Word: wpb
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Over the Hump? The great hope sprang out of war production. U.S. industrial genius had triumphed beyond belief. WPB had suddenly discovered that its first big job was done. The spadework was over in munitions-making, in getting the many new plants built, in converting the old ones. No one had guessed how much war material the new plants would make- and how fast...
...arms production, WPB Chair-man Donald M. Nelson spoke: "[The U.S.] is actually doing things today which were truly unthinkable a year ago. It is executing programs which sounded utterly fantastic no more than six months ago " Out the window went WPB's long-term plans for factories that would not produce arms until later. The war effort had succeeded in establishing the full priority of things military over things civilian, but now priorities were being established among military items. For the first time U.S. priorities were apparently being dictated not by the general object of beating the enemy...
Nelson decentralized his staff, turned production over mostly to the Army & Navy, set up a new all-important committee to feed the war machine with raw materials, keep the present lines moving at top speed. To move the produce and to get around the shipping bottleneck, WPB worked toward a huge new fleet of air transports. Now 1943 and 1944 were far away and 1945 was never...
Downhill Road? In England, chafing for action, the news about WPB was greeted exuberantly. Cried London headlines: U.S. PLAN IS NOW FOR SWIFT VICTORY; WIN IN 1942. Winston Churchill said that the United Nations could now see the top of the ridge beyond which lay the road to victory...
...grim reminder came from WPB. Rubber, which had almost been forgotten in the uproar, might make the gasoline prob-lem academic. At the rate people had been riding around before gas rationing began, rubber was wearing out at the rate of 3½% a month. For the sake of rubber, if not for the sake of gas itself, the whole country is likely soon to face gas rationing. Like the East, it will probably grouse a bit and chisel a bit, for men do not like to have their habits forcibly changed. But in no other country in the world...