Major Kaiser Accomplishments
During the Fleur du Lac Era (1935 - 1962) Part One
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“Fortune Favors the Bold” – Vergil
At its peak in the early 1960’s, Henry Kaiser’s business interests including Kaiser Industries, Kaiser Steel, and Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical had combined annual revenues exceeding $1 billion ($9.45 billion) and operations in more than 50 countries around the world. Kaiser’s business empire at that time was among the largest in the United States, larger than such familiar companies as Eastman Kodak and Coca-Cola. Kaiser’s greatest triumphs in business came relatively late in his life, in the late 1930’s to mid-1950’s, when he was more than 60 years old. His greatest accomplishments also occurred during the period the Kaisers enjoyed Fleur du Lac as their playground, corporate retreat and refuge. The full story of Henry Kaiser’s remarkable business triumphs during the period his family enjoyed Fleur du Lac can be found below:
Early Success in Construction
Others have written that Fleur du Lac was built by Henry Kaiser to celebrate his consortium, Six Companies, completing the Hoover Dam. While we are not sure that assertion is strictly true, it is certain that the Hoover Dam project was Henry’s breakthrough in the U. S. construction business. But, the springboard for that massive project was actually the success he had enjoyed earlier in Cuba (1929) building the Central Highway, a $20 million ($327 million) project including 200 miles of highway and 500 bridges, working in partnership with the Warren Brothers a well-established construction firm.
Finishing his portion of the contract almost two years ahead of schedule, earning a profit of $2.1 million ($35.3 million), and getting his profits out of Cuba before the Country imploded, the job made Henry a millionaire (a $16 millionaire in today’s dollars) and qualified him for greater projects in the eyes of potential partners in the construction business.
So it was natural for “Dad” Bechtel to come to Henry with the idea of putting together a consortium to enter a bid for the Hoover (Boulder) Dam project. Most banks and construction companies were still weak from the effects of the Great Depression. The U. S. Government was a merciless taskmaster on large projects; bids were required to be at a fixed price and a performance bond was required as well. Since the Hoover Dam project was to be the largest single project ever done by the Bureau of Reclamation to that point, the U. S. Government office overseeing the project, and was expected to be bid near $50 million ($921 million), very few construction companies were in a position to even enter a bid. As it turned out, only three consortiums entered bids, and when the bid envelopes were opened on March 4, 1931, Henry’s consortium, the Six Companies, was the low bidder at $48,890,995.50 ($901 million). Presumably, the 50 cents on the bid were there for good luck, and it worked!
From an engineering point of view, it was an audacious project. The chosen location was very rugged, and the Colorado River had wild and unpredictable flow rates. In order to tame the river flow so that the Dam could be built, construction crews would have to blast two diversion tunnels through solid granite, before they could pour the amount of cement required to build the dam, that would itself total more than the sum total of all cement used in all prior Bureau of Reclamation projects combined. In fact, the cement required to build the Dam could have built a 20-foot wide, 6-inch-thick concrete highway stretching from Oakland to Washington D. C.
The simple, practical problems seemed overwhelming. Such as, where were the thousands of workers necessary to build the Dam going to live? Kaiser solved that problem by building a new city, Boulder City, to house the workers.
After the dust settled about 5 years later on March 1, 1935 when construction was completed, Kaiser’s team had delivered the project 2 years and 2 months ahead of schedule and under budget. As its reward, the Consortium earned a profit of $10.4 million ($211 million) after taxes.
While hard at work on the Hoover Dam, Kaiser and Bechtel won the bid for the Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River at $16 million ($347 million) in 1933. While a smaller job financially than the Hoover Dam, the massive flow rate of the Columbia, over one million cubic feet per second-five times greater than the Colorado River at the Hoover Dam, and the structure of the river’s banks presented unique engineering and construction challenges.
Henry made a brave decision and put his son Edgar, then 25-years-old, and one of his top “kids” Clay Bedford, 31-years-old, as co-general managers on the project. Just as with other Kaiser projects, Edgar and Clay brought the project in ahead of schedule and under budget with a profit of about $1.8 million ($39 million). Kaiser would later say: “They said it couldn’t be done, but my kids went ahead and did it anyway!”
But then, Kaiser suffered a rare stumble in construction in the Caldecott Tunnel Project in his own backyard in 1937. Caught between unforeseen engineering problems, a fixed price contract, and a non-bending Government team of overseers, Kaiser and his team ended up losing $2.4 million ($46.9 million) and suffered a blow to their image.
