 This is the Big Picture, an official television report of the United States Army, produced for the armed forces and the American people. Now to show you part of the Big Picture, here is Master Sergeant Stuart Quain. Just before written history, a famous army was stalled before the walls of a famous city. Finally, in desperation, it turned to its engineers. And those early engineers built the Trojan horse and chained stalemate into victory. Well, there's not much demand in our modern army for Trojan horses. But the Army's core of engineers has been asked to build almost everything else. In today's Big Picture, we'd like to introduce you to the men and women whose job it is to provide combat engineers in the field with the equipment they need when they need it. Without this footbridge, these troops would have been stopped. Without this floating bridge, a lifeline of vital heavy equipment would have been halted, mountainside, and an airstrip constructed almost overnight in a far corner of the world. All built in combat by your army engineers. There is a temporary sign, but there are thousands of projects which are unmarked. The services of those who carry out the desperate work of construction during the heat of combat or during days and nights of extreme urgency where the job must be finished regardless of danger or difficulty, or fatigue or hunger, this story cannot be told often enough. Nor can it omit the important role of those who provide the equipment and keep it in running order for the moment when it is needed. In America's defense, not only men, but equipment, the right equipment must be ready. In times of peace, your engineers must be instantly prepared to give aid when disaster strikes, when nature goes out of control, eating the emergency, and seeming perfectly designed for its location, a new bridge replaces the one washed out by floodwaters. Whenever and wherever the nation suffers large-scale destruction, the engineers are on the scene. But how does it happen that in addition to the men, the right equipment is on hand? Obviously, a vast, well-planned system of supply is required to bring forth the right materials, not only for emergencies that may occur in peacetime, but for the major need of national defense. In depots all over the world, this system of supply must have engineer equipment for the soldier, on hand, combat ready. To see what is on hand in the storage depots overseas, equipment constantly to be maintained, serviced, repaired, and replaced is to understand part of the supply story. And to see similar long lines of bulldozers and other heavy construction equipment stocked in depots in the states, is to begin to recognize the size and scope of engineer supply activities. Phases of the supply mission, such as recording and cataloging all these items, and seeing to it that they are properly shipped when called for, these alone are giant tasks. For the seemingly superhuman job of inventory control, this country has developed literally superhuman electronic data processing equipment. This equipment has become essential for our modern army. Electrical machines, recording depot inventory, keeping stock records, recording repair parts levels, these process huge amounts of data at a very high speed. They save time and effort, and they help tremendously in speeding the delivery of engineer items to the users in the United States and overseas. The system of linked business machines, which among other things does away with old fashioned file cabinets filled with bulky and various sized forms, has greatly increased efficiency. Staffs can be smaller, but must be more highly trained. They are needed to process and interpret the supply data the machines turn out. All information is translated into machine codes on small, compact, easy to store, punched cards. When special information is needed, a sorting machine will find it, thus eliminating the time and labor of rummaging through large and bulky forms. The newest, most elaborate equipment used by the Corps of Engineers is the giant electronic brain. Brain's memory is on reels of magnetic tape, which carry the facts and figures of supply, as many as 40,000 characters of information are available at any one time. The brain is 100% logical and instantly reports mistakes to the operator. Besides analyzing data, the machine is able to predict future trends in supply requirements. Used for inventory control, the electronic brain is a time and money saver. A product of American ingenuity, it is of tremendous value to national defense. Here in the depots are the facts and figures in physical form that the brain handles and digests with such remarkable ease. Masses of construction equipment, as far as the eye can see, and all of it, each item is well known and recorded in the extensive data system of engineer supply by number, location and condition. Cranes. Trailers. Ditchers. All of it identified and in order. Stacked bridge parts piled high for all types of bridges, baleys and ponds, fixed and floating. When the demand arises, the proper bridge can be shipped in a minimum of time where it is needed. For the bridges that must be floated, there must be boats. These two are engineer equipment. Here, the boats are being tested by civilian specialists before being shipped to an engineer bridge unit. These boats must be tough and capable of taking plenty of punishment. They are small tugs needed for a myriad of tasks, such as the number of boats or a myriad of tasks, such as towing and pushing floating bridge sections and ferrying equipment or men in combat are easily handled, lifted in and out of the water, as simply as toys. Water tasks, which the Corps of Engineers may be called upon to perform at a moment's notice, there are several types of workboats available. Another collection of supplies. Crane parts and attachments. Crane, always a source of interest to the sidewalk superintendent, has almost as many attachments for digging as a dentist's drill, buckets and hose and shovels, each type for a purpose. To see even a portion of what is contained in the engineer's supply system is to understand