Document 5bZggdV1nBbaMOR55ebNg7Ryz

FILE NAME Bechtel BECH DATE 1961 DOC BECH036 DOCUMENT DESCRIPTION Bechtel Book - A Builder and His Family publ Bechtel 5581 5581 EXHIBIT 5581 * PLAINTIFF'S A BUILDER AND HIS FAMILY 0132 0132 5582 0133 0133 A BUILDER AND HIS FAMILY FET ak a ED 1898 +1948 +1948 Being the Historical Account of the Contracting Engineering & Construction career of W. BECHTEL and ofhow his Sons and their ASSOCIATES have carriedforward hisprinciples in their many activities Compiled in the Fiftieth Anniversary Year of Dad Bechtel's start construction BY ROBERT L. INGRAM 5583 PRIVATELY PRINTED SECOND PRINTING SAN FRANCISCO 1961 Ney 0134 PREFACE TO THE SECOND PRINTING MORE THAN A DOZEN busy years have passed since A Builder and His Family was published to commemorate a half century 5 84 of Bechtel construction and engineering and much has hap- pened in the meantime A third generation member of the family has assumed a leading position in our activities with the electionin 1960 of Stephen D. Bechtel Jr. to the presidency of the company From earlier duties in the field he has steadily moved ahead through increas- ing responsibilities and for the past several years has been the senior officer and director for our pipeline international finan- cial and equipment operations His election as president was a natural development and fur- ther strengthens the executive direction of the company at a time when both the volume of work and uncompleted are at time backlog highs Our organization has more than doubled in size in the past decade Many who have found stimulating careers within the expanded Bechtel business family during this period have expressed the wish to learn more about our modest beginnings and earlier years With this desire in mind Steve's first year as president seems to our senior executives the appropriate time to publish a second edition of A Builder ... unchanged in any detail from the book which came as a pleasant surprise to the generation Bechtels on the fiftieth anniversary of the business S. D. BECHTEL San Francisco California July 1961 Ney 0135 PREFACE THE TELLING of this story is long overdue at least in the form 5585 in which it now appears In choosing to handle its preparation the hard way the unique position in which the author and his . conspirators found themselves was such that they alone had to take the responsibility for not only the facts but the writing and editing as well Through their own eyes is pictured a story that is usually told with the direct knowledge and participation of many of the principals In this book however so that the story be objective we have elected to have it told as we and others have seen it The results we think depict the principles and lifework of a man his sons and immediate family and also a larger group people who have chosen to make his precepts their guideposts to a way of life A Builder and His Family is not the only Bechtel story that could be told There are as many facets to it as persons who could write it however we at least and the author feel privileged to have had apart in bringing into clear focus an era which started fifty years ago and has continued without interruption until the present time changing but always resting on solid foundation TOM PHILLIPS and BILL WASTE San Francisco California March 1949 [ vii Ney 0136 CONTENTS FOR 0.E e W eOR ee D xiii 5586 CHAPTER I. How it started Background of a builder- railroad got a skinner a lifework West Far West at the turn of the century early friendships Wadsworth Nevada SP hired an Quarryman at Lovelock was where Mother made itSuperintendent Oakland California business was launched the tables Oroville and the steam shovel work on the Natron Cut The partnership with Wattis rock at Oakdale family's shovel California and Utah went separate NWP The first real team was put together young subcontractor named The chow stuck to a man's Spaghetti by They called him -Some- thing new was Sewell's fleas Where a contractor's organization jelled From Perry Street to San Tomatoes and lawn mowers- When Alice kicked the chandelier . 2. 2. . ' 6 . e + ' + | I CHAPTER II A fling at mining pocket tooth School and -NWP again rails to highways the start of diversification Dad's views on partnershiTphse mighty blast of San Gabriel Canyon Hutchinson Lumber Company logging railroad generation railroaders -Steve heard from Dad at Caribou Water Tunnel college boy licked the mud problem Cut the later contracts Warren tried out the new tractors power in Arizona youngest construction stiff on wheels A. Bechtel Co. a corporation Ken- neth a superintendent big upsurge began Another new field pipe lines -Pipe -Pipe line No. 2 Crockett Bechtel Kaiser pipe liners on a national Why the jobs More pipe Coos Bay Biggest railroad Industrial Indemnity as it grew I. to date 16 . . . CHAPTER III Taming a great river Companies Inc. its antecedentsThe joint venture men of Six Companies bids the job in Black Canyon temporary The Bechtels contribution Hoover Dam some statistics played a rough August 28 1933 a builder laid down his tool-s Oakland California September 19 Parker Dam feet for the world's largest bridge jetties tunnels . 31 CHAPTER IV The petroleum McCone Corporation-Corpo-ration- Emphasis on engineering job No. - fast start men of Team strength grew and railroad construction tions for foreign service Associates on early foreign projects Venezuela- War in Construction copper mine . . . 4I CHAPTER V. National defense Uncle Sam piled it Prelude to ship- building- a bunch that never built a ship . . movers to ship- California Shipbuilding Corporation Ships enough to bridge the English Channel inship selection- Tailor- ix Ney 0137 made tankers and oilers men stayed on- -Joshua Hendy Iron Works- 5 87 ~ From sixty to eleven thousand employees . . . . . 49 CHAPTER VI PNAB nests the American eagle- can do the job The Bechtels enlist again- late start at Where there's a willFinis at Cavite- Francisco calling -Marika to Kuching the first Borneo story ending Action on the home Basic materials powder steel Morenci second mine Castle Dome at Miami Arizona the border . . . . . ........ 60 CHAPTER VII The Bechtel perennials rails and pipe Refineries- A mystery project of North America for a jobsite munications and supply biggest headaches for the Commuting to the Arctic modern sourdoughs study in contrasts modification stiff test of engineering Precision manufacturing in volume 7 1945 the Germans gave September 2 V Day counselloTrhse war years not always smooth Again democracy works 70 CHAPTER VIII Conversion to peace Warren A. Bechtel Kenneth K. Bechtel A. Resources consolidated Bechtel Brothers Mc- Cone Company D. Bechtel foreign refineries transitional from war to peace job Refineries and chemical plants ton of tomatoes per -Kettleman Hills to the Start of a year cycle for the power utilities The Power Division big year for the process in- Gasoline from Repeat performance in Missouri Action in the Refinery Division . 2... 1 1 ee ee ee eee ee 79 CHAPTER IX The migrants stayed Bethlehem General MillsAgain pipe lines in the West Friant siphon traditional kitchen car Arthur V. Bechtel a link was broken returns to active direction names Bechtel Corporation Compa^-iaBechtel S.A Bechtel International Corporation International Bechtel Seasoned men 88 CHAPTER X. The world's oil where it came to the surface Middle East Problems of pipe construction in the desert Old friends team up again . . potentially the biggest development ... ... Tapline Channeling desert -Nature still a tough foe- -Aramco contracts men at -Modernizing an ancient civilization Bahrein had to be good job in London Opportunity on a big scale . 93 CHAPTER XI Venezuela S. Power BCo got the callHorsepower -Electra directors engineers constructors Building for the Somastic- . + identified for many years " Edward C. Panton C. Sewell . . . . . CHAPTER XII New division names more top manpower Gas Refineries the airport watchdog at Big Contra Costa biggest steam Colgate final 1948 entry 108 AFTERWORD . . 2. eee 8 ee eee III Ney 0138 ILLUSTRATIONS The plates either face the page designated or are grouped immediately after it Frontispiece Dad and the boys about 1931 W. A. Bechtel in career Freight wagon and horse team W. A.'s first steam shovel Oroville California Early dump truck Mule train The Perry Street home 1912 After an airplane flight 1917 The Bechtel family about 1915 Steve as a Dispatch Rider in France 1918 Warren A. Bechtel Jr. in uniform Stephen D. Bechtel in uniform W. and his sons at Natron Cut The Bechtel yard San Leandro A kitchen car A Bechtel work train One of Warren's Cats Steve's first powered shovel Outfit car TeeKaa Mrs. W. E. Waste and Steve Jr. Dad and Mrs. Bechtel meet Cat 60 en route Bowman Dam cast concrete snowsheds in the Sierra Facing title I 6 6 IO 10 14 14 8222 8222 8222 8222 20 20 20 20 22 22 24 24 24 24 24 xi _ we 5 8 we Ney 0139 5589 W.A. Bechtel with E. S. Burney and Earle Lloyd after election to National Presidency of A.G.C. Ken's butterfly sheds for the Santa Fe Stone bridge Sequoia National Park WABCO crane and locomotive about 1929 Arthur V. Bechtel Bill Waste Frank Sewell and Tom Phillips painting the Texoma gas line 1931 Shoring a bridge for heavy load Hoover Dam Laura and Steve Bechtel at caisson launching Bay Bridge job John A. McCone and Stephen D. Bechtel Six Companies men at Calship Marinship yard Sausalito California Bechtel cargo ships George S. Colley Jr. and Harry Koons at Cavite 1941 Ken and Steve Bechtel Felix Kahn Edgar and Henry J. Kaiser at Marinship Warren Steve and Ken 1944 Aircraft Modification Center Birmingham Alabama Aviation gasoline refinery Richmond California Steve Bechtel Jr. pipe liner Steve and Prince Amir Faisal 1944 Board of Directors Bechtel Corporation 1948 xii Ney 0140 FOREWORD THE WORKS of men speak for them needing no words How- fiftieth 5 90 ever signal occasions make words appropriate as in 1948 the anniversary of Dad Bechtel's start in the construction business By then the ranks of timers were rapidly thinning there existed no single related and permanent record of the work and no man even this narrative's principals all the key facts about a century's activities Consequently William E. Waste Vice President of Bechtel Corporation caused this accounting to be made and called in of Robert L. Bridges Counsel for advisory assistance Other than these two no one within the firm knew its preparation least of all the Bechtels themselves Therefore their engineering and construction accomplishmentis shown not as seen through their eyes nor those of their associates but as viewed by many engineers senior and builders customers other con- struction stiffs most of them people who were there when it happened How they felt was shown by the way their information was eagerly affectionately Shouldinaccuracies be found they likely will be of detail traceable to faulty memories The larger meanings were never in doubt spirit andimport stood out with crystal clarityin every interview and letter Itis hoped this brief book will partially repay its real authors for the pleasant hours and days they gave to create events of the past Acknowledgmentis made to all who contributed and there were many not named here Especially to A. J. Barkley retired Southern Pacific engineer John Q. Barlow also a retired engi- neer formerly with Southern Pacific and Utah Construction Co Warren A. Bechtel Jr. who believed he was giving facts fora short article in the firm's employee magazine V. G. Hindmarsh whose aid was enlisted under the same guise Earle retired G. Lloyd Indemnity of Industrial founder and former Secretary Treasurer E. E. Mayo Chief Engineer Southern Pacific Company Emery Oliver former Western Pacific engi- neer Silas H. Palmer former Bechtel partner and a Director xiii] Ney 0141 5591 5591 of Pacific Gas and Electric Company Otto W. Peterson Chief 5591 Engineer Construction Division Pacific Gas and Electric 5591 Company and Thomas L. Phillips Chief Engineer The West- ern Pacific Railroad Co. To Robert L. Bridges who gave valued counsel and Tom Moriarty for aid in research Above all to the instigator Bill Waste virtually a author who devoted hours on end to patiently keeping this pen writing along a straight line Altogether the task has been highly pleasurable Assembling the facts and documenting the Bechtel achievement through two generations provided an opportunity to come close indeed to appreciating its real significance One saw that for all its individuality this story also had a universal character for it showed what men could do in the free air of America after the humblest of beginnings and frequent discouragements So Steve Warren Kenneth Sister Alice and your organizations of Bechtel people everywhere here is how fifty years of Dad's work and the family's looked from the sidelines R. xiv Ney 0142 5592 A BUILDER AND HIS FAMILY Ney 0143 5593 W. A. Bechtel as he looked when his railroad construction activities were at the peak Ney 0144 CHAPTER I 5594 NTO Oklahoma then Indian Territory one day in 1898 a young rancher came driving a span of mules He was looking for a job Mulepower was a sure ticket to steady wages on railroad construction in those days so Warren A. Bechtel had no trouble leasing his sturdy animals and hiring himself out to handle them Hore it started Grading with the old slip scraper was hard work but hard work was nothing new to a young man who had fought to wring a living out of the Kansas soil following the great Money Panic of 1893. W. A. Bechtel was well prepared for rough going on the railroad job by the two circumstances of sturdy ancestral stock and a rugged outdoor childhood His family line came straight down from Pennsylvania pioneers There is _ a town of Bechtelsville located in Berks County at the south- east corner of the state He was born on a farm near Freeport Illinois on September 12 1872 grew up there and at Peabody Kansas under frontier conditions that developed early reliance and a strong body At Peabody his duties were divided between the family farm his father's town grocery store and the local schools When he had earned his high school diploma he tried cattle raising for several years with discourag- ing results In January of 1897 W. A. Bechtel married an attractive visitor from Aurora Indiana Miss Clara Alice West Like many another bridegroom he wanted his lady to have the good things of life and the ability of the ranch to provide them looked doubtful at best By December 23 1898 when Warren his first son was born at PeabodWy. A. Bechtel already had turned his energies to better account Rails were Background of a builder 1898 The railroad got u skinner 1 Ney 0145 5595 being laid in Indian Territory some miles to the south in the spring of '98 word had reached him that the railroad would look with favor on a well young man willing to deliver a full day's work especially if blessed with his own team of work animals The eventual outcome of his trip to Indian Territory is recorded in the works of one of the world's largest engineering and construction organizations But the immediate result was no more important than the addition to the railroad section gang of one more hired hand with a shanty outfit except for a change that took place within the man himself Here in the heat and dust he found what he had been looking and he knew it It would be agreeable to report that the railroad job was his first adventure in construction but this was not strictly the fact In off seasons while ranching near Peabody W. A. Bechtel had done some local road work and there was con- struction precedent in the family even farther back His father John Moyer Bechtel had been a county road commissioner while living at Freeport Illinois Certainly however the job in Indian Territory marked the genesis of W. A. Bechtel's lifework For the right people heavy construction can be an infection It got into the freshman teamster's blood and stayed there Found a lifework W. had a natural affinity for this kind of work and he relished the satisfaction in accomplishment that is the builder's real reward Years later a prominent engineer said of him He loved construction Long after he had become a successful contractor I have seen him peel off his coat and take a turn or two with a team and scraper He used to climb up on a steam shovel and load a couple of cars enjoying every minute of it * W. A. came right up from the grass After the stretch in Indian Territory he went north into ; Iowa and Minnesota and then into Wyoming on Union Pacific } 1899 reconstruction after Harriman took over the road But for Eyes West some time in the Greeley tradition his eyes had turned toward the Far West He went there soon after the new century began first to Oregon as a gang foreman on the Southern Pacific and 2 Ney 0146 then to Wadsworth east of Reno Nevada where he figured cross sections for the SP Engineering Department I landed in Reno he said with a wife and two babies a slide trom- bone and a ten dollar bill A second son Stephen Davison Bechtel had been born at Aurora Indiana on September 24 5596 1900 The west at this time remained largely a land of promise In The Far West the fifty years following the Gold Rush giants like Stanford at the turn I and General Dodge had finished paving the way for the future of the century . with highways of steel yet California always the leader in western development by 1900 had attracted a population of only 1,213,400 The resources were there but except for gold still almost 5 entirely untapped Oil which was to inspire son Stephen D. Bechtel's engineering vision thirty years later and water and gas as sources of power a field in which today's Bechtel inter- 11405 ests are highly active had not been exploited to any consider- able extent People the factor essential to empire were still to 11405 come in numbers large enough to support a rounded 11405 economy The key that could unlock the treasure house was 11405 transportation and transportation meant the railroads When Collis P. Huntington last survivor of Southern Pa- 1 cific's Big Four died in 1900 his company already was oper- e ating eight thousand miles of railroad extending from Portland le to Guaymas Mexico and east to Ogden and New Orleans s But Santa Fe's main line into Oakland had yet to be completed e and Western Pacific was not in full operation until 1907. South- ul ern Pacific was building down the Coast Northward from D Marin County a number of independent short lines would wait m seven years for consolidation into the Northwestern Pacific it So although all the pioneer rail routes were complete as the Twentieth Century began western carriers were engaged on to the less spectacular but more comprehensive program of short- ic ening distances improving grades and adding branch lines or V.G. Hindmarsh now a Vice President of Bechtel Corpora- 1902 2529 tion and George S. Colley father of International Bechtel's Some early 2529 George Colley became acquainted with W. A. Bechtel at friendshipsfriendships nd Wadsworth Nevada The three men were employed during 3 Ney 0147 Wadsworth Nevada The SP hired an estimator 1902 and 1903 on realignment of the Southern Pacific's Over- land Route then called the Central Pacific Division The man who was SP's Supervising Construction Engineer on this job tells how W. A. caught on with the railroad His name is A. J. Barkley he is now retired and living in Berkeley Here in Mr. Barkley's words is the story first met Beck near Wadsworth during the winter while I was inspecting some work being done on the roadbed I saw a man walking back from the worksite of the contracting firm of Carney Roy and Higgins He looked discouraged as he asked me if there was a chance to get a job with the railroad I told him I knew of no job open at the moment but that one might be a little later I asked him if he a wanted lift in our wagon by which I meant that he could ride for a while on the buckboard and then walk in back for a while hanging on That's the way we did in those days when the weather was cold it was bitterly cold up there six inches of -snow on the ground and a good wind blowing up the canyon He said his name was Bechtel that he had been promised the job of superintendent by the contractor's agent but that when he arrived at the site Higgins told him to clear that no superintendent was needed I found out later that he had his family along and was short of money He looked like a mighty fine man to me so when I got to Wadsworth I asked at our office if a job was going to be open Well there was an opening and we offered it to Beck He took it as an estimator He worked hard and was well grounded From there he was sent to the Ogden office A little later I requisitioned a gravel pit superintendent for a quarry at Lovelock and Beck was sent out There were fifteen to twenty rock cars on the pit sidings all the time The rock was loaded by steam shovel which then was a new idea It was a tough job and Beck did very well In those days out on the desert men worked from sunup till sundown He was learning all the time but he seemed to me a natural engineer and I've always thought that good engineers are born not made They must have a knack for it in the first place or all the books on stress and strain won't do much good 4 Ney 0148 " was glad to hear of his success in later years He descitc^" to succeed Beck was what I've always thought an engineer should be man who understands what is to be done knows how to do it and finishes the job economically At the Lovelock gravel pit the family lived in a converted box car one of many improvised homes Mrs. Bechtel had been reared in genteel surroundings parents were people of means and standing in Aurora soon after marriage she showed that she too had the stuff of pioneers by adjusting to a modest income and primitive surroundings with resourcefulness and good grace She proved in fact to possess an unusual talent for creating a real home under conditions that were anything but conducive to normal living This helped W. A. immeasurably and as time passed had an important bearing on the children's development as well because for some years they spent almost as much time living at the jobsites as at home in the cities 5 98 1903 Quarryman at Lovelock Home was where Mother made it In 1902 and 1903 Silas H. Palmer was an inspector for E. B. and A. L. Stone an Oakland contracting firm His work took him to Nevada and there on a siding by the gravel borrow he met W. A. Bechtel and his family in the box car living quarters Palmer discovered that W. A. had figured out how to squeeze the utmost in profitable work from the new steam shovels using them in combination with his available manpower and transportation facilities His mastery of detail was apparent Palmer said and I was attracted at once by his ability I told him that a good job was open with the Stones and suggested that he look into it Accordingly in 1904 W. A. Bechtel moved his family to Oakland and became a superintendent for the Stone firm In this capacity he took charge of building the Richmond Belt Railroad and the extension of the Santa Fe into Oakland As an employee of the railroads or their contractors he was adding to experience on many types of railroad work Kenneth Bechtel was born on July 4 1904 while the family lived on Linden Street in Oakland A few blocks away the 1904 Superintendent Oakland California tracks of the Key System interurban electric line to San Francisco were being laid and older brothers Warren and Steve 5 Ney 0149 5599 remember the excitement when the first Key train came in At this time W. A. had charge of filling the swamp at the head of Lake Merritt for Oakland's Lakeshore Park and of grading Grand Avenue in the Grand Lake District Shortly afterward the family moved to Placerville Califor- ad nia eT where W. A. ran a slate quarry To a nearby hill one night in Aprilof 1906 he took the boys From that place they looked across sixty airline miles and saw a bright red glow inin the western sky It was light reflected from flames consuming the city of San Francisco the great fire following the earthquake 1906 Eight years after his initiation into construction in Indian : A business was Territory W. A. Bechtel was ready to strike out on his own ns launched as a contractor The opportunity came through a subcontract on the Western Pacific main line then building into Oakland The site was between Pleasanton and Sunol and the year 1906 He hooked up with George S. Colley his friend from Nevada days and a fellow employee at the Stone firm Thomas L. Phillips later Chief Engineer of the Western Pacific recalls that first job The work consisted of making a cut through limestone he says and the material thus removed was to be used for adjacent fills There was trouble the rock broke irregularly causing a heavy break in the hard yardage excavated Bechtel was pressed to make ends meet on the neat yardage of the cut Right here he was to demonstrate a necessary qualification for the successful con- tractor the abilityin negotiations to present his case in a convincing manner He pointed out that the extra material was being used by the railroad for fills and appealed for remeas- urement of the cut And he got it As a consequence instead When the tables turned of losing money Bechtel and Colley madea little on the job There's another story wrapped up in that first subcontract The partners rented a steam shovel from the prime contractor who exacted all the law would allow Bechtel and Colley proved less than persuasive in attempts to get the rental re- duced And when they asked the young partners were told off in no uncertain terms Although this contractor then was one of the largest some years later he had financial reverses and approached W. A. for a thousand emergency 6 Ney 0150 aspograts Lot 560 Freight wagons and horse teams were in use when W. A. started in the construction business An early contract for Western Pacific's Oroville station with W. A.'s first steam shovel Ney 0151 loan Notwithstanding the earlier incident and the additional circumstance that subsequent high rentals had paid for the shovel several times over the loan was granted The incident bears out another characteristic frequently mentioned by old friends W. A. was always a fair fellow In 1908 he returned briefly to the status of employee as Project Manager on the construction of the Sutter Canal and on levees built near Marysville in the Sacramento Valley During this period the family lived at Biggs California More railroad work followed again as a contractor including some for the Western Pacific for as Tom Phillips points out " had dealings with W. A. Bechtel from 1906 on In 1909 a direct contract was completed for grading the site of the Oroville station W. had to hustle for funds Emery Oliver then WP's Division Engineer related forty years later Apparently his finances were low at the time as I had to guarantee his account with the wholesale grocer in Marysville Then as now the contracting business wasn't always strawberries and cream However the veteran railroader concluded he finished the job and madea little money W. A. now owned the steam shovel he had rented at Sunol and he was proud of this fine piece of modern equipment It was a Model 20 Marion a type developed for Panama Canal construction which had been converted from its former rail- road truck mounting to heavy steel traction wheels Across the cab bold letters proclaimed W.A. W.A. Bechtel this a full before sixteen years he would incorporate his business A human touch indicative of his determination to build a larger organization Early in 1910 he obtained a subcontract to take out two cuts located fifteen miles below Natron Oregon on the Southern Pacific extension from Eugene to Oakridge Here his path crossed that of Heinie Hindmarsh for the second time Heinie was Resident Engineer on an adjoining section W. A. ran these jobs himself using the steam shovel and teams of horses Thirteen years later his sons would be active in the construc- tion program that completed the mile Cascade Line be- tween Oakridge and Black Butte near Mount Shasta And 5601 1909 Oroville and the steam shorel 1910 Early work on the Natron Cut 7 Ney 0152 5602 here they would improve on Dad's livestock by introducing modern power equipment For some time W. Bechtel's activities had attracted the The partnership with Wattis 1911 Hard rock at Oakdale attention of William H. and E. O. Wattis brothers who headed up the powerful Utah Construction Co. of Salt Lake City one of the largest western railroad builders The Wattis brothers were impressed with W. A. Bechtel's work in Oregon where the Utah concern held the prime contract E. O. Wattis had a son Ray who was anxious to get a subcontract from his father's company and the story is that the senior Wattis agreed providing his son would take a steady and experienced man for a running mate As result W. A. Bechtel and Ray Wattis became partners on a subcontract under the Utah firm during construction of irrigation district facilities at Oakdale Califor- nia Their particular job was to drive a water tunnel and build ditches The new partners looked the ground over and the material seemed favorablWe. A. was familiar with tunneling from his railroad work there was reason to believe the new partnership would prosper But like Sunol all was not as serene as indicated by surface appearances Hardly had the tunnel portal been opened when the subcontractors ran into a solid ledge of blue diorite Hand drills were helpless against the hard rock to lickit they had to buy a Water Leyner Denver drill and drill sharpener In the light of today's operations this would