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Look Back: St. Louis Ordnance Plant
Date: 6/25/2010 Album ID: 1030797
Photos by Post-Dispatch photographers
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The St. Louis Ordnance Plant made 6.7 billion cartridges during World War II, but work for the 16,000 employees ended on June 27, 1945, as the war wound down. Production resumed during the Korean and Vietnam wars. Today, 2,000 employees of Social Security, Veterans Affairs and other federal agencies have offices in some the old Ordnance Plant buildings.
Men looking for construction work line up at the future site of the St. Louis Ordnance Plant at Goodfellow and Bircher boulevards, in the northwest part of St. Louis, on Jan. 28, 1941. With World War II raging elsewhere, the national government was ramping up production -- a boon to workers enduring the joblessness and low pay of the Great Depression. Construction began shortly on the sprawling complex of almost 300 buildings that eventually would spread across 291 acres. At its busiest, the construction job employed almost 17,000. Western Cartridge Co. of Alton, the company that would run the government-owned ammunition plant, began hiring and training workers later in the year. By summer 1943, at the height of production, 34,338 people worked there, making .30-caliber and .50-caliber ammunition for American soldiers and aviators. It was the world's biggest small-arms ammunition plant, and turned out 6.7 billion cartridges during the war -- 40 percent of what America fired in anger. With hires and departures over the war years, 86,264 people held jobs at the Ordnance Plant. (Post-Dispatch)
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An aerial view taken on June 27, 1941, of the expanding site for the St. Louis Ordnance Plant. The view is to the southeast, with the Chevrolet plant at Union Boulevard and Natural Bridge Avenue in the middle background. The area marked with an arrow shows where construction has begun on the original 133 acres. In the foreground, bounded by Bircher Boulevard and Stratford Avenue, shows land subsequently bought by the government to allow for a larger ammunition factory. The open land at Stratford and Goodfellow Boulevard was David Hickey Park, a park the city had dedicated only two months before in the memory of the first St. Louisan to be killed in World War I. The Ordnance Plant grounds soon took in the houses to the left as well, covering 291 acres with about 300 buildings, including 49 large ones. (Post-Dispatch)
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Trainees take classes in ammunition-making at a school that Western Cartridge set up at 3000 Locust Street, west of downtown. The photo was taken on June 22, 1941. The plan was to train 2,100 supervisors and machine inspectors for the startup of the plant, which was under construction at a furious pace. Production of cartridges began one week after the Japanese sneak attack upon Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, bringing the United States into the war. (Post-Dispatch)
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Lorraine Harris, a telephone operator for the new ammunition plant, displays devices for use in recording some conversations at the Ordnance Plant under construction. The plan was to use it to record work orders and other official messages to a few lines, not ordinary calls. It also could be used to record administrative meetings. The photo ran in the Post-Dispatch on July 23, 1941. (Post-Dispatch)
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Construction workers gather on a payday in August 1941 at the Ordnance Plant site. They lined up according to their trade. (Post-Dispatch)
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Brig. Gen. Brehon Somervell, Army chief of construction, gives construction workers a pep talk on Sept. 25, 1941, at the plant site. Other nations are looking to us for aid, Somervell said. Shall we let them down? Many of the 6,500 workers assembled shouted, No! America was not yet in the war, so the government's theme then was helping countries fight the Axis powers. Contract disputes stopped work several times in 1941, but the construction crews finished the job ahead of schedule. They continued building while the first cartridge line went into operation on Dec. 16, 1941. (Post-Dispatch)
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Workers have laid foundation for one building, while floors and supports are ready for bricks on the one in the background. This is one of the photos of the construction project that the Post-Dispatch ran in its feature section on the morning of Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941. Word of the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor would hit the radio in St. Louis at 1:31 p.m. Central Time. (Post-Dispatch)
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Boxes of brass casings made at the Ordnance Plant and awaiting movement in July 1942 to the loading-machine lines, where workers would guide the feeding of gunpowder and bullets. The plant made .30-caliber and .50 caliber ammunition for rifles and machine guns. Some of the cartridges were loaded with tracer slugs that, when added to belts of ammunition for machine guns, helped gunners aim their fire. (Post-Dispatch)
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Some of the 300 black protesters who marched along Goodfellow Boulevard in front of the Ordnance Plant on June 20, 1942, seeking better-paying production jobs. The plant employed blacks for janitorial and other support jobs. One week earlier, the plant had laid off 148 blacks after their work as landscapers was completed. After the protest, the plant announced that it would hire blacks to run one of the production lines, keeping black and white production workers segregated. It stayed that way until December 1944, when the government ordered the plant to fully integrate. Many white workers objected to that idea and, at a meeting of the Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers Local 825, overturned their leaders' resolution to support integration. But the government order prevailed, allowing more blacks to be hired. (Post-Dispatch)
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Col. Roy L. Bowlin, commanding officer of the Ordnance Plant, swears in 450 civilian guards in a ceremony outside the administrative building on July 22, 1942. (Post-Dispatch)
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Workers pack .50-caliber cartridges in cardboard boxes of 10 each before putting them in larger boxes for shipment. This picture was taken in July 1942, shortly before the plant reached full production. (Post-Dispatch)
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C.P. Allen solders shut a watertight metal cartridge box filled with .30-caliber rifle ammunition before closing the wooden shipping box in March 1943. The double boxing kept down corrosion. (Post-Dispatch)
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Mrs. Henry Staehle (right) operates a machine that checks .50-caliber machine-gun cartridges for defects in March 1943. Her husband was in the Army, stationed in Australia. (Post-Dispatch)
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Aaron Pittman Jr., a maintenance worker at the plant, works on a machine in March 1945. Pittman, a discharged infantryman, is wearing his old Army jacket. (Post-Dispatch)
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Robert Logsdon, leader of United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers Local 825, speaks with members at a rally July 18, 1945, outside the plant to push for severance pay for the workers. Plant managers announced on June 27 that they would end production by Sept. 1. The company and union worked out a severance deal, but the government objected, fearing a wave of similar obligations throughout the nation as it was shutting down many war plants. (Post-Dispatch)
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Inspectors check casings for 175-millimeter artillery shells in September 1968, during the Vietnam War. The government reopened the Ordnance Plant during the Korean War to make cartridges and artillery shells, and resumed production artillery during Vietnam. It had been renamed the St. Louis Army Ammunition Plant. Production ended permanently in 1969. (Lou Phillips/Post-Dispatch)
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A view of some of the buildings, used and vacant, of the old Ordnance Plant complex in December 1974. The Army still used some of them at the time. Today, about 2,000 employees of several federal agencies have offices in the old complex, including many of the old main production buildings, such as the one visible through this broken window. Among the agencies at 4300 Goodfellow Boulevard are the General Services Administration, Social Security, Veterans Affairs and the Department of Agriculture. (Robert C. Holt Jr./Post-Dispatch)
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A view of the old foundry building, which loomed over Interstate 70 at Goodfellow until it was demolished in 2007. Often called the clamshell building or the devil building because of the U-shaped roof, the building was designed that way to draw upward the heat boiling from 10 forges. (Post-Dispatch)
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