This six-spindle multiple drill press being operated by Alice Cariss in the American Can Company's "Amertorp" torpedo plant in St. Louis, is but one of long lines of inanimate giants turning out the 5,000-odd precision parts required to make a single torpedo -- more like a piece of fine jewelry than a deadly weapon of naval warfare.
Veteran of three years in the U.S. Marine Corps, survivor of two months' combat in the green hell of Guadalcanal, witness of the Japanese destruction at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, A. J. Lang 23 year old St. Louis fighting man didn't allow a medical discharge to knock him out of the war effort.
"Heads up!" is the pervading spirit of the several thousand employes helping to maintain dynamic production records in the American Can Company's "Amertorp"toorpedo plant in St. Louis, but not in the case of these specialists who work on the steel shells which form the airbourne tin fish's war-heads.
One of the most delicate precision instruments of naval warfare, the airbourne torpedo, with its 5,000 parts and integrated units, must pass scores of rigid tests before the jewel-like finished weapon is approved and turned over to the Navy.
Lined up in orderly array pointing symbolically toward a single objective, crushing defeat of United Nations foes, these finished sections of "Amertorp" plant in St. Louis an inspiring war production setting few civilians ever before have witnessed.
Known as Victory Alley during the recent Third War Bond Drive, this is one of the busy production thoroughfares in the tool room of the American Can Company's "Amertorp" torpedo plant in St. Louis.
June Kienzler (above) is one of the expert woman machine oprators in the American Car Company's big Amertorp torpedo plant in St. Louis, which made the first torpedo produced in this war by an industrial manufacturer, and now is turning them out in quantity greater than the combined pre-war output of the nation.
Racks of ruin Axis enemies at sea, these war-heads for airbourne torpedoes, stacked row on row in the American Can Company's "Amertorp" plant in St. Louis, soon will be parts of complete death-dealing "tin fish" riding in the racks of fighting U.S. Navy torpedo planes.
This is the first picture of one the submarine-type torpedoes now being manufactured at the United States Naval Ordnance Plant operated by the Amertorp Corporation at 3200 South Kinghighway.
Deadly airbourne torpedoes of the type being turned out in mass production at the American Can Company's "Amertorp" plant in St. Louis are shown in this official Navy picture, being loaded aboard a warcraft somewhere in the South Pacific.
One of the most impressive photographs of war-scale torpedo production ever made public, this is an assembly line scene in the American Can Company's closely restricted "Amertorp" plant in St. Louis.
