Permanente Metals Corporation (PMC) is best known for having managed the
Richmond Shipyards in
Richmond, California
Richmond is a city in western Contra Costa County, California, United States. The city was incorporated on August 7, 1905, and has a city council. , owned by one of industrialist
Henry J. Kaiser's many corporations, and also engaged in related corporate activities. These four of the seven west coast
Kaiser Shipyards
The Kaiser Shipyards were seven major shipbuilding yards located on the United States west coast during World War II. Kaiser ranked 20th among U.S. corporations in the value of wartime production contracts. The shipyards were owned by the Kais ...
were known for their construction of
Liberty ship
Liberty ships were a ship class, class of cargo ship built in the United States during World War II under the Emergency Shipbuilding Program. Though British in concept, the design was adopted by the United States for its simple, low-cost constr ...
s and later
Victory ships.
The company was formed on 9 December 1940 as the ''Todd California Shipbuilding Corporation''. The name was changed to ''Permanente Metals Corp.'' on 8 November 1941. In February 1942 the Todd Corporation acquired Kaiser interests in the
Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Corporation and Kaiser acquired Todd's interests in Permanente Metals. The seven way shipyard in Richmond that was built to fulfill a contract for 30
Ocean ships was complete by August 1941 and ''Permanente Metals'' completed the contract for the ships.
The company was originally a major producer of
magnesium
Magnesium is a chemical element with the symbol Mg and atomic number 12. It is a shiny gray metal having a low density, low melting point and high chemical reactivity. Like the other alkaline earth metals (group 2 of the periodic ...
during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
and derives its name from the
Permanente Creek in Santa Clara County, California where mining operations commenced in the early 1930s. To make use of its major product, powdered magnesium, PMC also developed and supplied an incendiary bomb mixture of magnesium powder, asphalt, gasoline and others components (known as "goop", with similar characteristics to
napalm
Napalm is an incendiary mixture of a gelling agent and a volatile petrochemical (usually gasoline (petrol) or diesel fuel). The name is a portmanteau of two of the constituents of the original thickening and gelling agents: coprecipitated alu ...
); 17,000 short tons of goop-filled bombs were used in World War II (approximately eight percent of the total tonnage of incendiaries that were dropped during that conflict). Permanente ranked 42nd among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts.
[ Peck, Merton J. & Scherer, Frederic M. ''The Weapons Acquisition Process: An Economic Analysis'' (1962) ]Harvard Business School
Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA ...
p.619
References
Notes
Bibliography
*
External links
Richmond ShipyardRosie the Riveter National Historical Park, Richmond Shipyard Haer No. CA-326-M No. 3
Defunct companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area
Defunct shipbuilding companies of the United States
Companies based in Richmond, California
{{industry-company-stub