a phase of American preparedness, the large amounts of different kinds of construction equipment and supplies. These are weapons too. They are the very best that American industry can produce for our military construction forces. They are essential to success in war. Because equipment must be ready for issue at all times, the supply mission includes care and preservation of this equipment. It's one of the shops in which this kind of work is done. Steam cleaning. Each item receives the individual treatment it requires. There was a time when mothballing techniques applied to such vehicles as this baby bulldozer meant a liberal pouring of grease over everything in sight. Today, preservatives are applied to relatively few parts of the equipment. A special aluminum wrapper is being used on a piece of equipment to keep out moisture. The aluminum cloth moisture barrier will protect this item indefinitely under normal storage conditions. The cloth is sealed by machine. Delicate instruments are given this type of storage treatment. One tractor protected against weather for anywhere from 18 months to three years, ready to leave the care and preservation shop for storage. No one knows when it may be called for. It may be three weeks, three months, or three years. It may be for the Arctic or the tropics, for the desert or the jungle. But when the demand comes, the equipment must be ready. Those machines returned from the field for overhaul are regarded as something of a challenge by the men in the repair shop. It's a major job to strip down a bulldozer, but in doing so, in providing a top-to-bottom overhaul, even to sandblasting the body and parts clean of old paint, the aim is to return the machine to the user as good as or better than new. After a paint job, a dozer blade is attached to this model and it is ready to roll. Beside the big equipment that must be restored to first-class working condition, there are many small items that are supplied by the engineers and therefore must be repaired by them. The infantryman's sniper scope is one of these. Capable of throwing a beam of infrared light for a considerable distance, the sniper scope is used at night to allow American sharpshooters to literally see in the dark. Precise measurements are all important in instrument repair shops where meters and gauges themselves are repaired. These tell a vital story about equipment and how it is operating. The key to the maintenance and overhaul of engineer equipment is in the large number of different repair parts required. Inventory control of repair parts is a complex and difficult operation. Electronic machines greatly facilitate the work of procurement, storage and issue of repair parts. A request comes in in the form of a punched card. The holes carry all the information. Requesting agency, date, the part required, method of shipment, and so on. This card and others are fed into the machine and the electronic brain will locate the nearest depot, storing the part, issue a warehouse order, and report the number of spares in stock. No one need refer to the files, no pages need be studied, no telephone calls need be made. In a matter of minutes, an order goes out to the depot nearest to the agency making the request. Here in an area stocking great quantities of engineer supplies, a highly organized system allows the orders to be filled with remarkable speed and efficiency. Fundamental in the operation is the chain belt principle. Various types of conveyances are in motion throughout the area and in the warehouses to simplify the routing of thousands of items which are simultaneously being processed. The Corps of Engineers uses the best methods employed by modern industry and takes pride in moving with the times. Every effort is made to save unnecessary steps and movements. This ingenious device called a tovair makes a round trip throughout the plant every 51 minutes thus providing a long distance chain belt for carrying small items from one section of the warehouse to another. All is lined with bins. In this depot, there are thousands of individual bins, each one storing a different repair part. And in few of these bins is their time for dust to gather for almost all of them contain fast turnover items. Also, every phase of the operation has been scientifically worked out from the standpoint of the individual worker to avoid strain and to prevent injury. In the bins, items are stored according to weight and size. Commonly drawn items are at elbow height while the light items are frequently stored at the very top. The items selected are now headed for the shipping department. There is no pause in filling the order from the time it is received. Of the many problems of storage, one is the damage to equipment caused by moisture within packing cases. A humidity sensing device is being used here to indicate the moisture within the box. Most of the problems of moving and storing large boxes are solved by the amazing little forklift trucks. These are an integral part of any large warehouse operation. Frequently, civilian employees devise ideas which aid in carrying out the supply mission. A set of rollers eliminates tugging and straining in the handling of heavy boxes. And here, a machine called a pack master, which wraps small parts, was improved upon by an employee's suggestion to the effect that the same machine could label the part as well as pack it. There are endless problems in packaging small parts. A plastic shield protecting the operator from flying particles given off by this sealing machine was an employee's suggestion, resulting in safer operation. To protect the individual and to speed the part on its way, these are two important aims in this phase of engineer supply. Among the many methods of protecting parts is a dip in a plastic bath, simple and effective. The tow veyer arrives in the shipping section with an order transmitted earlier by the electronic brain, fan blades destined for a depot in France. Here, the supplies are given final packing and are addressed. Everything flows along smoothly in a warehouse system second to none. At many stages, there are machines