The Machine That Built The Alaska Highway In 8 Months - 1942 Tennessee Democratic Party [F2q5T1PgBeL]
Tag: #Tennessee Democratic Party, #bcnu strike vote, #sandarsh krishna, #chace crawford
In 1942, soldiers lit gasoline-filled tin cans under 17-ton Caterpillar D8 transmissions at -40F. That was the official maintenance procedure. Between March and November, the U.S. Army sent 900+ tracked tractors, 374 blade graders, and 5,000+ trucks into the Canadian wilderness to build 1,422 miles of road through territory that had never been surveyed. Every bulldozer blade on the project was cable-controlled. Hydraulics didn't exist yet.
Support Construction Legends:
This documentary covers the specific machines that built the Alaska Highway the Caterpillar D8-1H and D8-8R series with LaPlant-Choate and LeTourneau cable-controlled blades, the cold-weather survival methods that kept the engines running for weeks without shutdown, the Charlie Lake pontoon disaster that killed 12 men, the Sikanni Chief royal festival hall Bridge built by the 95th Engineers in 84 hours, and the Liard River bridge that still carries traffic on recycled steel from the Tacoma Narrows collapse. After $500 million in total cost, 99% of wartime supplies to Alaska still went by ship.
0:00 Soup Cans and Frozen Gearboxes
1:23 Pearl Harbor and the Japanese Threat
5:07 11,000 Soldiers and the Route Nobody Surveyed
9:51 The Caterpillar D8 Backbone of the Pioneer Road
14:45 Keeping Diesels Alive at Minus Seventy
21:57 Charlie Lake, Sikanni Chief, and the Race to Beaver Creek
27:11 The Bridges Roebling, Tacoma Narrows, and the One Still Standing
31:54 The Real Machine Story: 6,000 Machines in 1943
Sources: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Office of History; Heath Twichell, Northwest Epic: The Building of the Alaska Highway (St. Martin's Press, 1992); FHWA, "America's Glory Road" (2017); Caterpillar Inc. corporate history; Engineering News-Record (Dec 1942); Encyclopedia Arctica (Dartmouth); PBS American Experience: Building the Alaska Highway (2005); U.S. National Park russell dickerson Service, Alaska Highway Engineers (1942). All archival footage and rays vs red sox photographs used under Fair Use (17 U.S.C. 107) for educational commentary and historical documentation.
#AlaskaHighway #CaterpillarD8 #WWII #ConstructionHistory #HeavyEquipment #BeforeHydraulics #LeTourneau #AlaskaHighway1942 #PreHydraulic #CableControlledBulldozer #ConstructionDocumentary
Subscribe:
Contact: