The Trojan Powder Company was an American manufacturer of explosives founded in 1904 that made nitro-starch powder. It had a manufacturing complex in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and another facility at Roberts Landing near San Lorenzo, California.
The company thrived during World War I (1914–18), continued research and development in the interwar-period, and during World War II operated a large facility in Sandusky, Ohio, under contract to the army. After the war, production scaled back. A facility in Oregon was sold for use by the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant. In 1967, Trojan Powders became a division of Commercial Solvents Corporation (CSC). It was later acquired by the Ensign-Bickford Company.
History
Roberts Landing plant c.1922
Chemists F.B. Holmes and Jesse B. Bronstein discovered how to produce a stable nitrostarch while working at DuPont's Eastern Laboratories.[1] Between 1905 and 1908, Holmes obtained various patents related to stabilization of nitrostarch powders.[2] Because the powder did not contain glycerol, it would not freeze and was non-toxic.
The powder quickly became widely used for mining, tunneling and quarrying. General Harry C. Texler, a cement manufacturer and one of the organizers of Trojan, used the powder in large quantities. The Panama Canal project used huge quantities of nitrostarch.[3]Walter O. Snelling, who became director of research at Trojan, worked for the U.S. Bureau of Mines on some aspects of the Panama Canal project, and invented a detonator that could be fired underwater.[3]
J. B. Bronstein left DuPont and founded the Non-Freezing Powder Company in 1905.[2] Bronstein was the first president of the company.[4] He built a small-scale plant that produced some commercial explosives in Paulsboro, New Jersey.[2] After a fire, the company relocated to Allentown, Pennsylvania as the Allentown Non-Freezing Powder Company.[1] The company was incorporated in New Jersey on September 13, 1905 with 1,000 shares at a par value of $100 each.[5] It built a commercial nitrostarch explosives manufacturing plant in Seiple, Pennsylvania, near Allentown[2] The parent Trojan Safety Powder Company was incorporated in the State of New York in 1906, and became the Trojan Powder Company in 1907.[4]
The Pacific High Explosives Company was incorporated in California on 25 April 1906, and built a plant at Roberts Landing in San Leandro, California to manufacture Trojan powder.[2] This was the only western plant of the New York-based Trojan Powder Company.[6] On November 23, 1906, most of the apparatus for the new Trojan powder works at Overton, eight miles north of Pueblo, Colorado had arrived. The buildings were almost completed and it was thought that the manufacture of powder would be started before 1 December.[7] The products of the Trojan Powder Factory were shipped on the Southern Pacific railway from the San Lorenzo railroad station.[8]
The Allentown subsidiary changed its name to the Pennsylvania Trojan Powder Company on 2 October 1909.[5] In 1912, Pacific High Explosives reorganized as California Trojan Powder Company.[1] In 1913 Trojan powder was provided to all primary lookouts in Rogue River National Forest for use in signaling when a fire was seen, assuming the phone lines were out of order. The signalling method was never put to the test, and a report on the experiment was highly skeptical about whether it would have worked.[9] An advertisement on 17 May 1913 for the Trojan Powder Company of Allentown, PA. listed the principal sales offices as New York City, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Denver and Portland, Oregon. The company had powder mills in Allentown, California. and Colorado.[10]
During World War I (1914–18) the Trojan Chemical Company expanded the plant in Allentown to manufacture explosives and load them into grenades and mortar shells.[11] The company prospered during the war.[4] Trojan was one of a small number of explosives companies at the time, and obtained large orders from the British, French and Italians. Demand increased when the United States entered the war in 1917.[3]
The haberdasher Thomas Koch (died 1915) was a member of the board of Pennsylvania Trojan Powder Company.[12] In 1917 William E. Hall was president of the Trojan Powder Company, the Trojan Chemical Company and the Stackpole Carbon Company.[13]Walter O. Snelling (1880–1965), a scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey (1907–10) and the Bureau of Mines (1910–12) joined the Trojan Powder Company in 1917 after a period of self-employment.[4]
