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Quonset huts, the icons of American can-do ingenuity, can still be seen today although they are not always immediately recognizable. Maybe a porch has been added to convert the Quonset hut into an antiques store. Some Quonset huts are places of storage or places of worship. Others have been converted into imaginative housing. But wherever a Quonset hut is serving today, it is doing credit to its World War II heritage.
In March of 1941, months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States Navy knew its ability to mobilize and house men and supplies would be severely strained in the event of war. Rear Admiral Ben Morell, Chief of the Navy's Bureau of Yards and Docks, set out to develop an improved version of a British portable structure called a Nissen Hut, which was used in World War I.
Morell approached the George A. Fuller construction company with to make a prefabricated lightweight shelter that could be easily shipped anywhere and quickly assembled by untrained troops in the field. Morell gave the order to Fuller on the contingency that the first structures had to be delivered within 60 days.
Engineers Peter Dejongh and Otto Brandenberger were set to work in the Fuller production facility near Quonset Point, Rhode Island. Within a month the first Quonset hut was ready. It was a half-tubular building measuring 36 feet long and 16 feet wide. The skin was crafted of ribbed galvanized steel sheathing placed over a frame of lightweight steel arch ribs. It had insulation and a pressed wood interior. The Quonset hut could be assembled on on a concrete foundation or, if need be, on a simple plywood floor. The wood ends had a door and two windows. Most connections were made with self-tapping screws.
Initially the military ordered 16,000 Quonset huts. Before the war would end there would be 170,000 Quonset huts produced. Most were painted a dull olive to reduce visibility from the air. Larger versions were built with a basic model bulging to 20 feet wide by 48 feet long, enveloping a usable space of 720 feet inside. Some warehouse-sized models stretched to 40 by 100 feet and Quonset huts could be bunched to create massive storage areas on larger bases.
The huts indeed provided quick barracks for troops and cheap warehouses for weapons and materiel. But it was soon apparent that these were not just flimsy, temporary structures. All the components used to design Quonset huts worked in perfect unison to produce incredible strength that could withstand the pounding of hurricanes. At the end of World War II the Quonset hut was not relegated to the scrap heap. The military sold them to the American public for one thousand dollars and the Quonset hut soon moved off the military house and into single-family neighborhoods.
They are still out there today. Maybe with wings or other additions built on or maybe with the steel side cut open or expanded or maybe just free standing in all its elegant simplicity, the Quonset hut stands as a monument to America's quick thinking in times of crisis.
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