Military Service and History – Missouri S&T 150

A civil war fortress

Thu, 27 Aug 2020 20:52:03 +0000

As the Civil War raged on, the Union Army, following a defeat at Wilson’s Creek in southwest Missouri, fell back to Rolla and in 1863 constructed a double-deck blockhouse to protect the town from any rebel attack from the east. That building – named Fort Dette, after Capt. John F.W. Dette, who supervised most of its construction – sat on the site of what is now Missouri S&T.

Builders of the bomb

Thu, 27 Aug 2020 20:51:00 +0000

The U.S. government’s Manhattan Project, which led to the development of the first nuclear weapons, was a massive but highly secretive World War II undertaking that involved thousands of scientists and engineers at dozens of sites across the nation. They included a few with Rolla connections, most notably Thomas G. Day, a professor of organic chemistry at S&T in the 1940s, who served as an “administrative assistant to one of the scientific divisions” and “gave himself wholeheartedly to the work and made a real contribution to it,” wrote Harold C. Urey, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist who played a significant role in the development of the atom bomb. Another Rolla professor, Harold Q. Fuller, worked on the Manhattan Project during 1944-1945 before joining the S&T physics faculty, where he served as department chair 1948-1970. According to the Atomic Heritage Foundation, two Rolla graduates also worked on the Manhattan Project. Max L. Custis, a 1944 chemical engineering graduate, and Sam Tarson, who earned a mechanical engineering degree in 1947, both worked in a “Special Engineer Detachment” at the K-25 Plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

One man’s WWII timeline

Thu, 27 Aug 2020 19:02:17 +0000

Jesse Bowen, EE’49, joined the Army during peacetime and was a radio operator for B-10 bombers. Immediately after Pearl Harbor was attacked, his unit was equipped with brand new B-25 bombers and sent to Nevada for aerial gunnery training. Bowen was shipped out to England and named Group Communications Chief with the 354th Fighter Group.

“I remember the German planes looked like big white moths flying overhead at night,” says Bowen. “The English had a lot of searchlights and 90mm anti-aircraft guns close by our shelters.”

Bowen was moved to Normandy following D-Day. He was transported via army landing craft and says he could still see “the remainder of the havoc and hell our ground troops went through to make the invasion.”

Bowen and the air support followed General Patton’s 3rd Army into France and provided close support for tanks. After the German defeat, Bowen’s group was moved to Nurnberg and he says that “since the European war was over, we didn’t have to work very hard.” He even visited Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest in Austria.

Remembering Bataan

Thu, 27 Aug 2020 19:00:39 +0000

Gene Boyt, who earned a degree in mechanical engineering; Robert Silhavy, ceramic engineering; and John McAnerney, civil engineering, were called up to serve in the U.S. Army two weeks after they graduated in 1941. Stationed in the Philippines, the three were part of Allied troops stranded without air support after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Japanese troops began to invade the Philippines and John McAnerney was killed in combat — reckoned to be one of the first Miners to die in World War II. Boyt and Silhavy were taken captive and were able to survive the Bataan Death March, a war crime that involved 60,000-80,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war forcibly marched approximately 65 miles.

Boyt and Silhavy found each other in a POW camp and one day decided to start conserving their meager food rations for a St. Pat’s Celebration. At approximately noon on March 17, the two made an “Engineer’s Cake” — consisting of a half gallon of rice mixed with milk and butter. It was then covered with jam. The two also put raisins in a jar and allowed them to ferment, making “champagne” for the event.