The Ordnance Department of the U.S. Army wanted to find an explosive that would be nearly as good as TNT for grenades. Tests summarized in a report of 3 December 1917 showed that the Trojan Explosive was in several ways superior to TNT.[14] Trojan won the contract to make all the powder used in U.S. hand-grenades, and to load the powder into the grenades.[3] The Pennsylvania Trojan Powder Company stepped up expansion of their plants in California and Pennsylvania to create the required capacity. By the time the Armistice was signed in November 1918 the company had the capacity to make over 50,000,000 pounds (23,000,000kg) per year of Trojan Grenade Powder and Trojan Mortar Shell Explosive.[15] Trojan also supplied powder for "airplane drop-bombs".[3]
Inter-war period
1921 Catalog Entry
After World War I, the eastern and western companies merged into the Trojan Powder Company, and continued to refine processes to manufacture a satisfactory stable product. A number of permissible nitrostarch-type compounds were approved by the Bureau of Mines.[2] A 1929 letterhead listed offices in Allentown, New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Portland, Oregon.[16]
In January 1936, Trojan supplied nitrostarch explosive for test to compare this to TNT for the purpose of demolishing obsolete concrete structures of the Tennessee Valley Authority in the Norris Dam area.[17] The conclusion was that nitrostarch had similar performance to TNT at half the price. Although more expensive than dynamite, in some situations it could be a cost-effective alternative.[18] Jesse B. Bronstein Jr., son of the founder, joined Trojan in 1937, and would become its president in 1961.[19]
World War II
In 1940, the Trojan Powder Company obtained a contract to operate the Plum Brook Ordnance Works in Sandusky, Ohio.[4] Trojan operated the works from December 1941 to September 1945 during which period it produced over 1 billion pounds of nitroaromatic explosives.[20] These included trinitrotoluene (TNT), dinitrotoluene (DNT), and pentolite. The factory operated around the clock, seven days a week throughout the remainder of the war.[21] The United States Army Ordnance Department took back control of the site in December 1945 and started decontamination.[20]
Snelling represented Trojan at Plum Brook. In 1942, he discovered the TNT could be used instead of silver salts to coat photographic paper.[22] During World War II, Trojan was among the companies making pentaerythritol, a precursor to the explosive pentaerythritol tetranitrate.[23] Snelling worked for Trojan until retiring in 1954.[4]
After the war Trojan continued production of pentaerythritol, now used as a raw material for synthetic resins.[23] On 7 January 1947 the New York Times reported that three ex-employees from the Sandusky plant were suing Trojan for $30 million in back pay plus damages on behalf of 10,000 workers.[24]
Trojan Powder had a plant at 400 E. Highland Ave. in San Bernardino, California that was destroying in a forest fire in November 1956. Most of the explosives were removed before the fire reached the site.The San Bernardino plant was in operation as late as 1961.[1] Trojan's Roberts Landing factory closed in 1964.[25] Extensive clean-up of the contaminated soil was required before the site could be used for a residential development and restored marshlands.[26] The Trojan Powder Works manufactured gunpowder and dynamite on a 634 acres (257ha) site beside the Columbia River, a distance of 4 miles (6.4km) from Rainier, Oregon. In 1967, Portland General Electric chose the site as the location of the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant.[27]
Trojan produced formaldehyde, pentaerythritol, polyols used in alkyd resins, synthetic drying oils, vinyl stabilizers, fire retardant coatings, organic nitrates used in rocket propellants, and inorganic chemicals for various purposes.[19]
Takeover and legacy
