I cannot find any information on what Eisenhower grease is, or how it helped witn the invasion of Sicily. Can anyone comment?
its also as I've experienced it kinda unrefined? it stinks, smells like turpentine sometimes and is a royal bitch to clean off parts. we don't use it anymore but you can still buy new old stock.
if you burn the wax version to remove it, it emits a choking white smoke. most cosmolene can't be used in high speed applications, and has no friction modifiers like copper or lithium.
just to add, the standard cleaning procedure is mineral spirits or xylene, which creates a toxic waste that most recyclers flat out do not accept. you have to take it to a specialty chemical disposal company.
[1] https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015068120040?urlappend=%3B... - Popple, C. Sterling. (1952). Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) in World War II. New York: Standard Oil Co. (N.J.). Pages 119-120.
[2] http://www.royalpioneercorps.co.uk/rpc/history_compound.htm -- "Taken from The Royal Pioneer, Issue No 40, September 1954"
And [2] promises that answer. Before reading that, I was thinking some mechanic, or perhaps a farm hand turned logistics sergeant, had to see the problem and know that a special type of grease was the answer. Then, how to communicate that up the chain, when the bosses might not know about engines in that way?
I feel this is the struggle of innovation, repeated once more but in a literal life and death context.
I’d love to know more about that part of the story.
>Eisenhower requested a special kind of grease to help enable an amphibious attack on Sicily. On May 31, the Standard Oil Development Company (SODC), the technical hub of Standard Oil of New Jersey, where experiments and testing were centralized, received instructions to create a scalable formula so that delivery of the grease could happen within one week. SODC succeeded and SONJ began producing the lubricant in its Baltimore plant on June 2.
leading to many days in the grease plant like the one documented.
That's major milestones for you, the old fashioned way.
There's something about the way you can maintain readiness with decades of experiments & testing under one hat, on the same rare equipment.