With the Hoover and Bonneville Dams on the resume, Kaiser was able to win one more prize job on the mighty Columbia River, the Grand Coulee Dam. The superstructure of the Dam was to be the largest structure ever built by man at the time construction began in 1938. The Dam would need three times the concrete used in the Hoover Dam, which means that the concrete used in this Dam could build a divided highway with each side 20 feet wide and 6 inches thick from Oakland to New York City, and have plenty of concrete left over for a few bridges along the way!
It was a monumental project, and once again, Henry put his faith and trust in Edgar Kaiser and Clay Bedford, now hardened construction managers at the ages of 29 and 35 years old respectively on the $34.4 million ($684.2 million) project. In a new wrinkle, Edgar convinced his father to offer all the construction workers and their families prepaid medical services through a new vehicle they created called Kaiser Permanente. Edgar and Bedford were so successful in managing the project that the Dam delivered its first electricity on March 22, 1941 and was fully completed on June 1, 1942, more than 1.5 years ahead of schedule. The team also delivered a profit of $7.2 million ($143.7 million) on the project. In fact, things went so well at Grand Coulee that Clay Bedford was able to leave the project early, with young Edgar in full control, to oversee the construction of the huge new Naval Air Station at Corpus Christi, Texas.
Although the Grand Coulee Dam project marked the end of Kaiser’s construction focus in the United States, Kaiser companies continued to build large projects outside the US such as: the Snowy Mountain Dam, one of a string of 16 dams in the massive hydroelectric and irrigation complex in southern Australia, as well as the Eucumbene Dam that created Lake Eucembene, the largest of all the dams and reservoirs in the project, completed in 1958. Kaiser also built a huge hydroelectric project and aluminum smelting plant on the Volta River in Ghana, a dam on the Bandama River in Ivory Coast, West Africa, and a hydroelectric plant, aluminum plant, steel mills, and a cement facility in India. Perhaps just an important, he built medical facilities for his workers and their families in every developing country in which he operated.
Serendipitous Entry into Industrial Products
Ironically, it was the loss of what Kaiser thought would be a sure thing, the Shasta Dam project in 1939, that nudged Kaiser into a new emphasis on industrial products. After losing the bid for the Dam, Kaiser vowed to provide all the cement for the project. He created Permanente Cement that supplied 95% of all the cement used in the project. He was able to outbid other, more established, cement providers by constructing an ingenious 9.6-mile conveyor belt to deliver bulk cement directly to the Dam site at very low transportation costs, savings he passed along, mostly, to his customer. He was able to turn his failure to win the construction project into a $6.9 million ($139 million) business at a very attractive profit margin.
With his new expertise in bulk cement, Kaiser was able to create a virtual monopoly in the cement business in Hawaii with his bulk carrier ship, the Silver Bow. This Hawaii cement monopoly had a very important advantage a few years later. When Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese aircraft in 1941, Kaiser was able to quickly supply virtually all of the cement used to rebuild the Harbor in 1941 and 1942. President Roosevelt would later say: “No doubt about it, Kaiser’s bulk cement helped win the Pacific War.” Success in bulk cement also led to profitable related businesses in gypsum and sand and gravel, all staple products in the construction business.
Kaiser’s Contribution to the World War II Effort: Ships
With Great Britain besieged by German “U Boats”, submarines, and Europe fully inflamed by World War II, Henry Kaiser saw a dire need for a West Coast shipbuilding capability even before the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor drew the United States into the War. In Kaiser’s eyes, the East Coast shipbuilding industry was hidebound and far too slow in responding to the obvious need for war machines.
As was often the case, Kaiser faced naysayers among the East Coast establishment, politicians, and even some military leaders who made the simple observation that Kaiser had never built a ship of any kind, let alone a ship that could be effective in wartime conditions. Undaunted, Kaiser entered the shipbuilding business on December 9, 1940 by contracting, with Todd Shipyards as a partner, to deliver 30 “Liberty” ships to Great Britain.
Liberty ships were to become the staple ship used to deliver much needed civilian and wartime supplies to Great Britain from the United States. The ships were 442 feet long, and 47 feet wide, had a cargo capacity of more than 10,000 tons and travelled at a speed of about 11 knots powered by a steam engine. The Liberty, and successor “Victory,” ships were extremely useful as transport ships; each ship could carry 2,840 jeeps, 440 truck tankers, or 230 million rounds of ammunition.
