Air-Conditioned War

World War II is becoming an air-conditioned war.

This startling fact was underscored last week when OPM materials chief William Batt told air-conditioning makers they could get top-rung priorities on all blast-furnace installations. In fact, steel companies will be urged to air-condition, can have RFC money to pay for the jobs. Reason: air-conditioned furnaces produce more iron (TIME, April 21).

Two years ago No. 1 weathermaker Carrier Corp. sold Alabama's Woodward Iron its first blast-furnace installation. Result, says Woodward, was up to a 20% increase in pig-iron output, a 13% saving in coke per ton of iron. A new Jones & Laughlin installation in Pennsylvania hiked output 16-18% with a 4% coke saving.

Woochvard conditioned its furnaces because it figured perfect moisture control in the air blast would maintain uniform operations and uniform iron quality. It did. But OPM's chief aim is speed. Present pig-iron capacity is 56,500,000 tons and a 10% increase (via more furnaces) would take 12 to 18 months, cost about $115,000,000. Put to work now, air conditioners could do the job in five to eight months.

Estimated cost: $16,000,000.

If air-conditioning makers get 50 to 100 blast-furnace jobs, they will be as war-busy as a gunsmith. Already backlogs of the two leading conditioners (Carrier and York Ice Machinery) are 50 to 60% war work. This is something new. A few years ago, the biggest air-conditioning customers were theaters, honky-tonks, smart cafes and offices.

But war's demand for fast precision manufacturing was tailor-made for air conditioning. Temperature changes in the average factory (often 15DEG in 24 hours) can alter delicate gauges and machines several ten-thousandths of an inch--too much. Apart from this, conditioning keeps out dust & dirt, prevents sweating hands from etching, tarnishing or rusting highly polished metal surfaces. Munitions makers rushed to sign up:

> Almost all aircraft plants are partly or completely air-conditioned. At Wright Aeronautical's huge Lockland, Ohio plant, a 6,000-ton* conditioner helps keep parts of the 1,700-h.p. radial engines perfect to the closest tolerances. At Dallas, North American Aviation uses artificial weather in bomber assembly. Wright Field uses refrigeration units to test engines and planes at --67DEG F.; decompressors to simulate flying conditions at 40,000 ft.

William Batt's own SKF Industries controls the weather in its ball-bearing plants; Chevrolet has units in its machine-gun plant; Alabama's Rust Engineering has a 1,200-ton machine in its shell-loading plant.

> All submarines use air conditioners and almost all naval shipbuilders cram conditioners into the tight hulls of destroyers, the sealed gun-turret rooms of other craft.

Tanks may soon be air-conditioned, if they are intended for desert or arctic warfare.

> Because the temperature ran to 150DEG F., Magma Copper would have abandoned its 4,600-ft.-deep Arizona mine. But air conditioning pulls the mercury to 90DEG F. and the mine is producing at record clip.

* Air-conditioning units are rated by ton capacity: one-ton machine removes enough heat to melt one ton of ice every 24 hours.

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