00:00:01 Solid propellant rocket motors, graphite fibers and resins, and composite structures,

00:00:08 all are products of Hercules Bacchus Works.

00:00:12 What began 75 years ago as a small dynamite plant,

00:00:16 has grown into one of the leaders in the aerospace industry.

00:00:21 This is the history of Bacchus, as told by the people who have been part of its past,

00:00:26 and those who make up the present and ensure its future.

00:00:56 In 1912, the United States government brought suit against DuPont under the Sherman Antitrust Act.

00:01:12 The resulting lawsuit divided the large and powerful DuPont into three companies,

00:01:18 DuPont, Atlas and Hercules.

00:01:21 As a result, Hercules was awarded two dynamite plants in New Jersey and California,

00:01:26 and a sales office in Utah.

00:01:29 Mining was big business in Utah and Nevada,

00:01:32 and a new copper mine had just opened in Utah's Bingham Canyon.

00:01:36 Shipping dynamite across the country was risky and expensive.

00:01:41 Hercules decided to locate a new dynamite plant closer to this expanding market.

00:01:47 The site we now recognize as Plant One was selected

00:01:51 because of its proximity to the Utah Copper Company mines

00:01:55 and the railroad lines that connected these mines to the mills in Magna.

00:01:59 Hercules was afraid that landowners would demand excessive prices

00:02:03 if they knew a big corporation was planning to do business in the area.

00:02:08 F.J. McGanney of the sales office said a rumor was spread

00:02:12 that the land was being purchased by ostrich farmers.

00:02:15 Well, this was not unlikely,

00:02:17 since the ostrich feathers were in great demand for the hats and fans

00:02:21 that were fashionable in the 1900s.

00:02:24 On September 18, 1913,

00:02:27 the Salt Lake Tribune announced the acquisition of 2,200 acres by Hercules

00:02:33 for the purpose of erecting a powder plant.

00:02:36 Construction was slowed by a severe winter,

00:02:39 but in April 1915, many prominent business, church and civic leaders,

00:02:44 including Governor William Spry, attended the dedication of Bacchus.

00:02:49 The plant consisted of a black powder line, acid line, nitroglycerin line,

00:02:55 dynamite line, magazines, and auxiliary buildings,

00:02:59 a barn for work animals, and an office often referred to as the farmhouse.

00:03:04 The plant was named for the first general manager, T.W. Bacchus.

00:03:10 Thomas Bacchus was one of the most renowned men in the explosives industry.

00:03:15 Mr. Bacchus contributed many technical innovations and improvements

00:03:19 to explosives manufacturing, including the gelatin dynamite machine.

00:03:24 He called dynamite Aladdin's lamp, the super force,

00:03:28 the greatest boon that has ever been created

00:03:30 for overcoming the obstacles in nature.

00:03:36 Stop and think about it.

00:03:39 The history of the world has really evolved

00:03:44 around the development of that technology.

00:03:51 Dynamite, for example, nitroglycerin explosives.

00:03:55 Industrial revolution couldn't have happened without that.

00:03:57 Economically it couldn't have happened without that.

00:03:59 You couldn't get the ore out of the ground to make the steel,

00:04:01 to make the copper, to make things happen

00:04:04 without the advent of explosives to deal new elements.

00:04:09 Conversely, wars wouldn't be what they are today

00:04:11 if it weren't for explosives either.

00:04:13 So it was both sides of that equation.

00:04:18 The mining industry in Utah would not have developed

00:04:21 without the advent of explosives.

00:04:23 Had it been for Goddard and the rocket motor,

00:04:25 which again is packaged energy,

00:04:27 the whole space thing would not have happened.

00:04:30 So the whole history of our country,

00:04:31 and really the history of the world,

00:04:32 has really evolved around explosive technology.

00:04:48 Transportation was difficult in the early 1900s.

00:04:52 A company town called Bacchus Village was built

00:04:55 to provide close, convenient housing

00:04:58 for employees of this remote new plant.

00:05:01 In 1914, 42 homes were built

00:05:04 on the company property west of the plant.

00:05:07 The majority of homes formed a triangular perimeter

00:05:10 around a recreational area that contained a clubhouse,

00:05:14 tennis court, and spacious lawns.

00:05:17 A boarding house for bachelors and a small school were also built.

00:05:21 Bacchus residents have some good memories

00:05:25 of the time they spent in the village.

00:05:28 And when I went to school there,

00:05:31 there was only one teacher, and that was Frances Sawyer.

00:05:36 And she had a daughter that was my age.

00:05:39 And she lived in the top part of the building.

00:05:47 We used one school room for one through four grades.

00:05:55 And then the other room that used to be a school room

00:05:59 we used for our music room and our dancing room

00:06:03 or whenever we had things that we all did together,

00:06:07 that's where we went.

00:06:09 We had the old-fashioned desks

00:06:13 like they used to have, the bench type,

00:06:17 and the little ink well up in the corner.