Most ships manufactured in the East Coast yards had hulls constructed from riveted steel sheets, and were assembled by a team that performed all the functions necessary to complete a single ship. Kaiser had a different idea of how the ships should be constructed. His contract with Great Britain called for Kaiser to build the necessary shipyard at Richmond, California, and for the Todd Shipyards crew to actually build the ships. On April 14, 1941, four months after the contract with Great Britain was signed, Kaiser had built the Richmond yards from nothing and the keel was laid for the first ship to be constructed.
Less than four months after that, on August 12, 1941, the Ocean Vanguard was the first ship launched from the Richmond Yards. However, that ship was not built by the Todd Shipyards crew, but instead by Kaiser’s shipbuilders using Kaiser’s new modular, assembly line construction methods and welding the steel plates rather than employing the more time-consuming riveting process. Kaiser and Todd parted ways and all subsequent ships were built completely by Kaiser crews. There is an interesting Hollywood depiction of Kaiser’s triumph at Richmond titled the Man from Frisco in 1944, starring handsome Michael O’Shea as Henry Kaiser. Interestingly, despite Kaiser’s business triumphs through the war years and after, this was the only movie about Henry or the Kaiser Family.
Kaiser delivered the contracted ships to Great Britain more than 5 months early and Winston Churchill would later credit Kaiser with “saving England” by helping to keep supply lines open from the United States.
Kaiser would later expand the facilities at Richmond by adding three additional shipyards. The small town of Richmond, population 25,000, was completely overwhelmed and changed forever by the additions of the Kaiser yards. By the end of 1942, Kaiser employed more than 100,000 workers who came to Richmond from all parts of the United States. At its peak near the end of the war, the Richmond yards employed more than 300,000 workers.
Not content with the production at Richmond, Kaiser sent his son Edgar to create shipyards near Portland, Oregon after Edgar completed his work at the Grand Coulee Dam. The three shipyards at Portland were built as part of a 1,000-acre development, and the first keel was laid on May 19, 1941, only a month after the first keel at the Richmond Yards. The first ship launched from the Portland yards was the Star of Oslo on September 27, 1941.
Like Richmond, Portland, population 340,000 at the time, suffered from the population explosion at the yards which peaked at about 97,000 workers in 1942. To alleviate the strain on Portland, Edgar used part of the 1,000 acres he had acquired to build the new city of Vanport to fill the needs for worker housing. Sometimes referred to as “Kaiserville” or “The Miracle City”, Vanport housed 42,000 workers and their families in 10,000 houses constructed by Kaiser. Vanport would become the largest wartime housing development and the second largest city in Oregon at the time; the city was later destroyed by a Memorial Day flood in 1948.
The importance of Kaiser’s shipbuilding efforts was highlighted by news from the naval battles in the Atlantic Theater. Less than a week after the first keel was laid at Portland, on May 24, 1941, the German battleship Bismark sank the pride of the British Navy, the HMS Hood, killing all but 3 of the 1,418 crewmen aboard. A severe psychological blow to Churchill, he ordered all available British Navy ships to find the Bismark and avenge the Hood’s loss. Less than three days later, on May 27, 1941, while making a run back to its home port, the Bismark was located in the North Atlantic and sunk, killing all 2,300 German sailors onboard.
News like the Bismark sinking was very important to civilian morale. Realizing this, Kaiser ordered a competition between the Portland and Richmond yards to demonstrate the rate at which war supplies could be provided. It was well known that German submarines were destroying supply ships almost as fast as they were being constructed, trying to tighten the noose around England’s supply lines. In what was derided by some as a “public relations stunt”, on November 7, 1942 the Richmond yard completed a 442-foot-long Liberty ship, the SS Robert E Peary, in 4 days, 15 hours, and 26 minutes from the point the keel was laid until the ship was launched. The normal time for a similar ship to be built in the East Coast yards at the time was a little over 2 months. In truth, it was done for public relations purposes, but it had the full support of Franklin Roosevelt and it accomplished its purpose, boosting public morale at a particularly dark period of the War.
Another triumph for Kaiser in shipbuilding was the idea to convert supply ship hulls into what became known as “baby flat tops”, small escort aircraft carriers that could assist the Pacific Fleet. The Navy hated the idea, but relented when pressured by Roosevelt and confronted with the realities they faced in the Pacific Theater. As usual, Kaiser built the ships very quickly and they proved to be critically valuable to the Allied victory in the Pacific.