scarcely merit mention At the time however the event was a milestone for it marked one more piece of modern equipment W. A. was able to acquire and another swing away from hand labor although by necessity From Oakdale Wattis and Bechtel moved north into Mendo- cino County to take the first of three subcontracts under Utah Construction on the Northwestern Pacific Railroad which was being extended from Ukiah to Willits The first two contracts were each for building approximately five miles of line and the third called for a mile grade north to the King Rock Crossing Bridge Bechtel's brother Arthur was a familiar figure on this and earlier work There was an eleven year difference in 8 Ney 0153 ages out even as a youngs often often in nau railroad his brother to work on the midwestern pees an bones Heinie jobs Hindmarsh recalls him on the Southern Pacific in Nevada backin 1902 Art was just a big kid then a swamper Hind- marsh said He rode out on the end of the boom tripping the dump gate of a clamshell There were no bucket controlsin the cab so a man had to straddle the big stick Believe me it took guts to be a crane jockeThye actual combat of man and machine against the forces of nature were always to Arthur Bechtel's liking Of later days on the Natron Cut Art enjoyed remembering That first Marion shovel we bought was my own baby there wasn't another shovel runner along the whole line I had to take my hat off to when it came to pitching dirt Before the third Northwestern Pacific job got under way Wattis and Bechtel obtained another subcontract for a branch running from the main line of the Denver Rio Grande & Western to a coal mine located near Helper in central Utah Ray Wattis took charge of the work He assembled several locomotives trains of dump cars and two steam shovels Wattis enjoyed looking at this prosperous display of equipment It may have caused him to foresee bright prospects ahead for an operation he could control alone In any event he and W. A. formed divergent opinions about their future activities and decided to go separate ways The partnership was terminated Wattis thereupon took over the Utah work and W. A. the Northwestern Pacific jobin California As crews moved in to start NWP subcontract number three W. Bechtel returned to doing business as an individual But he was not alone as far as assistance was concerned He had some good men at his elbow Earle G. Lloyd who had joined by at Oakdale old stand George S. Colley who came back to superintend the NWP work and of course brother Art Lloyd handled administrative matters and purchasing Colley knew men and construction and Art Bechtel in addition to his winning ways with a steam shovel proved the best man on employee relations the enterprise could have found Not that then any of them even had heard the term employee rela- I ne jamay shore runner 5603 1912 California and Clah went separate ways NWP The first real team was put together 9 Ney 0154 5604 A young subcontractor named Al The chow stuck to man's ribs tions Rather that Art was blessed with that open heart and friendly spirit characteristic of the outdoor westerner and men liked him on sight Other men destined for long association with the Bechtel family came to the NWP camps Barber Clarence Pop Thorne who recently retired from the Somastic Pipe Coating Division Al Berlander that seasoned veteran still carrying the old tradition forward as Construction Manager of the Arabian pipe line Berlander had taken a subcon- tract for concrete work W. A. said the success of the entire railroad contract depended on getting the concrete structures finished ahead of grading It meant bringing in many carloads of cement and storing them for use during the winter while the worksite was cut off from supplies Berlander stuck on the job early and late right through the winter matching wits with the weather He managed to stay in front of the grading crews and finished up in good time It turned out to be an early example of the initiative that enabled two Bechtel generations to rely on Al with complete confidence W.A. timers point out was a good feeder His camp table was sure to be mentioned wherever construction workers got together This was sound business policy because men were easier to recruit and hold if the employer had a reputation for good food and plenty of it and well men delivered a better day's work But it also was characteristic of W. A. that he himself liked the best to eat and would tolerate nothing less for employees So he hired the finest cooks and bakers he could find and paid them top wages He ate in camp mess halls with his crews consistently he often paid surprise visits to his kitchens and the cook who took liberties with quality or quantity got short shift indeed Once on the NWP job however he came a cropper That was the time he altered purchase orders for spaghetti and hightopped boots Like the cement both items had to be ordered in quantities sufficient to carry the camp through the rainy season The laborers were predominantly talians who made known their preference for spaghetti as the staple item of diet The question how much of it would they eat before 10 Ney 0155 5605 spring Earle Lloyd made his estimate carload of spaghetti George Colley put in his order for hundreds of pairs of boots Then W. A. checked was amazed at the figures and promptly ~ cut both orders in half Winter closed in and the north coast rains came The work went on with no slackening of appetites Down went the spaghetti supply deeper and stickier grew the mud until access to the outside world was cut off Then Lloyd discovered that the new Parcel Post like the Pony Express was committed to a ot go through come hell or high water Scant days before crisis developed a new order was sent to San Francisco and before long the faithful Parcel Post began to arrive I'll tell you it was a sight he said to watch those pack trains of Parcel Post mules come in thirty to a string covered with mud and piled high with spaghetti and boots The men who had contracted with the Government for mail delivery had just cause to curse the day we landed in their territory Spaghetti by mail but we had one consolation The other construction outfits along the railroad gave them even more trouble They had neglected to stock enough of anything and kept the poor postmen busy bringing in flour and the other necessities of life After that Lloyd recalls W. A. asked questions before he changed a food order Warren Bechtel was about fourteen years old when the NWP work started Steve was twelve and Kenneth a young- ster of eight The boys retain bright memories of summer days spent at the NWP camps They had been on earlier jobs but this project served as the remembered introduction to the construction business And as companions they had George S. Colley Jr. and his brother Wallace who came up during the vacation months The boys were beginning to share their father's enthusiasm for railroad building and becoming more and more his daily companions At this time Alice Elizabeth was born to round out the family with a sister so this is an appropriate place to bring in the affectionate nickname by which W.A. W.A. Bechtel became widely known Years before when Warren was born Mrs. Bechtel young mothers everywhere to call 11 Ney 0156 5606 | They called him Dad Something new was added 1914 Sewell's fleas her husband Dad Because in these years the family so often lived near the work the name Dad soon caught on as a familiar greeting at the camps and with passing time it spread into general usage wherever W. A. Bechtel was known The name took hold because it suited him to perfection short rich word that wrapped up a host of warmly human qualities friendliness consideration for others amiability also judgment leadership and respect Method the NWP work marked the earliest use of automobile trucks to haul construction supplies Dad Bechtel was the first contractor on this railroad to replace four freight teams with powered trucks and insofar as known the first in the country They were son Warren recalls 1912 model Packards and Alcos with chain drives Although the trucks of that time were not today's dependable vehicles and construction roads were little more than wide trails a shop was equipped to keep the new machines running so that supplies were moved at a substantially faster rate Later at the Bechtel San Leandro yard Dad's men built dump bodies for the trucks and thereby spearheaded a great advance in heavy materials transportation This yard also served the three sons as a school for the study of construction equipment Like all small kids they were delighted to play on the big shovels and wagons Growing older this interest changed to an attitude of inquiry whys and wherefores of machinery design and operation The time was one in which sweeping advances were made in power tools so the Bechtel boys acquired a thorough education in equipment while the equipment itself gradually was being evolved One of the young men who joined the outfit in 1914 was Frank Sewell He came on at Bechtel Camp Six of the NWP as an office man- then a necessary evil on construction jobs Frank used to say He slept in a building used as an office and warehouse which housed three carloads of sup- plies and two carloads of fleas After six Spartan months with these bedfellows he quit and went south for the winter But when spring came he wired IF CONDITIONS CHANGED I WILL 12 Ney 0157 5607 COME BACK Earle Lloyd truthfully replied CONDITIONS CHANGED and Frank returned I found them changed all right he said they were a damned sight worse But he stuck from then on The Northwestern Pacific projects fall into position histori- cally as the coming of age period for the Bechtel organization At the time no single reason was sharply apparent but looking back in the light of later developments it is plain that here the idea for the insurance business took root that Dad Where a contractor's organization Bechtel proved to his own satisfaction his readiness to expand operations and the two older boys at least cut their eye teeth on the realities of major construction Kenneth Bechtel too learned the feel of a construction camp Most important Dad's team of top men jelled and contacts with other outfits working along the NWP convinced them they could hold their own with the best jelled The final mile link through the canyon of the Eel was completed late in 1914 and the following year the line was opened to through traffic That was in 1915 the gala year of the Panama Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco and a great year for Dad Bechtel He had done his work well when the time came to settle up with John Tyler Assistant Treasurer of the Utah Construction Company Dad's share as subcontractor was a tidy sum " never expected to have that much money in a lifetime he confided to a friend He had : come a long way from the section gang in Indian Territory c During the Northwestern Pacific construction home base ee for the family was a story house on Perry Street in the kn Adams Point district of Oakland It was a good home in a good residential section But now that he was in comfortable cir- From cumstances Dad's first thought turned to his family and he Perry Street to n looked for a larger place where the children would have more room to grow He found it on Estudillo Avenue in San Leandro the city which adjoins Oakland to the east This place San Leandro generously satisfied the desire for more room by including a h large house which was remodeled and furnished with oriental exhibit rugs from the late Exposition beautiful gardens space for a tennis court and some lands suitable for crop cultivation 13 Ney 0158 5608 Tomatoes and lawn mowers Perhaps Dad remembered his own youth on the farm At least he reasoned it would be a good thing for the boys to work the adjoining piece and earn something for themselves So an acre or two was plowed up and put into tomatoes the boys toiled long and late and were rewarded with a bumper crop The quality was high too Dad had always beena stick- ler for good housekeeping out on his Tom Phillips said he always finished his work in apple pie order his sons proved to be chips off the old block The three budding tomato growers bought boxes and sorted and packed their product with the greatest of care until as an witness testified The full boxes looked as beautiful as a de luxe pack of Hood River apples They were hauled to the commission merchant's and in due time a check came The amount failed to cover the bare cost of the boxes Whereupon the bottom fell out of the truckgardening project and from then on tomatoes were free to friends and neighbors Younger sister Alice was very much in evidence at the San Leandro place an active little towhead who was the special joy of her three big brothers And the big brothers like other kids were not enthusiastic about the household chores Dad laid out for them on the Estudillo Avenue property They didn't care particularly for mowing the big lawns and raking the leaves Earle Lloyd perhaps because already they had flexed their muscles on the more stimulating tasks of heavy construction The home however served Dad's purpose well during the formative years Before it was sold to make way for San Leandro High School the family moved to the large apartment building overlooking Lake Merritt in Oakland where Steve and his family still reside W. Bechtel built this fine community apartment as his family's home and for owner occupancy bya group of fellow- investors Here on one occasion his daughter proved equal to one of Dad's clever twists Alice then was a high school girl at the stage where of all this world's treasures the most desired was a small car of her own Her father listened pa- tiently Perhaps when you're bigger he said It also hap- 14 5609 Urged on by son Warren Dad sampled flying in its early stages Pictured with Mrs. Bechtel and friends after a 1917 hop Ney 0160 5610 pened that in the new apartment the dining room chandelier hung rather low just clearing the taller heads One evening while Alice was particularly eloquent on the subject of a car Dad glanced up at it and had an idea When you're big enough to kick that chandelier from the floor you'll be big enough to have your own automobile he told her At the time it sounded like the wisdom of a modern Solomon but Alice had her com- mitment and she meant to capitalize on it Day after day she stretched and practiced with more zeal than a ballerina Long before Mother Nature added a single cubit to her height she triumphantly kicked the chandelier characteristically Dad made good immediately When Alice kicked the chandelier 15 Ney 0161 CHAPTER II 5611 1915 A fling at mining Dad completion of the Northwestern Pacific contract Dad kept crews and equipment on the line for a year or so clearing out slides and doing general maintenance work But from 1916 until the end of World War I he was not as active in construction as theretofore Two mining ventures a manufacturing experiment some land transactions and a brief return to farming occupied his energies During the summer of 1915 Warren and Steve went up to Eureka on a lumber schooner They met their father there and drove into Oregon He had invested in a placer gold mine together with one of the Brownings of Ogden a family having an interest in the Utah Construction Co. but better known as the inventors and manufacturers of the Browning machine gun The mine was located on the Sixes River near Port Orford and into its development the partners poured over two hundred thousand dollars But two months after opera- tions began like the California placers fifty years earlier disaster struck The local dairymen down river went to court got a permanent injunction to prohibit debris damage to their farming pursuits and the Sixes River mining venture was over Dad tenaciously held on to the property and it remained in his estate until eventually bought by a Chinese who converted it into a seed farm During this period W. A. invested in an Arizona copper mine and bought land rights along the Mexican border Earle Lloyd went to New York for him on another deal the Sanifold Manufacturing Company This was a happy experiment in manufacturing and distribution The product was novel but born of a concept that overestimated the American 16 ] Ney 0162 5612 urge to cleanliness The Sanifold tooth brush was as its name implies both sanitary and folding It collapsed neatly to slip into a vest pocket and the sanitary feature was provided by a built cup that completely covered the bristles in the folded position To own a Sanifold was to be assured clean teeth at any time no matter how far from the comforts of one's own bathroom Travelers and campers however failed to react in the numbers expected This experiment in consumer goods cost him a sizable chunk of money He charged it off to experience wryly observing that shoemakers should stick to their lasts And it showed another human that the same vision and The pocket tooth brush enthusiasm which made him a great builder could be a liability in an alien type of business Of course the Sanifold incident has been paralleled times without number when other successful men have stepped out of business character With Dad it didn't happen twice The mines and Sanifold were offset by profitable land investments which included downtown property in Los Angeles and Oakland Youthful training in horse trading stood him in good stead on transactions of this sort as did his knowledge of farming on several agricultural projects he tried The largest was a bean growing operation on leased land in the Central California delta region not far from Stockton Dad's return to the soil was in response to the national plea for increased food production during the first World War The Northwestern Pacific period brought along high school days for the Bechtel boys Warren attended Fremont High Steve and Kenneth went to Technical High both Oakland schools Later when Piedmont High opened Kenneth 1917 834.9 transferred and received his diploma there All three boys went For the boyson to the University of California Warren before the United school and war States entered the war and the others after the Armistice er Kenneth was much too young for war service no recruiting rle sergeant could have winked him in Wishing he were older he ld dug into the war program of the Boy Scouts of America with ri- a will and as a member of Oakland Troop 4 went ahead to Vas become an Eagle Scout From that day on his lively interest an in the Scout movement never flagged The two older boys 17 Ney 0163 5613 1919 NWP NWP again joined the United States Army soon after hostilities com- menced Both saw service in France Warren with the 18th Engineers and Steve with the 20th Engineers Construction during World War I did not approach the volume or scope it assumed in the recent conflict Conse- quently whereas the Bechtel contribution to success in the second war was organizational in 1917 and 1918 it was personal made by two young soldiers overseas by Dad in food production and by the helpful home front jobs a young fellow could do in the wartime Scout program When 1919 brought the return to peace W. A. Bechtel and Henry P. Hoey obtained a contract for highway construction along the Klamath River in the extreme northern portion of California W. A. had worked with Henry Hoey on Southern Pacific jobs notably at Natron where Hoey was the railroad's engineer in charge of construction Highway building headquarters were established at Happy Camp in Del Norte County The road traverses the Siskiyou Mountains through' some of the most primitive country in the State Bechtel and Hoey's part of it went south down the canyon from Happy Camp to a point north of Somesbar The job was completed after surmounting a number of unexpected difficulties and now forms a link between U. S. 99 in the Central Valley and the Coast Highway U. S. 101 via State 96 and U. 299 The Klamath Highway contract is another milestone because it marks a departure from specialization in railroad construction Dad had graded county roads in Kansas and streets in Oakland had worked in quarries and on levees and canals but as an employee not a contractor Nine years before the Oakdale water tunnel had been a change from railroad work but merely an isolated case whereas the Klamath River Highway was the first of an orderly series of moves made out- ward toward new horizons Of additional interest was the first California contract let by the United States Bureau of Public Roads In the same year W.A went back to the North- western Pacific to recondition the line after it returned to private control following wartime operation by the Federal 18 Ney 0164 Ney 0165 5615 Government Railroad work continued to dominate Bechtel volume for another decade but from this time on it never again occupied the organization's capacity to the exclusion of other kinds of construction Dad had made the Natron cuts and built the third section of Northwestern Pacific line as an individual but the short arrangement with Ray Wattis and the Bechtel and Hoey job on the Klamath were forerunners of later partnerships into which he entered His opinion was that since two capable men had more experience than one they could team up and accomplish more than either one separately He held positive convictions on the subject of partnerships First he confined such arrangements to men he knew to be reliable on the theory that when you can't trust a man's word you can't trust his signature This view led to verbal understandings sealed by a handshake involving many thousands of dollars His other principle concerned equality of interest It has been expressed by a former partner in these words Dad had no patience with 51-49 arrangements He used to say no man with a sense of respect wants to be controlled on that 7 kind of percentage During 1920 Bechtel and Hoey built another highway for the Bureau of Public Roads running north through San Gabriel Canyon from Azusa in Los Angeles County Steve and Art Bechtel were down there that summer A subcon- tractor named Leone had the portion of the work where a bluff was to be taken down by blasting Picric powder had been obtained for the purpose although similar in appearance to common black powder it was several times more powerful Leone's men with the approval of the Bureau of Public Roads field engineer loaded their shots on the generous basis used for black powder Dad Bechtel had gone back to camp for lunch Just as he got there the shot was fired The ground shook heaven and earth opened up and rock peppered the landscape for miles around Of course the mighty explosion moved several times the amount of material required but because Leone's subcontract was based on the yardage actually excavated his mistake earned him a substantial profit Dad never 1919 From rails to highways the start of diversification Dal's views on partnerships 1920 The mighty blust of San Gabriel Canyon 19 Ney 0166 5616 1920 The Hutchinson Lumber Company loggingloging railroad Second generation railroaders made up his mind how accidental the big blast was but he saw to it that Leone learned how to handle picric powder One day in 1920 A. received a phone call from his old friend with Western Pacific Tom Phillips The Hutchinson Lumber Company wanted a logging railroad built up the middle and south forks of the Feather River into the woods to connect with the WP at Bidwell Phillips who was laying it out thought Dad was the man to build it He mentioned a certain day several months ahead on which bids would be called and after some additional conversation hung up the phone and was soon back at the jobsite one hundred miles away But surveys and other preliminary work went slower than anticipated and the specifications were not ready on time On the appointed day having given no further thought to the phone conversation Tom Phillips came around a bend in the canyon trail and ran smack into Dad also on foot He had that date firmly fixed in mind Phillips says and he was Johnny at the right moment to look the ground over When the bids went in Dad got the job Warren Bechtel was up all through the work Phillips adds it was one of his early experiences and he did a good job too The Hutchinson Lumber road was a complete contained railroad system on a small scale with everything from its own main line to yards and structures Between 1920 and 1925 railroad contracts took the Bechtels into Sonoma County to build access roads and tunnels for the Northwestern Pacific to Stockton on a yard and round for Western Pacific into Arizona for Union Pacific and to various parts of California on Southern Pacific work From the early twenties on the three boys began to occupy positions of increasing responsibility Warren and Steve alternated as project managers on the Stockton contracts and thereafter headed up the field work on all principal contracts Kenneth came out from time to time to lend them a hand but his pri- mary concern lay in preparing himself for the financial and administrative responsibilities already apparent in the family's growing interests On one of the railroad jobs clearance of the SP's Coram 20 Ney 0167 5617 eatr et er ow Mud and motorcycles Steve burned up the French countryside as a Dispatch oe photographed just before the Armistice in 1918 at Camp Mont ee Mont cher Mena Ney 0168 Warren A. Bechtel Jr. 18th Regiment Railway Engineers saw service in France during World War I. Stephen D.Bechtel 20th Engineers Amer- ican Expeditionary Force from a picture made in June 1918 Railroad builders and the boys during construction of the Natron Cut Ney 0169 Shop and camp on wheels Bechtel work train 5620 Tunnel near Redding California after a fire Steve Bechtel ran the crew While his men were shooting in the tunnel he spotted some cars out on the main line and tied up traffic in the whole Sacramento River Canyon for a time Word went down to the railroad's main office in San Francisco someone in authority called Dad and in a matter of minutes he was on his way to Redding When he got there Steve caught what -on an occasion like this W. A. was in a class by himself remembers the set as vividly as though it had happened yesterday Dad was a kindly man but he would not tolerate poor headwork least of all from his own three sons While these jobs were in progress the Bechtels chalked up another first their first job for a big power utility This was the Caribou Water Tunnel built for the Great Western Power Company now part of the Pacific Gas and Electric system It was completed in 1921 in Plumas County California and with W. R. Fontaine as Dad's partner The water tunnel was two miles long twelve feet in diameter and concrete lined It extended from Butt Valley to a hill above the Caribou Power House Three hundred men were employed on it Otto W. Peterson the present Chief Construction Engineer of Pacific Gas and Electric Company remembers that Great Western Power welcomed Dad's bid He points out that Bechtel's work on railroad tunnels was well known to utility officials The Caribou Tunnel construction was accomplished smoothly he says without incident of any kind Behind the scenes in the Bechtel family however the Caribou situation did not develop quite as smoothly as indicated by Mr. Peterson W. A. had been seeking contracts with the big power utilities for a long time he was anxious to get started and show them what his organization could do But he had to wait for a tough job and Caribou was just that It called for tunneling through mud and waste disposal proved difficult and costly Part of this work was subcontracted to several of his best railroad tunnel men who were having trouble with this problem Steve came up during the college vacation and figured out a way to save money on getting rid of the excavated material He made a financial arrangement with the subcon- Steve heard from Dad at Coram 1921 Caribou Water Tunnel first job for a power utility Caribou where a college boy licked the mud problem 21 4 - ot + . ro oeee, , + fe pevranst atSUated ' Ney 0171 Warren's introduction of Cats marked an advance in methods but they chewed up the soft roads in winter SER \ 2 Steve built the SP's main line into Phoenix and introduced a new tool- the powered shovel Ney 0173 5623 As project chief he was building the SP's main line extension into Phoenix from the former main line running between Tu- cson and Yuma He had married Laura Adeline Peart at Han- ford California in September 1923 and she went with him to set up housekeeping out on this job There Steve added another first the first powered shovel a Bucyrus Model 50 driven by an Atlas horsepower cylinder 9x 9x 12 diesel engine H. L. Livingston of Bucyrus remembers this shovel well and points out that it is still working at an Oroville rock plant formerly owned by Bechtel and Kaiser From Arizona Steve went north to the Natron job The contract was for concrete retaining walls culverts and viaducts With Steve Jr. who had been born in the meantime Steve and Laura enacted Dad and Mother Bechtel's earlier roles by creating a home on wheels It wasn't quite the same though Bill Waste who visited them reports finding a rebuilt Ocean Shore Railroad observation coach transformed into an outfit car replete with modern comforts The car was called WaaTeeKaa It was named by Mother Bechtel who coined the word by combining the halves of three baby names the pronunciations each of her sons as toddlers had used for their given names- for Warren Tee for Steve and Kaa for Kenneth And in TeeKaa the youngest Steve generation III was following in father's steps out on the job from infancy Up to this time W. A. Bechtel operated his business as an individual or with a partner By 1925 growth of the organization and the responsible part taken by his sons in its projects caused him to form with them and his brother Arthur W. A. Bechtel Co. a corporation It was one of the largest western construction firms and the contracts on which its corporate life began included train sheds railroad tunnel enlargements and snow sheds in the Sierra Nevada The latter job is noteworthy for one of the earliest uses of cast concrete slabs This work on the Southern Pacific's main line over the hump centered at Emigrant Gap above Colfax Opportunities multiplied as two generations teamed up to capitalize on Dad's hard reputation Warren went to 23 11 992233 Diesel power in Arizona The youngest construction stiff on wheels- like father like son 19 19 W. Bechtel Co. a corporationcorporation mremet ea ester nee y pen Ney 0174 Mrs. W. E. Waste with Steve Jr. third generation constructor at Natron Cut Ney 0176  fi at Pheot t? Sh 5626 56265626 5626 In June 1927 Dad and Mrs. Bechtel met WABCo's Cat 60 between Emigrant Gap and Bowman Dam en route Ney 0177 Bowman Dam tough job that called for stacking and fitting big Sierra granite blocks as neatly as a saw puzzle Prefabricated concrete slabs early use railroad snowsheds in the Sierra Nevada Ney 0178 5628 worked with Gus Ayers father of Bechtel Corporation's Bill Ayers The western construction world for all its accomplish- ment is a small one indeed In 1927 Kenneth Bechtel first took complete charge of con- struction in the field Like the rest of the family he started with railroad work not far from the scene of Dad's first job Ken went to central Kansas and built butterfly sheds at a large Santa Fe station using the cast concrete slab technique the firm employed on the SP's Sierra snow sheds Two California highway jobs of 1928 and 1929 were interesting because of the beautiful settings in which they were built One the General's Highway in Sequoia National Park invited the artistic touch for it included masonry bridges using the native stone of the Kaweah River region Ken supervised the work and his bridges are still beautiful and a credit to the Park Actually they were expensive monuments par- tially donated by the firm which lost money on the extra precautions demanded by the Government An example areas where blasting took place the contractor was required to put metal pants on every tree trunk to protect them for the public's future enjoyment Ken followed instructions to the letter did a shape piece of construction and took with good humor the ribbing he got for his tree pants The other road contract covered additions and improvements to the highway system in Yosemite National Park At this time Warren was in New Mexico and Arizona tracking the Santa Fe from Gallup to Chambers Even a cursory examination of the Bechtel record shows a remarkable surge starting in 1929. Both in numbers and types of work the jobs increased rapidly and the organization entered on a period of expansion and group associations All - this was transitional in the development of the present worldwide Bechtel interests but it imposes limitations on reporting Projects larger than those heretofore recounted must get bare mention or none at all The purpose of this history is not to present an imposing job list but to search out significant trends and events and to sketch the people who have given the Bechtel story form and substance 1927 Kenneth- a superintendent 1929 A big upsurge began 25] Ney 0179 5629 i 1929 Another new field pipe lines 1930 Pipe line No. 2 Crockett One such event was the firm's first pipe line It represented a start in a new field which soon became an important Bechtel activity The first line was built by Bechtel & Palmer in 1929 for the Pacific Gas and Electric Company It carried gas from Tres Pinos eight miles south of Hollister to Milpitasjust north of San Jose The old acetylene torch method of welding was used on its construction Silas Palmer remember was the man who urged Dad to come to California in the first place from Lovelock Nevada from in 1903. By 1929 he had become a pipe constructor away having built the Montereyscrew pipe linein 1905. When the Bechtels determined to add pipe lines to their list Steve remembered his father's specifications for a project partner and turned to this old friend Palmer says that Steve displayed great energy and interest in pipe construction and adds in words used so often by other senior engineers in speaking of Dad- learned on the job by hard work One development worked out on this job became standard everywhere sideboom tractor Up to this time the slow tripod and chain block method of handling pipe had been used The following year W. A. and his sons were to get together with an extraordinary group of western contractors prelimi- nary to taking on the greatest single construction job yet built But even this tremendous undertaking could not divert them from their lively concern with pipe lines Joseph Shaw came to the firmin March of 1930. He was an engineer and his employment was prophetic of the emphasis on engineering for which the Bechtelinterests are now so well regarded Joe at once went to work on the engineering and cost problems of pipe construction In that year a gas line was built from Tracy to Crockett jointly owned by Standard Oil Company of California and Pacific Gas and Electric Company In the preceding year the Bechtels had done some grading for Stand- ard this and the Crockett line established a contact which became a standing relationship As might be ex- pected when both client and contractor have a progressive outlook again something new was added The Crockett 26 Ney 0180 5630 pipe line was the first in the west on which pipe was electrically welded in the field When the line was complete Steve went east to talk to the Continental Gas people As a newcomer from the Far West he had to do some first selling He asked to bid on the entire contract covering approximately four hundred miles of twenty inch gas line to be built from Amarillo Texas to a point on the Missouri River south of Omaha The owners insisted on completion within a short period of months and because they considered this too much of an undertaking for one firm Steve had to be satisfied with one hundred and forty miles The job was done by Bechtel Kaiser Co. Ltd. the partner being HenrJy. Kaiser with whom Dad had become acquainted on a road job near Redding in 1921. Later they joined in the operation of a rock plant at Oroville the forerunner of a number of Bechtel and Kaiser partnerships between 1928 1933 and later Kaiser's key people had just returned with him from building roads in Cuba They had no important commitment at the moment and Steve saw an opportunittoy use their tal- ents in this new field When Steve sees good men on the loose he has just one idea get them working on his team Warren Bechtel said This Steve did but it took a good bit of persuasion to get Henry Kaiser to share his enthusiasm for pipe lines When work was about to start on the midwest line the Continental Gas officials urged the contractor to provide two construction crews in order to meet a established average daily requirement of completed line The Bechtels insisted they could do it with one outfit but offered to add another if one crew failed to make the necessary progress At the end of six weeks this one crew was moving almost three times faster than the owner's requirement The methods used were soon adopted by other pipe contractors There was nothing mysterious about them Just better organization and getting men equipment and materials to the right spot at the right time make pipe construction a continuous process from trenching to com- Bechtel Kaiser- pipe liners on national scale Why the jobs grew 27 Ney 0181 5631 on | pleted backfill with the crews moving along the route like a gigantic mole Venprdnigan menvladotbwr 1931-34 As one result of this performance new contracts were obtained build gathering in the Texas panhandle for More pipe lines the Texoma Company the Phoenix Utility pipe line in Mon- shsthee in Montana tana and the long El Douglas line in the south- wh dee Texas west for Western Gas Company Altogether more than one te 4 New Mexico thousand miles of pipe lines were laid between 1931 and 1934 - Arizona and not including work done in California on the Valley Line for California Standard Oil Company of California and the forty Calaveras water line for the city of San Francisco both com- pleted in 1934. George S. Colley Jr. was head field man on many of these jobs To keep the thread of continuity intact reference is made here to railroad and highway work between 1930 and 1934 In the first category the three most important jobs were West- ern Pacific's Keddie Extension built in California by Coos Bay Bridge the Utah Construction Co. W. Bechtel Co. the Bonito Dam in New Mexico for the Southern Pacific and the Dotsero Cut in Colorado for the Denver Rio Grande & Western 1930 Keddie built by Morrison Inc. The principal highway project during this period was the Coos Bay Highway Bridge on the Oregon coast route a big and graceful arch completed in 1934 as a group venture which the Bechtels sponsored Ted Panton had charge of the work and a young California graduate engineer Al Orselli was his aide While Steve was out on the second and third pipe contracts Warren was sticking close by Dad's first love railroads During 1930 and 1931 he was on the Keddie the biggest railroad job Extension the largest single railroad construction contract obtained by the firm It was a ten million dollar project carried out in conjunction with Utah Construction Co. Except for five miles through Westwood where Western Pacific uses the Southern Pacific tracks the contract covered the entire one hundred and twelve mile link joining the main line of the WP in the Feather River Canyon with the Great Northern The Bechtels did a lot of work for us fact they are still doing it Tom Phillips of Western Pacific said but this ea, | 28] Ney 0182 Ad ey oya uo pAory wry *5) yay spre GO D GO D W.A W.A W.A BECHTEL BECHTEL BECHTEL C AC AA AA A s,aIYyDIg A PEC] AauINg OUT ZY panod aa. UoTseI90 suonefmadu0D Me c&9S Matching nature's beauty bridge of native stone Sequoia National Park mes Ney 0184 Dad's brother Art had a winning way with men and animals Bechtel veterans Waste and Sewell with an old friend Tom Phillips - in 1936 Ney 0185 5635 was the biggest single chunk It included grading tracklaying ballasting bridges about everything it takes to build a railroad And it was done fast fifteen months from start to completion That was one reason we liked to do business with Bechtel Another was that W. was a fair fellow he used to say you write the ticket'- meant he knew we were reasonable people he was always readyto go to work on without haggling over details We could get alongfine with a man like that So when the calendar turned over into the 1930's Warren was up on Keddie and Steve had become an enthusiastic pipe liner Meanwhile Kenneth Bechtel had gravitated into the administrative and financial work required by the Bechtels steadily growing business He had been a Director of W. Bechtel Co. since its incorporation and for fifteen years would remain active in the family's construction operations as Treas- urer and administrator Butin 1931 an event took place which pointed the direction Ken's principalinterest would take On July 27th of that year he was elected to succeed his father as Advisory President of Contractors Indemnity Exchange Later the same year he was named first Chairman ofits Committee In true movie style brief flashback to 1920 and carlier Born out of opinions formed by Dad from studies made by Earle Lloyd during the course of the Northwestern Pacific construction Contractors Insurance Agency of California had been granted a charter by the State on November 12 1920 to act as operating company for the formed Contractors Indemnity Exchange The founders werWe. A. Bechtel Earle G. Lloyd and Arch Borland of Bates & Borland an Oakland construction firm Earle Lloyd had handled theinsurance cov- erage of thousands of workmen on the NWP and other jobs The NWP work taught us that costs can be controlled by careful planning he said referring to employers liability I job believe we can do an even better through co^perationin a bigger field Dad observed Following enactment of the California Workman's Compensation Act in 1913 contractors had been forcedinto an unfavorable position Because private carriers refused to write contracting risks the owned Industrial IndemnityIndemnity as it grez 29 Ney 0186 5636 I. to date public carrier was forced to accept their business But no effort was made to provide other than the routine services of premium collection and payment of loss Such dividends as the contractors earned were in the lowest brackets The result was high insurance cost which penalized initiative and ran up the cost of construction How well the new California carrier of compensation insurance answered this need for contractors and how completely it fulfilled Dad's forecast for employers in other lines of business is evident in the remarkable growth of Industrial Indemnity Premiums exceeded twenty million dollars in 1948 Progress was slow for a long time however Amendments to insurance legislation early concentration of risks within the construction industry and the business depression presented recurring obstacles Only in 1935 fifteen years after the start did premium dollars pass the million mark And five years more went by before the two million dollar level was reached Nevertheless at the bottom of the depression in 1933 the concern made its Big Change by increasing assets and changing the names to Industrial Underwriters Inc. and Industrial Indemnity Exchange As its President Kenneth Bechtel had a leading part in formulating the policies and organizational changes then put into effect which have been instrumental in raising Industrial Indemnity to first place as the largest private carrier of compensation insurance in California 30 Ney 0187 5637 y " > % ae ee vsrae Chor Ug Pipe construction painting the Texoma gas line 1931 Shoring a bridge to withstand heavy heavy loads As equipment grew larger the problems of transporting it multiplied Ney 0188 5638 3 oy Hover Dam. Ney 0189 CHAPTER 5639 HOOVE Boulder Dam has been called man's mightiest work Certainly its great size the difficulties attendant upon remote location extremes of climate variations in the flow of the Colorado River and the problems of caring for an army of workers and large numbers of depression migrants made the Dam's construction within the short space of five years one of the greatest achievements in history No man no single contracting firm built Hoover Dam It was a team job Looking back it seems incredible to suppose that it could have been accomplished effectively in any other way It was an especially audacious undertaking for the group of contractors who tackled it Their combined experience was impressive by any ordinary standard but it looked small indeed when they stacked it against the gigantic task waiting in Black Canyon Where the idea for Six Companies started may never be known There are a number of versions probably the reasonable view is that it started separately with several men and required just the right combination of existing friendships and the right sequence of planned and accidental contacts Dad Bechtel acquired his early experience as a subcontractor under Utah Construction Co. Dad met Henry Kaiser on a road job and Kaiser had worked with Warren Bros. the Boston con- struction firm Utah Construction was also the link with Harry Morrison of Boise Idaho who had joined with them on railroad work When Morrison went to see Leland Cutler in San Francisco about obtaining a surety bond to bid the Dam Cutler suggested a talk with Felix Kahn of MacDonald & Kahn whereupon as Morrison said one thing led rapidly 1931-36 Taming a great river Six Companies Inc. its antecedents 31 Ney 0190 5640 The joint venture to another Earlier he had discussed the possibilities of building Hoover Dam with Charlie Shea a Portland and San Francisco contractor who had a working arrangement with Pacific Bridge Co. of Portland So the line proceeded simultaneously on two fronts it was complete when the Warren interest came together with the other consisting of Morrison Pacific Bridge Six Companies Inc. was incorporatedin Delawarein February of 1931 a mere two weeks before the Hoover Dam bids were due W. H. Wattis was elected Presi- dent W. A. Bechtel First Vice President E. O. Wattis Sec- Charles Secretary A. Kahn ond Vice President Shea and Felix Treasurer Properlyit was a joint venture a form of organi- development zation here brought to its highest Just as Dad Bechtel found additional capacity and strength in partnership arrangements so these western contractors developed an ideal solution to the big problem aheadin this expanded partnership which pooled their skills Not only way Hoover Dam but other large projects were handledin this The nature of the work was made the key to the composition of the group Who could contribute the most knowledge experience ability Compatible outfits with proof of good past performancein a given type of construction got the call In short the group association or joint venture became an instru- ment for better service Because no two jobs were alike no two groups were quite alike Participation was governed by the financial stake of each venturer No salaries were drawn by the risk takers thereby earnings were allowed to accumulate for later distribution Whereas at Hoover Dam the group did not use one of their members as a sponsor or management unit this form of job control became standard on other projects The project spon- sor usually the firm best equipped for a particular job received participant's only a given participant's return along with the others But a sponsor was given a larger participating share as a rule and had the added incentive of demonstrating his usefulness to the group on future contracts Because these men held each otherin high esteem they went ahead in Dad's tradition sealing their agree- 32 Ney 0191 ments with a handshake often with nothing more than a verbal understanding Highly complex and involved arrangements were made by telephone with details left for later confirmation The stripe of men dealing in millions on a basis of mutual trust soon became generally known and that custom had almost as much do with establishing their reputations as the projects they built The Wattis brothers and Henry Kaiser already have been introduced into this narrative Most of the others who enter now will appear in its pages again for the good reason that having discovered each other's abilities the men of this group would find many additional opportunities for joint usefulness Harry W. Morrison is one who came in at Hoover Dam and has remained a staunch Bechtel ally ever since He is a big man -big frame big outlook Like W.A. W.A. he got his contracting start laying rails His firm Morrison Company Inc. was formed in 1912. Its headquarters in Boise serve as Mr. Morrison's base camp in a calling noted for travel he is perhaps the dean of all hoppers And a typical westerner he likes to cap a hard day in the field with a round of cowboy songs and billy ballads sung in a clear strong voice playing his own accompaniment on the guitar There is no record that Dad's trombone and Harry Morrison's guitar ever teamed but the two head men played the same music in their con- struction band Felix Kahn of MacDonald & Kahn later retired is one of five brothers all distinguished engineers He came up through the structural steel business then built some of the largest buildings and industrial plants in the west When you look at San Francisco's famous Mark Hopkins Hotel you see a typical Felix Kahn job The late Charles A. Shea of J. F. Shea Co. Inc. formed his company in 1914 as a partnership with his father who started in the plumbing business Prior to the formation of Six Companies Inc. the Shea organization had been associated with Pacific Bridge Co. of Portland a pioneer concern dating back to 1869 and headed by Charles F. Swigert On these partnerships Shea took care of sewer and tunnel work and Pacific 33] 5641 The men of Six Companies Ney 0192 5642 March 4 1931 The bids One week later On the job in Black Canyon Bridge the underwater construction Together they built a considerable part of San Francisco's Hetch Hetchy water system Aninteresting sidelight W.A Bechtel Co was active separately on this water line and Utah built the seven million dollar Hetch Hetchy Dam with John Q. Barlow as one of its facts senior engineers and Henry J. Hank Lawler as Superintend- ent So as even these few indicate the men of Six Com- panies were as well prepared for the problems of Hoover Dam as any group of contractors thenin business Between them they had completed work valued at more than four hundred million dollars at the time their bid was submitted and they were then engaged on projects totalling some thirty millions The Government set March 4 1931 as B Day for bids When the chips were down of the many organizations which previously had shown livelyinterest only three made applica- tion The project's size combined with difficulties of location and terrain made estimating a tremendous task furthermore the hazards were so obvious that even the most carefully worked bid was extremely risky The figures showed Six Companies an even five million dollars below the next lowest offer and almost ten millions under the highest bidder In their ambition to win it looked like they had left five millions on the table Furthermore they found out they were only twenty- four thousand dollars above the Bureau of Reclamation's esti- would mate of actual cost Success way require ingenuity all the job Six Companies Inc. got the for 48,890,996 Within a week the nucleus of the construction organization was com- plete Superintendent Frank T. Crowe arrived at the site on March 11th I was wild to build this he told an interviewer from Fortune magazine twelve years later the biggest dam anyone ever built by anywhere Frank Crowe was a Univer- sity of Maine engineer with more than twenty years of service with the Bureau of Reclamation He built the Jackson Lake Damin Wyomingand the Tieton Damin Washington Six Companies got him through Morrison and Utah Crowe knew his business and minced no words about it Once asked what his biggest hazard was at Hoover Dam he 34 Ney 0193 5643 promptly snapped the Directors These gentlemen saw his point and gave hima closely four Executive Com- mittee for most of them were men of his own rugged stamp Such as Dad Bechtel and Hank Lawler who for many years held informal board meetings every Saturday afternoon over the pinochle table Between them they would decide what was going on and tackle their problems while the cards dropped to these old timers the height of venturing Soon after the contract was announced suppliers anxious for a piece of this big business began to descend on Steve A close friend Bill Waste heard from him by phone one day in April 1931. Come over and give me a lift Steve said " want you to front for me with all these peddlers That was Bill's start with the Bechtels he went to work the following Mon- day morning Salary was not discussed " thought it was a temporary job he says but in no time at all I was at Steve's side helping him direct the buying Before it was over we purchased between eight and ten million dollars worth of supplies W. Bechtel Co.'s direct share of the work was largely administrative but as officers and directors the Bechtels put their construction knowledge into the common pot said Bill Waste who was there almost from the beginning William H. Wattis in his seventies and ailing when elected President died six months after the contract award The partners picked Dad Bechtel to succeed him Later Steve was elected First Vice A temporary job The Bechtels contribution President became a member of the four Executive Com- 3 mittee which directed actual work and Administrative Direc- tor Warren Bechtel busy with other Company work was I able to spend about half his time at the Dam in the first year after that the press of outside duties kept him away more of the time He served on the Board as did Kenneth The technical story of Hoover Dam's construction has been e told many times The bare statistics of the contract were these the project was divided into five parts first the river diversion works necessary to pass the Colorado River around the dam- Hoover Dam some statistics site consisting of upper and lower cofferdams about ninety feet high and four of the largest rock tunnels ever built averaging four thousand feet each in length and fifty feet in 35 Ney 0194 5644 Nature played a rough game Aug. 28 1933 A builder laid down his tools diameter second the dam proper a concrete arch seven hun- dred twenty feet high and eleven hundred eighty feet across at the crest third two giant spillways each large enough to a accommodate battleship fourth two outlet systems lead- ing from four great intake towers through rock tunnels to the powerhouse and valve houses fifth the powerhouse largest of its kind ever designed Additionally the volume of development cableways roads down the sheer cliffs a railroad a permanent city for workers communications and such incidentals as mammoth aggregate and concrete plants rivalled for magnitude only by later foreign projects To do all this the Government established a working time of 2,565 approximately seven years It was done in five years a saving to the public treasury of five and half million dollars The human side of man's conquest of the Colorado has been preserved by George A. Pettitt in So Boulder Dam Was Built a book published in 1935. He states the twin problems that made for widespread unemployment which only public works could relieve and recurring floods that threatened disaster to the people of California's Imperial Valley And he documents the victory of spirit over nature's mightiest killing weather and floods that tossed the great preliminary works aside like match sticks Every man who was there carries vivid memories of these and a hundred other battles not recorded in printer's ink Meanwhile the fame of the men who were winning this fight spread around the engineering world Six Companies Presidewnats urged by the Russian Government to inspect the great Dnieprostroy Dam just completed It's a good time to see what the rest of the world is doing Dad told his partners With three sons on the job at home the invitation offered an opportunity to compare notes on men and methods So he was off to the U.S.S.R. accompanied by his first and best partner Mrs. Bechtel And there in Moscow on August 28 1933 he died It was a great shock and a great loss but the family and his host of friends could find solace in the knowledge that he left as he had lived as he would want to active 36 Ney 0195 5645 to the very last a construction man on a construction mission Dad's homecoming gave the country and his profession an opportunity to show where he stood in their hearts Let Gilbert Darwin speak for the many who memorialized him in the nation's press Mr. Darwin then editor of Western Construc- tion News wrote in the September 1933 issue Dad Bechtel is gone His end came with tragic sudden- ness An international beloved and respected by thousands was a taught successful builder with intense pride in a job well done Outstanding in his characteristics were a loyalty to old friends and faithful employees no matter what their station a simplicity and kindliness of manner enduring from his shovel days on railroad construction until his death at the height of activity and power honesty tremendous vitality prodigious industry a great sense of humor and enthusiasm Dad Bechtel did a world of good things few people will ever hear about Success never changed his attitude toward life or construction He paid the closest attention to all details of his work kept up his equipment in class shape operated good camps was on the alert for new and improved methods and materials of construction A prominent railroad executive from a background of over twenty years acquaintance says of him No engineer ever had to go after Bechtel to do a good job The many useful monuments built by Dad will endure from generation to generation silent tributes to his genius in development of the western empire His brother and three sons are left to carry on the ideals of Bechtel contracting organiza- tions in memory of a fine man who built well and loved his fellows The press accounts emphasized the great warmth of W. A.'s personality devoting fully as much space to his richly human qualities as to his many notable achievements Little was written about his honors and affiliations Nevertheless he joined in fraternal and association activities choosing them carefully necessity for a man so thoroughly occupied by the two things nearest his family and work Oakland California-- California-Sept. 19 1938 ... fraternal and association memberships 37 Ney 0196 5646 1934-38 Parker Dam Dad was a Mason and a Knight Templar and of this fellowship he was deeply and justly proud He was also a loyal Elk In the field of association service he contributed substantially to the advancement of the construction industry a Charter Member of the Associated General Contractors of America and in 1929 as A.G.C.'s National President He was the pioneer of western builders in this organization holding a personal membership long before the formation of its first Pacific Coast chapter and his active participation in association work had a lot to do with putting the western contractors on the map with their eastern contemporaries His election to the Presidency of A.G.C. was reminiscent of the old story about John Alden Miles Standish and the courtship of Priscilla Dad campaigned vigorously in behalf of another man was amazed when the membership turned the tables and made him the overwhelming choice for President Later he had the satisfaction of seeing this office ably filled by another westerner friend and associate J. Kaiser First W. A. Bechtel and then Henry Kaiser gave A.G.C. the vigorous early leadership under which some of its greatest strides were made Dad's last venture was the San Francisco Bay Bridge job He did not live to see it built But the sons who Gilbert Darwin charged to carry on and their associates in Bridge Builders Inc. saw it through At about the time of the first Bay Bridge contract and before Hoover Dam was completed Six Companies obtained a contract to construct Parker Dam 155 miles down the Colorado Parker was a major undertaking in its own right but the vast work in Black Canyon and the dramatics of matching engineering wits against the winds and tides of San Francisco Bay tended to overshadow its importance Frank Crowe straddled both Hoover and Parker as top construction man with Perry Yates on the job down.at Parker as his good right arm Parker was built under subcontract by J. F. Shea Co. Inc. between 1934 and 1938 to impound waters for the Los Angeles Aqueduct and as a source of power It is three hundred twenty feet high eight hundred fifty feet long at the crest 38 Ney 0197 5647 Bridge Builders Inc. received two contracts on the Bay Bridge for the pier foundations of the East Bay cantilever span the other for painting the entire structure from shore to shore Steve was a prime mover in this joint venture which marked the introduction of eastern firms into the group on an active basis The work was covered well by inviting in three outstanding organizations on underwater construction pile driving and steel work Missouri Valley Bridge and Iron Co. and Dravo Corporation of Pittsburgh furnished the men who put the caissons down and a New York firm Raymond Con- crete Pile Company built the cofferdams The Bechtel service was in the field of management and administration Steve was Vice President of Bridge Builders Inc. and Bill Waste was Administrative Manager The Bay Bridge brought the men of Six Companies Inc. into direct competition Transbay Construction Co. which included Morrison MacDonald & Kahn Shea and Pacific Bridge bid spiritedly against their former and later Bechtel and Kaiser partners who were members of Bridge Builders The latter firm as noted was awarded the East Bay piers and the painting job Transbay Construction got the piers for the western crossing The rivalry grew as the work progressed Transbay set their lowest pier depth at minus two hundred forty feet to make it the world's deepest But Carl B. Jansen now Dravo's President and then Bridge Builders General Superintendent quickly revised his depth figure for Pier E near Yerba Buena Island on the east crossing from minus two hundred forty feet to minus two hundred seven feet Bridge Builders had the satisfaction of setting the deepest bridge footing in the world The contract for foundations from Oakland to the island embraced building steel caissons launching them at an Oakland dock towing them to the pier site then getting them down and anchored into place on the Bay bottom before building up the permanent concrete pier structures Missouri Valley's E. H. Connor dean of caisson men laid out the method Sinking the big caissons was a touchy job They had to go down with the utmost precision and rest exactly in the 1933 Big feet for the world's largest bridge 39 Ney 0198 5648 1934-138 The group built dams jetties tunnels designated spot Winds and tide had to be reckoned to a nicety the engineers were given no margin for error in computations and when the big minute arrived every member of the wellrehearsed crew had to respond with second accuracy Commuters still remember watching the bridge builders jockey those bulky boxes with the sharp cutting edges and sinking them one by one until they bit deep into bearing surface far below the ooze of the Bay floor Later after steel rose into the sky and a web of wire had been woven the decks of the ferry boats were grandstand seats for the world's biggest bridge painting job When it was finished the great Bay Bridge in its sparkling aluminum coat was as beautiful as any masterpiece of the silversmith's art The venture idea worked well for the extensive public works built in the thirties It multiplied the contractors capacity in addition to Hoover and Parker and the Bridge group members operating as Columbia Construction Co. built Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River Ruby Dam and the Gray's Harbor Jetties in Washington As Six Companies of California they constructed a section of the Oakland to Contra Costa County highway and did the troublesome initial work on the Broadway Low Level Tunnel MorrisonKaiser Co. completed two Colorado jobs lining the Moffatt Water Tunnel and building Taylor Park Dam This list partial and not entirely chronological covers a period of simultaneous operations extending from 1934 through 1938 40 Ney 0199 5649 Laura Bechtel launched a pier caisson named in her husband's honor during construction of the San Francisco Bay Bridge Ney 0200 CHAPTER 5650 UBLIC work had been advantageous to the participating contractors It enabled them to build rounded organi- zations and increase their resources But even while group work of this nature was in full swing Steve Bechtel made plans to enlarge the firm's direct service to private industry In 1936 a subsidiary called Industrial Engineering Co. was set up to manufacture and apply Somastic Pipe Coating Here was a straw pointing the next direction his thinking would take His keen interest in pipe lines and pipe coating was significant both found their major market in the petroleum industry Steve's vision was of energy types of it but particularly of oil as a universal power source a close associate pointed out And his ability then to foresee the tremendous growth that has since taken place in the petroleum industry led to the conception of a new engineering and construction facility to meet its needs As Mr. Customer at Hoover Dam he had cemented a friendship formed at the University of California The friend was John A. McCone McCone gave promise of his brilliant later career by making an outstanding record at the University Working closely with Reese Taylor another college mate later President of Union Oil Company he helped put together the Consolidated Steel Co. after working his way up in a predecessor concern When Hoover Dam got under way Consolidated's new Maywood plant had just been completed With a depression on McCone faced the necessity of finding business for the new plant and lots of it Hoover Dam was the place where the most steel was needed right then and he convinced Steve that Consolidated had the answer The petroleum aye 41 Ney 0201 5651 1937 McCone Parsons Corporation Emphasis on engineering Hydrogenation ut Richmond Refinery job No. Steve to McCone sent an coming young salesman to get the orders and look after the account was never one over- look good men He already had John McConein mind as a possible future associate and he took stock ofthe redheaded stcel salesman too Alden G. Roach by name Five years after Hoover Dam when Steve conceived a new organization to engineer and build processing plants for the oil companies he thought ofit in terms of John McCone as a team mate of the Bechtel brothers And he kept in touch with Roach who became Consolidated Steel's President and in 1948 President of Columbia Steel Company and a Director of United States Steel Alden Roach came into the Bechtel family at a later stage as a member of the Board of International Bechtel Inc. and of Industrial Indemnity In 1937 the new company was formed McCone- Parsons Corporation with headquartersin Los Angeles Ralph M. Parsons was broughtin with a specialized technical staff drawn from an earlier Chicago organization BMP became a rare entity in business annals an assured success Two contracts quickly were waiting to go on its books and more followed showing the oil industry's confidencein these men engaging in for them wholly new type of endeavor BMP was big and mature right from its opening day of facility business Its formation brought a new to the west completely self contained able to design engineer procure equipment and materials and build the complex processing structures of petroleum refining and industrial chemistry From the standpoint of the Bechtel development BMP marks the beginning of its primary concern with engineering on a large scale which would grow to include staff specialists in all main divisions of the science of petroleum Warren Bechtel said it used to be an education to watch Dad sell He didit simply and sincerely a lot of persuasion But he didn't seem to be selling at all Steve had the same knack and the advantage of many more kinds of work behind him and wider contacts Steve called on his sales ability now at the Standard Oil Company of California's offices He wanted to build Standard's new hydrogenation plant at the Richmond 42] Ney 0202 5652 refinery He was so sure he was right so sure the petroleum industry needed a complete refinery engineering and construction facility in the west that he told Standard we'll go to Richmond and do the job for nothing That kind of assur- ance was catching particularly when it came from a man who did what he said the oil company officials had occasion to know from his pipe work It was a big step on other than a routine type of refinery but Standard gave him the contract Construction of the hydrogenation plant began in the summer of 1937 and was completed the following January Meanwhile by November Standard had seen enough on the first job to place its second refinery contract this for a duo plant at Richmond In April 1938 Glacier Production Company ordered engineering and construction of a complete refinery at Cut Bank Montana In July Union Oil Company awarded year BMP the engineering and construction contract for its new solvent treating plant at Oleum Then Hercules Powder Co. selected the firm to build an ammonia plant at Hercules California Here was a new field with problems closely related to petroleum processing chemistry Not yet two years old BMP already had behind it the successful record of five plants under way or completed no two alike Refineries and chemical plants are that even two plants utilizing the same basic process will differ materially That's one reason why this class of work is a stiff test of engineering and construction ability Several men occupying responsible positions in the present Bechtel organizations were prominent in BMP's operations Heinie Hindmarsh who had known Dad Bechtel and the boys for so many years joined W. A. Bechtel Co. to help out after Dad passed away When BMP was formed he switched over to take charge of all construction Heinie's career shows the wide range of work that can be covered successfully by a really grounded man Twenty years of railroad engineering for the Southern Pacific plus shipbuilding and various types of heavy construction were in the kit of experience he brought to BMP On top of this he was an executive having labor's confidence and respect In the field of labor policies and A fast start five plants in two years The men of BMP 43] Ney 0203 5653 Team strength grew labor negotiations he carried on the enlightened policies Dad Bechtel initiated and adapted them to the vastly greater re- quirements of the later activities He also brought a large fol- lowing of superintendents foremen and mechanics which gave the new firm an excellent reservoir of skilled manpower right at the outset Another experienced man who joined in May of 1937 was Perry Yates He worked closely with Hindmarsh as the co^rdinator between engineering purchasing and construction Perry has come into this narrative before a neighbor when Bowman Dam was being built by Warren Bechtel in 1926 and as a Six Companies field engineer at Hoover and Parker Dams But prior to his employment by BMP he also had acquired specialized experience in the firm's kind of work Shell Oil Company as an engineer in the construction of oil refineries To the new from the older Bechtel firm came Earl F. English a senior executive who had seen extensive service with public utilities east and west He had been Executive Vice President of Pacific Public Service Corporation understood both management and engineering and had a background that enabled him to undertake a variety of important assignments for the Bechtel interests John C. Byrne was another early arrival As an executive of Consolidated Steel Corporation John McCone had watched the rise of this young M. I. T. graduate from laborer to Estimator Excellent judgment on costs and job production was McCone's comment based on nine years of observation In December 1937 John Byrne came to BMP and was put in charge of estimating schedule making and cost control All of these men were with the new company as it ended its first year More key people were added in the following years Jerome K. Doolan a Stanford engineer seasoned by eighteen years of engineering and management joined in August 1940 and took over project management of the shipyard built for Consolidated Steel Corporation at Orange Texas Ed Dorresten who had been made Sales Engineer the preceding December followed Perry Yates to Missouri on muni- 44 Ney 0204 5654 John A. McCone and Stephen D. Bechtel Ney 0205 5655 tions plant construction and then opened BMP's San Francisco office as Manager His business life had been devoted entirely to refinery and chemical installations so he was right at home in this class of work And George E. Walling was brought in when the pressure of wartime responsibilities required an outstanding man to direct the accounting operation He was one of recognized Lybrand Ross Bros. & Montgomery's aces Until 1937 when McCone Corporation was formed there had been just the one Bechtel business evolving from Dad's contracting activities Now there were two cleanly divided according to function A. Bechtel Co. engaged in heavy construction and the McCone firm specializing in the engineering and construction of processing plants principally refineries While BMP Athena was springing grown into the world of refinery engineering WABCO continued to build pipe lines and railroads During 1938 two lines were laid in the high country across the plateaus of Wyoming and down through the canyons into Utah Somastic Pipe Coating crews operating from a railhead plant applied coating to a large part of the Mountain Fuel Supply Company's line into Coalville Utah Pipe line owners discovered that lasting protection against corrosion was a good investment at the top of the conti- nent as well as in the tidal areas where Somastic previously had found its best market Farther east Bechtel liners under George S. Colley Jr. put in a line for Continental Oil Co. from Lusk Wyoming to Cheyenne And in the Los Angeles basin more lines were woven into the network already there- for Hancock Richfield Shell and the Southern California Gas Co. Warren Bechtel continued to oversee the Company's services to the Western Pacific building tunnels sidings and cul- verts These of 1938 were the principal heavy construction contracts The two years 1939 and 1940 brought the next important development With operations normal for W. A. Bechtel Co. in heavy construction and young BMP running as smoothly as its new Richmond hydrogenation plant Steve Bechtel pre- 1938 Pipe and railroad construction 45 Ney 0206 5656 1939 Preparations for foreign service Associates on carly foreign projects pared to gear up for service on a global scale Enthusiastic about future possibilities but making sure of his ground he set about laying a foundation that soon would enable him to say We will build anything any place any time One of his first moves was to bring Van W. Rosendahl into the Bechtel fold Another was to talk with William V.McMeni- men President of Raymond Concrete Pile Company expartner on the Bay Bridge job and with liner Hal Price and other friends Van Rosendahl joined the organization in 1939. Bechtels had known him and watched his progress for a long time primarily in the construction of large buildings but also on pipe lines and general construction He had been an athlete during undergraduate days both he and John M. Rogers now Execu- tive Vice President of the international Bechtel interest rowed on varsity crews at the University of California a school that sent three oared shells to the Olympic Games and three times won the world's championship Soon after he came with the firm events took place which brought about the Bechtels entry into foreign work a field which later became his special charge Steve had good reason to renew the association with McMeni- men of Raymond The nature of this firm's work frequently took it into foreign countries to build harbors and similar developments The Raymond business grew out the idea of the place concrete foundation pile and widened to include various types of engineering and construction When the Bechtels undertook the first foreign projects this wellestablished organization again became a valued ally Another was H. C. Price of Bartlesville who originally met the Bechtels as a welding subcontractor on the midwest pipeline jobs of the 30s Price started in a small way as a pioneer in the electric welding process in 1928 after seven discouraging years he was able to make the first successful electric weld on a pipe line and thereafter built his firm into one of the coun- try's largest welding organizations A third associate at this time was Williams Brothers Corp. of Tulsa large pipe contractors These Raymond 46 Ney 0207 5657 Price separately and together the starting lineup with which Bechtel foreign activities began Here once more was the versatile joint venture made up of men and firms who were competitors one day partners the next Oil- rich Venezuela furnished the locale for the work The 125- kilometre inch Mene Grande pipe line was built from supple- Oficina in the interior to Guanta on the coast eight mentary contracts included dock construction and 132 miles of telephone lines George S. Colley Jr. ran the pipe job Bill Hanna breaking in was one of his younger assistants Forty miles of the Mototan Grande road were cut through the jungles and the Guanta Highway was surfaced pipe contracts to Oficina Three were executed for the Standard Oil Company of Venezuela Harbor and wharf instal- lations were made at Ciudad Bolivar for the Venezuelan Gov- ernment Altogether these projects added up to a good volume for the first year of foreign work Meanwhile international politics were taking an ominous turn The chips were down when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939. No great foresight was needed to see that before this war ended the United States would be drawn into it Like others the Bechtels were alert to the implications and lost no time getting their resources ready for the country's service Each step they formation of the refinery engineering and construction facility cementing relations with other con- structors their entry into foreign work and the addition of minds and experience to the top echelon closer to the goal of greater capacity Their organizations would need great strength and capacity sooner than anyone realized For the time being heavy construction went on as usual In the United States more pipe lines were built in 1940 the principal ones being the one hundred seventy mile Fort Peck line in Montana and the Illana job line two hundred seventy miles long laid through Illinois and Indiana Also in the same year the organization completed one of its early buildings of the industrial type although this East Bay Iceland in Berkeley not a factory but a skating rink The 1947 National Figure Skating Championships were held there and 1940 Venezuela- fountainhead of forciyn with Sept. 1 1939 War in Europe 1940 Construction 47 Ney 0208 5658 competitors pronounced its ice floor one of the best in the country But engineers who visited the place looked up at the ceiling not down at the ice for the rink has a tremendous roof 1940 Refineries supported by a clear span hinged arch type truss that invariably catches an engineer's eye Two refineries were on the year's agenda for BMP an alkylation plant at Watson California for The Texas Company and a delayed coker for Union Oil Co. at Oleum Of the domestic work the most significant was contained in two heavy construction contracts between Dodge Corporation the big mining concern and W. A. Bechtel Co. These contracts covered excavations for thickener tanks and concrete founda- f 1940 tions for an immense copper reduction works at Morenci A copper mine Arizona Unknowingly Morenci turned out to be the kick- off of construction for war Although originally not a govsponsored defense project the Morenci job reflected the nation's concern over copper and it proved to be a forerunner of heavy defense and war responsibilities for the Bech- tels Narrowed down to southwest copper Morenci marked the first of three separate Bechtel open pit mines with their processing plants and attendant facilities 48 Ney 0209 5659 WORK for the naval and military forces started in earnest during June of 1940. These were group ventures sored by other partners big jobs Some of them required up to three years to finish The first assignment was to engineer and construct the Navy's Air Station at Corpus Christi Texas a project that employed seven thousand people Next in August came Fort Ord near Monterey California John McCone got Jerry Doolan and Jerry Komes to check the group's estimate Both recently had come into the organization as noted previously The need for additional key men was being met promptly they came and stayed how they grew with the organization and where they landed is a matter of later record Fort Ord was built under Harry Morrison's joint sponsorship with Ford J. Twaits The same sponsors also constructed Camp Roberts near Paso Robles which got under way in November 1940. Group work was give and take These part- ners led off on defense work soon the Bechtels and various members of the group sponsored other projects which were shared with the partners One piece of direct work done at this time also belongs in the defense category Because it was closely related to BMP's special qualifications in engineering and equipment installation BMP engineers were awarded the design of a central heating and steam plant for the Army and its construction men the job of building the plant at Elmendorf Air Field Anchorage Alaska When the direct contracts at Anchorage and Morenci were added to group projects started in 1940 the total exceeded one hundred and eight million dollars for strategic 49 1940 National dejense the start of America's biggest construction job Ney 0210 5660 voted 1941 Uncle Sam piled it on construction Pearl Harbor was still a year away but already the Bechtels and associates had deployed their forces on the nation's second line of defense Events to come showed that thus far the engineers and field crews and office people had just begun to fight Steve Bechtel would be everywhere from San Francisco to Washington to Manila and way points Warren would be digging in literally in Arizona and northern Mexico to provide more copper for munitions and a thousand and one other essen- tial uses And Ken financial man and administrative head soon would be the family's Number One Shipbuilder as well Shipyards and ships naval bases stretching clear across the Pacific the Army's principal western depot and Port of Embarkation two big powder plants and a score of other jobs piled ingroup work sponsored work direct work All of these responsibilities came during 1941 and before Pearl Harbor They were so complex and so many that merely to segregate and document them is difficult How difficult they must have been for the contractors to absorb and get under way can be imagined when sometimes only minutes or hours were permitted for decisions only days for organizing That capable organizations could be assembled quickly smoothly and simultaneously on dissimilar projects at widely separated places now seems past belief But they were just as all over America other men and women were doing other kinds of impossible jobs adding to the sum that was the miracle of preparedness in a year And it was done by these men with the confidence and humility Dad Bechtel taught his three sons and those who worked with them and their associates and assistants A typical instance of the years of preparation by American business people that preceded and made possible America's year of preparation enough soon enough to save the nation from quick defeat At the time the three Bechtel sons were heavily engaged in organizing these vast war activities February of 1941their mother passed away This gentle understanding lady had been W. A.'s first last and best partner of the home helpmeet and mother in the fullest meanings of the 50 Ney 0211 56 1 illustrating Once again John McCone Steve the value of working together Companies men at Calship Bechtel Jack McEachern Harry Morrison Gil Shea es AS sy ra: Marinship's setting tanker yard at Sausalito California Ney 0212 5662 words When Mother Bechtel was called away the boys and sister Alice were left with a sadness that was heavy indeed A pioneer stalwart when the going was most rugged imprint she left would always be cherished The Bechtels readiness to take on a substantial chunk of the emergency shipbuilding program illustrated the almost prophetic steps by which they prepared for the new responsibility Back in 1936 when the American Merchant Marine was still in the talking stage Earl Fisher Vice President of Pacific Gas and Electric Company and a neighbor of Steve Bechtel's was appointed to an exploratory Maritime Committee From time to time he discussed the problems with Steve who became interested in the possibility of reviving big scale U. S. shipbuilding and shipping He began to study the situation to discuss it with his brothers and partners and to cultivate acquaintance within the existing shipbuilding industry This conditioning went on for three years even though projects then in work occupied the time of the three Bechtels and their organizations far beyond the usual hours people allot to business The chain of circumstances went something like this Earl Fisher aroused Steve's interest after that the Bechtels and John McCone made a study of the shipbuilding industry from which they concluded that shipbuilding seemed about to become a big volume business and therefore was a real possibility for our kind of operations They were thinking groupwise Steve succeeded in interesting Henry Kaiser and Charlie Shea of Six Companies and this had the effect of getting some of the others to look into the matter One of these associates was J. A. Jack McEachern up from pile driver to head man of Seattle's General Construction Co. Through his friend Jim Lamont of Todd Seattle Dry Docks Inc. group members met John D. Reilly President of Todd Shipyards Corp. in New York Reilly in turn had a up with William S. Newell of Bath Iron Works in Maine Exactly how this combination worked out is a detail outside the scope of this report but in September 1939 when the Maritime Commission called for bids on five C cargo ships 51 Prelude to shipbuilding Ney 0213 5663 ... bunch that nezer built a ship movers to shipbuilders under the Government's long range program the western group and Todd formed the Tacoma Shipbuilding Corp. and were the successful bidders Then when the British Purchasing Commission inquired of U. S. Maritime's Vice Chairman Admiral Howard L. Vickery concerning shipbuilding facilities for sixty ships he told them there's a bunch out on the west coast that never built a ship but they think they can do a job for you After conferences between the British representatives and the group the sixty order was placed Thirty were to be built on each coast Bath came in for the eastern end and Richmond California was set up as the Pacific Coast base of operations Next came the start of the American wartime cargo fleet and further talks with Admiral Vickery Thereafter things happened fast In summary BMP sponsored and built a Naval Shipyard for Consolidated Steel Corporation at Orange Texas the group under various sponsors built and operated the nineways Houston yard in Texas a seven yard and another ways yard in Maine the eighteen SeattleTacoma Shipyard the nineteen Richmond facilities and the eleven Oregon Shipyard at Portland Todd Shipyards sponsored some of the yards Bath Iron Works some the Kaiser interests some the Bechtel interests some and General Construction Co. acted as sponsor of the Tacoma yardyard This represented a big part of the war shipbuilding accomplishment and the first time in U. S. history when the west outbuilt the eastern shipyards Two sponsored yards delivered five hundred and seventy cargo transports and tankers addition to the hundreds built at other group yards To these operations was added in conjunction with an old Bay Bridge partner Missouri Valley Bridge and Iron Co. a ways yard for Navy LSTs at Evansville Indiana The group's two big Pacific Coast yards designed built and operated by Bechtel interests invite special attention because they became important to the growth and integration of the present Bechtel organization anda testing ground for some of its key personnel Individual group holdings in the various 52 Ney 0214 5664 yards were simplified by adjustments in the partnerships made during the shipbuilding program which brought about closer control by the Bechtels at California Shipbuilding Corporation's Wilmington operation and at Marinship in Sausalito Of the two Calship came into the world first Its natal day was January 11 1941 when the Maritime Commission awarded the first facilities contract Ground was broken three days later and after that the lusty newcomer grew fast in its big crib out on Terminal Island in Los Angeles Harbor McCone's engineers designed the yard and it was built sponsored and managed by McCone All this sounds coldly factual actually although Calship was a much bigger undertaking than any of Dad Bechtel's railroad jobs of twenty years before it soon took on the familiar look of people working together in the pattern of co^perationset up in the Northwestern Pacific camps Steve became Calship's President then Board Chairman when John McCone actively took over direction of operations as President Kenneth Bechtel served as Secretary and later as Vice President Bill Waste and George Colley were the first two to go on the new payroll Bill as Administrative Manager opened shop and started hiring on New Year's Day a week and a half ahead of contract conclusion George got under way fast with the big construction job and stayed until April when he shipped off to Cavite on the Navy's construction program in the Philippines His shoes at Calship proved a good fit for J. S. Jap Connell who stepped in as construction chief the same Jap who now heads Bechtel Corporation's Somastic Pipe Coating Division When the pressure got really heavy Heinie Hindmarsh loaned them Harry Benner his General Construction Superintendent on refinery work Jerry Doolan was slated for the post of General Manager and as soon as Consolidated Steel's shipyard in Texas was completed he returned to California and these duties Jim Warfield had been hired by Bill Waste as Assistant Administrator When he went north to help Ken Bechtel start Marinship Warfield moved up to Bill's former spot Quite a while later Jerry Doolan also left the yard to take on the problems of building 1941 California ShipbuildingShipbuilding Corporation Corporation Corporation Calship's line 53 Ney 0215 5665 refineries in the Netherlands West Indies and the Middle East and then Jim Warfield was made Calship's General Manager John Byrne and Jerry Komes on the Operating Committee Pat Ryan the Chief Engineer J. S. Jumpy Sides the Produc- tion Manager and several others who continued with Bechtel- McCone carried the brunt of the load Group partners who were Board members included Felix Kahn Treasurer Les Corey of Utah Construction Henry J. Kaiser and his son Edgar Jack McEachern of General Construction Co. Harry Morrison Gorrill Swigert and Gilbert Shea Calship's Board looked like a Six Companies reunion Altogether at peak employment this shipyard was a community of 42,000 souls a population about equal to every man woman and child in the city of San Bernardino California Its Ships first block of three hundred six Liberty Ships placed end to Ships enough end might have made a bridge twenty miles across the | to bridge the English Channel for Eisenhower's invading armies Thirty- English Channel four ships were in process of construction simultaneously ten in the fabrication and assembly lines fourteen on the ways and ten at the outfitting berths On one remem- bered day four ships were delivered More revealing is the over average of sixty hours between deliveries Total production was four hundred seven Libertys EC tankers AP and AP Victorys and transports Twenty per cent of the Calshippers were women and less than ten per cent of all workers had ever been employed in a | shipyard Yet these greenhorns helped management achieve - savings in hours up to seventy per cent No wonder John McCone could say in Washington in September of 1946 that Those responsible for Calship are proud of its record Year after year he continued operating three shifts a day seven days a week we produced ships in unprecedented numbers and at low cost In doing so the stockholders placed in the service of the yard a vast number of executives engineers superintendents and workmen all of whom represented the real assets and resources of this Western group The skill and ability of those men and their sincerity of purpose in serv- 54 Ney 0216 5666 ing the country's need produced the ships without which the war would have been lost It was plain that top management knew where credit belonged and proudly pointed it out The two operated war shipbuilding ventures were active for four years and ten months and for three years and eight months respectively Calship delivered its final ship on October 27 1945 and Marinship two days later The throughput of the two yards came to well over a billion dollars nine hundred nineteen millions by Calship almost two hundred millions by Marinship These were sobering figures for to spend so much money that fast and intelligently was a tremendous responsibility indeed The payrolls in millions were w eqeue ivkalent to starting a new major construction project every Because there were other war tasks for the Bechtels and the chronological group and because it is convenient to sacrifice sequence in favor of tracing each undertaking through from start to finish the shipyards are sketched at this point Accordingly the story moves back to March 2 1942 and San Fran- cisco the genesis of Marinship On that day the Bechtel office received a telegram from Admiral Emory S. Land Chairman U. S. Maritime Commis- sion Briefly it invited a proposal to initiate a new yard stating mind in part Your proposal should include a schedule of deliveries bearing in that the maximum number of completed ships is desired prior to December 31 1942 this in March of that year We are now relying on you the Admiral wired in the interests of this emergency to contribute your indi- vidual organizations emergency demands all within your power to give your country ships Please advise by wire the date we may expect your submission at this office Steve Warren and Kenneth Bechtel and John McCone talked together by telephone They already were loaded with other work But they realized as Kenneth later wrote that Admiral Land would not have sent out his plea to us unless we really were needed We decided that if this yard was to go forward I should sponsor it Of the available sites on San Francisco Bay Marin County 55 1942 Murinship Ney 0217 5667 Site Site selection " Tailor tankers and oilers offered the least congestion That night Ken talked with three friends to discuss possible locations the next morning with Harry Allen Ted Panton and Fred Boole he covered every possibility Within a few hours they found a suitable piece on the Marin County shore near Sausalito and started negotia- tions for a lease A familiar thread reappears for the selected site consisted largely of early client Northwestern Pacific's property now owned by another old customer the Southern Pacific One week after the telegram came preliminary studies were handed to Admiral Vickery in Washington repeating again for it was exactly one week from contract to the arrival of the advance force at the Hoover Dam site So on March 12 1942 a Maritime Commission contract was awarded stipulating among other things that the yard be built in the shortest time possible Calship had made a good record ground breaking to first launching in less than eight months Marin shaved it by almost two full months when hull Number One the SS William A. Richardson slid down the ways on September 26th In fulfillment of Admiral Land's original request six Liberty ships were afloat in the ninety days remaining before 1942 came to an end with the seventh coming along on January 3rd Marinship however was not to be a volume yard in the sense that Calship was On July 4th the day of the second keel laying and Kenneth Bechtel's birthday he learned from Admiral Vickery that Marinship had been selected for tanker production The difference between building standardized cargo ships and building tankers can be likened to the difference between making a ready suit and tailoring one to measure The tailors went to work invited California's Governor Earl Warren to lay the first tanker keel on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor December 7 1942 and went on to become the national tanker champs When it was all over after VJ Day ways Marinship has delivered fifteen Libertys sixty electric 140,000 T tankers and sixteen Navy Oilers of similar size and design Eight of the yard's Navy Oilers later went into Tokyo Bay with the Big 56 Ney 0218 5668 Of Calship's 467 vessels 336 were EC Liberty ships including 30 tanker conversions Marinship delivered 15 Liberty cargo ships before switching to tanker production Each Liberty carried as much as four car freight trains AP and AP Victory ships were faster than Libertys and had longer range Calship built the nation's first AP the China Victory went on to deliver another 100 Victorys plus 30 Victory Transports : ert menmeen T Tankers Marinship's primary responsibility were key factors in establishing American sea supremacy The yard built 78 of these 140,000 floating tank farms Ney 0219 5669 Mo to acknowledge the Japanese surrender And Marinship's people continued the family's habit of finding improved ways of doing things better and faster with a number of shipbuilding innovations One was the level outfitting dock built to deck height and approached by ramps which reduced outfitting time materially But achievements notwithstanding the one thing Marin's old hands remember most vividly was its esprit de corps something very special even for those days of employee unity It soaked all the way through the outfit you could notice it the minute you checked in at the gate And it ran clear through the big redwood Administration Building from the receptionist on up to the President's office Even at this distance no one cares to put a finger on the exact cause Probably there were many fellows like President Ken and Vice President and General Manager Bill Waste Ray Hamilton who headed production Administrative Manager Bob Digges Naval Architect Dick Grambow Russ Quick and Bill Ayers And in the earlier days Ted Panton who built the yard And the partners John McCone Jack Pomeroy and Felix Kahn and Harry Morrison and W. V. McMenimen Give an assist to the employees own magazine The The Marin Spontaneous outbursts from the ranks helped too like The Stinger that fearless champion of democratic journalism fathered by John Connolly Certainly John O'Connell who was there and who now looks after labor relations under Heinie Hindmarsh got off to a good start in Marinship's healthy labor climate Some people believe that the personnel knit together quickly because Marin was a smaller operation if indeed a force of twenty thousand can be considered small At all events a high degree of morale developed It was Marinship's version of the old teamwork idea that kept cropping up again and again in this fifty story Dad Bechtel began Some of the yard's key men had been members of the family long before the war and still are but others who joined here for the first time also stayed on to share in postwar growth When a man showed he meant to stick and train for bigger things management caught on quickly and gave him 57 Why men stayed on ne . Puters F ot fetrenyan yyyet Ney 0220 5670 Joshua Hendy Iron Works 1940 From sixty to eleven thousand employees the opportunity In fact the Bechtels provided permanent careers for so many of their people that the circumstance attracted editorial notice in the 1947 Engineering Issue of the California Monthly alumni organ of the University Both Calship and Marin won coveted wartime awards for outstanding service Both by the jobs they did can share in sentiment expressed by Admiral Vickery speaking specifically of Marinship when he said What we were buying was management brains I knew the Bechtels and a number of their people I sent telegrams to about a dozen people asking what they could do Bechtel called up when he got the telegram and said they were going right to work on they made the best record of any of the yards that came in at that time They were making such a good record that when I saw I had to do something to increase production of tankers I took that yard myself and shifted it to tanker production Not merely ships but engines to drive them were produced by a sponsored war industry The manufacture of ship engines was a production job of the venerable Joshua Hendy Iron Works The name Joshua Hendy reaches back to California's Gold Rush fact Hendy's founder came around the Horn to San Francisco in '49 For seventy years this factory's placer mining and sawmill machinery enjoyed a worldwide reputation After its San Francisco plant was destroyed in the earthquake and fire of 1906 the operation was moved to Sunnyvale in the orchard country north of San Jose California When the group of contractors bought Hendy in November of 1940 the plant employed sixty people In the following twenty months its payroll grew to eleven thousand five hundred and the original plant expanded to cover a million square feet Charles E. Moore was President during this pro- gram and the war production period and was followed in that office by John McCone in 1945. Steve and Kenneth Bechtel were Directors Kenneth also the Secretary Long associ- ate Felix Kahn gave a lot of attention to this group interest as Hendy's Vice President and Treasurer Les Corey of Utah Construction Co. Gene Trefethen of the Kaiser organization and W. Gorrill Swigert of Pacific Bridge were others who 58 Ney 0221 5671 served on the Directorate another throw to Six Com- panies days The plant turned out seven hundred and fifty EC recipro- cating steam engines for the Liberty really big power plants weighing one hundred thirty tons each Hendy also manufactured propulsion steam turbines for ships generators turbine reduction gears diesel engines ships line shafting and torpedo mounts Initiation of turbine manufacture marked the first time engines of this type had been made in the western half of the United States In September of 1942 the Joshua Hendy operation was expanded by the acquisition of the Wheeler Manu- 1942 facturing Company of East Orange New Jersey Crocker- Wheeler Wheeler was also a pioneer in its field manufacture of was added motors generators generator sets and large flexible couplings When the war ended Joshua Hendy and its Wheeler Division stood beside the two shipyards in Sd the reviewing line for they too had earned the highest merit awards the nation bestowed on its soldiers of production i Ahn Ahn Ahn Ahn Ahn Ahn 1 1 t 1. SI ZO ZO 59 bor ty Pera Ney 0222 CHAPTER 5672 1940-41 PNAB nests for the American eagle HAT in essence was the story of ships and ship engines for victory It was big and dramatic but not as big nor as hazardous as another emergency contract This was the farflung construction of Pacific Naval Air Bases which grew into the largest and fastest construction job of all time a statement for which there is the good authority of Vice Admiral Moreell who had charge of it The job was undertaken as a group project or more accurately as a series of projects Pacific Naval Air Bases officially began on May 25 1939 with the appropriation by Congress of three millions for the purpose The story before that is a long one of devotion by key Navy people to a task filled with heartbreaks race lost against time to register with the American people an awareness of vulnerability on the Pacific flank One who proved tireless on this job was the head of the Navy's Bureau of Yards and Docks Admiral Ben Moreell Once under way PNAB became his baby a thriving infant striving mightily to grow up in a mere matter months because it had been born five years too late From a spearpoint in the Philippines up through Guam Wake Midway swinging back out of Pearl Harbor down to Palmyra and Johnston all of it anchoring on the California base at Alameda plan proposed to ring the fortified Japa- nese mandated islands with air power Only part of what the Navy knew to be its bare minimum had been provided by Congress even at this eleventh hour but it was a start and Moreell let no grass grow in getting it under way This program began as a three million dollar project and eventually grew to cost about four times that amount Billions were 60 Ney 0223 5673 spent for cure where millions might have afforded prevention Countless lives were poured into that final price too contractors men and Navy people alike When the newspapers reported the authorizing legislation no less than forty contracting firms showed interest One was the Turner Construction Co. of New York which under R. C. Cliff Wilson was then completing a testing basin for the Navy in Maryland This firm soon arranged to tie up with Raymond Concrete Pile and the Hawaiian Dredging Company of Honolulu headed by Walter H. Dillingham They called themselves Raymond Two Baltimore firms the Arundel Corporation and Consolidated Construction Co. formed a separate group And as might be expected the west- ern contractors teamed up once more to offer their services There were others anxious to do the work but only these three groups survived the early rounds Harry Morrison took the lead for the constructors from the Far West Three days of meetings convinced the Navy that these men could justify their stated position ... ... We can do the job Details We'll work them out as they come up and give you the job you want in fast time As it turned out they were selected But not at the outset Raymon Turd ner had made a detailed analysis and proposal they were put to work first with the western partners held in reserve The Navy knew that before long there would be enough work to occupy both groups David O. Woodbury's book Builders for Battle gives a thoroughgoing account of the whole adventure background how it grew and what happened before and after the shooting started out on the jobsites stretching ten thousand miles across the Pacific Even Woodbury's four hundred pages only highlight the story But the heroism of Dan Teter's twelve hundred workers on falling Wake is in it and the story of Marlyn Sheik with fifteen hundred of Harry Morrison's men on embattled Midway and Gus Ayers and the others getting under way on reconstruction while the smoke still hung over Pearl and Lowell Dillingham's bunch ingeniously freeing the wedged battleships along the Ford Island shore 61 We can do the job Ney 0224 5674 1941 The Bechtels enlist again again By January of 1941 money was promised to expand naval facilitiesin the far Pacific Time was running out for workin the Philippines before Congress could vote the funds the eight PNAB contractors were asked who would take the job We will Steve Bechtel answered and the man we will send don't out is our Vice President George S. Colley Jr. He can get people to do what they don't know they're capable of The Bechtels put the nucleus together quickly George turned the job of building Calship over to Jap Connell packed his bag and climbed on a plane for Manila He had Jack Scarlet for General Superintendent and Harry Koons Chuck Snead Smith Davis Combs Webber thirty key men Workers were recruited at Manila A late start at Cavite George Colley with George Ferris of Turner and a small group went in by Clipper on April 20th The Navy's Com- mander Jim Wilson and his assistants were waiting for them First order of business was to modernize the installations at Cavite on Manila Bay There were no blueprints just a list of jobs the Navy wanted done It's up to us Wilson told them we'll have to plan on the spot Construction headquarters went up right away draftsmen purchasing agents and the office crew buckled down Twenty projects were on the dredging list at Cavite and out on Sangley sea plane ramps hangars fuel and ammunition storage powerhouse Where there's will living quarters Plenty of labor was available Heavy equipment was a horse of a different color The dredging job was a big one with no time to wait for equipment from the States The Philippine Government owned the only available dredge It was not for Colley hire authorities stiffly pointed out and Ferris talked the matter over There's only one out the two Georges decided President Quezon himself The President was at Baguio ill with visitors barred They decided to try anyway An old friend got Ferris on a Thursday By Monday the big dredge was on the job at Cavite Getting steel was the next problem Practically none in the Islands Someone had seen a stock of it Where At Hong Kong The Japanese surely knew about it trying to get it [ 62 Ney 0225 5675 would be risky business No other choice up to China by air a taxi cruise of the town a quick deal and then a brush with the Hong Kong authorities over all typhus shots But the steel went to Manila right under the Japs noses That was the way things were done during those frantic final weeks It was a race and everybody knew it The fifth column around Manila knew it They watched politely and were careful to spell George Colley's name correctly on their blacklist By fall Japanese observation planes had seen enough to earn him a high place on the roll of those to be liquidated General MacArthur was interested in the naval work He called Ferris in for an hour's talk Young man said the General it does my heart good to hear about the plans you and Colley are carrying out I pray to God you will finish in time I do not think you will History records the Philippine disaster of December 8th 1941. First Clark Field Manila felt the Japs air onslaught American airpower in the Philippines had been destroyed the ground Thereafter only time and courage stood before the fall of the Islands And of Guam as well where Jack Pomeroy's organization had started work in July Guam that years center of the whole political maneuver to appease Guam where Clark Eldridge and seventyseven good construction men were taken prisoners Jack Pomeroy Harry Morrison and W. V. McMenimen were there just before the outbreak Jack intended to stay Mac planned to go on to Cavite but a typhoon intervened There- upon he decided to return to the mainland for Christmas and finally argued Jack Pomeroy into coming along By this narrowest of margins the three of them missed being war casualties They met Earl English on the returning Clipper homebound on one of his San Francisco to Manila commuting trips for Steve At Honolulu they picked up George Ferris who had come in from Manila and left by Matson Liner on December 5th It was that close After the first attacks in the Philippines had cleaned out the American air force there the enemy came over at will on their bombing runs On December 10th 10th the coup de grace was given I pray to God MacArthur said ~ Dec. 10 1941 Finis at Cavite [ 63 ] Ney 0226 5676 to the partially completed installations at Cavite and out on Sangley Point With no more worth doing there Commander Wilson took them over to Mariveles to build emergency airfields and ammunition tunnels in the mountains From then until that dark day when the little yellow men arrived the contractors forces were put to work on odd jobs in an attempt to bolster the weak land defenses Most of the men were taken prisoner in Manila and spent three miserable years at Santo Tomas and Cabanatuan Some like Chuck Snead did not return Back at San Francisco Steve Bechtel was badly upset Bechtel men had faced danger a thousand times was part of the game this was something different Men waiting for the inevitable like caged animals was not to his liking He was in no way responsible for their plight but it was as character- istic of the sons as it had been of Dad Bechtel to feel a close San Francisco calling Manila Manila to Kuching the first lap kinship with the organization's people George Colley of course was Steve's close friend from childhood on After Cavite fell and while the men were still working around Manila Steve telephoned George every night more for encouragement than anything else On one of these calls was December George said You won't hear from me again for about a month He didn't elaborate They both knew the Japs had tapped the line A week later Chuck Snead cabled Colley had escaped to sea With him went his wife Marjorie Harry and Mrs. Webber of his staff Dr. Ashton Laidlaw of Shanghai and a very important brief case containing records of the work They put out in a small pleasure launch inching their way through two mine fields in the black of night drawing a warning shot from Corregidor before establishing identity The chances of reaching Australia seemed slim for the enemy's navy had been seen to the north and patrol vessels even now might lay across their course Colley's plan was to travel at night and hide during the daylight hours After ten nights they reached Balabac across the Straits of Mindoro switched to a native sailboat known as a kumpit and prepared to run the gauntlet of small Japanese craft known to be ahead Traveling thus [ 64 Ney 0227 Cavite 1941. George S. Colley Jr. and Harry Koons of the top Bechtel staff with Filipino laborers ronted Ken and Steve Bechtel Felix Kahn Edgar and Henry Kaiser at re Marinship another Six Companies reunion Ney 022 5678 through what George merely calls bad weather they made Sandakan in Borneo to find the Japs already in possession of part of the island Here they hid out in a tidal river while attempting to obtain a more seaworthy craft The nearby town fell into Jap hands and George decided to swim down river to a native settlement in the hope of finding a boat Part way there a crocodile took after him and soon Colley was perched high in a mangrove tree with Mr. Croc patiently waiting below He was still there when the Japs came several hours later sweeping the river in a launch The others had been captured by a separate patrol First on the leper island of Berhala and then at Kuching they learned what life was like in a Japanese prison camp Food was bad some of the time there was not enough to subsist on Treatment was worse Harry Webber and nine others were executed for infractions of camp rules How for survival George and his companions managed to set up a food smuggling network and how he put out a trap line of rusty tin cans to catch syrup drippings from a sugar warehouse in that damp climate are examples of ingenuity he recounts in the privately published book of his experiences Manila Kuching and Return The return in that book title came three weeks after August 20 1945 when the camp commandant called them in to announce the historic atom bomb incidents and the armis- tice Not until September 11th following threat of a wholesale slaughter did the Australians arrive to insure their freedom On September 12th Marjorie Colley who had been held separately in the women's quarters was reunited with her husband and they walked the long distance from the prison camp to Kuching Arriving there you can imagine their delight to see evidence of American strength again in the form of the LCT Wild Willie To Labuan they went on the Wild Willie enjoying every minute of the trip At Labuan they were told a special plane was on the way to pick up George Colley and wife a courtesy which should have aroused their suspicions Because the next evening in Manila the reason for the special plane was 1942 Borneo 1 story ending ending 65] Ney 0229 5679 1941 Action on the home front Basic materials . Powder ... Steel .. Copper apparent when George and Marjorie came to the happy ending of their war story Waiting to welcome them was Steve Bechtel all the way from San Francisco While work went ahead on Naval bases in the Pacific the men at home had an Army Base and Port of Embarkation to design and build at Oakland's outer harbor on San Francisco Bay It became the heart of the Army's Pacific overseas supply pumping the lifeblood of food munitions and equipment westward in a steady stream The W. Bechtel Co. engineered this project in 1941. The following year construction valued at eleven million dollars was carried out as a group venture under Bechtel sponsorship Some of the supplies that cleared through Oakland came from two other projects built by the organization These were facilities for the manufacture of munitions One job consisted of additions made to an existing Hercules Powder Company installation at Belvedere New Jersey The other was a completely new plant engineered and constructed by McCone at Louisiana Missouri and known as the Missouri Ordnance Works Warren Bechtel who negotiated the Belvedere contract pointed out that after an explosion in 1940 at Kenville New Jersey the United States was left virtually without facilities for the manufacture of smokeless powder Belvedere remedied that situation and the Missouri Ordnance Works added mate- rially to Uncle Sam's explosive output As happens so often some of the same Bechtel people worked at both ends of apparently unrelated projects Perry Yates and Russ Quick went east on construction of the powder facilities that furnished munitions to the Pacific through the Oakland Army Depot they had just finished building If powder was short so were copper and steel The Bechtels helped in the solutions to both problems steel at Pittsburg California where in war foundations and additions were made to the Columbia mill copper in Arizona and Mexico Warren as recorded pioneered the Bechtels war construction