00:06:21 Remember that?

00:06:23 When anything was going on over there,

00:06:25 it was like I say, it was a big family.

00:06:28 There was 31 houses in the main village.

00:06:31 There was 10 houses down on the old powder line road.

00:06:34 And then there used to be an old house over here on the hill

00:06:37 across the highway where the water tank was

00:06:39 where the barn used to be there

00:06:41 where they kept the mules.

00:06:44 I went to school there until the fifth grade.

00:06:47 And we used to have a good time over there.

00:06:50 They had the clubhouse there.

00:06:51 They had the movie house.

00:06:53 Every Friday night we would have a movie.

00:06:57 And those were back in the days when you would have a serial.

00:07:02 Tom Mix or the guy that flies around

00:07:08 that we thought would never happen. Flash Gordon.

00:07:10 All of these, and they would show them in sequence.

00:07:14 They had a bowling alley, one-lane bowling alley in the basement.

00:07:18 They had a pool table and a billiard table.

00:07:20 We used to set pins over there.

00:07:22 We used to set pins for seven cents a game.

00:07:26 And it was all manual.

00:07:28 You didn't have a pin setter.

00:07:29 You just set them on the spots by hand.

00:07:31 Anyway, we had big dances.

00:07:35 The New Year's dance was the big dance.

00:07:40 And people from all over.

00:07:42 I mean, everybody that worked at the plant was invited to come.

00:07:47 We had the tennis court there.

00:07:50 We would flood that in the wintertime.

00:07:52 We'd ice skate that in the wintertime.

00:07:55 And we had our basketball court there.

00:08:00 We played basketball and tennis.

00:08:02 And then we used to also play football in the center lawn there,

00:08:05 football or baseball.

00:08:06 Everyone played.

00:08:08 And lots and lots of times we all took our sleeping bags,

00:08:12 those who had sleeping bags or quilts or whatever,

00:08:15 and we would sleep out on the big lawn.

00:08:18 That was a big deal.

00:08:19 When you got old enough that you could go out and sleep on the big lawn,

00:08:22 you was made.

00:08:24 And we also used to go up in the hills a lot.

00:08:27 It was called Coombs Canyon up there.

00:08:30 And we'd go up there and camp overnight.

00:08:33 Or sometimes we'd go up on skis and go overnight and just go up there

00:08:37 and just camp outside.

00:08:39 But overall, it was sort of fun.

00:08:41 I can remember some nights sitting out on the tennis court there.

00:08:46 You don't realize how much higher the Bacchus Village is than the floor of

00:08:50 the valley, but you can look out on a summer night,

00:08:55 look out over the valley and see the little light spring thing.

00:08:59 It looks like a jewel box.

00:09:00 It's so pretty.

00:09:01 Anyway, Sherry and I had a wonderful several years there,

00:09:04 and we loved it.

00:09:10 The passage of time not only changed the appearance of Bacchus,

00:09:14 but also the appearance of Bingham Canyon just south of Bacchus.

00:09:18 Hercules' industrial explosives helped carve out the Kennecott Copper Pit,

00:09:23 the biggest man-made hole on earth.

00:09:26 In turn, Kennecott extracted millions of tons of ore

00:09:30 and refined it into copper wire, tubes, and sheets.

00:09:34 Mules housed and maintained by Bacchus personnel were an important part

00:09:39 of the old dynamite operation.

00:09:42 They transported the ingredients between the warehouses,

00:09:45 storerooms, and mixed buildings.

00:09:47 Well, when we were on the old dynamite line,

00:09:49 when we used to make the explosives here on plant,

00:09:52 well, we used to pick up the ingredients, the dry ingredients,

00:09:55 in the warehouses.

00:09:56 Now, the warehouses are what the old storehouses are now,

00:09:59 where they used to store their ammonia and all their ingredients in that.

00:10:04 And they used to pick that up, and then they'd haul it down to the dough pots.

00:10:07 Then we had the nitrator, the old, what we called the batch nitrator.

00:10:13 The reason they called it a batch nitrator, a nitrator now is a continuous flow.

00:10:17 What they would do there was they would make one batch,

00:10:20 which was approximately 3,500 pounds of nitroglycerin,

00:10:23 and then they would pick it up from there with their angel money

00:10:26 and take it to the mix houses.

00:10:29 You'd first put your NG in there, your nitroglycerin, in the bowl,

00:10:33 the big brass bowl there,

00:10:35 and then the operator, he would dump the dry ingredients in there

00:10:38 and they would mix it for a certain time.

00:10:41 Then the powder was dumped from there into what were called hogs.

00:10:47 Now, these were like wooden wheelbarrows.

00:10:49 Everything was made of either wood, brass, or anything that wouldn't have a spark.

00:10:57 And so we had to dump them into these hogs,

00:11:00 and we had a distributor who would divide the powder

00:11:03 when they would dump it into these four wheelbarrows.

