TROPICAL BUTTER FOR ALASKA

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXII, Issue 13430, 18 April 1944, Page 2

TROPICAL BUTTER FOR ALASKA

USED FOR SKID GREASE

CONDITIONS OF U.S. SOLDIERS

IN ALEUTIANS

Champaign, 111., Feb. 18

Butter used for skid grease and Diesel tractors pushed over the side of a mountain were cited yesterday by Harold W. Richardson, Western Editor of Engineering News-Record, as typical of the manner in which Americans are "building for something big" in Alaska and the Aleutians.

At the University of Illinois Conference on Highway Engineering, Mr Richardson reported on two inspection tours of the 2,000-mile "construction front of the North:"

In his report he related how soldiers in the Aleutians received a shipment of tropical butter so hard "only a bayonet could be used to pry off a chunk," and at the same time were stymied by lack of skid « grease for pile drivers. An enterprising soldier discovered the butter was such an effective substitute for grease that sand had to be used in it to keep pile drivers from skidding into the sea, he said. "Tropical butter, Mr Richardson said, is a type developed by the Army in which wax of a similar substance is added so it will withstand the tropical heat. For "some unknown reason," he said, it was shipped to Alaska and the Aleutians. During the battle of Attu, he declared, other engineers had to get a tractor down over a mountain so steep the machine could not be run down under its own power. In desperation, they pushed six Diesel tractors over the cliff with the hope that" one would be usable when they landed.

"Those tractors were good old American - construction tractors, built for rugged service, and to everyone's amazement, all six were in running condition after the wild plunge," he added.