Page:Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator (Collins, 1919).djvu/220

 two weeks. Think of it! Once the kind and the size of the submarine we needed had been agreed upon by our naval experts, that is, standardized as it is called, machines and jigs were made by which each part was stamped out of a solid sheet of metal, and this was done, not in one or a dozen factories, but in hundreds of factories scattered all over the country and each of which made a single part.

These parts were shipped to docks at various ports on the Atlantic seaboard and there artificers of all kinds were ready to assemble them, that is, to put them together. Thus it was that in two weeks after the ore was mined it was made into parts, assembled and the submarine was ready for its perilous cruise.

While the building of submarines was thus speeded up there was another factor that made for their efficiency as a destructive engine of war which was just as important as the boats themselves and that was the crews to man them. Aye, and there was the rub, for a crew could not be trained for this highly specialized work in less than two months’ time and sometimes it took three or four months.

Because the submarine job was considered