00:11:06 He would take that and the trucker, he would truck the powder over to the hauls.

00:11:11 Then the hauls, they would put them into the sticks.

00:11:17 Now, the sticks would come from the shelters.

00:11:21 They would make the different size sticks depending on what powder they were running.

00:11:25 In the olden days, it was 50 pounds per box.

00:11:27 These would go into a wooden box at that time.

00:11:30 Later, they went into a cardboard box.

00:11:33 In the olden days, it was just about all wood.

00:11:36 Long before the days of vibrating hoppers and automation,

00:11:40 Hercules fell prey to a sluggish demand for dynamite following World War I.

00:11:46 Business tapered off for Utah Copper also.

00:11:49 This resulted in the only complete shutdown of the plant

00:11:52 from September 1921 until September 1922.

00:11:59 The Utah legislature then outlawed black powder for use in coal mines

00:12:04 because of numerous industrial accidents.

00:12:07 The black powder line was closed in 1924.

00:12:12 Bacchus works changed along with the rest of the nation.

00:12:16 The Great Depression of the 1930s impacted production demands on the plant

00:12:21 and resulted in widespread layoffs and two- to three-day work weeks.

00:12:26 Later, World War II pulled the entire nation out of economic despair.

00:12:31 Hercules played a prominent role in the war effort.

00:12:34 The ordinance plants at Radford and Sunflower developed the bazooka,

00:12:38 and Hercules produced every pound of propellant used in every armed forces rocket motor.

00:12:45 Bacchus shipped dynamite to the Bingham mine,

00:12:48 which in turn produced one-third of all the copper used by the armed forces.

00:12:54 Our normal production was about a million and a half pounds of dynamite a month.

00:12:59 It varied maybe from a million two up to a million six or so.

00:13:03 Sixty percent of that went to Connecticut.

00:13:07 Another 10 percent went to other metal mines.

00:13:10 About 15 percent went to the coal trade.

00:13:14 The other 10, 15 percent was construction, dam building, railroad relocation,

00:13:21 highways, and oil exploration.

00:13:28 For many years, employees entering the plant passed through a wrought iron arch.

00:13:33 During the winters, the arch created a venturi effect

00:13:36 that caused large snow deposits several feet deep right in the middle of the road.

00:13:41 Some Bacchus employees thought that dynamite could solve the problem.

00:13:46 In having to shovel it by hand or use the mule-drawn plow to clear the road,

00:13:55 it took a lot of time.

00:13:56 So a couple of the individuals, as Farney related the story,

00:14:00 decided that since we were dynamite experts, we ought to try blasting the snow away.

00:14:08 And so a couple of the individuals got out there,

00:14:13 drilled a hole down in this big giant snow drift,

00:14:17 and put some dynamite in the hole.

00:14:23 And they planned on igniting the dynamite with some powder that they strung down the road.

00:14:30 And when they were at a safe distance, one of them lit the powder,

00:14:35 and the powder went, shhhhh, burnt up over the snow drift,

00:14:40 down into the hole.

00:14:42 In only one miscalculation, they got too much powder in the hole.

00:14:47 And the powder went off, blew the dynamite up in the air

00:14:50 about the level of the sign at which the dynamite exploded

00:14:53 and blew the sign all to pieces.

00:14:56 According to Farney, it hardly bothered the snow drift.

00:15:01 It did take care of the snow problem, though,

00:15:03 because the wrought iron sign was no longer there.

00:15:14 Bacchus Works went through some major changes in the 1950s.

00:15:19 The corporate office decided to close down the dynamite office

00:15:22 in California due to residential encroachment.

00:15:25 This meant an increase in the production capabilities at Bacchus.

00:15:29 Altogether, it was a $2.5 million project,

00:15:33 which at the time was probably the largest amount

00:15:37 that had been spent on addition to a dynamite plant

00:15:41 as far as our company history was concerned.

00:15:46 The write-up for the newspaper said it was to be

00:15:49 the most modern dynamite plant in the country.

00:15:53 Bacchus grew, but the increase in production never materialized.

00:15:58 However, the course of Bacchus would soon be redirected.

00:16:03 Russia astonished the world by launching Sputnik.

00:16:06 The satellite was visible to the naked eyes

00:16:08 that traveled across the evening sky.

00:16:11 Many Americans regarded the launch

00:16:13 as some kind of technological Pearl Harbor.

00:16:17 The Russians put it up, and it made this country nervous,

00:16:20 as it should have.

00:16:22 And so this country decided to build a minivan missile.

00:16:25 In 1958, Hercules formed a chemical propulsion division

00:16:29 and began to compete for government missile contracts.

00:16:33 In August of that same year,

00:16:35 Hercules won a research and development contract

00:16:38 for the third-stage Minuteman rocket motor.