program with the first Dodge contracts at Morenci Arizona Under increasing pressure for copper Morenci began to grow until when he finally took his men off the completed 66 Ney 0230 5680 job it had become one of the world's largest open pit copper mining operations Like the Canol Project to come there was an element of hedging in the enlargement of U. S. copper production After the enemy's initial success in the Pacific American sea routes were vulnerable Had the Japanese cut sea access to Chilean copper the supply of this metal would have been nearly as critical as rubber or tin Morenci is located in southeastern Arizona not far from the New Mexico line It is an old mining district dating from the erection of a small blast furnace there in 1872. Development on a large scale did not take place until 1942 when Louis S. Cates and associates of the Dodge Corporation started operating the present copper reduction works which effi- 1941 Morenci ciently utilizes ore assaying only one per cent copper Its con- struction took place in two stages The first units consisted of a reduction works with an initial daily capacity of thirty thousand ore tons a smelter powerhouse water system and tailings disposal facilities Under a separate contract the con- structor graded and disposed of residual matter from the processing plant for the period of one year The second stage of the work comprised additions to the 3 plant and mining pit increasing the daily capacity to fifty peer thousand ore tons and the construction of a complete commu- tt nity for workers The community was no small job itselffive hundred forty housing units two large dormitories two schools two stores and major additions to an existing hospital Two who were active at San Francisco on figure work for the t Southwest mining projects were Frank C. Sewell a key admin- T istrative man continuously since Dad's Northwestern Pacific work and Brantley M. Eubanks Alice Bechtel's husband S whose service started at Hoover Dam included the Bay Bridge e painting job and some of the early refineries Dad Bechtel as mentioned once took a brief fling in mining but in a small way and as a mine owner Otherwise before n Morenci there was no precedent in the family for mine con- i struction Here was another new field but most of the prob- dn lems were familiar to these old hands at earth moving and concrete work Even the massive installations of classifiers and 67 Ney 0231 5681 '43 ThTehse econd mineCastle Dome at Miami Arizona 1943 Over the border flotation cells were taken in stride after the schooling at Hoover Dam on the cement gravel and blending plants Experience at Morenci demonstrated again that givengood men and methods good performanceis a sure thing At least the officials of Defense Plant Corporation thought so Forin December of 1941 when the first Morenci excavations and foundations were still the principal show pieces in the Bechtels mining exhibit they were retained to design procure materials and build a second large open pit copper mine and proc- essing facilities near Globe Arizona for operation by the Castle Dome Copper Co. Inc. This was the Miami project and among other thingsit marked John M. Rogers freshman year with the firm Rogers was an experienced mining engineer A friend of Van Rosen- dahl's he casually droppedin one day at the San Francisco office and then Warren Bechtel before he could catch a deep breath I had him on the job down in Arizona The hot arid country around Miami offered a pretty fair rehearsal for the Middle East where John Rogers would see postwar service Almost at the outset he got in on some good shooting when the constructor's powder gang shot off the entire top of Castle Domein a single blast Altogether eleven million tons of overburden were stripped from the ore body to streamline this big mountain When the benching was done Castle Dome looked like an immense terraced garden ready for landscaping Miami was designed to process ten thousand ore tons daily specification In operation it exceeded by approximately twenty per cent As at Morenci construction included the necessary auxiliary facilities and housing as well as water and electrical systems The job was completedin April of 1943 whereupon the mine builders moved across the international border to Cananeain the state of Sonora Mexico comparable In many ways the work at Cananea was to that just concluded at Miami Processing capacities were about equal there were similar installations and structures Stripping accounted for ten million tons of overburden just a million less than at Miami Cananea had its own peculiar features 68] Ney 0232 5682 however One was the chore of training nine thousand Mexican Nationals with a U. S. staff fixed by Mexican Government regulation at ninety people Nine thousand had to be trained in order to get half that number of workers As fast as the natives learned to run the tractors and trucks churn drills and power shovels off they went to other parts of Mexico where such unusual skills commanded a high premium 69 Ney 0233 5683 CHAPTER VII 1941 The Bechtel perennials rails and pipe lines recapitulation sponsored and group operations were occupied with strengthening the nation's sinews for such projects as advance bases cantonments training camps a military port of embarkation shipyards and shipbuilding Direct work on the other hand was concerned mainly with facilities for producing the materials of war steel copper oil gunpowder As previously recorded steel and copper called for heavy construction which meant WABC0 while oil refining and powder manufacture process industries within McCone's special field Both companies also were active in the development of electric power for war industries by building mountain roads along the Pit Riverin California to serve Pacific Gas and Electric Company electric installations Bechtel- McCone by engineering and building a electric generat- ing plant at Henry Kaiser's Fontana California steel mill In addition land transportation by rail and pipe line was being geared to meet the heaviest demandin history requiring the kind of heavy construction typical of so much past work W. A. Bechtel Co. carried on an extensive construction and maintenance program for the Western Pacific Railroad sponsored partnerships laid pipe lines in the Far West the Continent and the East Lines were built across the plains of Kansas and Texas In Iowa and Nebraska twenty miles of diameter pipe was laid underwater at twelve river crossings in California a hundred gas line was converted to carry oil andin Ohio and Pennsylvania two sections of Big Inch the War Emergency Pipe Line were built Al Berlander as a superintendent on the latter got a lot of good 70 Ney 0234 5684 ke we Warren Steve and Ken 1944 at the height of their war production and construction responsibilities Ney 0235 5685 experience with diameter pipe for his postwar work in Arabia These contracts covered the period 1941-1943 McCone's refinery engineers and field crews kept going around the clock erecting plants to produce a variety of petroleum products waxing plant and an asphalt plant at Oleum for Union a Houdry unit at El Segundo and a lubricating oil plant at Richmond the latter two for Standard All were built in 1941 and 1942. Add to these between that time and the end of the war ten more refineries of eight basically different types engineered or built or both for six major oil companies Two were butadiene plants supplying products for the manufacture of synthetic rubber The biggest refinery of all was a complete octane aviation gasoline plant engineered and constructed at Richmond California U. S. air power grew tremendously from war on Every minute counted in the race to keep the supply of aviation fuels abreast of increasing naval and military requirements BechtelMcCone's men held up their end big octane plant at Richmond went on stream just eleven months after construction began A fine record for Heinie Hindmarsh Harry Benner Al rselliJim Brady and the others on a job complicated by extensive excavations and foundations some of them put down through deep tidal mud As group partners the Bechtels participated in construction of the Los Angeles Harbor Breakwater of docks at Mare Island Navy Yard others at San Diego and Pearl Harbor of the Norfolk Arkansas Dam and powerhouse and excavations at Miraflores Locks in the Canal Zone Another job done by Morrison helped prepare produc- tion facilities that dealt the crowning blow to Japan although at the time the contractors had no idea why they were building big storage tanks at Hanford Washington Along with the rest of the world they found out later The tanks were for the plutonium project of Manhattan District key production center for the atom bomb If it needed further substantiation the group idea certainly proved itself during these years especially from the standpoint of its members capacity for work Two more projects remain 71 1941-45 1941-45 RefineriesRef-ineries- the US Mctione built fourteen during the war Jobe bu group members included a mystery projecprojec Ney 0236 5686 1942-44 1942-44 Canol opened a new frontier One tenth of North America for a jobsite before the inventory of war construction is complete They were totally dissimilar Each was the largest of its kind both presented some of the knottiest problems engineering brains had been called on to solve They were respectively the prementioned Canol Project and the Birmingham Aircraft Modification Center Canol wrote its historian Richard Finnie is an epic of the North and parts of the North where in the words of Robert W. Service the mountains are nameless and the rivers all run God knows where But Canol is also a war story It became one of the biggest pioneering jobs of all time growing out of the enemy's threat to Alaska in the spring of 1942. Nor was the threat remote Less than one month after construction began on Canol the Japs moved into the Aleutians Two con- ditions were essential to a successful Alaskan defense access to the United States by a land route and a contained petro- leum supply Both called for quick action Prior to completion of the Alaska Highway not a truckload of supplies could get to the Territory by land before Canol not a drop of gasoline or oil When the Army's Corps of Engineers got the green light on the Canol Project late in April 1942 they invited three firms to undertake its construction W. A. Bechtel Co. H. C. Price Co. and W. E. Callahan Construction Co. an old line Dallas and Los Angeles concern In May a contract was executed between the War Department and Bechtel han a tem partnership of these three firms and six associates among them McCone J. H. Pomeroy & Co. Inc. Gunther and Shirley Company and R. A. Conyes The Standard Oil Company of California was named to consult on design and construction and the firms of J. Gordon Turnbull and Sverdrup & Parcel were retained as Architects On May 27th the advance guard of the construction forces reached Edmonton which was made headquarters To the north waited the biggest of all jobsites much of it unexplored in the Canadian Territories of Mackenzie and Yukon and in Alaska The supply route reached from Edmonton to Water- ways down the Athabaska River to Athabaska Lake down 72 Ney 0237 V -- l 1 S n n ill rs es he in er 5687 the Slave River across Great Slave Lake and on down the Mackenzie River to Norman Wells Down means down the rivers therefore to the north The northern leg from Edmonton to Norman Wells comprised a route by rail water and portage of more than fourteen hundred miles From Norman Wells the pipe line started west went five hundred miles over the Mackenzie Divide to Johnson's Crossing on the Alaska Highway along the Highway eighty miles to Whitehorse then north six hundred miles to Fairbanks As supplements a pipe line was built over White Pass from Carcross seven miles to Skagway at deepwater and another gasoline from Carcross eastward to an air field at Watson Lake a distance of two hundred sixty miles In all here was a sized almost twelve hundred miles of main line more than two hundred thirty miles of branch lines with pumping stations along most of the route plus a refinery a tank farm and storage facilities at Canadian terminal points and in Alaska These specifications covered only part of the task By far the larger part was the job of moving men equipment and supplies through a vast primitive empire and setting up camps and communications Here in a cold war that was really cold was a problem in logistics to the tenth power Sometimes exploration kept only one jump ahead of transportation and transportation barely abreast of construction All this inci- dentally took place in rugged country under extremes of weather that Canol veterans will never forget Mosquitoes flies and gnats added to the discomfort During the winter even daylight ran short in this Arctic wilderness There was muskeg to overcome soupy sinks of decaying vegetation that swallowed everything poured into it Permafrost was another unfamiliar hazard subsoil that could not be thawed but must be insulated and covered Miniature glaciers formed where water from warm underground springs came to the surface and built up layers of ice that halted traffic To solve the supply problem a complete system of inland waterway transportation was set up consisting of two thousand miles of access roads numberless bridges and a chain of Communications and supplybiggest headaches for the builders 73 Ney 0238 Birmingha-m 12,000 feet below sprawls the wartime Aircraft Modification Center built and operated in Alabama by McCone One of many Bechtel musts essential aviation gasoline refinery at Richmond California Ney 0240 5690 brought the United States and Canada still closer together Canol and Birmingham furnished the biggest contrast of all the wartime jobs Birmingham means the Aircraft Modification Center built and operated in that Alabama city Canol called for ingenuity So did Birmingham But whereas Canol's problems were mainly heavy construction problems calling for brainwork plus fortitude and brute strength Birmingham's involved planning engineering and scheduling with the precision of a watchmaker Because first of all it was a job for engineers the Birmingham project gravitated to the Bechtel organization which strongly emphasized the engineering funcMcCone with John McCone taking the top responsibility Under a December 1942 contract with Defense Plant Cor- poration BM as group sponsor constructed the facilities on a two hundred eighty acre site The main building covered approximately one and half million square feet of floor space and other structures accounted for four hundred seventy thousand square feet of additional area This contract also included installation of utilities storage tanks and equipment for production The modification of aircraft began in February 1943 months before the big plant was complete Here was something entirely new requiring mechanical engineering skill of a high order precise scheduling administrative ability and flexible minds able to handle quick changes as part of the day's work The purpose of the Aircraft Modification Center was to take planes fresh from the production lines of the aircraft factories and adapt them to new tactical requirements or special geographic conditions Many times the question was asked why build planes then tear them down and rebuild The necessity Actually it was the only way to avoid sweeping changes in the original production changes involving delays for tooling which would have nullified the entire plane production program Consequently the men who had built dams and oil refineries and powder plants took responsibility for a brand new technique sent Perry Yates who had seen service on all these types of work down A study in contrasts 1942 Aircraft modification A stiff test of engineering skill 75 Ney 0241 5691 Precision manufacturing in volume to Alabama to modify war planes And as they had done time and time again when new problems arose they rounded out the staff with the specialized technicians this particular type of work required Modification meant major changes which averaged about ten per cent of the hours required to produce the original planes To Birmingham came a large proportion of the bomb- ers from Willow Run and before long from other plants At the peak eight thousand eight hundred employees were on the payroll Altogether five thousand seven hundred ten planes were modified for the Air Corps in two and half years of operations 24s led the list with thirty hundred 29s were in second place with more than fifteen hundred Everyone remembers the pride Americans took in the sleek big 29s after this bomber design was taken off the secret list And everyone in McCone's San Francisco and Los Angeles offices remembers the thrill when the first photographs of these big beauties arrived from Birmingham It brought home the realization of an important share in the mounting U. S. air supremacy The rest of Birmingham's output was made up of work on four other types of planes 109s 38s 26s and M2Xs In October of 1943 production commenced on the fabrication and assembly of 24 wings for the Ford Motor Company More than six hundred sets were manufactured at Birmingham tat aenAt And before the plant closed at war's end BM went into the automobile business The final Birmingham contract was for ote f the remanufacture of the Army's quarter trucks better tent known as Jeeps Five thousand six hundred went through and A came out like new plus modern features to suit changed requirements In addition one thousand Chevrolet trucks were assembled for the Army and a large number of pieces of miscellaneous automotive equipment put back in class shape So Birmingham which began on the ground with the May 7 1945 pouring of concrete and took to the sky to implement U. S. The turmas turmas air power came back to earth to revitalize motor vehicles gove gove up up In Reims France at 2:41 a.m. May 7 1945 the Germans signed an agreement of unconditional surrender Only the 76] Ney 0242 5692 mop in the Pacific was still ahead although as late as June President Truman called for doubling the western forces It was not necessary On August sixth the first atom bomb fell on Hiroshima and the next day bomb Number Two wiped out most of Nagasaki A week later Radio Tokyo broadcast the Japanese surrender offer and enemy officials surrendered officially in Tokyo Bay on September 2 Victory was complete The whistle blew on construction for war only clean and terminal negotiations remained to finish the job Identified with no single war project but advisory on several were three members of outside firms who were invited into the highest councils of the Bechtels Two of them John L. Simpson and Robert L. Bridges later became Directors of Bechtel Corporation The third was Gordon Johnson like Bob Bridges a partner in Thelen Marrin Johnson and Bridges Attorneys and a valued aide to the Bechtels during the emergency All three had been associated with the business before the war but the growth of activities after Pearl Harbor greatly increased their opportunities for service John Simpson was well qualified to advise on decisions involving major policies finance and foreign operations He was a transplanted Californian a native son and ^ C. graduate in the class of '13 out of Woodland via Berkeley and San Francisco to New York his headquarters as Vice President of the J. Henry Schroder Banking Corporation international financiers His judgment provided the benefit of an exceptional background in finance and world commerce Bob Bridges was engaged principally with contracts and tax matters in which he worked closely with George Walling of the Bechtel organizations The job of winding up the war contracts was especially heavy On this Bob was aided by Mynderse Van Hoesen of the same law firm Gordon Johnson's contribution was in the field of labor relations mainly as counsel to and a teammate of Heinie Hindmarsh John Simpson Bob Bridges and Gordon Johnson each brought to management special abilities of a high order which had a direct bearing on the successful war another case where the custom of cultivating a September 2 - Day The The coursdiors- Simpson Simpson Drudges Drudges Drudges DrudgeDsrudges Johnson 77 Ney 0243 5693 reserve of key men paid dividends when the right time came One final accounting remains to complete the record of the war years The foregoing report has been confined to the The war years larger aspects of the constructors activities Since the larger not always view was overwhelmingly good the story gives the impression smooth of a series of engineering triumphs amounting virtually to ote superhuman performance The first people to reject this infer- me ence would be those who did the job for it is wholly foreign bere to the competent down thinking that made their iea accomplishment possible There were rough spots discourage- cube ments some mistakes There were times when employees tempers gave way to the incessant pressure of emergency schedules On several occasions the top men arrived at diver- gent conclusions on policies and procedures differing as strong Again personalities will The important thing was that when a deci- democracy sion was made all of them accepted it wholeheartedly Both works within the Bechtel organizations and within the group partner- One ships there was one inviolable rule the cards on the table ednh pave and thereafter give the winning hand full support 78] Ney 0244 CHAPTER 5694 VICTORY was not final until the Japanese accepted surrender terms on August fourteenth But the signs were clear to the war contractors much earlier and by the start of 1945 their plans for conversion were under way Certainly the change to a peace economy required no other type of business to make greater adjustments For the Bechtel organizations in particular the year marked the end of one cycle and the beginning of another The functions and activities of the two firms were consolidated into one And three of the four principal execu- tives Warren Bechtel Kenneth Bechtel and John McCone retired from active direction in the engineering and construction business So too did Steve Bechtel for about one year Warren Bechtel being the eldest of the brothers had been in harness the longest He always had been an outdoor man with a liking for construction at first hand living and working out on the jobs But growth had shifted top responsibility from project direction in the field to over management So after thirty packed years climaxed by his fine performance on the three big copper mines Warren decided to take time out This he did while still managing to keep tab on the newer developments And logically for he had a large part in the Bechtel organizations upbuilding and the works constructed under his direction are among the most substantial in the family's inventory Kenneth Bechtel's farewell to construction like Warren's came after an outstanding record in war service the President of Marinship Corporation In 1945 he moved his operational base over to Industrial Indemnity full time The two men now in charge of Bechtel administration and finance Bill 79 1945 Conversion to prac Warren A. Bechtel Jr. Kenneth K. Bechtel Ney 0245 5695 John A. McCone 1945 Resources consolidated Waste and George Walling have good reason to appreciate the solid groundwork Ken laid during his years of stewardship That he could discharge the responsibilities put on him by expanding operations in engineering and construction and simultaneously shape the insurance firm into the State's largest private carrier of its kind shows that he received his full share of the family vitality and ability to think straight under pressure During all this busy period and since he gave liberally of time and effort to the Boy Scouts of America He has been elected National Vice President to membership on the National Executive Board and Chairman of Region Twelve These are working jobs not mere titles Ken did not leave his first love because it wanted him less but because flourishing Industrial Indemnity needed him more And because there his demonstrated skill in administration and finance found a wider field for expression At war's end John McCone took a major role in the adjust- ment program particularly on termination agreements made with the Government on the Calship and Birmingham contracts and in the eventual sale to private interests of one Joshua Hendy plant The numerous and complex problems involved in these tasks required a vast amount of paper work a great deal of patience and negotiating skill of a high order The issues at stake were large and important their satisfactory resolution took time and the direction of a key executive The Joshua Hendy interest in particular called for John McCone's close attention In addition to these activities he accepted membership on the Air Policy Commission at President Truman's invitation Thus his service to the country was con- tinued after the close of hostilities and his experience made available in the formulation of the future national air policy During the trying years when the Bechtels might have wished themselves able to be several places at once John furnished additional leadership of their own caliber Without him the accomplishment inevitably must have been less The organizational changes of 1945 were changes of evolution brought about in consequence orderly growth The separate firm of McCone originally formed to spe- 80 Ney 0246 5696 cialize in petroleum refinery engineering and construction had spread to include allied types of work Now readying for the requirements of postwar operation BM's resources of brainpower and experience were brought together with those of the older Bechtel entity in a single brand firm To use an overworked word neworganization was streamlined for greater efficiency and co^rdinatedcontrol in a form like that of other large American firms corporation with divisions engaged on the separate classes of work The new corporation was Bechtel Brothers McCone Com- pany soon familiarly known as BBM Steve Bechtel was on the directorate along with Kenneth and John McCone but like them he retired from the active management of opera- tions This job went to six Bechtel veterans Waste BBM's President Vice Presidents Van Rosendahl Heinie Hindmarsh Perry Yates and Jerry Doolan and Treasurer George Walling Steve's business interests had grown through the years He wanted time and freedom to explore the postwar future for foreign construction In addition he was occupied with the wind of the war projects and among his other interests were an equipment company an Oakland property management operation and two steamship companies Pacific Tankers Inc. and Pacific Far East Line Inc. Also he had been elected to the Board of Directors of the United States Line and participated in several other business enterprises Two years before the end of the war and therefore before the organizational changes noted above construction started on the first two of three foreign petroleum refineries and in March of 1944 the engineering began for a third They were respectively a octane gasoline refinery at Curacao in the Netherlands West Indies built by a N.W.I. corporation owned by McCone interests and Raymond Concrete Pile Company for a subsidiary of Shell the ninety thousand barday octane gasoline plant constructed for The Bahrein Petroleum Company Ltd. on the island of the same name in the Persian Gulf and the refinery engineered and built for the Arabian American Oil Co. at Ras Tanura Saudi Arabia the two latter projects by Compa^-iaConstructora Bechtel Brothers Brothers McCone CompanyCompany Stephen D. Bechtel Three foreign refineries transitional from war to peace 81 Ney 0247 5697 1945 The job list Refineries and chemical plants Bechtel McCone S. A. All three were put up under the direc- tion of Heinie Hindmarsh Reference to them has been reserved until this point in the story because although started during the war they were forerunners of the present era of Bechtel activities Especially the two in the Middle representing a development of great significance to future preparations for national defense to the conservation of U. S. oil reserves and to coming events for the Bechtel organization and its associates Similarly almost all of the domestic work that got under way in 1945 before the August surrender belongs in the postwar inventory An exception was the Army contract for Jeep remanufacture at San Leandro California The truck repairs were made there on ground historically appropriate to this type of work for this was the property where Bechtel em- ployees built the first motor truck dump bodya full genera- tion before Otherwise the principal 1945 projects were authorized by private owners in anticipation of production for civilian markets Three processing plants and a major industrial project led off the year For Western Chemical Co. a perchlorate plant was engineered and built at Henderson Nevada This was a return to Hoover Dam country for Henderson is close by Boulder City It was called Railroad Gap in those days In February a contract was awarded for Phillips Petroleum's toluene plant at Borger Texas and shortly thereafter General Petroleum Corp. called in the organization to engineer and build an absorption plant at Riverdale California In the field of refinery engineering and construction the predecessor Bechtel companies had initiated in the two preceding years a maintenance service similar in function to that provided in railroading for the Western Pacific and embracing engineering purchasing and construction Such continuing contracts were put into effect by