If Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia were to invade Pennsylvania again it could solve all its pressing supply problems at the expense of the United States Navy.
Standing on almost the exact spot where a brigade of Confederate cavalry scored the northernmost advance of Lee’s army is the largest inland naval supply depot in the world—U. S. Naval Supply Depot, Mechanicsburg, Pa.
NSD Mechanicsburg is located 105 miles from the Atlantic Coast and nine miles from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s capital. More important, it lies within ten miles of the Enola Freight Classification Yards of the Pennsylvania Railroad, one of the largest and most complete facilities of its type.
Thanks to the Enola Yards and to excellent highway and airline facilities, NSD Mechanicsburg can move supplies or equipment to any point on the Atlantic Coast in a matter of a few hours to a week, at the latest. Direct rail connections with Chicago, Detroit, and Erie enable the depot to move material to the Great Lakes region in 48 to 72 hours.
Counting two Supply Demand Control points, activities located on the Mechanicsburg reservation store or control upwards of $2,000,000,000 in Navy and General Services Administration material.
Plans for NSD -Mechanicsburg and its sister inland depots on the Pacific Coast originated with the naval build-up of 1939- 40. The inland depots were to provide: 1) Centrally located support for all naval activities on the coast which they served; 2) Security from naval bombardment and aerial attack, and 3) Easing of the burden on congested coastal facilities.
Mechanicsburg’s prime function was to be that of a parts depot. In this it reflected the growth of naval supply beyond the confines of coastal shipyards. The days when all functions of Navy supply could be conducted at the water’s edge had ended.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor moved planning into high gear. Congress authorized construction of NSD Mechanicsburg on December 17, 1941. Groundbreaking followed two weeks later. By April, 1942, amidst a sea of mud and the hubbub of construction, the depot was receiving, storing, and dispatching naval stores.
NSD Mechanicsburg was commissioned on October 1, 1942, with Captain E. H. Van Patten (SC) USN in command. Construction continued apace. Throughout the winter of 1942-43, the depot’s administration building still lacked a heating plant, but a steam locomotive substituted for the missing furnace.
Within the next three years, NSD Mechanicsburg developed unique and unexpected functions. Established originally to support only East Coast facilities, the Mechanicsburg depot found itself procuring, storing, and distributing material for the entire Navy, world-wide.
During the latter part of World War II, every diesel and gasoline engine part used aboard every ship in the U. S. Fleet, and many allied vessels as well, came through Mechanicsburg. The pace grew so furious in 1944 that new parts or machinery would arrive from the manufacturer on one track, be unloaded and sorted on the spot, and loaded immediately on other box cars for shipment, without once having been stored in a warehouse.
By June, 1944, the value of goods stored at Mechanicsburg had risen to $2,000,000,000. The combined military and civilian staff stood at well over 4,000 persons. Incoming requisitions averaged 200 per day. In May, 1944 the depot’s communications section had handled 12,000 messages. By March, 1945 monthly freight traffic in and out of the depot involved over 2,000 railroad carloads and over 6,000 truck shipments. The development of NSD Mechanicsburg during the hectic war years reflects, in large measure, the development of the present Navy supply system.
Charged with supplying the fleet with virtually all its hull and machinery parts, Mechanicsburg found that the size of the job had outgrown the system of control in use. Prior to World War II, ships had procured parts from home building yards or directly from the manufacturer. This rather primitive system could not stand up under the demands of wartime operations.- In May, 1943, a central office known as Spare Parts Distribution Control was established at Mechanicsburg with the object of providing world-wide control of hull and machinery parts.
In the course of developing a new and more adequate control system, the depot accomplished a monumental task of tabulating thousands of separate parts originating with more than 300 independent manufacturers, each of whom had his own classification system. That the new Navy system was organized and put into operation within a matter of months is all the more remarkable when it is considered that many of the naval officers involved had no prior military service, having come directly to the depot from civilian life as “probationary ensigns.” Programs that were to have a profound influence on the efficiency of the entire fleet were originated, organized, and supervised by ensigns and lieutenants.
Out of Mechanicsburg’s Spare Parts Distribution Control, and from similar operations elsewhere in the supply system, emerged the Supply Demand Control points that today procure and control every item of material in use by the Navy.
The Ships Parts Control Center, successor to Spare Parts Distribution Control, became a separate organization at Mechanicsburg on June 9, 1945. “Born and raised” at Mechanicsburg, Ships Parts Control Center is still located at the depot. It controls the world-wide supply of 191,000 separate parts valued at $450,000,000.