00:16:41 Bacchus Works was designated as the primary facility

00:16:44 for this program,

00:16:46 partially because of the available acreage.

00:16:49 We desperately needed to be successful

00:16:51 on this Minuteman development,

00:16:53 and we didn't have a lot of time in which to do it.

00:16:56 A team of engineers and scientists

00:16:58 from Allegheny Ballistics Laboratory, Radford, Sunflower,

00:17:02 and other Hercules explosives plants was sent to Bacchus.

00:17:07 These people provided the expertise needed

00:17:10 to successfully complete this all-important milestone

00:17:14 in Hercules history.

00:17:16 We, back east, were all wondering,

00:17:22 where in the world is Bacchus?

00:17:25 We were vaguely aware of the location of Utah,

00:17:33 but no one had ever heard of Bacchus.

00:17:38 So it was with some trepidation

00:17:42 that we all hopped in our vehicles in 1958,

00:17:47 mostly November.

00:17:49 I remember that our offices,

00:17:52 at first, were in the old farmhouse.

00:17:56 Not much room there.

00:18:00 And it wasn't long, however,

00:18:03 until they had rigged up offices

00:18:07 in the machine shop for us.

00:18:09 There was a lot of people that didn't want anything to do

00:18:12 with the CP operation.

00:18:14 They was afraid of it.

00:18:18 Particularly old-type NG people,

00:18:22 they had handled NG safe

00:18:26 by their methods and standards for many, many years.

00:18:30 And they thought, well, now these crazy CP people,

00:18:32 they're going to take this and mix it up

00:18:35 a little bit differently and put it in containers

00:18:38 and take it out and put it in a case

00:18:41 and a nozzle in the end of it,

00:18:43 and we're going to blow the west side of the valley

00:18:47 off of the map.

00:18:48 Well, that was not the case at all.

00:18:50 The people that were here were dynamite people.

00:18:54 They didn't obviously understand us.

00:18:57 They couldn't understand why we weren't selling anything.

00:19:00 All we were doing was making motors and firing them.

00:19:03 They didn't understand us, and they didn't understand

00:19:06 what was going to happen to the plant.

00:19:08 And it's unfortunate that at that time

00:19:10 we didn't have time to talk to them about it either.

00:19:13 The demands that were placed on people,

00:19:20 and I'm sorry, and still are to some extent,

00:19:26 where people work 10, 12 hours a day,

00:19:33 you can stand it for a while when you're putting in a proposal.

00:19:38 You've got a massive work to do in a short time.

00:19:41 But then if there's one proposal

00:19:44 that comes right behind another one,

00:19:47 or there just doesn't seem to be any way

00:19:51 we're going to get enough people to get the job done,

00:19:54 then it begins to drag on some of the families.

00:19:58 So we would never have been able to do the job

00:20:08 if there hadn't been an awful lot of understanding

00:20:15 and cooperative wives.

00:20:21 The Minuteman program was a major technological challenge for Bacchus.

00:20:26 To wind the Minuteman motors,

00:20:28 spiralloid development and winding technology

00:20:31 was transferred to Clearfield, Utah.

00:20:34 We had experience at the Ordnance Plants

00:20:37 in designing and making propellants.

00:20:40 But this was a big job, this Minuteman job.

00:20:43 This was like a systems job.

00:20:45 We were going to design the case, the nozzle,

00:20:48 the thrust termination, the whole item.

00:20:51 And we'd never done that.

00:20:53 We were on the edge of doing something new,

00:20:57 and it was exciting.

00:20:59 A unique feature of the Minuteman I design

00:21:03 was the use of four nozzles in each of the three rockets.

00:21:10 This was an unknown technology at that time.

00:21:16 So the three contractors,

00:21:21 Viacol, Aerojet, and Hercules,

00:21:25 were all facing similar problems.

00:21:28 Another technical feature that came in was thrust termination.

00:21:33 Through the nature of a ballistic missile,

00:21:36 the third stage must have the ability to cut off

00:21:41 in a very small fraction of a second.

00:21:47 So the best way to do that

00:21:50 is to have it suddenly not blow up,

00:21:55 but at least forward vents open

00:22:00 so that the thrust forward is the same as the thrust backward.

00:22:04 And thrust termination on the Minuteman I

00:22:09 was in ports coming out the side of the rocket body.

00:22:16 That was a new feature at the time.

00:22:19 Minuteman, though a big success for Hercules,

00:22:23 marked the beginning of the end of the dynamite era at Bacchus.

00:22:28 Then the first thing that happened,

00:22:30 not the first thing, but within the first year,

00:22:33 we lost our big customer right up the road here at Kennecott.

00:22:38 They decided they didn't need our dynamite anymore.

00:22:41 They'd use slurry, Mr. Cook slurry, as a matter of fact.

00:22:45 And so we lost our biggest customer,

00:22:48 and it hurt our production and our costs and everything else.

00:22:54 So that was one big thing.