to carry out work that once took many man hours. A banding machine quickly and neatly reinforces the box. Sailing machine does its work with remarkable simplicity and efficiency. The fan blades are on their way. In a few hours, they will be on a plane, and in a few days, they will be at the depot in France. While most of the work at engineer depots is done by civilians, the army must have military personnel capable of setting up and running depots and maintenance shops in zones of military operation. These young soldiers are undergoing on-the-job training prior to serving overseas. Part of the training includes running their own depot, participating in all the basic supply activities that are commonly found in the full-scale operation. Working with an assortment of supplies, they become familiar with the practical problems of stock issue and control. Since complicated electronic equipment has become part and parcel of the engineer supply system and is to be used overseas, experience with its operation is part of the on-the-job training program. Men have been selected on the basis of aptitude for this advanced instruction. Many career opportunities are present in this field. National defense is expensive, so we are constantly seeking ways of making it less costly. Let us turn now from equipment and supplies to a man whose job is saving the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of dollars every year, one of the core of engineer's standardization experts, Mr. Bruce Dollison. Not long after the end of World War II, we began dropping items which were nice to have, but not really necessary. We made intensive studies of identical or interchangeable items, and since the Korean conflict, we have succeeded in dropping over 100,000 engineer repair-part items without weakening our supply effort. Here is an example of economizing. This familiar item, gasoline tank caps, used to be stocked in 87 different sizes and types. We now have reduced this to six basic types and sizes, some of which are shown here. Perhaps you have noticed in the back of your electric refrigerator small pipes. These are made of copper tubing. The core of engineers had over 3,000 requirements for copper tubing, each with a different stock number. We now cut these items from bulk tubing, using simple tools which are in the hands of the men in the field, thus eliminating 2,500 line items. When you press the little switch on the floorboard of your automobile to dim your headlights, this is the little dimmer switch gadget that does the work. Through standardization, we have succeeded in reducing several of these items with the same function to one. Incidentally, it is a less costly item. When you take your automobile to the filling station to have your car greased, these little grease fittings are the port of entry for the lubricating grease. Note on this board are 120 grease fittings which were formerly stocked under 120 different part numbers because we bought them from different manufacturers. We have now stocked these under one federal stock number and in one bin. The average cost used to be 22 cents each. We now pay an average of 3 cents each. So standardization results in not only space and manpower savings, but procurement savings. We have succeeded in eliminating over 5,000 line items of gaskets by the use of bulk material. The man in the field cuts out his own gaskets. Hand in hand with the program of eliminating all unnecessary repair parts by standardization, we have developed a small engine program in six sizes. One half, one and one half, three, six, ten, and 20 horsepower. Designed to meet the power needs of the armed forces, these six engines replace 78, now presently being supplied the military services. At the present time, at the Continental Motors Plant in Detroit, these engines are being assembly line tested. These engines will run water pump, air compressors, and hundreds of other items. Standardization is a huge step forward in ease of maintenance for the men in the field. In war, you cannot purchase or place a value on time. Standardization constantly recognizes new ideas, research and development, and a better way of doing things. Sometimes we compare it to the daily task of shaving. No matter how well you do it today, it still has to be done again tomorrow. Our goal in standardization is a better and more economical way of supplying engineer troops. Whatever the secret weapons a nation might have, none can perform without the support of construction power. America can be proud of its ability to manufacture and ship the equipment, supplies and repair parts needed to assure the construction power when called for by military units. And for numberless purposes including aid to our allies in the Mutual Assistance Program. These carloads of equipment symbolize not only our industrial might, but our clear recognition of the necessities of preparedness. A job needs to be done, it is being done. And these shipments to units here and abroad suggest to the countless constructive purposes for which this type of equipment can be employed. The future we do not know, but the past is full of lessons for the future. A shipment of supplies by truck recalls World War II's Red Ball Express for rushing equipment to the men in the front lines. Today we are continuing to think of the race against time and here for example new techniques for mass airborne transportation of heavy engineer equipment are under test. The work goes on. A joint effort by a civilian military team to develop the best techniques for supplying the finest equipment available to those who must use it and maintain it in the face of countless difficulties and dangers. Your Combat Engineers. Who's their services? United States Army Engineers are standing by ready when needed. Now there's a Sergeant Stewart Queen inviting you to be with us again next week for another look at your Army in action on The Big Picture. The Big Picture is an official television report for the armed forces and the American people produced by the Army Pictorial Center presented by the United States Army in cooperation with this station.