Permanente Metals Corporation (PMC) is best known for having managed the

Richmond Shipyards The four Richmond Shipyards, in the city of Richmond, California, United States, were run by Permanente Metals and part of the Kaiser Shipyards. In World War II, Richmond built more ships than any other shipyard, turning out as many as three ships ...

Richmond, California Richmond is a city in western Contra Costa County, California, United States. The city was municipal corporation, incorporated on August 7, 1905, and has a Richmond, California City Council, city council.

, owned by one of industrialist Henry J. Kaiser's many corporations, and also engaged in related corporate activities. These four of the seven west coast

Kaiser Shipyards The Kaiser Shipyards were seven major shipbuilding yards located on the West Coast of the United States, United States west coast during World War II. Kaiser ranked 20th among U.S. corporations in the value of wartime production contracts. The s ...

were known for their construction of

Liberty ship Liberty ships were a class of cargo ship built in the United States during World War II under the Emergency Shipbuilding Program. Though British in concept, the design was adopted by the United States for its simple, low-cost construction. Mass ...

s and later

Victory ships The Victory ship was a class of cargo ship produced in large numbers by North American shipyards during World War II to replace losses caused by German submarines. They were a more modern design compared to the earlier Liberty ship, were slight ...

. The company was formed on 9 December 1940 as the ''Todd California Shipbuilding Corporation''. The name was changed to ''Permanente Metals Corp.'' on 8 November 1941. In February 1942 the Todd Corporation acquired Kaiser interests in the

Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Corporation The Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Corporation (also operating as Todd Pacific) was an American corporation which built escort carriers, destroyers, cargo ships and auxiliaries for the United States Navy and merchant marine during World War II i ...

and Kaiser acquired Todd's interests in Permanente Metals. The seven way shipyard in Richmond that was built to fulfill a contract for 30

Ocean ship The Ocean ships were a class of sixty cargo ships built in the United States by Todd Shipyards Corporation during the Second World War for the British Ministry of War Transport under contracts let by the British Purchasing Commission. Eighteen w ...

s was complete by August 1941 and ''Permanente Metals'' completed the contract for the ships. The company was originally a major producer of

magnesium Magnesium is a chemical element with the symbol Mg and atomic number 12. It is a shiny gray metal having a low density, low melting point and high chemical reactivity. Like the other alkaline earth metals (group 2 of the periodic ta ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

and derives its name from the

Permanente Creek Permanente Creek is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed February 3, 2013 stream originating on Black Mountain in Santa Clara County, California, United States. It is the na ...

in Santa Clara County, California where mining operations commenced in the early 1930s. To make use of its major product, powdered magnesium, PMC also developed and supplied an incendiary bomb mixture of magnesium powder, asphalt, gasoline and others components (known as "goop", with similar characteristics to

napalm Napalm is an incendiary mixture of a gelling agent and a volatile petrochemical (usually gasoline (petrol) or diesel fuel). The name is a portmanteau of two of the constituents of the original thickening and gelling agents: coprecipitated al ...

); 17,000 short tons of goop-filled bombs were used in World War II (approximately eight percent of the total tonnage of incendiaries that were dropped during that conflict). Permanente ranked 42nd among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts. Peck, Merton J. & Scherer, Frederic M. ''The Weapons Acquisition Process: An Economic Analysis'' (1962)

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA p ...

p.619

References

Notes

Bibliography

External links

Richmond ShipyardRosie the Riveter National Historical Park, Richmond Shipyard Haer No. CA-326-M No. 3
Defunct companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area Defunct shipbuilding companies of the United States Companies based in Richmond, California {{industry-company-stub