WORLD WAR II AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF

THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL INDUSTRY

JOHN KENL Y SMITH JR.

Lehigh University

In the aftermath of World War II the American scientific community

called for an increased emphasis on basic research to restore the stock
of knowledge that had been depleted by four years of war-related
research and development (1). Behind this call was a model of techno-
logical change that made scientific research the mainspring of innova-
tion. Yet, examination of the impact of World War II on the chemical
industry reveals a different scenario. In the 1930s chemists in many
corporate laboratories had developed technologies for making poly-
mers or long-chain molecules, which could form the basis for an
unlimited number of new materials, but full commercialization had
been blocked by numerous obstacles. For the chemical industry the
real change of the war was to bridge the gap between development
and commercialization - not between science and technology. With
government help the industry met the challenge and found itself trans-
formed by its wartime programs.
World War II created an unprecedented demand for new materials.
In 1942 the Japanese cut off America's supply of natural rubber, so
that substitutes had to be found. The war put enormous demands on
the nonferrous metals industry, and plastic replacements were used
whenever possible. This substitution strategy soon had to be altered
because plastics were in short supply and proved indispensable in many
nonmetal applications. New technologies such as radar and nuclear
fission required materials with properties unavailable in existing sub-
stances. Given these incentives, it is not surprising that the war pushed
many polymers out of the laboratory and into general use. In the
307
E. Mendelsohn, M. R. Smith and P. Weingart (eds.), Science, Technology and the
Military, Volume XII, 1988, 307-322.
© 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
308 John Kenly Smith, Jr.

postwar era polymers made from petrochemicals would become the

engine of growth of the national's most dynamic industry. Government
intervention had come at a critical moment in the development of
polymer technology.

World War I and the Interwar Period

Earlier, World War I had established a firm foundation on which the
American chemical industry could grow. The war had created a
demand for new chemicals that played a critical role in industrialized
warfare. Nitrocellulose-based smokeless power, which ended the days
of the smoke-covered battlefield temporarily - chemists soon dis-
covered smoke-producing compounds that re-covered the battlefields
- was a relatively new product. Its manufacture on an enormous scale
created fortunes for the Du Pont Company and other explosives pro-
ducers. These companies used their war-acquired capital, skills, and
organization to diversify into a broad spectrum of chemical business,
the most important of which was organic chemicals. Before the war,
America had depended on Germany for most of its organic chemicals,
especially dyestuffs. When shipments from Germany stopped in 1914,
American chemical companies moved into this field; through a long
and expensive effort, Du Pont, Allied Chemical, and a few other
companies became dyestuffs producers (2). To make a high explosive
similar to TNT, the organic compound phenol was nitrated to picric
acid. Dow and Monsanto increased the nation's capacity for producing
phenol by a factor of twenty. After the war, cheap phenol provided the
opportunity for Leo Baekeland to expand the use of Bakelite phenol-
formaldehyde resins, which he had invented in 1909 (3). Given a big
boost by the war, the American chemical industry would purse its own
destiny largely independent of the military until World War II.
The Navy showed some interest in developing new materials be-
tween the wars. After the Harding armaments agreement of 1922
limited warships to less than 10,000-tons displacement, the Navy began
to look for ways to make ships lighter. One strategy it adopted was to
replace metal parts with plastic ones (4). A more important Navy-
supported research effort developed aluminum alloys for aircraft. By