NSD Mechanicsburg remains the Navy’s major storage point for reserve stocks of ships parts. In most instances, however, the depot has reverted to “wholesale” supply of coastal depots in place of direct, “retail” supply of individual ships, as was the case in World War U.
The post-World War II years brought NSD Mechanicsburg new and difficult tasks —the disposal of huge quantities of surplus materials and the preservation of large stocks of machine tools under the Departmental Industrial Equipment Reserve Program. In the calendar year 1954 alone, NSD Mechanicsburg disposed of surplus materials having an acquisition value of $100,000,000.
The Departmental Industrial Equipment Reserve Program, the “DIER Program,” is aimed at preserving and maintaining vital government-owned machine tools for use in the rapid expansion of war industries.
At the end of World War II, machine tools arrived at the depot in such volume that a crash program of preservation and maintenance was required. In many cases, valuable machine tools had been pulled out of plants and left to stand in the open in order to make way for conversion to peacetime production. As such equipment arrived at Mechanicsburg, essential maintenance was accomplished, replacement parts packaged with the unit, and the whole lot processed for preservation immediately.
As the work load was reduced, Navy civilian technicians broke out the more hastily stowed machinery and went over it inch by inch, replacing worn or corroded parts and placing the entire unit in A-l condition. The reconditioned machinery was then placed in dehumidified buildings for long-term preservation.
The outbreak of the Korean emergency found the commercial machine tool industry unable to cope with the sudden demands placed upon it. The tools in storage at Mechanicsburg and elsewhere literally saved the day. Orders for weapons and equipment that would have been delayed for two years pending the production of new machine tools were completed in a matter of weeks or months, thanks to the machinery preserved from World War II. Some of these same machine tools have returned to the depot for the second time either for preservation or for surplus disposal. In all, NSD Mechanics- burg has handled $31,000,000 worth of machine tools since the DIER Program began.
On September 6, 1952, NSD Mechanics- burg opened its gates to a second Supply Demand Control Point, the Ordnance Supply Office. Located formerly at the Naval Gun Factory, Washington, D.C., the Ordnance Supply Office is manned by 34 officers and 865 civilians. The organization controls 165,000 separate items valued at $1,300,000,000.
In addition to Ships Parts Control Center and Ordnance Supply Office, NSD Mechanicsburg also houses the Naval Records Management Center, Mechanicsburg, the second largest unit of its type in the country. The center stores approximately 9,000,000 records, among them the historical files of the Flag Commanders of the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets.
In 1954, an 85-unit tank farm was added to the depot’s facilities, providing storage for 521,000 barrels of perishable oils. At present this installation is being utilized by the General Services Administration as part of the National Stockpile Program.
In addition to the tank farm, NSD Mechanicsburg has provided GSA with over 1,500,000 square feet of open and covered storage space for the stockpiling of rubber, antimony, asbestos, bismuth, beryl, hog bristles, feathers and down, molybdenum, mercury, quartz, tungsten, and quinine. Other warehouses have been made available for storage of Civil Defense emergency medical supplies.
The importance of NSD Mechanicsburg can be measured chiefly in the scope of its services to naval installations from New England to Florida and in the additional services it performs as a distribution point, a storage facility for other government agencies and a “home” for three major tenant organizations.
From the day of its inception, NSD Mechanicsburg has played a significant part in the life of every resident of Central Pennsylvania. The Navy’s military and civilian payrolls, the huge volume of business which the depot provides for the railroad and local trucking and airline industries and the tremendous boost which the presence of the depot has given to land values in the immediate vicinity have helped to produce a boom economy in the Harrisburg area.
The town of Mechanicsburg itself has enjoyed the greatest economic spurt in its 135- year history. Settled in 1820 by a group of mechanics, the town now houses hundreds of atomic-age Navy mechanics. New store fronts, a government housing project at one end of town and a large private development at the other end can be traced directly or indirectly to the presence of the Navy.
With the return of something akin to normalcy in the post-World War II years, NSD Mechanicsburg has reverted to its original function as a reserve stock point. The days of handing material out of one box car and into another have gone, at least for the present. The military complement of the depot and its tenant organizations now stands at 97 male officers, two WAVE officers and 25 enlisted men. Civilian personnel total approximately 2500. Of these, many are veteran Navy employees. Their experience is a priceless asset to the Navy in both war and peace.