Question about a railroad industry supplier's non-railroad products:

Before and during World War Two, the Budd Company was an important supplier of fabricated stainless steel products for US military equipment applications. It is likely that several entire classes of USN vessels were equipped with Budd stainless steel smoke pipes (uptakes) and funnels. Has anyone ever encountered a comprehensive summary of all this production?

Link to USS Juneau CL52 wreck photos shows a stainless steel smoke pipe awaiting installation at Federal Shipbuilding in 1941, and the same smoke pipe 77 years later in the wreckage three miles deep in the Pacific, photos #1, #2 and #3 on this page:

https://ussjuneau.weebly.com/juneau-wreck.html

Thanks,

PC

The Red Lion plant was built to build stainless steel cargo airplanes. The war ended before this project got very far along. Budd’s primary product was steel stamping a for the auto industry and stamping dies. Their stainless products were something of a side line. They did build three stainless steel Studebaker cars, but this product was considered unsuccessful since Studebaker could not get paint to stick to them. One of those cars was in the Philadelphia area for many years. The owner removed all the paint and polished the stainless.

The airplane was the Budd RB-1 Conestoga twin-engine cargo plane. I understand part of the logic in a stainless steel airplane was a possible shortage of aluminum. The aluminum shortage did not occur and only 17 were built, all for the Navy.

The RB-1 had the same engines as a C-47 but was 1 1/2 tons heavier. Without a shortage of aluminum, there was no need for a stainless steel cargo plane and the order was cancelled.

The RB-1 did pioneer a significant design innovation: an upswept tail with a rear loading door so cargo could go right up a ramp into the airplane, now used by all of the US cargo aircraft: C-130, C-17, C-5b, CH-47 and CH-53.

Here's an unrestored RB-1 at the Pima Air Museum near Tucson, Arizona.

https://pimaair.org/museum-aircraft/budd-rb-1/

Phil Mulligan

Budd was more known in the industry for steel stampings, such as truck bodies, and motor vehicle wheels. These were ordinary steel, not stainless. Budd also produced rockets for the M1 Bazooka rocket launcher. And, of course, USN smokestacks where the properties of stainless steel could better resist corrosion from the oil exhaust.

Phil Mulligan

This is a topic I'd also love to see more details about. If destroyer escorts were a candidate for receiving them, I bet the USS Slater group would have some information. They seem very good at responding to inquiries.

Based off a few references through the years, I believe hatches were another thing Budd was heavily involved in supplying the navy during the build up before Pearl Harbor until the end of the war.

Incidentally, I saw something about their supplying stainless steel stacks just the other day, but forget exactly where. Maybe Kalmbach's special issue about Burlington's Zephyr fleet.

The loss of the Juneau (CL-52) occurred on November 13, 1942 during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. 687 men were lost, including the five Sullivan brothers.

After the loss of the five brothers from a single family, the Navy did not allow brothers to serve together.

The Navy has honored the loss of the five brothers by having two destroyers named The Sullivans (DD-537) and (DDG-68).

The Navy had two later ships named Juneau (CL-119) and (LPD-10).

Sort of railroad related, the Sullivan brothers father was a conductor. I don't know for which railroad, but that is how he is depicted in the movie about them, The Fighting Sullivans.

Darned near everyone made stuff for the war effort back then.
Rock-Ola and Singer made small arms, as did typewriter companies.
Union Switch and Signal made M1911A1 .45 caliber pistols. I'd love to have one of those as it'd be the ultimate collecting crossover for me, but they are not cheap (they didn't make many of them).
Heck, Lionel model trains made Morse code keys for the Navy!
A lot of the production documentation from WW2 is lost forever. It might be in some archive somewhere if Budd handed over their records to a library somewhere. Where that might be; I have no clue.

Among other things Lionel also made compasses for lifeboats. High tech stuff back in the day.

Going further off topic, way back in the 1960s I had the opportunity to interview Captain Shaw (Retired as Rear Admiral), who was the Gunnery Officer of Juneau's identical sister ship USS Atlanta (CL51), also badly damaged during this battle and subsequently sunk by the crew. He said that the ranges during the engagement varied between "rifle shot and stone throwing". The morning after the battle he inspected the gun mounts on the ship, and found they had all been firing at level or slightly depressed. The gun director and fire control computer settings were all at minimum distance scale.

A USS Juneau survivor stated that they had very few wounded aboard after the battle because a 14-inch shell from one of the Japanese battleships had killed nearly all of the wounded. There is no funnel atop the smoke pipe in the wreck because another 14-inch shell had cleanly removed the funnel and both of the adjacent searchlight platforms.

First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, one of the most violent and incredible naval actions of all time.

PC

If I recall right, the RB-1 Conestoga at Pima is the only survivor and in addition to the pioneering rear cargo door, the majority of the structure was spot welded using Budds then unique process...it's quite interesting to see in person...

There were a number of companies that not only built various materials for the war effort, but also went out of business afterward...
A railroad example being Edwards, which built Doodlebugs...generally gas mechanical cars, prewar...
They built aircraft components... I think mostly control surfaces....during the war and went out of business afterward....

Budd welded stainless steel by a patented electrical process called shot welding where an electrical charge welded the two pieces of stainless. No one else could weld stainless.

Phil Mulligan

For those who wish to dig deeper, surviving Budd Company builder's negatives (including documentation of non-rail products) may be found at the Railroad Museum of PA Archives in Strasburg, Pa., and contact-printed photographs are in the Lawrence S. Williams Collection at the Athenaeum Archives in Philadelphia.

Surviving records from the Budd Company are owned by Bombardier and have been placed on deposit at the Pullman Library at the Illinois Railway Museum in Union, Ill. There are also some Budd records at the Hagley Museum and Library in Greenville, Del.

K.R. Bell

This predates, WWII but since it was an item in issue in early WWII, updated 1917 WWI-era helmets were around at the outset of the war. Budd was one of the contractors for the model 1917 helmet, and there are a few decent photos of their production line from 1918 via Library of Congress.

https://catalog.archives.gov/id/45489713