On September 1, 1967 Commercial Solvents Corporation (CSC) completed a purchase of Trojan Powder, which became a division of CSC. The sale had been agreed in principle on 6 July 1967 by CSC President Robert C. Wheeler and Trojan Powder President Jesse B. Bronstein Jr., who continued as president of the new division. CSC said the Trojan products would be complementary to those of its McWhorter Chemicals division and U. S. Powder Company division.[19] CSC was merged into International Minerals and Chemical Company (IMC) in 1975.[31]
The Wolf Lake plant in Union County, Illinois had about 100 employees in the early 1980s, but was shut down in 1982. Ensign-Bickford bought it in 1988, and it had 240 employees by 1992.[32] Ensign-Bickford had bought the Spanish Fork Plant operations from the Trojan Corporation on 24 December 1986.[33] The Trojan Corporation was fully merged into the Ensign-Bickford Company on 1 January 1996.[33] The 480 acres (190ha) explosive plant at the entrance to Spanish Fork Canyon in Utah had contaminated the groundwater and soil. Ensign-Bickford closed the Spanish Fork plant in 2006 and began clean-up in preparation for a mixed-used development with 1,000 homes.[34]
The Trojan Powder Company Building at 17-19 North 7th Street, Allentown was an 11-story steel frame building with a brick facade, completed in 1911.[35] This building and the adjacent Allentown National Bank were abandoned by the 1990s and remnained empty until 2005, when they opened as a unified senior living apartment complex.[36]
Explosions
The company experienced a number of explosions, all apparently accidental.
1907
Henry Jorgensen died in an explosion in the Roberts Landing factory, He was buried in the San Lorenzo, California Pioneer Cemetery.[37]
1910
On 17 February 1910, the Trojan Powder Works at Roberts Landing, California blew up just before 11:00a.m. Five men were killed at once and three died later at the county infirmary. There were two small, sharp explosions, then a huge explosion so powerful it broke all the windows in the San Leandro School, 2 miles (3.2km) away.[6]
1916
The Penn Trojan Powder Company, at Iron Bridge, near Allentown, covered several hundred acres and held nine 15 by 30 feet (4.6 by 9.1m) sheet iron drying building. Every morning and every evening the buildings were loaded with 1,000 pounds (450kg) of wet dynamite composition. Hot air forced into the sheds would dry the composition over a period of 12 hours. On 9 December 1916 there was an explosion at the Iron Bridge plant, and three men were killed.[38]
1918
On 14 August 1918, there was an explosion at the Trojan dryer building in the Seiple plant, South Whitehall Township, Pennsylvania that killed five men. The cause was not determined.[39]
1922
On 5 January 1922, the Oakland Tribune reported that the previous day two massive explosives had killed four employees at the Trojan Powder Works in Roberts Landing. The storehouses and dryer had been reduced to piles of splintered wood. Windows were broken in nearby houses.[40]
1940
On 12 November 1940, three workers were killed by an explosion at the cap-packing shed in the Seiple plant.[39] The men were working in the one-story building making detonators for blasting at the time of the explosion. The company said they did not suspect sabotage, since the work was not related to defense.[41]
1963
On 16 March 1963, three men were killed in an explosion at the Seiple plant.[39]
2005
In August 2005, a truck coming from the Trojan plant at Spanish Fork Canyon, Utah blew up and created a huge crater in Highway 6.[42]
Linkswiler, Gilbert E. (July–August 1936), "Demolition Tests in the Tennessee Valley", The Military Engineer, 28 (160), Society of American Military Engineers: 266–268, JSTOR44563785
RDX (abbreviation of "Research Department eXplosive" or Royal Demolition eXplosive) or hexogen, among other names, is an organic compound with the formula (CH2N2O2)3. It is white, odorless and tasteless, widely used as an explosive. Chemically, it is classified as a nitroamine alongside HMX, which is a more energetic explosive than TNT. It was used widely in World War II and remains common in military applications.
Dynamite is an explosive made of nitroglycerin, sorbents, and stabilizers. It was invented by the Swedish chemist and engineer Alfred Nobel in Geesthacht, Northern Germany, and was patented in 1867. It rapidly gained wide-scale use as a more robust alternative to the traditional black powder explosives. It allows the use of nitroglycerine's favorable explosive properties while greatly reducing its risk of accidental detonation.
