Quonset Hut

Quonset huts at NAS Port Lyautey with flight line in the distance, October 14, 1945. Note rainbow at left, and blimp and PBYs on runways.

 

A Quonset hut is a lightweight prefabricated structure of corrugated galvanized steel with a semi-circular cross-section. The design was developed in the United States based on the Nissen hut introduced by the British during World War I. Hundreds of thousands were produced during World War II, and military surplus was sold to the public. The name comes from the site of their first deployment at Quonset Point at the Davisville Naval Construction Battalion Center in Davisville, Rhode Island.

Design and History

The first Quonset huts were manufactured in 1941 when the United States Navy needed an all-purpose, lightweight building that could be shipped anywhere and assembled without skilled labor. They could be assembled in a day by a 10-person team using only hand tools.

The George A. Fuller construction company manufactured them, and the first was produced within 60 days of signing the contract. In 1946, the Great Lakes Steel Corporation claimed "the term 'Quonset,' as applied to builders and building materials, is a trade mark owned by the Great Lakes Steel Corporation." But the word is often used generically. Today similar structures are made by many contractors in countries around the world.

The original design was a 16-by-36-foot (4.9 m × 11.0 m) structure framed with steel members with an 8-foot (2.4 m) radius. The most common design created a standard size of 20-by-48-foot (6.1 m × 14.6 m) with a 16-foot (4.9 m) radius[dubious – discuss], allowing 960 square feet (89 m2) of usable floor space with optional 4 feet (1.2 m) overhangs at each end for protection of entrances from the weather. Other sizes were developed, including 20-by-40-foot (6.1 m × 12.2 m) and 40-by-100-foot (12 m × 30 m) warehouse models.

The sides were corrugated steel sheets, and the two ends were covered with plywood which had doors and windows. The interior was insulated and had pressed wood lining and a wood floor. The building could be placed on concrete, on pilings, or directly on the ground with a wood floor. The original design used low-grade steel, which was later replaced by a more rust-resistant version. The flexible interior space was open, allowing use as barracks, latrines, medical and dental offices, isolation wards, housing, and bakeries.

Between 150,000 and 170,000 Quonset huts were manufactured during World War II, and the military sold its surplus huts to the public after the war. Many remain standing throughout the United States as outbuildings, businesses, or even homes, and they are often seen at military museums and other places featuring World War II memorabilia. Many were also used around the United States for temporary postwar housing, such as Rodger Young Village for veterans and their families in Los Angeles, California, and the Quonset Park complex of married student housing at the University of Iowa. Some are still in active use at United States military bases. The U.S. Department of Energy continues to utilize Quonset huts as supporting structures (fabrication and machine shops, warehouses, etc.) at the Nevada National Security Site. The repurposed huts were common enough that Sherwin-Williams introduced a line of paint called "Quon-Kote" specifically designed to stick to the metal structures.

In Popular Culture

After World War II, surplus Quonset huts became popular as housing in Hawaii. They became known as "kamaboko houses" due to their half-cylindrical shape, similar to a slab of kamaboko.

The situation comedy Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., which aired on CBS from 1964 to 1969, featured Quonset huts as the barracks housing at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California.

References

Building the Navy's Bases in World War II: History of the Bureau of Yards and Docks and the Civil Engineer Corps, 1940–1946, volume 1, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1947.

"Quonset Hut Manuals". United States Navy Seabee Museum. Retrieved 14 June 2024.

Vara, Jon (June 1, 2010). "A Hut for All Seasons: A Brief History of Quonset Huts". Journal of Light Construction. Huntington Beach, California: Zonda Home. Retrieved July 24, 2024.

"Quonset Huts". Polar Inertia Journal. May–June 2004. Retrieved 22 June 2024.

"Not 'Quonset'", The Dunn County News, March 13, 1946, p.1

Michael Lamm (Winter 1998), "The Instant Building". Invention & Technology, Volume 13, Issue 3, pp. 68–72. Retrieved 28 May 2020.

https://spectator.uiowa.edu/2010/january/oldgold.html "Temporary Housing: Not Much, But It's Home", University of Iowa Spectator

"The Kamaboko House". Historic Hawaii Foundation. Retrieved 2017-07-21.

 

All-wood huts, built in Seattle for the rigors of Army life in Alaska, are easy to erect and comfortable to live in, report soldiers who have done both. Gathered about the entrance of an assembled unit at a barrage balloon location are, left to right, Pvt. Andrew P. Cariello, Corp. Edward Lyons, Pvt. Eugene Aron and Pvt. Russell Weber. The huts are prefabricated and built in sections.