00:22:56 The other thing, we were building up so rapidly here at Bacchus,

00:23:00 spending money on building offices and trailers.

00:23:04 We still have a lot of trailers,

00:23:06 and we had a lot of them then, too.

00:23:08 And overhead was just going up and up,

00:23:11 and dynamite had to take its proportionate share of the overhead

00:23:15 from chemical propulsion.

00:23:17 So with that extra cost,

00:23:19 coupled with the loss of the business at Kennecott,

00:23:24 we had to come to the conclusion to shut the dynamite line down.

00:23:27 We didn't need it.

00:23:29 Despite the loss of the dynamite production,

00:23:31 Bacchus was bustling as Minuteman research and production escalated.

00:23:36 The Air Force built a new facility, Plant 81,

00:23:39 to ensure that production schedules could be met.

00:23:43 The plant was about 2,000 people, if I remember correctly, when I got there.

00:23:50 And by the time that I was transferred into Wilmington,

00:23:53 it had grown up to between 5,000 and 6,000.

00:23:56 Many of the people who were hired at Bacchus

00:24:01 are still with the company and have taken very important positions.

00:24:11 While Bacchus and the Air Force were producing the Minuteman,

00:24:14 the Navy was developing Polaris A-2,

00:24:17 a two-stage solid propellant missile for their submarine fleet.

00:24:22 Hercules proposed doing the design work at the ABL facility

00:24:26 and manufacturing the rocket motors at Bacchus.

00:24:29 But typical of that time was a rivalry between the Air Force and the Navy,

00:24:34 and Bacchus was considered to be an Air Force facility

00:24:38 dedicated solely to Minuteman.

00:24:41 So probably one of the bigger challenges was bringing the Navy program

00:24:44 into an Air Force plant and getting production up and running,

00:24:49 because they were really kind of different systems

00:24:52 as far as paper and how they looked at things,

00:24:55 so that we really had one heck of a time of getting a production started.

00:25:01 Early in the production of the Polaris here at Bacchus,

00:25:04 it got bogged down.

00:25:07 We were slipping schedule badly,

00:25:10 and Tucker, I believe it was,

00:25:13 assigned me to look into it and straighten it out.

00:25:16 I don't know who thought of the Polaris a day,

00:25:19 but we were so far behind schedule that I knew

00:25:22 it took one Polaris a day shipped in order to recover the schedule,

00:25:27 and that's where it probably came from.

00:25:29 And so we got all this ironed out.

00:25:32 Not I didn't get it ironed out.

00:25:34 We got it ironed out.

00:25:36 And we started producing a Polaris a day,

00:25:39 and we were successful, and that's a good story.

00:25:43 I mean, it's a successful story that everybody should be proud of.

00:25:47 Bacchus was thriving with Minuteman and A-2 in production

00:25:51 and a few experimental second-stage A-3s.

00:25:54 It seemed that nothing could go wrong.

00:25:56 But on August 23, 1962,

00:25:59 a cure bay housing a subscale motor blew up,

00:26:03 killing three Bacchus employees and injuring three others.

00:26:07 Seven weeks later, an explosion in a solvent prep building

00:26:11 left another three persons dead and 18 injured.

00:26:16 Hercules agonized long and hard about,

00:26:19 are we going to stay in this business or not?

00:26:23 The decision was we were going to stay in the business,

00:26:25 but if we were, we'd do something different, significantly different.

00:26:30 And what evolved out of that is what we call our safety standards.

00:26:35 Now, those safety standards are no more and no less than a document

00:26:38 that says if you do it this way, we know you can do it right and do it safely.

00:26:43 These safety standards, also known as aerospace propulsion standards,

00:26:48 have become the textbook for the entire industry.

00:26:51 The procedures and policies derived from these standards

00:26:55 have made Bacchus one of the safest industrial plants in the nation.

00:27:01 Minuteman and Polaris were good for Bacchus despite some hard learned lessons.

00:27:07 By 1966, production on both programs was nearing completion.

00:27:12 The nation was now armed with Minuteman missiles stored in silos across the country

00:27:17 and the Polaris submarine fleet was patrolling the oceans.

00:27:21 There was talk of an upgraded missile for the Navy, Poseidon C-3,

00:27:27 but production was several years away.

00:27:30 The first stage would require state-of-the-art rubber-based propellant,

00:27:34 a technology completely foreign to Hercules.

00:27:37 We really wanted to be competitive on both stages of the Poseidon.

00:27:42 However, Hercules, having specialized in high-energy propellants

00:27:50 and, quote, smaller motors,

00:27:55 we really didn't have in our stable, so to speak,

00:28:02 a large motor manufacturing capability,

00:28:06 nor did we have a, quote, lower-energy propellant,

00:28:10 which was required for Poseidon for the first stage.

00:28:15 So we had come up with the idea of forming a joint venture with Thiotology.

