OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) - The factory
that manufactures nearly all the bombs for the U.S. military has
suspended production of "bunker buster" penetration bombs after
workers at the plant developed anemia, officials said on Wednesday.
The 2,000-pound (900 kg) "bunker
buster" bombs are designed to penetrate the surface and do damage to
structures below.
Production was halted in August at the
McAlester Army Ammunition Plant
(MCAAP), in eastern Oklahoma, after workers making that type of
munition tested positive for the blood disease anemia, plant officials
said. Their anemia was likely caused by exposure to the explosive TNT.
"This is the first report we've ever
had of it in producing bombs for 60 years," said base spokesman Mark
Hughes. "That's why we are looking at the composition of the TNT." He
said there may have been a bad batch of TNT.
A heavy production schedule may also
have resulted in higher TNT exposure for workers.
Hughes said a task force is
investigating the matter and a new ventilation system is being
installed. Production will be halted until at least Jan. 1, and he was
not permitted to comment on the number of bunker busters the plant
produces due to security restrictions.
Production of the bombs was suspended a
first time in August when workers suffered from symptoms such as
fatigue and headaches. Testing showed anemia and a second crew of
workers was subsequently called in and they also tested positive for
the blood disease, leading to another halt, officials said.
Production of other types of bombs will
continue at the plant.
Built in 1943, the McAlester plant
employs about 1,400 workers who produce the overwhelming majority of
the bombs used by the United States military, including most of the
bombs dropped since the beginning of the wars in both Afghanistan and
Iraq.
At 70 square miles, the bomb plant is
three times the size of Manhattan.
Production of bombs at the plant has
been at the highest level since the Vietnam War
Exposure to TNT, or trinitrotoluene, a
high explosive used in bombs and in dynamite, has been linked to
anemia, liver damage, cataracts and skin irritation.
Anemia is a condition in which the
number of red blood cells falls below normal. The body gets less
oxygen and therefore has less energy than it needs to function
properly, according to the Anemia Lifeline Website. .
The Army has adopted a
"tiered" ammunition depot concept to reduce infrastructure, eliminate
static non-required ammunition stocks, decrease manpower requirements,
increase efficiencies, and permit the Army to manage a smaller stockpile.
The tiered depot concept reduces the number of active storage sites and
makes efficiencies possible. A "tier 1" installation will support a
normal/full-up activity level with a stockage configuration of primarily
required stocks and minimal non-required stocks requiring
demilitarization. Normal activity includes daily receipts/issues of
training stocks, storage of war reserve stocks required in contingency
operations and additional war reserve stocks to augment lower level tier
installation power projection capabilities. Installations at this activity
level receive requisite levels of storage support, surveillance,
inventory, maintenance and demilitarization.
The plant, as a Tier 1
installation, will be required to ship ammunition quickly during the first
30 days of a military conflict. McAlester, one of four Tier I ammunition
storage facilities in the Department of Defense and its largest in terms
of storage capability. McAlester has the capacity and the requirement to
be able to ship 400 20-foot containers of explosive ordnance a day for 30
days in the event of a conflict, giving mothballed production facilities
around the country the chance to fire up again, its officials added.
McAlester sprawls over 42,000 acres in rural, southeastern Oklahoma and
wild turkey and deer wander among its more than 2,400 explosive storage
facilities. It handles anything from 7.62 mm rounds to 5,000-pound bombs
and much in between. The turtle-shell-like magazines stretch row after
row, connected by road and rail line.
During 1998 the Oklahoma
National Guard and the U.S. Army Reserve provided McAlester Army
Ammunition Plant, Oklahoma, with a much-needed facelift as a part of their
annual training exercise, "Golden Kastle '98." More than 1,500
citizen-soldiers from engineer units completed $5.4 million worth of
construction projects that otherwise would have cost the plant
considerably more. The guardsmen built a surge support base camp for the
reservists who worked on road and magazine projects that enhanced the
plant's ability to meet Tier 1 requirements. The reservists paved 4.5
miles of road, prepared 8.4 miles for paving, built concrete truckstop
pads at 19 railroad crossings, and extended the drive-through slabs at 30
ammunition storage magazines.
For years, ammunition was
stored at secure bunkers at McAlester Army Ammunition Plant. When needed,
trains could pull up to the bunker and ammunition was offloaded for
transport to parts unknown. But that isn't fast enough any more. To fix
the problem, some 1,800 citizen-soldiers rotated through McAlester from
April to August 2001 as part of an exercise dubbed "Golden Kastle." These
soldiers used their construction skills to build and enhance roads, and
extend loading docks so that tractor-trailer trucks can also assist in the
loading process
The Defense Ammunition
Center (DAC), formerly located in Savanna, Illinois, is now based in the
foothills of the Ozarks in McAlester, Oklahoma. The Center is a tenant
agency on the McAlester Army Ammunition Plant. It serves a unique role as
part of the US Army Operations Support Command (OSC).
The McAlester Naval
Ammunition Depot now the McAlester Army Ammunition Plant (MCAAP) was born
in the dark days of World War II. The nation, on December 7, 1941, had one
Naval Ammunition Depot at Hawthorne, Nevada, to support the Navy's Pacific
Fleet and was building another at Crane, Indiana, to support the Atlantic
Fleet. With war, the Navy began looking for sites for at least three more
inland depots. A group of prominent citizens in McAlester heard about the
Navy's search and immediately formed a task force in the hope of securing
one of the deports for McAlester to boost the depressed economy of the
area. The task force, with the aid of Senator Elmer Thomas and Congressman
Wilbur Cartwright, convinced the Navy to consider McAlester as a site for
one of the new depots. The other two were subsequently located at
Shumaker, Arkansas, and Hastings, Nebraska.
