Cargoes

San Francisco's longshoremen and their waterfront employers seldom agree. But last week they loudly agreed that cargo space was being wasted, that ships steamed out through the Golden Gate with precious freights of airplanes, munitions, food dangerously and improperly stowed, that loading of vital supplies for Pacific outposts was being delayed and badly managed, and that Army & Navy officials in Washington were to blame.

In loading a ship, as in packing a trunk, the heaviest cargo is usually put in the bottom. But wartime cargoes are loaded not by common sense but by code. Washington supplies a code breakdown with instructions on where to stow each item. If orders put Item XA in the bottom hold, there Item XA must go, whether it turns out on arrival to be eggs, airplanes or cigarets.

Ships departed with light fuselages tucked in their bottoms, heavy tanks lashed to their decks. Army explanation: commanding officers wanted first things first on unloading. Waterfront men said that some of the top-heavy freighters they saw depart would never have to be unloaded if the vessels were hit by a hurricane.

What made San Francisco officials claw the air:

> Air Corps regulations demanded that crated wings of P-40s and P-39s be placed on end. Estimates along the waterfront were that 30 to 60% more planes could have been carried across the Pacific if wing crates could have been laid flat or on their sides.

> From Hawaii came a rush order for badly needed Army materiel, to occupy 400 cubic feet of space. Only ship leaving San Francisco was a Navy vessel. The Army begged the Navy for space, was turned down. Officials investigated, discovered that one hold in the Navy ship carried only peanuts, candy, soft drinks, cigarets. The Navy said the shipment was needed to bolster Navy morale. The ship sailed without the Army's order.

> A War Department colonel telephoned long distance from Washington, loudly demanded that one of the largest ships in the Pacific, which had arrived four hours earlier, be immediately discharged, reloaded, fueled and made ready by midnight of the following day to join a convoy. By working night & day longshoremen had the huge liner ready in eight days.

> Men sent to one pier were told by Army chiefs to stand by, as the cargo was not yet available. After two hours they were told to start loading onions. They loaded onions for three hours. Then they were told a mistake had been made. They were ordered to unload the onions.

>Counted by longshoremen as time lost was time spent loading one vessel going to Batavia and Singapore with empty beer bottles consigned to a Dutch brewery.

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