00:28:24 It was necessary that you had to be able to dig both stages

00:28:27 because it was going to be cost-competitive,

00:28:30 much more so than it had been in previous systems.

00:28:33 Technical challenges unique to this program included a single nozzle

00:28:38 with a flex joint for vectoring capabilities

00:28:41 and a thrust-reversal termination system

00:28:44 that used a flexible linear-shaped charge to blow open the forward dome.

00:28:49 The joint venture was successful,

00:28:52 and the first C-3 test launch took place in the fall of 1968.

00:28:57 By 1970, Bacchus was producing rocket motors again.

00:29:02 The contract deliverables, 750 Poseidon C-3 units.

00:29:08 Poseidon turned out to be one of our more successful development programs

00:29:11 that we've ever had, I think for Lockheed as well,

00:29:15 because we gave them a lot more performance

00:29:18 than what they ever anticipated they would get.

00:29:26 About the time that C-3 was keeping Bacchus busy,

00:29:29 Hercules was making plans for a new product line, graphite fiber.

00:29:34 Corporate headquarters approved construction of a new graphite plant in Maryland.

00:29:39 Bill Bernard, Dick Both, and John DeVault went to England

00:29:42 to obtain a licensing agreement for graphite.

00:29:46 One day, Jack Sherman was out of town,

00:29:50 and John Greer saw me go by his office door, and he called me in,

00:29:56 and he said, Bill, what are we going to do with this carbon fiber thing?

00:30:01 He says, we've got to make a decision.

00:30:03 And I says, well, John, you know, we've looked at all kinds of options

00:30:09 and ran returns on all places.

00:30:12 He says, you know what I think you ought to do?

00:30:14 You ought to just put it at Bacchus and be done with it.

00:30:18 Quonset huts at the south end of the plant were modified

00:30:21 to ensure a production rate of 15,000 pounds of carbon fiber a year.

00:30:27 It was a trauma.

00:30:29 The facility was ready to start in May of 1971,

00:30:32 and Bill, being the very bullish person that he was,

00:30:38 had decided that we wouldn't take any fiber to the marketplace

00:30:42 until we reached a tensile strength level of 400,000 psi.

00:30:46 That caused us some concern, and we really came down to prayer

00:30:50 is the way we really got there when it was all done.

00:30:53 But finally, by about October, we had made fiber at 400,000 psi

00:31:00 and took it to the marketplace.

00:31:02 1969, John DeVault really carried our whole inventory

00:31:09 in his trunk of his car.

00:31:12 It was 48 inches long, and it was $350 a pound,

00:31:16 and he'd have 200 pounds in there,

00:31:18 so he had $70,000 worth of material in the trunk of his car.

00:31:22 We would literally fly across to any place in the country

00:31:26 if we found somebody that was interested in making a part out of graphite fiber.

00:31:30 Our sales back in those days were a few thousand pounds a year.

00:31:34 At the same time we built a fiber line,

00:31:37 we built a prepreg line to manufacture impregnated carbon fiber

00:31:42 for use in structures.

00:31:44 Our first prepreg machine had the capability of making 3-inch tape.

00:31:49 The first real breakthrough came in the aerospace segment

00:31:54 was when the industry ran out of boron,

00:31:58 and GD was making a section of F-111 fuselage

00:32:03 which weighed close to 2,000 pounds.

00:32:07 I remember I was at a meeting out in California,

00:32:10 and a young engineer named Jim Ashton,

00:32:12 who later became the number one guru in the world in composites,

00:32:17 said he was going to use 2,000 pounds,

00:32:20 and he was based in Fort Worth at General Dynamics.

00:32:23 I remember calling Charlie Jordan and saying,

00:32:26 whose customer is GD?

00:32:28 He says, I don't know.

00:32:29 I said, well, some guy down there says he's going to use 2,000 pounds,

00:32:32 and I immediately got on an airplane and got to know Jim Ashton very well,

00:32:36 and we were able to sell the lion's share of the material

00:32:40 that went into that F-111 fuselage.

00:32:42 Then came golf shafts, graphite golf shafts,

00:32:46 and the fibers plant suddenly grew from an annual rate of 15,000 pounds

00:32:51 to 100,000 pounds.

00:32:53 Graphite fiber was no longer an exclusive material

00:32:56 for aircraft defense and space applications.

00:33:00 The possibilities for graphite fiber were limited.

00:33:10 The Bacchus wind record now included Minuteman, Polaris A-2,

00:33:14 Poseidon C-3, and graphite fibers and resonance systems.

00:33:19 Trident I C-4 was the next program that would benefit

00:33:22 from the advanced technology being developed at Bacchus,

00:33:26 specifically slurry cast technology.

00:33:30 So we convinced Navy and Lockheed

00:33:32 that that technology was ready to go into development,

00:33:35 and then we started competing.