The Navy announced its
choice on June 10, 1942. The Government, after the announcement, filed a
"declaration of taking" under the Second War Powers Act in the Eastern
Oklahoma District Court. The action allowed the Navy to take immediate
possession of the land-nearly 45,000 acres located nine miles south of the
city of McAlester. The land, at the time, was owned by farmers and
ranchers, many of whom sent their children to a small two-room school
house built as a WPA project in the 1930's. That school house-known as
C-Tree School-still stands at the plant.
Under the "declaration of
taking" the Government paid an average of $15 per acre for the land. The
original land purchase, with improvements, amounted to nearly $3 million.
The Navy, after the land purchase, awarded the initial construction
contract to Brown-Bellows Construction Company. Construction, after
starting in August of 1942, proceeded so rapidly that it was possible to
hold commissioning ceremonies on May 20, 1943.
The depot, at the time of
commissioning, consisted of 1,833 storage magazines, 197 permanent
buildings, 235 miles of surfaced and paved roads and 140 miles of railroad
track. Three months later, the first production-namely 5-inch 38
projectiles-came off the line. The depot, during the remaining years of
war, employed more than 8,000 people and produced 325,000 tons of
munitions, including 16-inch gun ammunition, rockets, mines, and depth
charges.
After the war, the
McAlester depot continued to store, renovate and maintain Naval munitions
and, in early 1950's, was tasked to ship this ammunition as well as new
production to meet the Navy's needs in the Korean Conflict. More than
3,000 people were employed at the depot during the Korean Conflict.
Employment, after the war, dropped as the workload decreased and hit an
all-time low of 632 employees in 1958.
With America's growing
involvement in Vietnam, new demands were placed on McAlester to both ship
munitions already in storage and produce new ammunition. The depot, as it
did for the Korean Conflict, responded almost immediately. More than 3,000
people were employed, and many of these worked on a three-shift operation
on the depot's bomb lines. During the war, McAlester employees produced
more than six million low drag bombs. 13 million 2.75 inch rockets, 556,
000 Zuni rockets and 34.5 million rounds of 20 millimeter gun ammunition
as well as a special type of 40 millimeter gun projectile.
Shortly before the end of
the war, the depot received a requirement to load, assemble, and pack a
new type of munitions-the Navy's Anti-Material, Anti-Personnel (APAM)
cluster weapon-and, during the eight year period ending in 1980, produced
more than six thousand containing 717 bomblets each. Four years after
Vietnam in 1977, the depot, along with its sister installations at
Hawthorne and Crane, was designated a single manager installation for
conventional munitions and was transferred from Navy to Army. The depot,
at that time, was renamed the MCAAP.
The plant's mission is
twofold, in that it continues to serve both as a munitions storage and
maintenance depot as well as a production facility in its six production
area-namely the 20-Millimeter, 40-Millimeter, Major Caliber, Medium
Caliber, Rocket, and Bomb and Mine production areas. The plant has
demonstrated more than once that it can quickly meet the conventional
ammunition needs of its customers-primarily Navy and Air Force. It can
respond almost immediately to any requirement, regardless of the
technology involved, and has, within the framework of its work force, the
knowledge necessary to continue to meet those needs.
On 26 November 1975, DOD
Directive 5160.25 was issued which assigned the Department of the Army
(DA) as the single manager for Conventional Ammunition. As a result of
this directive, the command and control of NAD McAlester was transferred
from the Navy to the Army on 1 October 1977, establishing the MCAAP as a
vast depot/plant complex.
The 1995 Defense BRAC 95
Commission recommended certain realignment and closure actions for
military installations on 1 July 1995. These actions were approved by
President Clinton on 13 July 1995, and forwarded to Congress. Subsequent
review by the Congress did not alter any of the recommendations, which now
must be executed under the provisions of the BRAC Act of 1990, Public Law
101-510. This act directed closure of Savanna Army Depot Activity (SVDA)
and the relocation of the US Army Defense Ammunition Center (DAC) missions
and functions from the SVDA, Savanna, Illinois to the McAlester Army
Ammunition Plant (MCAAP), McAlester, Oklahoma.
The action involved the
transfer of 229 civilian jobs. The transfer of mission and functions from
SVDA to MCAAP occured from July 1998 through September 1999. DAC performs
the following basic functions: munitions training, logistics engineering,
explosive safety, demilitarization research and development, technical
assistance, and career management. Relocation of DAC to MCAAP allow it to
collocate with an active ammunition storage and production operation.
MCAAP's "tier 1" depot, was the best for providing the needed
capabilities.
James has been working at McAlester Army
Ammunition Plant for three months. He cleans the thread of the bomb
and examines the pipes, where the ignition wires will be put
through. Oklahoma, USA, 10.2002
US DOD MCALESTER ARMY AMMUNITION PLANT
1 C TREE ROAD SJMMC-EM
MCALESTER OK 745019002
Latitude: 34.846886 Longitude: -95.898666
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