Hell's Kitchen

In the peaceful wooded hills of northern New Jersey, at Kenvil, lie the 400 acres of one of Hercules Powder Co.'s seven explosive plants. In this sub-sylvan spot, men, treading softly, cook a recipe of destruction.

To the kitchen at Kenvil recently went a U. S. Government order for $2,000,000 worth of explosives, and an order from Britain. One dav last week, in a solvents recovery building, something went wrong with the brew. A small explosion made employes in the other 49 buildings take alarm. Flames shot from the windows of the recovery house. Before men could let go their held breath, 200,000 pounds of smokeless powder went up in a hell's delight of flame and thunder.

Walls vanished. Men vanished. Living, clothes and flesh torn off, ran screaming, blindly, through an eruption of debris and live steam. In company-owned houses outside the gates, their families were knocked off their feet, and window panes disintegrated. Passengers in a TWA stratoliner, 6,000 ft. up and 20 miles away, saw "huge pillars of white smoke ... a bright flame at the base." In towns 125 miles away people felt the shock.

As the explosions died away, rescuers began arriving. While fires spread, they got out the living, some of the dead, dug through hot brick and rubble looking for more. Ten bodies were found in the woods 300 feet from the nearest building. The last flames were finally doused with chemicals. Damage: more than $1,000,000. Injured: 200. Dead: 27. Missing: 25. Three days later the count stood 43 dead, four still missing.

As possible causes of the blast, the fourth explosion in U. S. powder works within five weeks,* employes and officials guessed at spontaneous combustion or some fault with the compressor in the recovery building. But, mindful of disasters in U. S. munitions factories during World War I, agents of FBI, the Army and Navy, dug through the Hercules ruins looking for evidences of sabotage.

*Atlas Powder Co., near Joplin, Mo., Aug. 16, five men killed; King Powder Co., Kings Mills, Ohio, Aug. 7, three men killed; E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., Gibbstown, N. J., Aug. 20, four men killed.

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