00:33:37 Won contracts to compete on all three stages for the Trident I C-4 missile,

00:33:44 which had as its challenge to increase double the range

00:33:48 of the missile system inside the same envelope.

00:33:50 So that required that we advance the technology in propellant.

00:33:54 We have higher energy propellants,

00:33:56 and that we further reduce the inner weight

00:34:00 through the use of composites.

00:34:02 Get rid of the steel parts, use composites,

00:34:05 or use lighter weight composites,

00:34:07 such as going from the glass case to the Kevlar case.

00:34:11 We used Kevlar in Trident I C-4.

00:34:15 We'd like to have used graphite, but graphite just wasn't ready.

00:34:17 We just hadn't gotten far enough along with graphite to be able to.

00:34:23 The materials were there,

00:34:25 but we just couldn't at that point guarantee

00:34:28 that we could be in a position to manufacture it

00:34:31 to meet the requirements and the rates and the amount

00:34:34 that was necessary for C-4, so we used Kevlar.

00:34:42 In 1974, a C-4 second stage motor detonated during a test firing,

00:34:48 necessitating the need for a remote test site.

00:34:52 Bruce Beeler and Dwight Barr searched the Intermountain West

00:34:55 and settled on two sites,

00:34:57 Tonopah, Nevada, and Dugway Proving Grounds.

00:35:01 Dugway was chosen because Tonopah was too far away from Bacchus.

00:35:05 This decision was rejected at the last minute

00:35:08 because of a failure to settle some contract disputes.

00:35:12 Bruce Beeler then came up with the idea

00:35:15 of a government-aided reservation project

00:35:18 and sold the idea to Hercules Management.

00:35:29 A contract was made with the Bureau of Indian Affairs

00:35:32 to construct a firing range

00:35:34 on the Goshute Indian Reservation at Tekoi.

00:35:37 Tekoi, a name chosen by the oldest member of the Goshute tribe,

00:35:41 means twin knolls.

00:35:43 The Tekoi test range is a very important asset

00:35:46 to the Bacchus operation,

00:35:48 as well as to the Goshutes who lease the site to Hercules.

00:35:51 In addition to the income from the lease,

00:35:54 the development of Tekoi has provided jobs,

00:35:57 electricity, irrigation, culinary water,

00:36:00 and roads to Skull Valley.

00:36:02 It's been an excellent arrangement for Hercules.

00:36:06 I think an outstanding arrangement for the Indian people.

00:36:10 And when you talk about a band of about 67,

00:36:13 I think we can say we at least employ 12-15%

00:36:16 of the total band population.

00:36:23 In the early 1960s, the government sold two-thirds

00:36:26 of its inland naval supply depot

00:36:29 located at the Freeport Center in Clearfield, Utah.

00:36:33 Companies like Hercules began to lease available warehouse space.

00:36:37 Some of the first operations at Plant 2 included

00:36:40 the BE-3 and the X-259 Antares rocket motor cases.

00:36:45 Both cases were used as upper-stage motors

00:36:48 for satellites and probe launchings.

00:36:51 Portions of the Minuteman and Polaris cases

00:36:54 were also manufactured here.

00:36:56 But the second-stage Poseidon C-3

00:36:58 was the first start-to-finish chamber

00:37:01 manufactured at Plant 2.

00:37:03 This included mandrel fabrication,

00:37:05 insulator installation, case winding and curing,

00:37:09 removal of internal tooling,

00:37:11 case machining, and hardware attachment.

00:37:14 Trident I and Trident II placed greater demands on Plant 2.

00:37:18 Hercules expanded the facilities

00:37:20 to include more advanced winding,

00:37:23 machining, and hydro-testing capabilities

00:37:26 and added building H-10.

00:37:29 H-10 is a complete start-to-finish winding complex.

00:37:33 There was just no way that we could have started

00:37:36 the D-5 program over in the old complex.

00:37:40 That turned out to be a pretty good solution to that problem

00:37:45 because it gave us a chance to put in all new equipment,

00:37:48 new winding machines, new oven,

00:37:51 new machining area, new hydro-test area.

00:37:55 And H-10 has its own machine shop

00:37:58 and support facilities,

00:38:00 so it's almost a complete facility

00:38:03 and standalone facility by itself.

00:38:11 Hercules Bacchus Works was a one-contractor facility

00:38:15 in the late 1970s,

00:38:17 and management recognized the need

00:38:19 to obtain new customers.

00:38:21 Peacekeeper came along.

00:38:23 Here we were again with excellent backgrounds

00:38:26 and technologies,

00:38:28 the cross-link double-base capabilities,

00:38:31 the growth at Clearfield and what that had done.

00:38:35 Combined with the synergism that was occurring

00:38:38 in graphite and composite structures,

00:38:42 all we had to do was put it together for a win.

00:38:46 And suddenly we had the Air Force as a customer

00:38:49 on third stage Peacekeeper

00:38:51 with Dave Thompson leading the team.