Associated Oil Co. at its Avon California refinery and by the Standard Oil Company of California at El Segundo and Richmond The mentioned 1945 industrial project was by all odds the largest to date By industrial the Bechtel people mean buildings equipment and facilities for the manufacture 82 Ney 0248 5698 of goods other than the products of petroleum or chemistry There is good reason for the distinction The petroleum and chemical processes require specialized training and skills peculiar to themselves particularly within the engineering branch Whereas other types of industrial plants regardless of wide differences in purpose impose somewhat related problems and consequently may be handled by the same group of engineers and constructors The big industrial job was the H. J. Heinz Co.'s food proc- essing plant at Tracy California Heinz was an early bird with the first major civilian project authorized since the war's outbreak under the Government controls then in Ground was broken March 26 1945. By October almost five hundred were employed on the contractor's force Construction involved a large masonry job laying of one million bricks An idea of the size of this Heinz 57 operation was contained in the fact that a ton of tomatoes can be processed every minute of the working day in season and comparable amounts of other foods One of the most impressive features was the manufacturer's strict adherence to imposed quality standards All food lines were of stainless steel The big evaporators the peelers used for strained foods the beautiful cookers and ket- tles combined to make a dream kitchen on a gigantic scale The Bechtel organization not only constructed this building and its supplementary facilities also made the precision installation of the equipment laid more than nineteen miles of plant piping and did a big wiring job Soon after comple- tion Heinz called the constructor back for an encore on a substantial enlargement program In December the liners matched the Industrial Divi- sion's first postwar project with the first major postwar pipe line to be built in the west For Standard Oil Company of California they laid the hundred Kettleman Hills Medanos twenty line through the San Joaquin Valley near the route covered ten years before by Bechtel crews under George Colley This time Marinship alumnus Ray Hamilton returned to his earlier love to handle the pipe negotiations Bob Bowman and Bill Hanna ran of tomatoes tomatoes per minute 1945 Kettleman Hills Hills to the Bay 83 Ney 0249 5699 the job Bill who had cut his eye teeth on pipe work for the Bechtels under George Colley down in Venezuela now followed George's footsteps up the same old California Valley From the time of their first pipe linc the Bechtel organiza- tions have been close to new and improved construction methods either as the actual developers or as early users The Kettleman Hills line now introduced three procedures in line with the progressive attitude of Standard Oil Company's top engineers Harry Hall and Marshall Evans These were semiautomatic pressure welding the use of electric pipe having extra yield points called high strength pipe and Gamma photographs for checking weld quality One hundred miles of the line was Somastic When the Kettleman line was in operation the Stanpac gas line previously converted to oil was changed back to gas a line which had become axiomatically a Bechtel construction responsibility Finally 1945 was a significant year from another standpoint It ushered in the great expansion program of the far western utility companies and the first major power contract in this program for the Bechtel organization Southern California 1945 Start of a year cycle for the power utilities Edison Co. selected BBM to handle the equipment adjustments made necessary by a change in frequency from fifty to sixty cycles This job included engineering purchasing and construction cycling involved literally thousands of changes throughout the entire electrical system affecting equipment using electrical power in many kinds of applications It affected not only the utility company but a large proportion of its customers An endless variety of problems arose to tax the oe engineers and constructors One of them as shown by a report Blaze from the field crew illustrated both the nature of the work and tabi dee its requirements The report read The horsepower 360- valet RPM motor which is pictured in report drives a sheet rolling mill The mill was shut down at 12:30 a.m. on June 13th the motor removed to a rewind shop where both stator and rotor were rewound to the new cycle design New bearings were poured and the mill was put into operation at 12:00 midnight June 22nd We believe the report concludes this should establish some sort of record 84 Ney 0250 5700 Work of this type and the engineering and construction of facilities to generate and distribute the additional electric power later became the function of the firm's Power Division The concept of this Division grew out of the entire postwar power development but started specifically with the frequency change contract Perry Yates present head of the Power Division took charge of this initial contract and his chief assistant on its execution was John Kiely Project Manager Kiely came from Calship where he made an excellent rec- ord as Manager of Outfitting from 1942 on His frequency changers gave a good account of themselves on this threeyear project as management expected when Kiely was put in charge of it The new year brought heavy activity in construction for industrial chemistry and petroleum refining By 1946 BBM was well established as one of the largest firms doing this class of engineering able to step in and deliver turnkey operations from preliminary study through process design to construction In 1946 there were nine new contracts for large chemical plants and refineries and a number of smaller jobs The Industrial Division men fresh from making an excellent record at Tracy went to work on three major industrial plants In a return to public work construction began of a tremendous concrete siphon on the Friant Canal a unit in the California Central Valley Project of the United States Bureau of Reclamation As a group venture through partnership with the J. H. Pomeroy Co. work started on a large breakwater at Guam Pomeroy's men going back to this old stamping ground where some of their mates had been captured during the war At Pittsburg California the same contractor sponsored group construction of a new tinplate mill and other facilities for Columbia Steel Company where WABCo had been active earlier BBM's process and refinery engineering staff had grown to sizable proportions with experienced men in the key positions and specialized technicians to back them up Early in 1946 Fred Meyer whose appointment to the post of Chief Engineer was announced at the close of 1948 returned to the The Power Division % 1946 A big year for the process industries 85 Ney 0251 5701 Bechtel organization from Japan On this trip he headed a team in the Oil Chemical and Rubber Section of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey Cliff Pehl was another Bechtel man on the expedition Also BBM's construction side 1946 Gasoline had developed strength to match its engineering the firm's resources of manpower were continuing to grow From the standpoint of process design the most interesting 1946 development was contained in a U. S. Bureau of Mines contract It called for a million dollar demonstration from coal plant to produce synthetic motor fuel from coal And it was put up at Louisiana Missouri where McCone built crnetasy. the wartime Missouri Ordnance Works Engineering began in May involving a large amount of exploratory work carried out in conjunction with Government specialists A coal hydrogenation plant never before had been built in enr this country There was no precedent for the solution of problems concerned with extremely high operating pressures and the flow of liquids and coal paste Consequently the design engineers had to develop new equipment This job was high- powered pioneering even though they had the counsel of experienced German scientists Approximately two years were needed to complete the design Plant construction began in May of 1947 and was carried out under Superintendent Jim Brady Ray Russell was Project Manager Some of the equip- ment was of enormous size the ninety converters for instance A great deal of it required totally new manufacturing designs But the real feature of the plant was its extremely pressure piping to fifteen thousand pounds p.s.i. which not only accomplished the necessary process functions but provided a safety margin well above that of European plantsplants 1946 Also at Louiciana Missouri but for the Army anhydrous Repeat ammonia manufacturing facilities at the Missouri Ordnance performance in Missouri Works were rehabilitated after a period of shutdown following the war This was a real conversion to peace enabling a powder facility to switch over to the manufacture of agricultural materials Late in the summer of 1946 work commenced on a sulfonate 86] Ney 0252 5702 project for Standard Oil at Richmond Earlier in the year an eighteen months program of engineering and construction was undertaken for the Shell Chemical Corp. at Pittsburg Three crude oil units were started one for Associated at its Avon California refinery another for Standard at El Segundo and the third for the same owner at Richmond Also for Standard sulphur dioxide and acid treating facilities were built at El Segundo and extensive alterations made on an alkylation plant near Bakersfield An asphalt plant near Portland was completed for Shell for Union Oil BBM refinery men went to Cut Bank Montana and built extensions where BMP years before had erected one of its earliest refineries Condensed here into one paragraph are the reasons why BBM's refinery headquarters in San Francisco took on the appearance of Grand Central Station at fifteen The industrial men kept pace On March 15th they received the first contracts for the facilities which manufacture the paper stock and print the Pacific Coast editions of Time Life and Sunset magazines These contracts covered precision installations of making equipment in two plants belonging to Zellerbach Corporation one located at West Linn Oregon and the other in Camas Washington This was the start of a circle completed by the construction in Los Angeles of the west's largest printing establishment the Pacific Press where these magazines and the Los Angeles Shopping News are produced The big automatic paper machines and the tremendous presses with their wheels and gears looked like something men from Mars might have designed They did everything but think and there was even some doubt about that 1940 dction in Ge Refinery Refinery Refinery Di Di siosnion sion 87] Ney 0253 5703 1946 The migrants stayed put Bethlehem Steel Thundreds Far West grew up during the war People came by the Thundreds of thousands to work in the shipyards and plane factories but no one knew how many would remain once the gates closed at the war plants Peace came they stayed found new jobs and sent for friends and relatives Far from ending the migration continued into the greatest peacetime population movement the world has ever known People made markets markets needed goods and services which created jobs and buying power As far as the Bechtel people were concerned the west's new maturity brought a greater demand for petroleum products and power and food and the means to supply them In addition large steel production headed toward the Pacific Jack Pomeroy's men as noted were helping Columbia at Pittsburg prepare to meet the increased demand for steel Henry Kaiser using war needs as a springboard had entered into steel pro- duction with a new mill at Fontana in Southern California Now in line with earlier construction by W. A. Bechtel Co. at Pittsburg and the powerhouse built at Fontana BBM heard from another steelmaker of the Bethlehem In April 1946 construction started in Los Angeles on the expansion of Bethlehem Steel Corporation's production facilities there Altogether this program required an investment of sixteen million dollars almost ninety per cent of the total going for construction in Southern California Again it was a case of mammoth excavations and reinforced concrete foundations for the heaviest of heavy equipment and again the delicate job of accurately setting tremendous machinery that yielded to Bechtel experience When it was complete a sub- 88] Ney 0254 5704 stantial increase had been made in western steel plant capacity From steel to the staff of life was an easy jump for BBM's industrial builders With the Heinz plant behind them they were ready to tackle their next food project When it came along in October it was something special opportunity to design engineer and build an new flour mill new in con- cept new in the almost automatic way it would operate The customer was the Sperry Division of General Mills Inc. Jerry Doolan headed the project aided by John Byrne and Jerry Komes The mill of tomorrow will set the pace for future flour plant design It contains the first commercial installation of a machine that looks like a giant pantograph but actually unloads box cars automatically of interlocked conveyors and elevators of vertical screw lifts instead of the less efficient conventional bucket elevators Cleaning equipment not only washes the grain but reclaims feed stock Protection is provided against explosion the dust control system is a model date solutions to the two age problems of milling But the mill's over performance is its most important feature rigid maintenance of quality standards with rapid and economical production On these General Mills at Los Angeles is in a class by itself able to manufacture everything from flour to breakfast cereals biscuit mixes and soups While the new Bechtel divisions grew apace the men re- sponsible for carrying on the older types of work were very much on the job Pipe liners for example The Kettleman Hills line was completed by summer immediately the crews moved east to build lines in two states for the Stanolind Pipeline Company In Missouri they laid eighty miles and on jobs in Minnesota a total of seven miles The latter contracts included crossings of the Mississippi River Construction of the Friant Canal siphon was a job in another familiar category works This one was like going back to Dad Bechtel's time and like some of the earliest contracts it did not turn out so well for the firm proving that contracting was still a hazardous business Ted Panton negoti- ated it with the Bureau of Reclamation and started the work General Mills Ayainpipe lines in the mid West 89 Ney 0255 5705 1348-48 1348-48 River River underpass -the Friant siphon -like -like -like -like -like the the the old days 1946 The traditional kitchen car June 8. 1346 One more link Onemore broken broken Johnny Shea's gang finished building this river underpass for a The canal siphon is located in the dry hills of Fresno County California The canal is a part of the Central Valley Project that stretches to both ends of the State's agricultural bowl from Shasta Dam south to Bakersfield The Bechtel job con- sisted of excavating and building a reinforced concrete siphon twenty feet in diameter drop the canal waters eighty- five feet under a foothill stream and then lift them to the normal canal level in a total run of six hundred feet The going was really tough During excavation the drillers encountered rock so hard that they thought they were using rubber bits One disgusted timer said it might be a good idea to make new bits out of the rock itself Weeks were lost waiting for appropriations Congress like other large bodies sometimes moves slowly But eventually the siphon took shape a as the concrete men poured around collapsible steel form from which moved along a prepared runway one position to the next And they built big rectangular reinforced concrete transition sections at both ends of the line Finally in August of 1948 after two long years General Manager of Construc- tion Al Orselli reported the project complete and all hands breathed a sigh of relief The completed siphon however could be a source of satisfaction to those who built it for it fell into place with other difficult jobs licked by perseverance and perspiration though at a loss to the contractor Out on the Western Pacific during 1946 as before and since BBM maintenance crews policed the mountainous one hup- dred and seventeen Feather River Canyon Route and construction men added to the railroad's physical plant When Cook Jack Pasman on the Kitchen Car banged his gong to come and get it-the timers knew an honored custom was still in force As it had for forty years good Bechtel food gave the men added zip to construct the passing tracks the yards culverts and bridges they built in this particular year In 1946 the final link with the earliest days was broken Arthur V. Bechtel passed away in Oakland on June sixth Dad's kid brother had served as a Director of W. A. Bechtel Co. until January of the preceding year He had lived to see 90 Ney 0256 5706 cr Mallen eked, a SteveSteve Bechtel Jr. pipepipe liner ; : po i, toy: FP- sap Te e NeyNeyNey 0257025702570257 the family's enterprise grow and prosper First as Dad's extra right arm and later as senior counsellor to the boys he had contributed to its success founder shovel runner job boss executive career paralleled the firm's rise In three kindly and useful years he had endeared himself to thousands -a man without peer for largeness of heart for friendliness and sincerity And his passing saddened everyone immeasurably for there would never be another Uncle Art Time sharpens perspective Looking back at 1946 not even the volume and variety of work were as important to the firm's progress as the headway made in that year by its program of integration For in the fall Steve Bechtel returned to BBM as President At this time he and his associates in the firm acquired the interests formerly held by Kenneth Bechtel and John McCone Like the fire horse who could be happy only in harness Steve told BBM's officers how he felt about being asked to resume active personal direction saying My chosen field has been and is engineering and construction It is the most interesting stimulating and in my opinion one of the finest professional and business fields Those who knew how completely he lived for his work knew what an understate- ment that was Important decisions were made at the Directors meeting of October 9th Basic policies were defined and major duties reassigned as the organizational pattern took shape Policy stressed the target concentration on selected projects And the division of responsibilities was worked out with reference to skills and experience in order to gain the maximum benefit from each person's ability Dad Bechtel laid the foundation his three sons added to it Now over this base a framework for the future was put together The new turned with the announcement of new company names For domestic work Bechtel Corporation For work outside the United States Compa^-iaBechtel S. A for the Middle East projects Bechtel International Corporation and International Bechtel Inc. Primary functions were established for the key Steve Bechtel in direct charge of all operations Bill Waste over BCo's administration 91 5707 October 8. 1946 Steve returns to active direction 1947: New names -Bechiel Corporation -Compa^-ia Bechtel A. - Bechtel International Corporation -International Bechtel Inc. Ney 0258 5708 Seasoned Mon Van Rosendahl heading foreign activities as President of BIC and IBI backed up by John Rogers and George Colley Heinie Hindmarsh in charge of domestic construction Perry Yates directing the power program Jerry Doolan overseeing indus- trial work the newest member of the executive group Strib Snodgrass in charge of engineering John Byrne as Executive Engineer George Walling for financial direction Bob Bridges charged with responsibility for legal matters John Simpson as Director and advisor Into the picture had come Stephen D. Bechtel Jr. Young Steve repeated his father's experience starting life in a railroad car growing up and serving in his country's armed forces but as a Marine instead of an Army Engineer and now generation took his place in the business Young Steve may have thought he came into a far different organization than the one his father and uncles joined thirty years before In size scope and degree of organization was But not in philosophy or principles for Bechtel Corporation was simply the outworking of a half century of development Its key people had been picked up along the Steve of course literally born into the business the others at various steps some at twenty years some at ten at five and one only a little more than a year before this fiftieth anniversary of the family's service When Bechtel Corporation came along it got them as seasoned men so could fit each one into the right particular slot and go on its way as a complete smoothlyfunctioning organization The new firm had another heritage for on top of experience and special skills it inherited men who had absorbed a way of life Because they made it their own the tradition of Dad Bechtel was not to end but to live on That was the lineup as this account takes temporary leave of personnel to examine the world's oil situation 92 Ney 0259 habs hin Prelude to construction in Middle toured Marinship in 1944 with Prince Amir Faisal Foreign Minister and son of King ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia IBI has since undertaken a large overseas construction program for the petroleum industry in Saudi Arabia and adjacent lands as well as extensive work for the King's government Ney 0260 CHAPTER 5710 HE two top facts about oil are that its consumption has almost doubled in the past ten years and still climbs and that most of it comes from shrinking U. S. reserves This situation presents the alternative of developing new oil fields elsewhere or of draining the American reservoir Of the approximately seventy billion barrels constituting the world's oil treasure the United States holds an estimated twenty billion South America has less than half this amount Europe a mere trace the U.S.S.R. probably six billion barrels and the Far East about one billion The rest approximately thirty billion barrels lays under the windblown sands of the Middle which means the countries surrounding the Persian Gulf -Iran Iraq Saudi Arabia Kuwait and the island of Bahrein Oil products to feed the mounting horde of automobiles trucks busses tractors diesel locomotives furnaces and oil 1947 The world's oil heaters kept U. wells and refineries busy in 1947 supplying about sixty per cent of the world's total while the rich Middle East in its then stage of development produced only a little more than ten per cent It is true of course that seventy- five of the eighty per cent increase in oil consumption since 1938 was absorbed within the United States But the era of _where it came to the surface power development was still to come elsewhere deferred but 4 not cancelled by the dislocations of war and reconstruction tisteie And for the first time since 1925 in 1948 this nation became dasa a net importer of oil and its products Obviously the time for iehksbahdt the development of foreign petroleum reserves had come .. bs The necessary action was taken World oil leaders American and British companies in the vanguard engaged on a far- reaching development program in the Middle East Their 93 Ney 0261 5711 Milk Milk The Easi Easi Easi program BECHTEL BRIEFS scooped on the Arabian news activities were limited geographically to the area of tested reserves located in and adjacent to the basin of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and the Persian Gulf Of the five Middle East oil regions three became sites of Bechtel engineering and construction operations in a liaison formed between the contractor a activated group project leading American and British oil interests and the respective governments of the countries involved Set up to carry through this vast program were Bechtel International Corporation and International Bechtel Inc. These ventures resulted directly from Steve Bechtel's concern with the opportunities he long ago envisioned for service to the petroleum industry his prompt postwar activities and the performance records made by members of the team carefully assembled for this specific purpose The line of demarcation between the two firms Bechtel International Corporation and International Bechtel Inc. BIC and IBI is that the former operates entirely within the United States on engineering design and procurement whereas IBI does the field engineering and all construction Steve Bechtel is Chairman of the Board of both companies Van Rosendahl President of both Directors include these two top officers and group partners Bob Conyes Charles P. Dunn of MorrisonKnudsen Jack Pomeroy Hal Price Alden Roach and Jack Sverdrup and two additional men from the Bechtel organization George Walling and Strib Snodgrass The framework for the group organization was put together during 1946 and announced during the spring of 1947. In January of the latter year Steve went to Arabia accompanied by Bob Conyes Jack Sverdrup and Paul Piggott By March most of the people in the Bechtel enterprises knew what was up but for official notification they had to wait for the April issue of their lively house magazine Bechtel Briefs Briefs broke the good news admitting with editorial candor that when we last went to press we knew all the time that BC and its partners had a big chunk of the Arabian pipe jobno less than six hundred fifty miles with four pump stations thrown in for good measure But we had to observe a bit of protocol or whatever they call it in the Middle East and there 94] Ney 0262 5712 we were right up against the gun with the biggest news since Boulder Dam all set up in looking type and the order comes through scratch the horse Steve Bechtel returned to observe am more convinced than ever of the accuracy of the statement by Bert Hull President of Arabian Pipe Line Company that the chief problems facing those who tackle the job of conquering the Arabian desert are water transport and morale You can't help but get this impression when you realize that this thirtyinch four hundred thousand barrels line will be the mightiest pipe line ever bigger than any oil line yet completed and almost as long as the Big Inch line running from Texas to New York The task of engineering and constructing this line in a region that hasn't a single permanent structure along its entire route from the Abqaiq field the pipe origin to beyond the Jordan border eight hundred miles away is one that will involve some eight months for planning the line and making the necessary arrangements in the way of men materials equipment transportation living quarters and about two years to lay the line itself and to build the pump stations " am sure that you will be interested in knowing Steve told the Bechtel personnel that joining with us on the Arabian pipe line program will be our old friends Morrison- Knudsen Company Inc. Boise Idaho H. C. Price Co. Bartles- ville Oklahoma Bob Conyes Oakland and Sverdrup & Parcel St. Louis Missouri In addition to the pipe line and public works projects in Arabia for the Saudi Arabian Government there is for immediate construction the building of a port facility at Dam- mam with a fourteen railroad connecting Dammam and Dhahran ; In the Middle East program I cannot help but foresee tre- mendous possibilities pointing towards potentially the biggest development of natural resources ever undertaken by Ameri- can interests The facts overwhelmingly support Steve's closing appraisal and his group's part of the task has since grown beyond even Problems of pipe construction in the deseri Old friends team up again * ... potentially the biggest development ... 