Storage of Other CWS Items

The transfer to the Chemical Warfare Service of responsibility for the incendiary bomb program in the late summer of 1941 brought with it the need for magazine operations on a scale hitherto reserved for Ordnance. Storage requirements for items capable of explosive or incendiary behavior— both of which could be expected from incendiary bombs in case of accidents—followed a fairly strict pattern based largely on Ordnance experi- 

By the summer of 1S 42 the first shipments of incendiary bomb clusters were beginning to fill the new facilities. As the carloads arrived, the 100-pound clusters were manhandled into the igloos from the railroad docks via trucks and roller conveyors arid stacked inside by hand, as many as twelve to a stack. This procedure, time consuming and laborious as it was, remained without much change for more than a year until the use of fork-lift trucks and pallets became general. A number of devices had by then been improvised for handling 100-pound and 500-pound clusters. 

C Supply Div OC CWS for C CWS, 30 Sep 4l, sub Fire Protection of Magnesium Incendiary Bombs in Storage. CWS 314.7 Storage File. 

Crane operated booms and jigs lifted a truckload of clusters at a single operation, the standard load being seven 500-pound Ml7 clusters.  

The packaging and storage of bleaching powder was hardly as big a responsibility as the handling of incendiaries, but it proved to be one of 

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