The Russian spy: Drilling Performance

My old toolmaker buddy worked in the naval shipyard near Bremerton, Wash., during World War II. He told me quite a few great stories about the day-to-day life in a machine shop during the big war. This was one of those big government shops with hundreds of guys on multiple shifts, building everything from torpedoes to potato peelers.

When my friend Charlie first started at the shipyard, he was assigned to the lathe department. The shipyard had lathes in a huge range of sizes. He started out on a lathe with a long bed, turning long shafts and screws. He sometimes had to mount up to four or five steady rests at a time for some shafts.

After he had been working there a while, he got a reputation as a pretty good lathe hand. One day, eight or 10 new American Pacemaker lathes were delivered to the shop and set up. “Good American machines,” he told me. Being a relatively new guy, he was surprised when he was assigned to one of the new machines. After a little grumbling from the older guys, things settled down.

Nearby, on another lathe, a machinist set up his machine to drill a part. Apparently, it required a fairly large drill bit—about 2 ” to 3 ” in diameter. The guy set the machine up and started drilling. The hole was pretty deep, so he was at it for some time.

At one point, there was a big commotion at this guy’s machine and everybody came over to see what had happened. Like sharks to a scuba diver with a beef jerky wetsuit, they descended on this poor fellow. When Charlie got over there, everybody was still laughing at this poor red-faced guy for what he had done.