Despite the naysayers, what the Robert E Peary demonstration and the official construction statistics during the War clearly illustrated was that Kaiser’s modular construction methods, and his innovative competition between the Richmond and Portland yards, resulted in ships being produced at a rate approximately two times that of the established East Coast yards. Kaiser yards averaged 30 to 35 days per ship while the East Coast yards averaged a little over 2 months per ship. What’s more, the average cost of a Kaiser ship was about one-half the cost of ships produced in the East Coast yards. These are all simple facts, impossible to refute. A final advantage resulted from the way Kaiser’s yards were constructed with multiple ship-ways; the Richmond and Portland yards each produced about 3 ships each day, providing a steady stream of ships to counter the Axis Powers menace.
Kaiser’s ship production numbers are simply amazing. The Kaiser yards built a total of 1,490 ships; 747 at the Richmond yards, and 743 at Portland. All totaled, the yards built 13 different types of ships including: 821 Liberty ships, 219 Victory ships, 107 war ships, 50 baby flat top carriers, plus 294 other ships of various configurations. This was accomplished over a time span of just 68 months. Kaiser’s reputation as a man who would get things done quickly spread among the Allied Generals under enormous pressure early in WW II. The wartime photograph shows General George C. Marshall listening intently to a point being made by Henry.
The approximate total value of the ships produced by Kaiser shipyards was $4.1 billion ($68.7 billion). With their work done and the War over, the Richmond and Portland yards closed in January, 1947.
Kaiser’s Contribution to the World War II Effort: Aircraft
While Kaiser’s successes in shipbuilding were being heralded around the world, Henry knew that the German U Boats were sinking his supply ships almost as fast as they could be built. So, in a speech to shipyard workers at the Portland yards on July 19, 1942, Kaiser unveiled a seemingly outrageous plan to convert some space at the 1,000 acre shipyard into facilities to build 5,000 extremely large transport aircraft, “flying boats” as he called them, by the end of 1943. His idea was to fly wartime supplies over the heads of the U Boats out of harm’s way.
On the face of it, the idea seemed preposterous, but Kaiser had done the seemingly impossible so many times by that point that he was actually able to get some traction for the idea from President Roosevelt and other Government officials. Some simply pointed out that Kaiser had never built an airplane before, but then realized he hadn’t built a ship before turning out hundreds in his shipyards and becoming the largest shipbuilder in the United States. Might this crazy idea be feasible as well?
Kaiser had just the partner in mind for this venture. World famous aviator and business magnate Howard Hughes was staying at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco in August 1942 recuperating from an illness. Although Henry had only a casual acquaintance with Hughes at Fleur du Lac, he bounded into Hughes’ suite at the hotel to lay out his plans for their partnership to build “flying boats”. Playing artfully on Hughes’ patriotism and ego, Henry was able to overwhelm the normally taciturn Hughes with his charm. Before the day was over, they had a handshake deal: Hughes would design the plane and build a prototype, then Kaiser would take over the production of the airplanes. On August 24, 1942, newspaper headlines ecstatically announced that Kaiser and Hughes had formed an alliance to build 500 “flying boats”, now officially labeled the “HK-1”. This was catnip for the reporters who hailed it as “the most ambitious aviation program the world has ever known.”
The glamor and mystique of the partners themselves only added to the public’s fascination. The announcement was also a much-needed shot in the arm for civilian morale as Allied fortunes in the War were near their nadir that summer. Actually, it was the strangest sort of partnership match imaginable: Kaiser, family man, straight arrow, tireless worker, dreamer and doer, mass production expert, greatly over-weight, 60 years old; and Hughes, tall and handsome, 36-year-old playboy, brilliant aviation engineer and pilot, champion speed aviator, scratch golfer, womanizer, and movie tycoon. What could go wrong?
The announcement with all its favorable publicity now had Government officials in a box. Military planners still thought the idea preposterous, even though the production target had been sensibly reduced from Kaiser’s original 5,000 airplanes to 500 by Hughes. One of their main concerns was where were the partners going to get enough aluminum, magnesium and other precious war materials to build so many planes? And, where was Kaiser going to find the skilled workers necessary to actually build the planes?
