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FORTRESS GUNNERWith fifty bombing missions behind him and a bullet-removed from his ownside--hanging on a watch chain, Buster Nickell, when home on a furlough,said: "I always knew that Dad and the men on the Hill would never let usdown. The Cermans have equipment of the best and it takes plenty good tobeat it."

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~ ECHNICAL SERGEANT NICKELL is a radio gunner. Aradio gunner operates the radio on the way to the target andback. Over the target, he operates the gun, or as Buster says:HOnce over the target, we turn on the heat."

Fresh from bombings ov~r France, Italy, Germany and~frica, Sergeant Nickell is hesitant to talk about his experi-ences because, as he says: "The people who never see the ba!,tlearea won't believe the horrors of war. They iust label themIncredible and unbelievable. Anyway. there are men comingback who've done and seen more than I have."

He did lell us, though, of the Germans capturing an Amer-ican pursuit plane. After they captured it, they flew it into an~merican formation. The result was that the Germans shotClown one American plane and crippled two others. It hap-pened over Italy and the Germans got away with the plane, sono' one knows how many more planes were shot down or dam-I~ed by this one capture. But Buster evened up the score forthe plane he knows was shot down by shooting down a Mes-serschmidt ME-l091 ..

There was just one. hole made in his ship the day Busterwas wounded. Buster said: "My back stopped the bullet and

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it lodged in my side, but I stayed on in position for twenty-fivemi~utes fighting off enemy aircraft. Finally Bob Verlanic(Remember the story in COPPER COMMANDO about SergeantVerlanic? Bob and. Buster were on the same Flying Fortress'>got me out of the tail and took me to the radio room. Therethey gave me a shot of morphine to help out until we could getback to a hospital. ,. While in the hospital, Buster was awardedthe Purple Heart for wounds received by enemy fire. (He alsohas received the Air Medal with ten oak leaf clusters.)

Buster was wounded April 14, 1943, and three monthslater he was back in the air. He has twenty-five missions tohis credit from that day until October 1, 194~, when he com-pleted his fiftieth bombing mission. He says: "I was just half-way through my {ifty bombing missions when the bullet carriedmy name. It happened on the twenty-fifth.".

Buster says there were plenty of times on those fiftymissions when he thought of his dad, Alyin Nickell, a shift bossat the Steward Mine. He said: "I always knew that dad andthe men on the Hill would never let us down. I knew theywere gettin~ out the copper and copper is needed for all theequipment that we were using. We had fine equipment andbelieve me we needed it. The Germans have equipment of the ~best and it takes plenty good to beat it.'-

JANUARY 21, 1944

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In This Issue:FORTRESS CUNNER • • • 2Technical Sergeant Nickell is a radio -gunner. He has fifty bombing missionsto his credit and a bullet-removed fromhis own sicle--hanging on a watch chain.Buster has received the Purple Heart as

C>well as the Air Medal with ten oak leafclusters. The son of Alvin Nickell, ashift boss at the Steward Mine, Busterknows the part copper is playing in thiswar.

RESEARCH INVESTICATION 4This story, pertaining to chrome concen-tration, is a typical example of theproblems brought to the Research De-partment at Anaconda for solution ..There are many problems brought in andthe boys do a fine job of experimenting

><IIi so that the final operation suggested forthe Plant develops into a successfuloperation.

TIMBER! 6..................................... _ .._ -_ ...Timber left in the mine yard, as seen inthe last issue, would not do much by wayor helping hit the safety jackpot - butwhen the boys take it underground anddo the fine job that they do of timberingthe ground that needs it, that's anotherstory. Let's go underground with theboys and see just how it is done.

KEEPINC THEM. MOVINC______________ 9When you're in Great Falls, you hearfolks talk about the Low line garage andthe Zinc Plant Surface garage. Then,too, there's the Management garage. Theboys working in these three garages keepthings.moving at the Plant. All repairwork on the cars and trucks are done at• I

I the garages.

PEOPLE AND PLACES______________________10Dennis G. Walsh, a miner for five yearsat the Mt. Con, Belmont and Badger.spent ten months in Africa. He experi-enced bombing practically each and everyday while repairing bridges. roads andvehicles of all sorts. Here's the story ofsome of his experiences.

EAST HELENA L-M COMMITTEE _.__ 11We got a shot of the Labor-ManagementCommittee at East Helena in session.The boys get together and "talk it over."More and more it is apparent to bothsides that problems can be solved-through the Labor-Management Com-mittee. There's a picture of the SafetyCommi ttee, too.

