It's the Bomb!

#92 - “Gimme an F, Gimme a U, etc. - -”.

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It's the Bomb!

“What is the strangest job you ever had?”, a friend asked me.

“I made bombs!” I answered.

Well, not quite, but much to my chagrin, I had a part in it.

My first job, after hitchhiking to Hollywood, after hitchhiking to San Francisco, was with Manpower.  

A busload of us were bused down near the Port of Long Beach to what I learned was Navy property. There were guards at the entrance.

At this point, I’m wondering what’s going on.

It was a bomb making facility.

It was a huge complex and the building we were in housed an assembly line that began at one large open bay door and wound around throughout the arena-like space until exiting through another large open bay door.

I never made it to either of the bay doors to get an idea of where these bombs were coming from or going to next.

On the assembly line was a continuing line of steel bomb casings, or shells.

Not loaded, - yet. That was done elsewhere. I didn’t find out where. Maybe Port Chicago, or Mare Island, up northeast of San Francisco, here in my neck of the woods. They were ordinance depots for munitions headed west.

Beyond what we could see before us, there was little talk about the operations.

They were five hundred-pound bombs “fresh from the forge”, said the regular employee guy who served as the leader of our group of twenty.

That would make them MK-82s, I think. They are the closest in appearance and weight to the ones we worked on.

They were used extensively during the Vietnam War. I couldn’t imagine the numbers that were made and deployed.

These were “general-purpose” blow-to-smithereens crater-making unguided carpet bombs. About seven feet long and maybe a foot wide at its widest point.

Yes. I was conflicted by being there. Had I known where I was going, I might have opted out. Perhaps I didn’t see the job description or wasn’t looking. I needed a job.

I was broke. I needed pants and shoes and food and rent. Sometimes, you gotta do what you gotta do.

The casings were laid out end to end on this assembly line. As we weren’t allowed to go wandering around, I couldn’t get a real sense of what else was going on. It looked like it was all just prep work.

At this stage, the bombs were without its nose cap and tail-fin assembly. They were attached further up the line.

My job was to run a handheld deburring tool over the threads that allowed the nose cap to be screwed on. It wasn’t much of a job. The guys stationed on either side of me did the same thing. The line moved twenty casings at a time automatically every couple of minutes.

A constant conveyor belt, in through one bay door and out another. All day long and into the night. It ran 24 hours a day, three mind-numbing eight-hour shifts. It was a loud place.

There must have been a hundred of us on the line. Many, like me, were temp workers.

Most were regular employees and looked the part. Regular looking guys whose job happened to be making bombs. Many were Hispanic and Asian. It must have made for interesting conversations with their friends with all the anti-war sentiment at the time.

For the most part, we temps, young guys about my age, would fall into the “hippy” category. I never thought of myself as a hippy.

It was weird. Some of the guys had radios. All tuned in to the same rock station. Nothing quite like working on bombs while Country Joe and the Fish were singing the Fish song, I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To Die. Loud singing, shouting, and laughing accompanied the Fish cheer - “Gimme an F, Gimme a U, etc. - -”.

Anti-war slogans and peace symbols and flowers were drawn on many of the casings. I saw no attempts to stop the activity. I guess that as long as the line kept moving it was no matter.

The casings were a dull steel gray. The graffiti was painted over at some point. Usually olive green.

There was an occasion where a group of “suits” walked through the line observing the work in progress. They looked pleased.

There were ten-minute breaks every hour and maybe a half hour for lunch. The day passed exceedingly slow. It was a long day with the ride down and back up to Hollywood.

I lasted two days. We were paid daily. I don’t remember how much I made. It couldn’t have been much.

I bought a pair of pants.

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