Curves: Destroyer Production in World War II.” In The Sinews of War: Essays on the Economic History of World War II, edited by Mills, Geofrey T. and Rockoff, Hugh, 150–165. Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Gholz, Eugene. “The Curtiss-Wright Corporation and Cold War-Era Defense Procurement: A Challenge to Military-Industrial Complex Theory.” Journal of Cold War Studies 2 (Winter 2000): 35–75.Google Scholar
Heinrich, Thomas B. “Jack of All Trades: Cramp Shipbuilding, Mixed Production, and the Limits of Flexible Specialization in American Warship Construction, 1940–1945.” Enterprise & Society 11 (June 2010): 275–315.Google Scholar
Higgs, Robert. “Private Profit, Public Risk: Institutional Antecedents of the Modern Military Procurement System in the Rearmament Program of 1940–41.” In The Sinews of War: Essays on the Economic History of World War II, edited by Mills, Geofrey T. and Rockoff, Hugh, 166–198. Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Holley, I.B. Jr. “A Detroit Dream of Mass-Produced Fighter Aircraft: The XP-75 Fiasco.” Technology and Culture 28 (July 1987): 578–93.Google Scholar
Karch, Andrew. “Venue Shopping, Policy Feedback, and American Preschool Education.” Journal of Policy History 21 (January 2009): 38–60.Google Scholar
Lieberman, Marvin B. “The Magnesium Industry in Transition.” Review of Industrial Organization 19 (August 2001): 71–80.Google Scholar
Mishina, Kazuhiro. “Learning by New Experiences: Revisiting the Flying Fortress Learning Curve”. In Learning by Doing in Markets, Firms, and Countries, edited by D. Raff, N. Lamoreaux and Temin, P. 145–184. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Nickel, Robert V. “Dollars, Defense, and the Desert: Southern Nevada’s Military Economy and World War II.” Nevada Historical Society Quarterly 47 (December 2004): 303–327.Google Scholar
Ralph, William W. “Improvised Destruction: Arnold, LeMay, and the Firebombing of Japan.” War in History 13 (November 2006): 495–522.Google Scholar
Searle, Thomas R. “‘It Made a Lot of Sense to Kill Skilled Workers’: The Firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945,” Journal of Military History 66 (January 2002): 103–34.Google Scholar
Thompson, Peter. “How Much Did the Liberty Shipbuilders Learn? New Evidence for an Old Case Study.” Journal of Political Economy 109 (February 2001): 103–137.Google Scholar
Wilson, Mark R. “‘Taking a Nickel Out of the Cash Register’: Statutory Renegotiation of Military Contracts and the Politics of Profit Control in the USA during World War II.” Law and History Review 28 (May 2010): 343–383.Google Scholar
Zeitlin, Jonathan. “Flexibility and Mass Production at War: Aircraft Manufacture in Britain, the United States, and Germany, 1939–1945.” Technology and Culture 36 (January 1995): 46–79.Google Scholar

Magazines and Newspapers

Fortune.Google Scholar
Life.Google Scholar
New York Times.Google Scholar
New Yorker.Google Scholar
Newsweek.Google Scholar
Time.Google Scholar

Unpublished Work

“Case History of Permanente Project, San Jose, Calif.” (n.d.), reel 33012, Air Force Historical Research Agency, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama.Google Scholar
Roberts, Lucien E. “Light Metals and Other Critical Aircraft Materials.” U.S. Army Air Forces, 1944, typescript report, reel 2040, Air Force Historical Research Agency Microfilm, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama.Google Scholar

Archival Sources

Henry, J. Kaiser Papers [HJK Papers], Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, California.Google Scholar
General Records of the Department of the Navy, 1798–1947. RG 80. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland.Google Scholar
Records of the Chemical Warfare Service [U.S. Army], 1917–1963. RG 175. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland.Google Scholar

Government Documents

Minutes of the Office of Production Management, December 21, 1940, to January 14, 1942. Washington, DC: GPO, 1946.Google Scholar
Minutes of the Supply Priorities and Allocations Board, September 2, 1941, to January 15, 1942. Washington, DC: GPO, 1946.Google Scholar
United States House of Representatives. “Authorizing the Disposal of Magnesium from the National Stockpile.” House Report 769, 89th Congress, 1st Session. Washington, DC: GPO, 1965.Google Scholar
United States Senate. Centralization of Heavy Industry in the United States: Hearing before the Special Committee to Investigate the Centralization of Heavy Industry in the United States, United States Senate, Seventy-Eighth, Second Session, Part 1, March 27,1944: Basic Magnesium, Inc. Washington, DC: GPO, 1944a.Google Scholar
United States Senate. Investigation of the National Defense Program, Additional Report… Magnesium. Washington, DC: GPO, 1944b.Google Scholar
United States Senate. Investigation of the National Defense Program: Hearings before a Special Committee Investigating the National Defense Program, United States Senate, Seventy-Eighth Congress, Second Session… Part 24. Washington, DC: GPO, 1944c.Google Scholar
United States Strategic Bombing Survey. Effects of Incendiary Bomb Attacks on Japan: A Report on Eight Cities. Washington, DC: GPO, 1947.Google Scholar