An explosive is a reactive substance that contains a great amount of potential energy that can produce an explosion if released suddenly, usually accompanied by the production of light, heat, sound, and pressure. An explosive charge is a measured quantity of explosive material, which may either be composed solely of one ingredient or be a mixture containing at least two substances.
Trinitrotoluene, more commonly known as TNT (and more specifically 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene), and by its preferred IUPAC name 2-methyl-1,3,5-trinitrobenzene, is a chemical compound with the formula C6H2(NO2)3CH3. TNT is occasionally used as a reagent in chemical synthesis, but it is best known as an explosive material with convenient handling properties. The explosive yield of TNT is considered to be the standard comparative convention of bombs and asteroid impacts. In chemistry, TNT is used to generate charge transfer salts.
Pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN), also known as PENT, pentyl, PENTA, TEN, corpent, or penthrite, is an explosive material. It is the nitrate ester of pentaerythritol, and is structurally very similar to nitroglycerin. Penta refers to the five carbon atoms of the neopentane skeleton. PETN is a very powerful explosive material with a relative effectiveness factor of 1.66. When mixed with a plasticizer, PETN forms a plastic explosive. Along with RDX it is the main ingredient of Semtex.
2,4,6-Trinitrophenylmethylnitramine or tetryl (C7H5N5O8) is an explosive compound used to make detonators and explosive booster charges.
Cordite is a family of smokeless propellants developed and produced in Britain since 1889 to replace black powder as a military firearm propellant. Like modern gunpowder, cordite is classified as a low explosive because of its slow burning rates and consequently low brisance. These produce a subsonic deflagration wave rather than the supersonic detonation wave produced by brisants, or high explosives. The hot gases produced by burning gunpowder or cordite generate sufficient pressure to propel a bullet or shell to its target, but not so quickly as to routinely destroy the barrel of the gun.
Picric acid is an organic compound with the formula (O2N)3C6H2OH. Its IUPAC name is 2,4,6-trinitrophenol (TNP). The name "picric" comes from Greek: πικρός (pikros), meaning "bitter", due to its bitter taste. It is one of the most acidic phenols. Like other strongly nitrated organic compounds, picric acid is an explosive, which is its primary use. It has also been used as medicine (antiseptic, burn treatments) and as a dye.
Amatol is a highly explosive material made from a mixture of TNT and ammonium nitrate. The British name originates from the words ammonium and toluene. Similar mixtures were known as Schneiderite in France. Amatol was used extensively during World War I and World War II, typically as an explosive in military weapons such as aircraft bombs, shells, depth charges, and naval mines. It was eventually replaced with alternative explosives such as Composition B, Torpex, and Tritonal.
Richard Arkwright Snelling was an American businessman, politician, and the 76th and 78th governor of Vermont from 1977 to 1985 and from January 10, 1991, until his death.
Torpex is a secondary explosive, 50% more powerful than TNT by mass. Torpex comprises 42% RDX, 40% TNT and 18% powdered aluminium. It was used in the Second World War from late 1942, at which time some used the names Torpex and RDX interchangeably, much to the confusion of today's historical researchers. Torpex proved to be particularly useful in underwater munitions because the aluminium component had the effect of making the explosive pulse last longer, which increased the destructive power. Besides torpedoes, naval mines, and depth charges, Torpex was only used in the Upkeep, Tallboy and Grand Slam bombs as well as the drones employed in Operation Aphrodite. Torpex has long been superseded by H6 and Polymer-bonded explosive (PBX) compositions. It is therefore regarded as obsolete and Torpex is unlikely to be encountered except in old munitions or unexploded ordnance, although a notable exception to this is the Sting Ray lightweight torpedo, which as of October 2020 remains in service with the Royal Navy and several foreign militaries. The German equivalent of Torpex was Trialen.
