One thousand miles from the nearest seacoast, in a converted stove factory in landlocked Kokomo, Ind., Globe American Corp. is building lifeboats for the merchant marine. Its assembly line, which makes one 3,500-lb. boat every two hours, "launched" its 220th boat this week.
For 58 years Globe American had been building stoves and ranges. To tall, black-haired, New England-bred Alden Chester, vice president, defense work seemed more important. Last summer he decided that steel lifeboats could as easily be assembly-lined as stoves. Alden Chester hired a naval architect to look over minimum Government specifications, draw up blueprints. They were adopted by the...
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