Made for public viewing by the War Department, later known as the Depart of Defense, this film narrated by Hugh James focuses on “Subcontracting for Defense”. It shows the early mobilization of American industrial capacity that occurred prior to and during WWII. The film was one of a series of “Defense Reports on Film” made by the Office of Production Management and appears to have been made prior to entry in WWII, as the USA’s economy gained steam as the “arsenal of democracy” — shipping supplies and defense material to Britain as well as equipping it’s own military. At the time, the government was calling on small factories and manufacturers to join in the effort. (Initially most of the defense contracts were going to larger corporations however by 1942 the Smaller War Plants Corporation was created in order to aide small manufactures in pursuit of military contracts.) This film was produced for the Defense Contract Service of the Office of Production Management. It was produced by Arch A. Mercey (:21). The film begins in a steel factory (:39) with white hot metal coming out of furnaces which will be used to make the commodities of war such as guns, tanks, ships, planes, etc. (:39). Modern warfare had become industry versus industry and victory depended on whoever had the largest industrial capacity (1:09). There was a need to boost the industry effort as Germany’s army was receiving more weapons from conquered areas than the USA was able to send to beleaguered Britain (1:25). A blueprint for a new factory is shown. This led to new plants springing up from coast to coast (1:38) including powder plants, airplane factories, factories for mechanized units and tractors (1:50) and ship yards were springing up along the Gulf coast, west coast and all over New England (1:58). 30% to 50% of industrial production was going to national defense, though they wanted to expand production further (2:10). P-40 Warhawk fighter planes, bombers and other types of military aircraft including trainers are seen being built in an assembly line at a manufacturing plant (2:12). It took about 12,000 parts to make up one engine (2:52) and workmen are seen weighing and testing each part (3:07). One plane was the result of many parts produced from various plants (3:19). A radial engine is shown. As they sought to expand, the government looked to small factories, repair shops and garages in smaller towns and cities (3:49). Sunnyside Bronze Foundry is shown on Long Island, New York. In small plants, machinery and tools were sitting idle that could be put to work and even in larger plants there were machines that were not being used enough (3:58). Small tools could be farmed out or subcontracted from larger plants in order to assist with prime contracts (4:28). The major corporations were already pushed to the extreme and the installment of new factories was still not enough to keep up with demand (5:16). In order to meet the requirements the U.S. military now needed, the banking power of the Federal Reserve System and the resources of the Office of Production Management were joined together to form a new arm of defense services (5:48). Offices were set up in all of the reserve bank branches (5:59) and these provided financial and engineering aide to all communities and local defense councils (5:59). New transportation means were needed as some of the subcontractors may have been nearby or they may have been hundreds of miles away (6:52). Industrial surveys were conducted in areas like Florida, Missouri, Illinois and others which depicted the areas plant capacity of available machine tools and skills (7:16). These surveys were sent to the Office of Production Management (7:26). A map of the Federal Reserve Districts in the US follows (7:35). The film points out that anyone could discover what their community could do to help speed up production by going to their local federal reserve branch bank (7:57). The film wraps up shots of P-40 Warhawks and T-6 Texan training aircraft in flight, and a montage of war products including PT Boats, searchlights, and weapons with narrator discussing the notion that a small fitting for an airplane motor was just as important as the entire plane (8:04). Factory workers producing weapons (8:23).

We encourage viewers to add comments and, especially, to provide additional information about our videos by adding a comment! See something interesting? Tell people what it is and what they can see by writing something for example like: “01:00:12:00 — President Roosevelt is seen meeting with Winston Churchill at the Quebec Conference.”

This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD and 2k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com