Dunnite, also known as Explosive D or systematically as ammonium picrate, is an explosive developed in 1906 by US Army Major Beverly W. Dunn, who later served as chief inspector of the Bureau of Transportation Explosives. Ammonium picrate is a salt formed by reacting picric acid and ammonia. It is chemically related to the more stable explosive trinitrotoluene (TNT).
The Mk 2 grenade, also nicknamed the Pineapple is a fragmentation-type anti-personnel hand grenade introduced by the U.S. armed forces in 1918. It was the standard issue anti-personnel grenade used during World War II, and also saw limited service in later conflicts, including the Korean War and Vietnam War. Replacing the failed Mk 1 grenade of 1917, it was standardized in 1920 as the Mk II, and redesignated the Mk 2 on April 2, 1945.
Hercules, Inc. was a chemical and munitions manufacturing company based in Wilmington, Delaware, United States, incorporated in 1912 as the Hercules Powder Company following the breakup of the DuPont explosives monopoly by the U.S. Circuit Court in 1911. Hercules Powder Company became Hercules, Inc. in 1966, operating under this name until 2008, when it was merged into Ashland Inc.
Weldon Spring Ordnance Works (WSOW) was a 17,323-acre (70.10 km2) U.S. Government-owned, contractor-operated (GOCO) facility in St. Charles County, Missouri, 55 km west of St. Louis. The site was originally operated by the Atlas Powder Company during World War II from 1941 to 1945 to produce explosives. The Atomic Energy Commission acquired part of the property in 1955, and Mallinckrodt, Inc. processed uranium ore from 1957 to 1966 under contract. The site has been divided into several parcels, and ownership has transferred over the years. Two portions of the original WSOW property are now Superfund sites that require substantial cleanup efforts. The environmental remediation of the WSOW site is currently designated as a major project of the Defense Environmental Restoration Program of the United States Department of Defense. Part of the original property is still used by the Army Reserve as the Weldon Spring Training Area.
Joliet Army Ammunition Plant (JOAAP, formerly known as the Joliet Arsenal) was a United States Army arsenal located in Will County, Illinois, near Elwood, Illinois, south of Joliet, Illinois. Opened in 1940 during World War II, the facility consisted of the Elwood Ordnance Plant (EOP) and the Kankakee Ordnance Works (KNK). In 1945, the two were deactivated and combined forming the Joliet Arsenal. The plant was reactivated for the Korean War and renamed Joliet Army Ammunition Plant during the Vietnam War. Production of TNT ended in 1976, and the major plant operations closed shortly after in the late 1970s. The facility briefly revived an automated load-assemble-pack (LAP) artillery shell operation that was managed by the Honeywell Corporation during the Reagan administration in the 1980s before it was finally closed.
Walter Otheman Snelling was a chemist who contributed to the development of explosives, aircraft ordnance, and liquefied petroleum gas.
Roberts Landing was a settlement in Alameda County, California, now incorporated into the town of San Leandro. It is located at the mouth of San Lorenzo Creek on San Francisco Bay just west of the community of San Lorenzo. In the 19th century, it had warehouses and a wharf, and was used by farmers to ship their produce to the city of San Francisco. From 1906 to 1964, it was the site of an explosives manufacturing plant operated by the Trojan Powder Company. Following the plant's closure, the site was decontaminated. After protracted discussions, part was made into a housing development while a larger part was made an open space that is now also called the San Leandro Shoreline Marshlands.
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The Oklahoma Ordnance Works (OOW) was a government-owned, contractor-operated (GOCO) facility that was built in Mayes County, Oklahoma to produce smokeless powder and other military explosives that were to be used during World War II. The facility was closed from 1946 until 1954, when production resumed until 1956, then closed again. In 1960, it was sold to the Oklahoma Ordnance Works Authority (OOWA), which converted most of the facility to become the mid America Industrial Park.
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