The war spikes, at anchor size

1917–2005

Twice in thirty years the system was requisitioned by war, and the spikes mark its graph: The First World War's Mishawaka is documented at the home-front size the Wars section gives it: a town that raised its Fourth Liberty Loan quota — $800,000 laid on Mishawaka and Penn Township together — in, in the South Bend News-Times' phrase of 6 October 1918, "exactly one minute after the campaign opened," its manufacturers' committee having committed the largest part of its share in advance. What the town's mills made for that war is the Ball Band leg's own named gap: the company's First World War contracts are not itemized in the record reached, and the spike is printed here at the size the surviving page proves — the money, in a minute — and no larger. The Second World War's spike is the graph's summit and is documented to the person: the Ball Band works' all-time employment peak of 9,446 in 1943, women more than half the labor force and working among other rotations the "victory shift," and the plant's war line itemized in the city history — Army raincoats, Navy deep-sea diving suits, aviator boots, and self-sealing fuel cells for the B-17, B-25, B-26 and B-29 bombers, the Navy's PBM-3 and the A-20C. Its documented summit is eight weeks of round-the-clock work in February 1942, when the plant designed and built three fuel tanks for each of the Army's B-25s — a 225-gallon bomb-bay cell, a 160-gallon crawlway bladder, a 60-gallon turret tank — extending the bombers' range to some 2,400 miles for a mission its builders were not told; the raid on Tokyo followed on 18 April 1942, and Doolittle's telegram of congratulations came back to the floor. The whole war record — the rolls, the dead, the home front — belongs to the Wars and Ball Band sections. The third spike belongs to the third life: the Iraq armor crisis, in which a vehicle designed for work behind the lines met a war with no behind-the-lines, and the Mishawaka plant diverted the majority of its manufacturing power to the armored M1114 — the Army program's production curve, as the AM General section carries it, running from 30 up-armored vehicles a month in May 2003 to 400 a month by December 2004 and 650 by September 2005. Three spikes, three systems: a loan raised in a minute by a woolen-and-rubber town; a rubber works at nine thousand hands sealing fuel tanks against bullets; a truck plant racing armor onto its own vehicle. Each spike subsided into the peacetime system that follows in these entries — and after 1945, for the first time, the subsiding did not mean growth.

Sources:

1. South Bend News-Times, 6 October 1918, Mishawaka page (Hoosier State Chronicles) — the Fourth Liberty Loan quota of $800,000 for Mishawaka and Penn Township, the manufacturers' committee, and the "million dollars in a minute," as the Wars section carries them.
2. Peter J. De Kever, Mishawaka: A History, as carried in the Ball Band section — the employment peak of 9,446 in 1943 and the war-production line; Ball-Band Factory marker — women more than half the labor force in 1943, the victory shift.
3. City of Mishawaka, historic markers account of the Doolittle Raid tanks — the February 1942 design and construction, the three tanks and their capacities, the 2,400-mile range, and the telegram after the raid of 18 April 1942.
4. This build's Wars, Ball Band and AM General sections — the war records whole, including the M1114 production curve carried as Army program figures; cross-referenced and not retold.