00:38:53 It's a strange-shaped case in the first place.

00:38:56 The diameter is bigger than the length of the case,

00:39:00 the motor,

00:39:01 and the nozzle is actually as long as the motor

00:39:04 when it's extended.

00:39:06 We used the new nitrate ester polyether propellant,

00:39:11 the NEPI propellant, in that motor.

00:39:13 That was the first large application

00:39:16 for that propellant that had been developed

00:39:18 as a backup for the C-4 propellant.

00:39:21 We used carbon-carbon exit cones,

00:39:26 and there were extendable exit cones,

00:39:29 which gave us a great expansion ratio,

00:39:32 which provided us about a 5% improvement in performance,

00:39:36 which was probably a greater contribution

00:39:39 than all the propellant advances

00:39:42 that we had made in the previous 25 years.

00:39:46 Although the NEPI is a very high-performing propellant,

00:39:50 the contribution from the extendable exit cones

00:39:54 was really significant.

00:40:00 Pershing II came along,

00:40:03 and we had no right to bid it.

00:40:06 When you look at what marketing strategy should do,

00:40:09 we didn't know the customer,

00:40:11 we didn't know his desires,

00:40:13 we didn't know his wants,

00:40:15 and he had an incumbent

00:40:17 who had performed satisfactorily for him

00:40:19 for over 25 years.

00:40:22 Again, fantastic effort,

00:40:25 and that's been our cornerstone,

00:40:28 is the effort people can muster,

00:40:30 the desire within.

00:40:32 Ernie Mettner and the gang

00:40:34 were really sure that they could win this program

00:40:38 and unseat the incumbent.

00:40:42 The Pershing program took C-4 technology

00:40:45 and applied it to a tactical environment

00:40:48 and a composite propellant.

00:40:50 To be able to win that program

00:40:52 and put that program through development and production

00:40:55 and be very successful in that program

00:40:57 is a key piece of technology

00:41:00 and a key piece of business

00:41:04 that's going to help lead us to where we're going in the future

00:41:07 and into space.

00:41:09 In 1984, the joint venture won the competition

00:41:13 for first and second stages

00:41:15 for the Trident II D-5 missile.

00:41:18 The D-5 first stage

00:41:20 is the largest unsegmented graphite chamber ever produced.

00:41:24 The Trident II objectives

00:41:28 were much like the Poseidon objectives,

00:41:34 which were to use the D-5 missile

00:41:37 and the Poseidon objectives,

00:41:39 which were to use the technology that existed

00:41:42 but make a bigger motor.

00:41:44 And in fact, they're the largest high-energy propellant motors

00:41:48 that have ever been built.

00:41:56 Hercules Bacchus Works

00:41:58 continued to win significant programs,

00:42:00 including the MX canister

00:42:02 and the filament-wound case for the space shuttle.

00:42:05 These programs, along with the foresight

00:42:07 of Hercules management,

00:42:09 identified the need for a large,

00:42:11 fully automated rocket motor facility,

00:42:14 Bacchus West.

00:42:16 Building that complex,

00:42:18 laying the groundwork for our future,

00:42:21 and it really is such a different kind of thing

00:42:26 than we've done before on this plant,

00:42:28 except in 59 when we built

00:42:30 the original Minuteman production line.

00:42:33 Here we built a complete plant on another site,

00:42:37 and it turned out that our usual thinking

00:42:41 on building buildings

00:42:43 or expansion of an existing plant

00:42:47 didn't quite fit.

00:42:49 We're building a system.

00:42:50 It's not just a plant.

00:42:52 It's a system for building rocket motors,

00:42:56 and it took a different approach.

00:43:00 This system, this state-of-the-art approach

00:43:03 to making rocket motors,

00:43:05 has been instrumental in securing contracts

00:43:08 that paved the way for Bacchus Works

00:43:10 to enter the space business.

00:43:20 Our marketing, our hustle,

00:43:23 our conviction that we could do the job,

00:43:26 won Delta II over an incumbent

00:43:29 that had been there with East Castor Motor

00:43:31 for 20 years.

00:43:33 The combined technology

00:43:35 and the offering of a Bacchus West

00:43:38 with built-in quality,

00:43:42 safety, reliability, and cost.

00:43:45 I think historically,

00:43:47 Hercules has always given the customers

00:43:50 probably the best products in the industry.

00:43:53 That's why our business has grown

00:43:56 and we've become the...

00:44:00 I like to think of it as the premier

00:44:03 rocket motor producer in the country

00:44:05 and probably the world.

00:44:07 Just as it did 75 years ago,

00:44:10 the future depends on people.

00:44:13 Bacchus Works has a proud history and reputation,

00:44:16 especially for dedicated, hard-working people.

00:44:20 Success in producing reliable, quality products

00:44:23 that have consistently pushed the state-of-the-art

00:44:26 in aerospace technology

00:44:28 has made Hercules a leader in the industry.