Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story : The Most Secret Corporation and How It Engineered the Wo by Laton Mccartney (readict .txt) 📗

REGARDING YOUR FIRST LAUNCHING,” the admiral wired, “WHEN IS THE

NEXT LAUNCHING AND WHEN WILL SHIPS BE DEUVERED, OR WAS THAT

[the christening ceremony] MERELY A PUBUCITY STUNT?”6 Two months later, Ken wired back apprising the admiral that Marinship had completed its first, fully outfitted tanker, the Mission Purisima. “ITS A GIRL

(PURISIMA) DEUVERED AT SIX PM NOVEMBER 23. CHILD IS VERY

HEALTHY. ALL PARENTS WEAK BUT WILL RECOVER REGARDS.” Vickery’s retort came back the same day. “DELIVERY WAS STIMULATING NEWS. I HOPE THE NEXT PERIOD OF GESTATION WILL NOT BE THAT OF AN ELEPHANT. ”7 From the acerbic Vickery, that was high praise.

John McCone also received his share of Vickery’s needles, but he had his own special incentive for keeping production at Calship in high gear. Henry Kaiser had followed BechtelMcCone’s lead into shipbuilding, and during the first few y ears of the war the two companies had emerged as the country’s leading shipbuilders, running nearly neck and neck in the speed and volume with which they turned out vessels.

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THE WAR YEARS

But Kaiser had the decided edge for self-promotion, and as a result, the media began characterizing him as the captain of America’s war effort, a gutsy, down-to-earth patriot-capitalist who managed to keep defense plants humming twenty-four hours a day and never forgot to bid “Good morning” to Rosie the Riveter. “The Atlas Industrialist,” Fortune called him. “The most portentous industrial phenomenon in the U.S. today.”

A proud man, McCone was irked that Kaiser was getting so much publicity and claiming so much credit. Bechtel was annoy ed as well, but neither he nor McCone was ready to tangle with Kaiser publicly.

Lacking Kaiser’s self-promotional skills, they beat him where it mattered-on the production line. Each time one of Kaiser’s shipy ards announced an increase in production, McCone and Bechtel would push Calship’s up another notch, alway s maintaining a slight lead. At his peak, during the summer of 1944, Kaiser was turning out 18 ships a month. By October, Calship was producing 20, winning for Bechtel and McCone the satisfaction of running the most productive single shipyard in the world.

By then, Bechtel and McCone had become involved in other wartime enterprises, some of which would later come back to haunt them.

There was, for one notorious example, the Alaska pipeline.

Until Pearl Harbor, the Army had not thought much about Alaska; but then, not many people had, including Bechtel and McCone.

Alaska was far away, barren, cold; it seemed an altogether useless piece of real estate. In the jittery months after the Japanese attack, though, that estimation rapidly changed. All at once, Alaska was importantindeed, vital, for it was here, Army intelligence concluded, that the Japanese would likely mount an invasion and from here, after securing their position, sweep southward through Canada and into the United States itself.

Defending Alaska, where military installations were few and exceedingly far apart, would be difficult-impossible without supplies, most critically oil, from the “lower forty -eight.” W ithout oil, the fighter planes based in Alaska couldn’t take off, and the bombers that landed there on their way to the Pacific couldn’t refuel-nor, for that matter, could any of the cargo ships and ferries bound for Russia with LendLease war materiel.

Work on one oil route, the Alaskan Highway, was already under way, but even when completed, the highway would be closed two-thirds of the y ear by fierce subarctic storms. Alaska needed another means of supply, and Lieutenant General Brehon Somervell, head of the Army 61

FRIENDS IN HIGH