Lumber
The use of wood during the Second World War is often overlooked when considering industrial production during the war, with its images of welding sparks and huge cranes loading tanks onto cargo ships. But wood was a critical product of the war, and the US lumber industry faced an immense task in providing enough to meet demand. The Army needed wood to produce airframes for its gliders, barracks for its soldiers, rifle stocks for its weapons, and hundreds of other uses. The Navy used wood for Motor Torpedo Boats, for landing craft, small boats, wharves and piers. Wood also served as a replacement for consumer products formerly made of steel, iron, or plastics. Shippers required vast amounts of wooden crates and barrels for their products.
At the outset of World War 2 the tool most associated today with wood cutting – the chainsaw – was relatively rare, bulky, unreliable, and usually required two men to use. It was not used to cut down trees because tilting the saw cut off the flow of fuel, instead it was used to cut an already downed tree to suitable lengths for the mill. Trees were cut with two man saws or by axe men. After being trimmed and cut to length they were typically floated downstream to be further processed. By the end of 1942 logging industry was falling behind the demand for wood.
Besides the need for wood to be used to build things, wood pulp was required for the making of paper, with the rapidly expanding American government and military generating huge demands for paper. The lumber industry had been hard hit by the Great Depression and little modernization had taken place, impeded by the relative low prices for wood before the demand generated by the war.
By 1944 wood harvests across the United States and Canada had achieved record levels. Gradual improvements in the moving of cut wood to mills where it could be shaped into lumber began to take hold. Many lumber harvests had historically been limited to the period of the spring thaws, when streams fed by snow melt had sufficient water levels to float the cut logs to gathering points from whence they could be shipped by barge or rail. Improvements in the moving of cut logs by truck helped to eliminate this bottleneck.
The lumber industry was more fortunate following the war than many others. Many manufacturers faced economic downturns following the war due to the need to retool for consumer products, or simply because their customer base no longer demanded their product. The building boom which followed the Second World War, fueled in part by the GI Bill, ensured that the demand for lumber remained steady, and the improved methods of harvesting it helped maintain the industry at high levels of production for many years after the war ended.