Production Boss

Few bureaucrats can tie such a Gordian knot of red tape as the gold-braided bigwigs of the U.S. Navy. Last week a rawboned, scrannel-necked Texan was busy cutting through those knots with a vengeance. As new production boss of the Navy, Vice Admiral Samuel Murray Robinson had the tremendous job of getting material for the U.S. Fleet's gigantic warship and airplane program. He had no time for bureaucratic nonsense.

Sam Robinson's job was strictly a post-Pearl Harbor development. For 80-odd years the Navy's tiers of bureaus--Bureau of Ordnance, Bureau of Supplies and Accounts, Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, etc.--had functioned like little feudal states. Bureau chiefs were jealous, prerogative-minded, ensnarled in procedure. Many a Secretary of the Navy talked wistfully about simplifying the Navy, but nothing was done until Pearl Harbor rocked Frank Knox. The two-ocean Navy, due for completion in 1944, was needed in 1942. Panting for construction speed, Knox created a new Office of Procurement and Material, put Admiral Robinson in charge. His powers were the naval equivalent of WPBoss Donald Nelson's. He could tell off any bureau chief.

No stranger to big jobs is Admiral Robinson. For the past two years he has been in charge of the Navy's new Bureau of Ships, is rated in naval circles as the real powerhouse of the building program. Looking more like an underpaid bookkeeper than a military man, he appeared some 50 times before Congressional committees, patiently explaining the Navy's needs.

In the Bureau of Ships, Robinson provided designs for whatever craft the office of the Chief of Naval Operations ordered.

Picking a ship, according to the Admiral, is like buying a hat. (In Navy slang, tentative ship designs are known as "spring styles.") Before the Navy decided on any one type of ship, the Bureau of Ships whipped up as many as ten different designs. After six or eight months of blueprint work, the designs were sent to the General Board, which eventually notified the Bureau what it fancied. The time between contract plans and working plans used to be from 15 to 18 months. Under Robinson, the time was cut to less than a year. Ably assisting him was Rear Admiral Alexander Hamilton Van Keuren, his Annapolis classmate, who has taken over the Bureau since Robinson went up.

Building ships has always been Sam Robinson's specialty. Now 59, he graduated from Annapolis in 1903, went back after six years at sea for engineering postgraduate work. Most of his career has been in Navy engineering departments. He was executive officer on the Collier Jupiter, first ship equipped with electric drive, learned enough about electric machinery to design it for many a battlewagon.

Robinson was the man who decided to freeze the designs of combat ships in each category, thus stopping endless delays for changes. Robinson was the man who surveyed and lined up the nation's shipbuilding facilities, so that when Congress provided the cash for the 70% expansion of the Fleet in September 1940 almost all contracts were awarded within an hour after Franklin Roosevelt signed the bill.

A genius for getting action at weak spots, Sam Robinson brought the mam moth construction program--biggest ever undertaken--to the point where every major shipyard, except those deliberately set aside for naval repair work, was building some kind of Navy craft.

In his new job, Sam Robinson chums up with Donald Nelson, wangles materials with finesse. Along with the new berth he acquired the rank of vice admiral, highest ever held by a "staff "(technical) officer of the Navy. Nowadays he rarely has time for his hobby: gardening. He gets down to his office by 8 a.m., seldom leaves before 6 p.m.

Had Robinson needed any more incentive than Pearl Harbor, the Japs gave it to him shortly before Christmas. They captured his son, Lieut. James Burnham Robinson, U.S.N.R., a civil engineer, on Wake Island.

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