JANUARY 21, 1944

The caption for this ~icture states that that is a dead U. S. soldier in the foreground.He was killed by a booby-trap attached to a gate near a bridge. Four were killed andtwenty injured. This picture was taken near St. Agata, Sicily, on August 9, 1943.The two soldiers in the picture are sweeping for mines. Now read what Dennis c_Walsh, a former Butte miner, has to say about booby-traps on page ten.. .

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COPPER COMMANDO is the official newspaper of .the Victory Labor-ManagementProduction Committees of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company and its UnionRepresentatives at Butte, Anaconda, Gr eat Falls, East Helena, Montana. It isissued every two weeks ••. COPPER COMMANDO is headed by a joint committeefrom Labor and Management; its policies are shaped by both sides and are dictatedby neither ... COPPER COMMANDO was established at the recommendation ofthe War Department with the concurrence -of the War Produptton Board. Its edi-tors are Bob Newcomb and Marg Sammons; its safety editor is John L. Boardman;its chief photographer is AI Gusdorf; its staff photographer is Les Bishop • . . ItsEditorial Board consists of: Denis McCarthy, CIO; John F. Bird, AFL; Ed Renouard,ACM, from Butte; Dan Byrne. CIO; Joe Marick, AFL; C. _!\. Lemmon, ACM, fromAnaconda; Jack Clark, CIO; Herb Donaldson. AFL, and E. S. Bardwell, ACM, fromGreat Falls ... COPPER COMMANDO is mailed to the home of every employee ofACM in the four locations--if you are not receiving your copy advise COPPER COM-MANDO at 112 Hamilton Street, Butte, or, better still. drop in and tell us. This isVolume 2, No. 11. .3.

A Typieal Researeh Investiga.lion

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When World War II broke, foreign chrome ores were largely cut off from import into theUnited States and exploitation of native ores became a matter of immediate concern. TheStillwater country of Montana, southwest of Columbus, could furnish the ore, but it wasnecessary for the ReSearch Department of Anaconda to solve the problem of how to con- .centrate it after it was mined. ..

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.4. JANUARY 21. 1944

THE chrome ores found in the Still-water country contain about 19% 'of"chromium trioxide. It was desirable toconcentrate them to about 40% chrom-ium trioxide. This is a typical exampleof the problems confronting the Re-search Depart,ment. Here's the way theycoped with this particular problem.

Study showed that in generalchrome ores are concentrated by gravitymethods which take advantage of the dif-ference in weight between mineral andwaste. It was necessary to layout a flowsheet of a concentration process-thatis, a sequence of 'operations which thebest available information indicatedwould give results. This was done inminiature to assure its success before itwas attempted on a large scale.

Accordingly it was decided to putup a pilot plant in the Research Building.This plant consisted of small scale unitsas nearly like commercial units as Pos-sible. In the top picture, opposite page.Jack Nowlin is dumping a sack of chromeore into the feed hopper. About threehundred pounds of ore can go through inan hour. The enclosed unit to the backis a rod mill for fine grinding of the ore-it's like the ball mills used in the largeoperations. Then there's a miniatureclassifier like the Akins classifiers. Fromthe classifier the ore goes to the hydraulicclassifier shown In the lower oppositepage picture which separates the groundmaterial to four different sizes by takingadvantage of the differential settlingrates of the. different sizes in rising cur-rents of water. The individual sizes sus-pended in water then move on to thesmall Wilfley tables as shown in the upperpicture. The Wilfley table is one of theoldest and best known of gravity concen-tration devices and has a horizontal dif-ferential shaking motion. The heavy min-erai is moved farther and faster thanthe light waste material. That's Fred Roed-er standing at the hydraulic classifier andGeorge Hanson checking the tables. Theheavier portion of the minerals shakesover the end and the lighter porti?n orwaste goes over the side. The center pic-ture gives you a better idea of the opera-tion. That's the way the relatively cleanconcentrated mineral is recovered. Themiddlings .collected on the 'side, whichcontain chrome; minerals and waste, goback to the mill for further grinding.

The lower picture shows anotherform of gravity concentration. Thecrushed ore is fed to the hopper at thetop and drops through and is mixed withwater all the while jigging up and down.The heavier mineral drops through a per-forated screen to the bottom of each cell.The waste goes over the top and over-flows at the end of the last cell into atailing box. The concentrate caught atthe bottom comes out the side and isweighed, dried, etc. That's Perry Bou-kind, Francis Holdereed and Ed Topsichin the picture checking on the operation.Although these jig tests were made. jigswere not embodied in the flow sheet.