95 Ney 0263 5713 1947 Tapline Channeling desert rizers the big job he defined above This is how it worked out from inception through 1948 at five locations Tapline is a short way of saying Arabian Pipe Line the eleven hundred mile trunk line under construction from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea When completed this great desert river will deliver over four hundred thousand barrels of oil daily at Europe's back door Its source at Abqaiq is the largest of four fields developed in the area discovered in 1941 and by 1948 producing two hundred thousand barrels per day from only eighteen wells Tapline construction dates from July 12 1947 when the first IBI party reached Ras el Misha'ab Within six months this outpost grew into a miniature city of seventeen hundred people to become a base camp and chief receiving port Here an old construction gag came to life the familiar skyhook every beginner was asked to find along with handed monkey wrenches and paper stretchers This particular skyhook unloaded ships three miles out in the Persian Gulf towers that went to sea over which a high line was strung carrying a machine that looked like a borne lumber carrier veritable aerial jeep In the fall of 1947 George Colley arrived to take charge of Tapline's construction following an interim period of modernization after three years in the Borneo prison camp IBI's Vice President again lined up old sidekick Al Berlander as Construction Manager Genial Don Roberts developed Bechtel man carried the load as Tapline's Chief Engineer until ill health forced his return to the States Bob Bowman was Superintendent Harry Waste Project Engineer and a young veteran of many Bechtel camps Eddie Zecher headed the administrative staff By November pioneering across the desert was under way In February 1948 construction began on the Abqaiq to Qatif line Big thirty- and thirty pipe sections came in at Ras el Misha'ab were welded into ninety lengths and took off across the sand by truck and trailer in forty loads An interesting feature of the construction miles of restrained pipe line were laid above ground half mounted on steel bents half on concrete pads and held down 96 Ney 0264 5714 by bolted ring girders The Manager of BCo's Pipe Line Divi- sion Ray Hamilton went to Saudi Arabia on loan as consult- ant once more working closely with his time Standard Oil boss Harry Hall Vice President of Tapline a veteran pipe planner and former Chief Engineer Standard Oil Company of California The Abqaiq line was completed by the end of April 1948 whereupon the pipeliners laid an eighty line to Abu Hadriya After that they were on their way to Hafar el Batin first leg on the long route to the Medi- terranean Sea Where the heat stays well above one hundred degrees except when going higher and men are put to it to cope with the flies not to mention inquisitive scorpions -where sandstorms can scrape off a metal surface or a man's whiskers as fast as a shot- blast machine and rare desert rains drop like Niagara development of fast efficient pipelaying methods is not only economically expedient but a humanitarian necessity as well The ingenuity shown was a credit to the policies of B. E. Hull Tapline's President and his organization Once again lessons learned as far back as Hoover Dam paid off in Saudi Arabia The problem of cooling truck engines was licked by using two radiators all equipment received double servicing and big soft sand tires were necessary to get rolling stock across the shifting dunes Arabian Pipe Line Company is wholly owned by Arabian American Oil Company familiarly Aramco It operates in Saudi Arabia over an area larger than the State of Texas American oil drillers named it Wajid mafi which is Arabic for plenty of nothing an apt description of its barren terrain In spite of the area's nothingness one result of Aramco's activities was the mushrooming of Dhahran into the largest American colony between France and the Philippines another was that this community became the world's first completely conditioned city Aramco has one refinery the previously Bechtelbuilt plant at Ras Tanura Its original capacity of fifty thousand barrels per day has been increased to more than twice that amount IBI did the expansion program but the firm's assign- 97 Nature still a tough foe Aramco contracts Ney 0265 5715 IBI men at Dhahran Modernizing an ancient civilization ments were not confined to it alone An around group was assembled to plan engineer and build docks a railroad housing and industrial buildings utilities and all that goes to make a complete contained development in a far country J. W. Walt Hillman year Bechtel veteran in the Middle East supervised the work as General Superintendent Later Lou Killian another Camel Legionnaire came down from Ras el Misha'ab to become Project Manager Dhahran headquarters for the constructor's principal field officers became the nerve center of all Arabian operations Head man Rosendahl spotted IBI Executive Vice President John Rogers into the picture early Rogers was no stranger to these parts for he went from the wartime Arizona copper projects to Ras Tanura on construction of the original refinery Dhahran is also home base for Canol veteran Rudy Grammater IBI Treasurer and administrative chief formerly Building and Loan Commissioner of the State of California and since 1941 a Bechtel administrative executive One of the reaching effects of Aramco's oil development was that it became by design a human development as well More than ten thousand Saudi Arabs acquired new crafts and skills The progressive monarch of this ancient land turned to good account a generous share of the income his kingdom received from the oil company and many of the fruits of King Saud's wisdom and planning were apparent in the work IBI undertook for the Government of Saudi Arabia The constructor received orders to build a deepwater harbor highways electrical utilities a telephone system hospitals hotels and other large buildings airports and also to purchase necessary equipment and materials Electrical work included the design and construction of a steam power plant and distribution system for the capital city of Riyadh to be followed by similar facilities at Jeddah Mecca and other centers Jeddah principal seaport and the seat of foreign legations is being transformed into a thriving business metropolis A new port and pier replaces its former shallow harbor and airports were built at both Jeddah and Riyadh The prime mover in this modernization of a nation after the King is His Excellency 98 Ney 0266 5716 the Shaikh Abdullah Sulaiman Minister of Finance Execu- tives of IBI point out that his range vision and financial planning will transform Saudi Arabia into an minute nation with higher standards of living for all That widelyexperienced senior officer BIC's Vice President Earl F. English looks after this work for the King as the man in charge of its many ramifications within the United States From Saudi Arabia over water to Bahrein Island in the Per- sian Gulf is only a twenty jump Bechtel men had been there from the beginning the refinery Bahrein Petroleum Company Ltd. retained IBI to enlarge it and carry on continuing development work Most of the men heading Bahrein construction in 1948 were year veterans with the Bechtel interests on the island General Superintendent Bill Hackler rubbed elbows with a supervisory staff of Americans who had been on the ground so long they felt like natives Americans going to Arabia were five thousand dollar beauties for that was the investment in processing and transporta- tion Small wonder that many were called but few chosen that those who passed the careful screening here at home included the best craftsmen in the business And the big percentage stuck many veterans signing up for additional hitches in the service of the Camel Legionnaires From Bahrein the story moves up the Persian Gulf to the small independent Arab kingdom of Kuwait lying between Iraq and Saudi Arabia Kuwait is ruled by Shaikh Sir Ahmed al Jabir Development here is by the Kuwait Oil Company Ltd. jointly owned by British and American oil interests Burghan field discovered in 1938 may prove the world's largest when fully developed The Kuwait staff was headed by another Arizona copper plant man Clark Rankin as Project Manager He was Canol too as was Ro Ross Administrative Manager at Kuwait The key to this construction was versatility their neighbors on the Aramco contracts these men got " little of everything in their work orders A great deal of preliminary work was necessary problems of food and water supply to the logistics of scale 99 Bahrein They had to be good Ney 0267 5717 The job in Kurait London Opportunityon a big scale construction At Shuwaikh a terminal was constructed for water tankers barges built and a water line laid to Ahmadi site of an oxygen plant A jetty was built at the capital city also named Kuwait at Burghan the oil field IBI men installed machinery for a shale grinding mill set up equipment for pump stations and went to work on the gathering system This was a real network of pipe six hundred miles of it Buildings and housing were erected at Fahaheel a boat harbor an oil pier to handle six tankers a cargo pier and a thousand trestle Roads a quarry harbor dredging breakwaters marine loading lines a powerhouse and other jobs filled out the agenda The work was so extensive and varied that close constant touch with the London offices of the owners became an essen- tial part of it Accordingly IBI opened an office there and sent over Bob Digges until then Bechtel Corporation's Administrative Manager to serve as chief liaison officer with the British interests This former Marinship executive brought a fitting background to his new responsibility The foregoing summary of the extensive Middle East projnecessarily short on detail demonstrative of the extent to which leading American and British oil companies were readying the supply for future needs in the second or worldwide stage of the petroleum age And a consequence of this program was that it furnished another opportunity for the Bechtel interests as group sponsors to demonstrate the volume and the diversity of work they could do Once more was Steve heading a vastly larger project yet in many ways remi- niscent of the time when Dad Bechtel's activities branched out in the early twenties [ 100] Ney 0268 5718 WHIL the Middle East work took shape in the forepart of 1947 construction on another foreign contract began in Venezuela Two repressuring plants were built by Compa^-ia Bechtel S. A. in the flat country near San Tome for the ear- liest of Bechtel overseas customers the Mene Grande Oil Venezuela Company They were completed early in 1948 by Morgan Wchailekfer as Project Manager and Roy McAuliffe construction Within the United States Bechtel Corporation in 1947 added a number of projects to the large volume of construction already under way Among the new contracts was one for wrapping more than two hundred miles of big inch pipe on the California gas line On November first engineering commenced on the year's largest refinery order a seven million dollar crude unit for the Standard Oil Company of California at Salt Lake City Construction was wholly a 1948 job starting in March and winding up with the plant on stream in November Under Heinie Hindmarsh and the watchful eye of Al Orselli the job went through in fast time And the engaged Industrial Division added new factory jobs in 1947 largest at Santa Clara California for Owens- Corning Fiberglas Corporation On top of the existing carryover these contracts made 1947 a substantial year in domestic construction But in Bechtel Cor- poration's annals it will stand primarily as the time when the western power utilities threw the main switch on their gigantic Power expansion program The size of the investment in new power facilities was shown bya figure released at the close of 1948. In three years 101] Ney 0269 5719 Why Bo got the call Horsepower corrals Electra Pacific Gas and Electric Company had invested three hundred millions a comparable amount was required by Southern California Edison's great forward program activities into which BCo came early by invitation As plans were completed the contracts grew in size and number By the end of 1947 the name of the firm's Projects Division headed by Perry Yates was changed to suit its principal function and it became the Power Division The rapid growth of this activity traced right back to the alert top man Steve had anticipated the surge in power well ahead of time exactly as he had foreseen the shipbuilding program and the big push in oil Once again the firm was ready when opportunity knocked able to get under way without lost motion And his planning was no miracle but the result of keeping close watch on major trends natural as breathing for a man who lives to build During 1947 new contracts were obtained to engineer and construct power substation and electrical distribution facili- ties in the Los Angeles metropolitan district Horsepower by wire was the area's urgent need The utility was giving a prompt answer its big herds of horses galloped over the main lines into new substations they were broken into working teams for home and industrial use Many of these corrals were Bechtel When the two mil- lion dollar Mesa Substation contract was awarded in Novem- ber of 1947 it became Number Eighteen on the Bechtel list for Southern California Edison And there was a big order at Long Beach too a 22,50KV0A generator installation put through from the start of engineering to steam day in exactly one hundred days Then in November PG selected BCo for a hydro job in the Mother Lode country at Electra Power House near the historic Gold Rush town of Jackson California It called for setting six horsepower impulse water wheels mounted in three groups of two each group driving a 33,000horsepower generator In addition Bechtel power men did a craftsmanlike piece of wiring there a wholesale scale Electra was this utility's largest electric project of 1948 converting the station into a modern horsepower 102 Ney 0270 5720 enough power to serve the needs of the California cities of Richmond Berkeley and Emeryville Electra went into operation in July Bechtel Corporation continued to integrate its men into an efficient functional set throughout 1947. At the Directors meeting in May the firm's legal counsel Robert L. Bridges was elected to the Board andin October Vice President C. Stribling Snodgrass became a Director Strib Snodgrass was the newest of the top men to come with the Company His election to BCo's Board twenty months afterjoining the Bechtelinterests not only acknowledged his own abilities but showed the importance engineering had acquiredin the scheme of things Under his direction this divi- sion grew to include six hundred engineers technicians and draftsmen Nearly every type of engineering was represented on the roster And their top man had an exceptional back- ground Annapolis graduate naval officer petroleum consult- eventually his path led to the Petroleum Administration Refining for War where as Director of the Foreign Division andin other key posts he rendered a notable wartime service Heis a Fellow of the Institute of Petroleum The Company's contract officeris a man who handles nego- tiations a and variety of client relations His functionin the BCo line is concerned frequently with engineering so came under Strib Snodgrassin the Engineering Division At this stage 1947 position had not been created but the man who would get it in April of 1948 was already doing one part of the work as engineer His Charles T. Draney an experienced petroleum engineer and a year Bechtel man via McCone Landing refinery contracts means having the right men on the top technical staff BCo had key engineers to fill the bill among them Fred Meyer Bert Aldridge Gordon Zimmer- man Hal Weber Karl Bausch Porter Thompson Hugh Hyde Frank Fischer and Bubber Chisholm Andin construction refinery contracts got the benefit of a grown tested organization The Construction Division matched the engineers withits 103] 1947 New directors The engineers Ney 0271 5721 The constructors Heinie's boys own realignment in 1947. Veteran builder Heinie Hindmarsh Vice President stepped up A. G. Orselli to General Manager of Construction His name has appeared in these pages several times since recording his employment in 1933 on the Coos Bay Highway Bridge Another California engineer he went from WABCo to McCone to Calship back to BM on to Arabia for CCBM S. A. then back home to BBM and finally into quite a shift but all inside the Bechtel fold This very fact illustrated an important Bechtel asset ability to move key men around and the willingness of the men to go wherever they were needed Orselli was field boss or construction manager on many of the refineries these com- panies built When the 1947 appointment came along he had twenty years of practical experience under his belt Two year men were advanced to give Orselli a handHarry Benner and Jim Brady Benner a Stanford mechanical engineer helped on BMP's first refinery hydrogenation plant at Richmond Jim Brady was a civil engineer who switched to construction He joined BMP when Benner did and had a parallel career Both of them travelled around through the Bechtel organizations but like Orselli concentrated on the same general types of work and earned key positions During the fall of 1947 Cliff Pehl was placed in charge of estimating He was a Panama Canal alumnus who returned to the States as a Bechtel job engineer another example of preparedness rewarded by promotion The array of completed refineries was a consequence of BCo's valuable resource of experienced manpower trained by the firm's senior construction executive Each of the men who moved into the positions just mentioned had been schooled by Hindmarsh and a sizable number of field people as well His patient work was evident all along the line in dependable superintendents and field managers fellows like Gene Lippa Fred Brown Tom Moran Edgar Garbarini Bill Lindauer Walt Sims Buzz Barron J. H. Chamberlain Bill Hanna Buck Buchanan Babe Carter George Wilcox Bill Lake Steve Valline and others who knew their business Some of Heinie's stiffs were called to other Divisions like Fred Paul [ 104 Ney 0272 5722 and Johnny Herkomer to industrial work And many of them went to Arabia or Kuwait or Bahrein Island The youth Dad met in 1902 at Wadsworth Nevada was a long time getting under the Bechtel roof but once there he made up for lost time by building the men to build the projects In October of 1947 in the Industrial Division under Jerry Doolan and Executive Engineer John Byrne BCo promoted its other Jerry Calshipper Jerome W. Komes to General Manager Perry Yates heading the Power and Pipe Line Divisions announced that another Calship man John Kiely had been appointed General Manager of the power forces Whenever a man moved up it meant that his superiors had found the stuff for greater responsibilities he became an understudy for the job above his own When Bob Digges who had been at Bill Waste's elbow since Marinship days as Administrative Manager went to London for IBI Waste had another man groomed for the job at home Like head man Steve William R. Ayers was a second generation construction man His father was of the old school- Six Companies Chief Engi- neer at Hoover Dam and immediate boss there over Perry Building for the future Yates but son Bill's aptitude proved to be with figures that go into ledgers and managing the people who do the paper Painted. work Whereas Gus the parent tackled construction literally hand to hand Bill prepared for it with college courses in engi- neering and business administration One year after graduation he landed with BMP as a timekeeper and climbed steadily as experience accumulated there and at Marinship then with BBM and wound up at BCo OE, Following its commercial inception in the thirties be Peles Somastic Pipe Coating gradually won increasing acceptance Rete from pipe operators Bechtel Corporation in the eleven Somastic Dien ede western states and at foreign locations took over the franchise tea formerly held by Industrial Engineering Co. and H. C. Price 2 rake Co. the territory east of the Rocky Mountains In BCo's divi- sional scheme Somastic came under Perry Yates as Vice Presi- dent and Jasper S. Connell the Jap Connell of Calship the Canol Project and other Bechtel jobs as General Manager His assistant Austin S. Joy was a veteran in the sale and applica- [ 105] Ney 0273 5723 < identified for many years Edward C. Panton Frank C. Sewell tion of this coating Somastic headquarters are at Watson in Southern California Although two more key positions were to be filled in the following year BCo's organizational mold was essentially complete at the close of 1947. In the December employee magazine Steve Bechtel's message told of his pleasure in the fact that these men officers and managers have been identi- fied for many years with our family interests I am sure he added that through this management service we can offer diversified experience in large capacity and with centralized responsibility The modern team like Dad's much smaller one at the Northwestern Pacific camp was ready for the future Although the twelve months of 1947 brought the firm a great gain in the disposition of its manpower it also brought a double loss Two fine veterans passed away Edward C. Ted Panton in June and Frank C. Sewell in October At eight Ted's passing came on short notice just when he figured heavily in Bechtel plans For thirty years he helped lift the face of the dams railroads highways bridges shipyards electric stations powder plants and what -the last fourteen years of this time as a senior construction executive in the Bechtel organizations A big chunk of the tough Canol job was his Ted's final charges were the Friant siphon and the later Western Pacific work Gruff sometimes leather on juniors who somehow liked him for it he was a man's man in the cast of Hank Lawler Everyone who served under him understood why Steve said that this loss was a great and personal one and why the Bechtel family would miss one of its ablest builders Frank Sewell had retired in 1946 after serving Dad and the boys for his whole business lifetime His death cut another link with the past for as a youngster he came to work at the North- western Pacific camps grew up under Dad while keeping a watchful eye on the growing Bechtel sons and with fierce pride shared all their accomplishments As suited one so long in the family councils Frank spoke up whenever he thought the occasion justified He could be a severe critic for he was another with a gruff bark covering a heart as big as all out- [ 106 Ney 0274 5724 W W HENnew calendars went up in Bechtel offices on the first workday of 1948 the fiftieth anniversary year began but no one took time from the heavy press of business to remark the fact Looking over the schedules the top men knew that this would be the biggest of all peacetime years The job inventory proved the wisdom of concentration target system initiated in 1946 the projects under way were large indeed In domestic work every year had grown as big as Hoover Dam 1948 New division names more top manpower . The name change mentioned earlier was made effective January first from Projects to Power Division and another for a similar reason when the former Construction Division was renamed the Refinery Division Executive manpower continued to come in with the addition in January of George Gibson as New York Representative and in April with the return of Ed Dorresten Ed came to BCo as Manager of Engineering directly under Strib Snodgrass It was homecoming for this former McCone man with broad experience in petroleum and chemical engineering In late fall engineering's varsity roster was filled out by the appointment of coming Fred Meyer to the post of Chief Engineer An imposing list of major undertakings were brought to suc- cessful conclusion during refineries the Friant siphon Electra Power House Edison cycling project the coalhydrogenation plant and the flour mill Many of the Southern California substations went into service in fifteen months up to August 1948 BCo had been retained on fifty separate jobs of this nature Jack Pomeroy group sponsor completed the tin plate mill for Columbia Steel at Pittsburg and at the [ 108] Ney 0275 5725 opening U. S. Steel officials announced Alden Roach's election to the presidency of Columbia Across the world Interna- tional Bechtel's nineteen hundred Americans and six times that many natives were winding up some jobs making good time on others and starting new ones in history's largest program of foreign development by private industry One kind of heavy construction that really moves is pipelining The hours are long and the number of working days the same as those in the seven sometimes they seem like eight Pipe men never talk about cubic yards or tons it's miles So one big job that was started in 1948 and finished in short order was the first seventy miles of the hundred Tennessee Gas and Transmission Tennessee Gas Company's thirty- and thirty gas line in Texas The Tennessee Gas line ushered in a new construction unit Bechtel headed R. A. Conyes long a Bechtel associate Canol partner top transportation man in the Arabian Bechtel desert and a pipe veteran With at least five years ahead of intensive pipe construction Steve wanted him in to amplify BCo's seasoned Pipe Line Division The inch Texas work was done in conjunction with another old associ- ate Hal Price On it young Steve served as field engineer and Ray Hamilton returned from Arabia to start construction Jap Connell moved Somastic pipe coating crews into Utah and coated sixty miles of the Rangely crude oil line feeding the new Bechtel Salt Lake refinery In March Socony- Refineries Vacuum Oil Company gave BCo the green light on its East St. Louis Illinois refinery enlargement and rehabilitation pro- planning engineering and construction Another came i tidey along in mid a seven and half million dollar invest- Sat ment representing eighteen months of refinery work from het US process design through engineering procurement and con- tard Bet struction This one at Ponca City Oklahoma was for an old bantadte Bechtel pipe customer Continental Oil Company ve An unusual 1948 Industrial Division job was -which means fog intensity dispersal of in a sort of backwards word arrangement Actually it is a system of blotting up ground fog at plane landing strips and this contract covered Fido airport watchdog [ 109] Ney 0276 HORE DURES oe TE SPENT PORT ET 2 Ee SAN, pe ARER th LMA ING Ma Hed oR enr ae tae y TURnAe e So bee n RP tah hath a he rE ee a he ce o. te Corporation Bechtel Corporation Corporation Corporation ered PE a 5 tet Hie DHARHI 3 PSI variq WIAframnseary,SZEN 9 5727 YysmVUIPTF]BuUTeA { 4 ADaupiserg A aoyeNGwopiselg99u1eAjog sd1A y uosdungaiseA, f uYyof y A AA roan saoys2is:Surpueyg saSprzg "] ayoy YW pareagsoqwarptasergSuaprseg -gh61 201A uomesdon[yepuaAsoyq sgaqx f A yayog 3uepisrgyuepisag sroiserq aor, jo poayog preog Clseadpous S Ney 0278 day 5728 monk monk monk vcd AFTERWORD AppORTAL AppORTAL The end of Year Fifty brought no pause for stocktaking The men of Bechtel went right ahead with their work concerned with more essential matters than evaluating the past This accounting picked it up but when the time came to draw off totals the sums fell into many columns like trying to add apples and plums Nothing less than standing far back and taking a long view of the worksheets made sense at all even close inspection of the activities under way at one time EVAMPSPORN in 1948 was a case of losing sight of the forest in the trees Consider In that year Bechtel geography spanned half the earth's sur- face from a dozen or more frontiers in the U.S. to civilization's cradle the Middle East In types of work contrasts were as great as the design of a chemical process and the re- shaping of a granite mountain In specific projects pipe lines and pipe coating pump stations refineries chemical plants mills to make steel and mills to make flour factories ware- enfrtarily houses whole communities railroads highways piers and har- by any bor works tunnels water systems hydro- and electric any any generating stations substations and a multitude of distributing personaYERGLW.RYMESNGER facilities for power Add in the recent past dams bridges mines shipyards ships and ships engines aircraft modification personaYERGLW.MSNER plus a substantial portion of the Western Hemisphere's defenses personaYERGLW.MSNER On the employment rolls at the close of 1948 were esti- mators planners designers engineers draftsmen procurement specialists recruiters transportation men accountants office people in many categories and a virtual army of rugged outdoor guys ranging from grizzled superintendents to common construction's children every one The executive group had grown larger than the entire management staff of many good firms Altogether a full twenty thousand gathered around the family fireside that once warmed only Dad Bechtel and brother Art What did it mean this century of impact by one western American family on its world and times 111 Ney 0279 5729 +. Dollars They ran into millions big figures were a conseessential and enabling hardly the best yardstick for measuring years of work The dollars were impressive enough reasonable estimate on December 31 1948 was that the fifty total of direct and venture projects represented a combined value of five billion dollars Size Yes as proof of ability and the quality of performance but otherwise the organization's size was not the main . product of its accomplishment Completed works To the extent that everyone benefited by their existence But it is fair to assume that the works would have been constructed in any case if not by these men by others Certainly they were the prime instruments of planning and building and as such put into the job all their assetsforesight courage brainpower manpower varied special skills honest effort and more a consuming love for the work itself If none of the foregoing details gave an observer a basis for understanding the first fifty years of Operation Bechtel one could be found in the range outlook of the men themselves Their preoccupation with present and future problems showed how they looked at the chiefly as an opportunity for building knowledge on experience Use it fully add to it and go on from there No job has been done so well that the next one cannot be done better That frame of mind Dad Bechtel all over again right up from the grass and carried forward by Steve and his associates by brothers Warren and Ken and the thousands who make up today's family And they were having the time of their lives adding to mankind's storehouse of useful resources Dad had something mighty big and genuine to pass along In different ways it kept cropping out all the time amplified over and over but essentially the same good homespun stuff that built one of the world's great construction outfits The third generation was coming on but the flavor of the old days lingered when Heinie like Frank Crowe back at Hoover Dam told a junior Get in there and break something I'll know you're working 4 tad [ 112] Ney 0280