Dallas Procurement District

After the outbreak of hostilities the number of inspectors rapidly increased. They were needed not only in the existing installations but also in those newly activated—Pine Bluff, Huntsville, and Rocky Mountain Arsenals, and Atlanta and Dallas Procurement Districts. By the close of 1942 the CWS reached its peak wartime figure of 6,398 inspectors. From then until the end of the war the number dropped sharply—less than 3,000 in December 1943 and less than 2,500 in May 1945. ... 

By the spring of 1942 requirements for the shell had reached a point where the CWS felt obliged to seek additional contractors, and the service awarded 4 additional prime contracts at that time. Two of the new contractors, Erie Basin Metal Products, Inc., and the David Bradley Manufacturing Division of Sears Roebuck and Co., were located in the Chicago Chemical Procurement District. The other 2, the Guiberson Co. and Hardwicke Etter Co., were in the Dallas procurement district. In 1943 another prime contractor was added, the Day and Night Manufacturing Co. in the San Francisco district. Early in 1945 prime contracts were awarded 5 more manufacturers, 3 in the Boston procurement district and 2 in the Dallas procurement district. But the war came to an end before any of these 5 got into production. 

Late in January 1942 the Office of the Chief, CWS, sent Maj. Herbert P. Heiss to Atlanta to establish a procurement district office. A month later Col. Alfred L. Rockwood was transferred from the San Francisco Procurement District to assume command of the new Atlanta office, and Major Heiss then proceeded to Dallas to open the new office there. He arrived in Dallas on 2 March, and five days later the district was activated. With the creation of the Atlanta and Dallas districts, some of the territory formerly attached to the Pittsburgh and Chicago districts was put under jurisdiction of the new districts. The Atlanta district included the following states Florida, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Mississippi while the Dallas district included the states of Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana. (See Map, page 112.) Early in 1943, Headquarters, ASF, and OC CWS decided that the continuation of the Atlanta office as a separate district office was not justified and, in April 1943, it was designated a suboffice of the Dallas district. 

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