JANUARY 21. 1944 .5.

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, TIMBER!

.6. ,JANUARY 21. 1944

T IME has changed a good many thingsin mining operations around Butte. Oneof the many changes has been in timber-ing. For. many years practically all exca-vated ground was timbered and Buttewas known as'a square-set camp. Butalong with the years came the knowledgethat all places didn't need timbering.

Timbering is decided upon gener-allv by the character of the ground. Someground doesn't need ti mber support;other ground does. The decision as towhere it is needed is usually left to thejudgment of the boss on the job. Thereason that all excavated ground does notneed timbering is that the texture of theveins is different. In some veins theground lays in slabs and timber is re-quired because the slabs peel off andmight drop on the worker's head. Otherground is more or less compact and doesnot need timbering.

For the. past ten years or so timber-in~ has been used chiefly in stoping andraising and always where there is fault-ing. The same type of timber is usedin both a raise and a stope. -The numberof pieces is determined by the size of theexcavation. In a stope there are stopeposts, caps, girts, three-inch regular lag-ging, two-inch gob lagging. two-inchchute lagging. blocks and wedges usedand for a raise it is the same. An eight-post raise would require eight posts, fourcap~. six girts, eighteen regular laggings,blocks and wedges. A stope timberedWith a regular set, which is three hun-dred three cubic feet. requires two posts,one cap, two girts. six regular laggings,blocks and wedges. A corner set· istimbered with two hundred twenty cubicfeet which represents one post. one cap,one girt, six regular Jaggings and blocksand wedges.

While the biggest per cent of timberis used in stapes and raises, a lot is alsorequi red for laying the tracks under-ground. Five ties are required for eachfifteen feet of rail. Timbering is seldomremoved from any place underground forit wi II eventually degenerate.

JANUARY 21. 1944

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Timber, such as you saw in the last issue of COPPER COMMANDO, would noldo much good by way of helping hit the safety jackpot if it were left in the mineyard. So here we go underground to see just how timbering is done. Rememberthe names of the different pieces of timber. There are sill posts, sill caps, three-inch regular back lagging. ties, stope posts and caps, regular girts, two-inch gob lag-ging, two-inch chute lagging, stulls, blocks and wedges, stringers and stulls.

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Now let's go underground with theboys and see just how timbering is done.

In' the upper picture, page six,stringers are being lowered into the mines

• by Tom Albright and Tony Kronitz. Asyou can see, stringers are five by ten andare used for protection until the regulartimber can be set in. To the left of thestringers is a truck load of posts ready tobe lowered.

The station tender, Henry Reed, isunloading stope posts from the cage,standing them on the station, in thelower left page six shot. They'll be usedfor timbering raises and stopes. That'stimber being delivered to the timber sta-tion in the lower right on page six. The.ties and sill posts are being unloaded bytimber truckers at the undergroundstation.

Harvey Wallace. a raise miner, ishoisting three-inch regular lagging to aworking place in the upper left shot, pageseven. The timber is hoisted for raisesbut it is usually lowered with a rope forthe stopes.

Before the ttmberlna can, be com-pleted usually it's necessary to build asubstantial platform or staging. Theupper right page seven picture showsHarvey Wallace completing a staging inorder to finish the timbering. The lowerright shot on page seven shows the boysputting the cap on a post. After the capshave been placed it is necessary to finishup with side or breast blocking. A miner,Paul Wells, is driving wedges to completethe blocking in the upper left shot. Theminers wi II tell you he's putting in awedge to tighten the cribbing. In thelower left picture. Paul Wells is blockingthe timber down from the back.

After the timber is blocked, thenext and last step is to add the lagging.In the lower right picture Harvey Wal-lace is finish"ing the job by lagging theset. The boys are all set now to startgetting out the ore which will help bringthe boys on the F~ghting Front homeagain.

.8. JANUARY 21, 1944

KeepingTheDl MovingBATS off to the garage boys at GreatFalls! These fellows keep the equipmentrolling and we have just paid them avisit. We want you all to know them.

. At the top of the page we see theLow Line garage crew. Reading fromleft to right we see Joe Guidotti, MattMuretta, Eskild (Hy) Hyland, PetePreston and Bob Palagi. That is JohnSmith sitting in the cab.

Great Falls has. another garagecalled the Zinc Plant Surface, and wephotographed these boys on our recenttrip. Front row, left to right, we find ;Joe Hocevar, Matt Kralich~ R. DeRaniera,Matt Martinich, V. Vian and Ira Olm-stead. In the second row are MartinAmdahl, A. Roth, John Mack, CharlesJohnson, K. Dale and R. Piziini.