So, the military officials came up with a plan that they probably though would kill the idea once and for all. The War Department offered a contract to build 3 HK-1 planes, now also known as the “Hercules”, for $18 million ($309 million). But there were important stipulations: first, both Kaiser and Hughes had to agree to receive no profits from the contract; second, because of the metal shortages, the prototype was to be built of birch-laminated plywood; and third, Hughes and Kaiser were not allowed to hire any engineers or skilled workers from current aircraft manufacturers. Despite the seemingly impossible restrictions, Kaiser and Hughes entered into the contract on September 17, 1942, less than 2 months after Kaiser’s original speech to his Portland yard crew. One could say that this contract was done in “Kaiser Time.”
Unfortunately, design and production of the prototype by Hughes did not proceed in “Kaiser Time.” The sheer magnitude of the project coupled with Hughes’ failing mental health and focus led to delays that ultimately doomed the project. Henry dropped out of the project to focus on more pressing issues in his empire. Driven by his ego to finish the high-profile project that he felt would determine his legacy in aviation, Hughes pushed ahead, spending millions of his own money to finally produce a flying prototype that was formally accepted by the War Department on February 1, 1947, long after the War was over.
Yet, Hughes insisted that the Hercules, now also known somewhat derisively as “The Spruce Goose”, must fly for him to recognize the completion of his commitment. So, with much excitement and curiosity from the public and with Hughes at the controls, the Spruce Goose made its one and only flight off the waters of Long Beach harbor on November 2, 1947. The flight lasted only 8 minutes at low altitude and closed one of the most interesting episodes of aviation history. The Hollywood version of this saga can be seen in the movie “The Aviator”.
While Hughes was handling the engineering of the Hercules in 1943, the US Government implored Henry Kaiser to step into a production problem at Brewster Aviation in New York where the company was woefully behind in its production of critical Corsair fighter aircraft. Kaiser quickly identified labor relations problems and management ineptitude as the source of Brewster’s problems. He sent in four of his top executives, including Edgar temporarily from the Portland yards, and took the Presidency of the Company himself to turn things around.
Kaiser had agreed to take the assignment under the provisions that he would take no fees of any kind and would not receive a financial interest in Brewster Aviation. The month before Kaiser’s team was on the job, Brewster produced only 4 Corsair fighters. Over the next 7 months, even though they had never previously built an airplane, Kaiser’s team was able to correct production problems so that 591 Corsair fighters were produced. In the seventh month, April 1944, production had stabilized at 120 aircraft per month and Kaiser’s work at the Company was done. This was one of the most remarkable turn-around stories at any wartime plant.
Later, when the Korean War broke out in 1950, Kaiser secured a contract to build C-119 cargo planes in the spare space he had at his Willow Run, Michigan facility where he also produced Kaiser-Frazer automobiles. With Edgar overseeing both automobile and aircraft production, Kaiser produced 159 C-119 aircraft between 1950 and 1953. As we will see later, this production was a mixed blessing for Kaiser as it may have distracted Edgar during a critical period at Kaiser-Frazer.
In addition to his government aircraft work, Kaiser also converted several surplus WWII bombers and some commercial airplanes for his personal use and for the use of his executives to travel to his now far-flung operations. “Handy” Hancock, Kaiser’s long-time executive assistant, wrote that Kaiser loved trains, and was one of the last Kaiser executives to switch to air travel. But, once the switch was made, “he lived on airplanes.” Kaiser owned several DC-3’s and DC-4’s and at least one amphibian plane he sometimes used to get to Fleur du Lac. The operation Kaiser established inside his Company in 1946 to manage these airplanes, Kaiser Aviation, is still in business today as KaiserAir, Inc managing private and charter aircraft.
Kaiser Moved into Steel out of Necessity
In 1940, there were no integrated steel mills west of the Mississippi River, and the Eastern steel establishment intended to keep it that way. By mid-1941, Kaiser Shipbuilding was gearing up to produce a large number of ships at its Richmond and Portland yards, and that would require a large quantity of sheet steel. All of this steel would have to be shipped from east coast mills, and the cost of shipping would be prohibitive. Making the problem worse, Henry felt that the east coast mills were prioritizing shipments to nearby east coast shipyards, and were not increasing capacity at anywhere near the rate the War needs required.
Always the cheerleader for west coast industrial development, Henry was able to convince the U.S. Government to lend him the money to build the first west coast integrated steel mill, which he constructed in record time. Concerned about the threat from Japan for a west coast mill, the Government insisted that the plant be built inland, and Kaiser chose Fontana, California about 55 miles from Los Angeles. The first coke oven at the Fontana Steel Mill, named “Bess No. 1” after Bess Kaiser, was lighted on December 30, 1942.
Remembered as a patriotic extravaganza, with a young reporter named Chet Huntley as the master of ceremonies, the dedication was a ray of hope for War-weary Californians, offering the possibility that the U.S. would regain control of the War and that much needed jobs were coming to Southern California.
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The Fontana facility encompassed more than 350 acres, and at its peak employed more than 13,000 workers, making it the largest steel facility in the western United States and the ninth largest producer in the Country. The first steel plates produced at Fontana were welded into the deck of the Liberty ship SS Moczkowski in the Richmond yards on August 19, 1943. These were the glory days of Kaiser Steel, when the Company was the lynchpin of the Kaiser Companies empire. Famed author Ayn Rand visited Fontana in October 1947 as part of her research for her novel Atlas Shrugged. It’s not clear whether she simply wanted to know more about steel production, as that played an important backdrop in her novel, or whether she viewed Henry Kaiser as a character similar to Hank Reardon in the novel.
The Kaiser family was never warmly welcomed to the largely mid-west rooted steel industry cabal. In addition to the annoying added competition from a west-coast based supplier, old-line steel executives especially disliked the too-cozy relationship the Kaisers had with labor unions. On several occasions, Edgar Kaiser negotiated labor agreements with unions separately from other steel companies, often weakening the bargaining power of “big steel” with their own unions. In one particularly important episode, President John Kennedy summoned Edgar Kaiser to the White House to discuss ways to avoid a steel strike in 1962 – 1963. Kennedy feared that a looming steel industry shutdown would significantly harm the already fragile U. S. economy.
Meeting with Kennedy just days after a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union in the Cuban Missile Crisis was averted, Edgar Kaiser explained how a new labor pact Kaiser Steel planned to execute would share higher profits from cost reductions at Kaiser steel plants with the union workers at those plants. Edgar saw this as a way of making United States-produced steel more competitive on the world markets and improving worker relations at the same time. Kennedy reportedly approved of Kaiser’s plans, and steel strikes were averted at a critical time.
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Astute Moves into Aluminum and Magnesium
Against the recommendations of almost all his top executives, Kaiser entered the aluminum business on April Fool’s Day in 1946. Completely infatuated with the possible applications of aluminum, Kaiser decided to build his first aluminum plant in Meade, Washington, which in true Kaiser fashion, produced 110 million pounds of aluminum in its first year of production and earned more than $5 million ($71 million) in profits. To expand his aluminum empire, Kaiser later constructed a massive aluminum plant at Chalmette, Louisiana, and acquired the required bauxite reserves in Jamaica. Kaiser Aluminum quickly became America’s third largest aluminum producer, and the Company became the most profitable Kaiser enterprise.
Even before entering the aluminum business, Kaiser recognized the importance of magnesium to mounting an effective challenge against German aviation during the War. The only U.S. producer of magnesium in 1941 was Dow Chemical and the company’s production was woefully behind that of Germany. Kaiser saw an opening and convinced the U.S. Government to back Kaiser Metals using a new process called “carbothermic reduction” invented by a controversial Austrian national named Dr. Fritz Hansgirg. After a rocky start with the new process, including a period when Dr. Hansgirg was imprisoned for being a suspected German sympathizer, Kaiser was eventually able to produce more than 20 million pounds of magnesium for Wartime use, and established a strong footing for a very profitable post-war business. A significant derivative product for Permanente Metals was a product called “goop” that proved to be a fearsome weapon for the military in the War.
The production of magnesium was a very volatile process because magnesium dust is highly flammable. Almost by accident, Kaiser engineers discovered that when this magnesium dust was mixed with a simple distillate and asphalt in a product they named “goop”, the “goop” could be transported safely, but when ignited would burn with great intensity and be almost impossible to extinguish by conventional fire-fighting methods. Kaiser’s goop became the almost perfect incendiary munition that the military needed for bombing runs over Tokyo and other industrial sites in Japan. Kaiser Metals produced 82 million pounds of goop that was used to bomb over 160 square miles of industrial sites in Japan and Germany. Military planners later credited goop with substantially shortening the War.
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