In the last row are E. Johnson, Tony'Halacheff, J. Reichell (the foreman), M.•Shanko, John Johnson and Pete Kom-mers, the superintendent. Unfortunate-ly, Johnny Gillin, garage man at the_finc Plant Surface, was away when thispicture was taken.

Cars and trucks must be kept inrepair, and we were able to get a pictureof two of the boys of the machine shop,shown in the picture at the lower right,making a truck ship-shape again. Theserepairmen are Paul Tinelli and GeorgeSeverson. The man shown below isfrom the Management ga'rage and is w~1Iknown at Great Falls. He is LouisPorro. Matt Muretta and John Smithare two oldtimers. Along with BobPalagi, they remember the pre-automo-bile days when they drove teams. aroundthe hill. They all agree things havechanged a lot and that these days thingsare a whole lot better.

JANUARY 21 t 1944

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EVERY MINUTE COUNTS

NOBODY knows the exact number ofboys who won't come back from thiswar. Nobody can even make a guess atthe exact number. But there is onething that we do know. Every minutethat we can help shorten the war willmean more lives saved. Two hundredthirteen Americans were killed in thefinal day of the last war, and one thou-sand one hundred fourteen were wound-ed before the eleven o'clock Armisticetook effect. The number of boys whodo come back on their own two feetinstead of in a. flag-draped box-dependson us on the Home Front. It will be inexact proportion to the job we do hereat home.

The papers' may report that theAxis countries are be~ding under thestrain-but you can bet your bottom'dollar that they're not slacking up onebit in their war production efforts.Rome! Even Berlin! They're just mile-stones on the long, hard road to Tokyo.And there's a fanatical foe contestingevery inch of the way! Jap women warworkers slave fourteen, sixteen and eight-een hours a day - under the most ad-verse conditions--to turn out the stuffthat will increase the number of ourboys who won't come back. They be-lieve that they'll win too--and besidesin Japan if the workers slow up or taketime .ff from ~rk-they get shot.

It's not time to crow - wait untilwe·re in. Tokyo. We may feel cocky,about the war and our victories to date,but we better not. Whenever we startfeeling cocky, we're just sticking out ournecks.

Only a tidal wave of men, materialand money will win this war. There mustbe .. SUPREME EFFORT~to the pointof sacrifice-put forth by every man andwoman in industry on the Home Front.That's one MUST for winning this war.Another MUST is DOLLARS! Our airraids on the Axis are increasing in fre-quency and when land operations reallyget going, the cost will be staggering.

The more EFFORT we put into fur-nishing supplies and the more WAilBONDS we buy now-the quicker theAxis will be licked. And that lessensthe number of our boys who won't comeback!

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People (f"' PlacesDENNIS G. WALSH, a miner for fiveyears at the Mountain Con, Belmont andBadger, enlisted April 27, 1942, in the

• Engineers Company. After seven weeksspent- at Fort Lewis, Camp Claiborne,Louisiana,. and Fort Dix, New Jersey,Dennis was sent to England' for fivemonths'training for mountain fighting.From England he went to Africa, and forten months experienced bombing prac-ticallyeach and every day.

When Dennis, home on furlough,came into the qffice the other eveningwith Fred Mogus, he told us about life inAfrica. Looking at Fred, he said: "Thatguy right there trained me for first-aidwork in the Butte mines and believe meit came in plenty handy in Africa. TheGermans are treacherous. They set whatwe call 'booby traps.' Our work as engi-neers was to construct and repair roadsand bridges and do all the repair workon trucks and vehicles of all sorts. Anytime equipment was captured from theGermans you could count on a booby trapof some sort. Sometimes if we'd blowthe horn on a truck, a bomb would ex-plode. One day my friend and I wereworking on a truck and we flipped to seewhich one would take out the batteryand which the choke wire. I drew thebattery. My 'friend' started to take outthe choke wi re and a bomb explodedwhich just took his whole hand off. I wascertainly thankful then for the first-aidtraining I had had 'in the Butte mines."

Dennis told us about the argumentsover the copper mines. Because prac-tically all the equipment they use has

DENNIS G. WALSH

copper in it, everyone--knowing that hehad been a miner before his enlistment-wanted to know about Butte andmmmg. He insists that he won all the'arguments although he admitted thatthere were a couple of ti mes that he hadto write Chick Shea at the MountainCon for support to some of his argu-ments.

·'AII through'the African campaignit was hard to get the equipmentthrough," Dennis said. "It was terriblyhot and very damp. Mud would be up toour hips. Most of the fighting was donein the mountains, although some of itwas on the desert. The Germans dug inso deep that th~y couldn't be blasted out.You had to get close up and take them.

"The boys in Africa deserve a lot ofcredit. They're doing a line job. Butthere is only one thought in their mindsand that's to get in and pitch and get itover. It's a game of always pushing yourluck. Maybe today it was good but to-morrow it may turn.

"But," continued Dennis, '·1 wantto get back in. As soon as I can be re-leased from the hospital (he has been inhospitals in Africa and the U. S. sinceAugust and has not been released), Iwant to join my buddies. My buddiesare in there fi~hting every day and I havea brother in the Navy. If they can take I

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IN THE MAlt

All during the year, COPPER COM-MANDO tried to extend courtesies to themany boys in the Armed Forces' whostopped in the office. Seems as thoughall of them; lncleding the many soldiersbrought in for the War Show, remem-bered COPPER COMMANDO with aChristmas card. They came from all overthe world. We were mighty pleased andwant all of you boys in service to know it.

From Stanford University came aletter: "COPPER COMMANDO defi-nitely has a place here. We would ap-preciate it very much if you would putthe library on your mailing list to receiveit regularly. If earlier issues are avail-able, we would be glad to have as com-plete a file as possible." Similar lettershave been received from Harvard, Mon-tana State University and many othersthroughout the coU"ntry.

With the New Year came this letter'from Great Falls: "I wish' to complimentyou people on the COMMANDO. It isexcellent and as popular with our fami liesas with the men themselves. Good luckand best wishes."

JANUARY 21, 1944

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East Delena!ls Lahor-~lal.ageDlent COlDu.itiee

NOT unlike other Labor-ManagementCommittees, the committee at the EastHelena Slag Treating Plant had somegrowing pains while developing the rightpattern of operation. But now the com-mittee has taken genuine form. Themembers realize that the exchanges ofopinion are helpful to the cause of pro-duction. At the beginning there weredoubts on both sides as to the practic-

ability of getting employer and employeeto sit down together and "talk it over."But over a period of months, it is becom-ins:!mort=!and more apparent to both sidesthat problems can be solved. .

We are proud to introduce you tothe members of the Labor-ManagementCommittee at East Helena. In the pic-ture above, left to right, are: Bert Kane,ACM, and Bill Hays, CIO; R. L. (Tom-

my) Thompson, ACM, Earl Baldwin,ACM, Arden Grandy, CIO. and VerleGrandy, CIO.

The lower picture shows a meetingof the Safety Committee, which is a sub-committee of the -Labor-ManagementCommittee at East Helena. Left to- rightare: Ralph Jefferson, CIO, TommyThompson. ACM. Earl Baldwin. ACM,Ed Belgard. CIO, Mike Pavlinich, CIO .

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S:tnok.eGoes 10Work

IN the'picture just above we see the firstsigns of the smoke. In this test demon-stt:ation to see. how quickly a smokescreen could be thrown around a desiredarea, it took. only two minutes to set thesmoke to rising which outlined the dockand harbor facilities. You can see overthis area of several city blocks puffs ofsmo~e rising. In the picture at the right.which was taken four and one-half min-utes after the start of the demonstration,you can see smoke beginning to envelopethe entire harbor area. Notice that thesmoke does not spr:ead over wide areas,but rises straight up. These smokescreens are expertly controlled.

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THE Chemical Warfare Branch of theUnited States Army Service Forces per-forms many functions. Among them isthe laying of smoke screens as protection .for given areas. From the Signal Corpsof the United States Army we were ableto obt ..in this magnificent series of pho-tographs showing the Harbor at Palermo,Sicily, after its occupation by UnitedStates Forces. After "he troops occupiedthe area, smoke screen tests were con-ducted. It is doubtless interesting formany readers of this newspaper to knowthat zinc dust is used often in layingthese screens. 'The view at the top of thepage shows the hnbor of Palermo beforethe smoke screen was started. There isa natural haze in the back of all the pic-

..THERE we have it! In exactly fifteenminutes after the start of the smokescreen demonstration at the harbor ofPalermo, the area is completely obscuredby smoke. Enemy bombers attemptingto demolish the section would find ittough indeed to penetrate that densesmoke in order to hit military objectives.This is another tribute to the speed andefficiency of modern warfare. Smokescreens are used widely in these days ofmodern warfare and the Chemical War-fare Branch of the U. S. Service Forceshas done an amazing job in developingsmoke screens. It takes many kinds ofweapons to win a large-scale war.