 

Early Quonset huts being erected in Northern Ireland, March 25, 1942.

 

Early Quonset huts being erected in Northern Ireland, March 1942.

 

Early Quonset huts being erected in Northern Ireland, March 1942.

 

Early Quonset huts being erected in Northern Ireland, March 1942.

 

Seabees erect a Quonset hut at Camp Endicott, Rhode Island.

 

 

 

 

 

Pilots gather inside a Quonset hut after a mission.

 

American troops in Ireland, February 1942, marching past Quonset huts.

 

Quonset hut, originally barracks for the 736th Engineers, is set in place to be reused as office space by the 598th Engineer Base Depot, 1947-48, post-WWII Japan.

 

Construction in progress at the Londonderry Naval Base. General view of the site showing the type of hut that was used, circa 1942-45.

 

Building Quonset huts in a gale 1942; Iceland or Ireland.

 

The new movie theater in a Quonset hut at the U.S. base on Attu in the Aleutian Islands, Alaska, circa 1943-44.

 

Quonset huts at a U.S. base in the Aleutian Islands, Alaska, circa 1943-44.

 

Placing the Quonset hut on a trailer bed, Majuro Atoll.

 

 

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Army Women of Fort Monroe in World War II

"YOU ARE NEEDED NOW. JOIN THE ARMY NURSE CORPS." Office for Emergency Management. Office of War Information. Domestic Operations Branch. Bureau of Special Services. (03/09/1943 - 09/15/1945)

 

Women have played an important role in the history of Fort Monroe over the years, but World War II was especially important as it was the first time in US Army history that women were officially allowed to serve in the Army, instead of simply as auxiliaries or “with” the Army, but not in it. This affected the status of both Army nurses and members of the Army Women’s Corps stationed at Fort Monroe. Women had unofficially filled many roles in the army for years. During World War I they were allowed official roles outside of the realm of nursing for the first time. However, in World War I the women serving with the Army, both as nurses and in other roles, still were not officially members of the military, and therefore did not receive benefits such as equal rank, pay, or veterans benefits.

This all changed during World War II. The Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps was established by Congress in 1942 as an auxiliary unit to the army, but in 1943 a new law was passed dropping the “Auxiliary” and women for the first time became full members of the army as part of the Women’s Army Corps in September 1943. (The Navy and Marine Corps had enlisted women during World War I). Thus by the time the first WAC officers arrived at Fort Monroe in late 1943, they were officially in the Army. According to Defender of the Chesapeake, “three second lieutenants [were] placed on duty with the post and two with the Coast Artillery School.” The first enlisted WACs arrived in January 1944. It seems that all the enlisted women at the fort were assigned to the Coast Artillery School.

There were also Army nurses stationed at Fort Monroe. These women had to wait slightly longer than the WAC to receive equal status to army men. They only received equality of rank, pay, and benefits in 1944, even though the Army Nurse Corps had been in existence since 1901. In 1944, there were twelve nurses stationed at Fort Monroe to staff the 139 bed station hospital according to an article published in the Altoona Tribune that May. The chief nurse was Lieutenant Elizabeth Steindel. She had entered the nurse corps with the (relative) rank of second lieutenant in July 1942, and was promoted to first lieutenant in October of that year. She served as chief nurse at Fort Monroe from April 6, 1943 to January 7, 1945, when was relieved by Captain Helen Jacobs in January 1945 in anticipation of being sent overseas. Steindel was still at Fort Monroe when she was promoted in Captain in April 1945. It is unknown if she was sent overseas before the war ended.

Some of the other nurses at Fort Monroe during World War II were Anna P. Heistand, Margaret W. Henninger, and Lillian B. Westerfield, who all received promotions to first lieutenant in April 1945, and Lois V. Ketran, who was promoted to first lieutenant in January 1945. Ketran was from Philadelphia and worked in the operating room at the fort’s station hospital.

Steindel was from Altoona, Pennsylvania. The article mentioned above described the physical exercises Steindel had her nurses participate in so that they would be ready for both the stress of their work at Fort Monroe and the rigors of potential deployments overseas. Although women at the time were officially barred from combat, nurses realized they were likely to be in harm’s way when sent overseas and wanted to be prepared. In September 1943, nurses at Fort Monroe started participating in “military drill and calisthenics,” and also had the use of tennis courts behind their quarters, a volleyball court, and an archery set. Although the tennis court is long gone, the nurses’ quarters, Building #167, still stands on Patch Road across from the hospital.

The nurses also had access to the officers’ clubs, which at the time were the Casemate Club, located in the Flagstaff Bastion, and the Beach Club, with beach access and a swimming pool, where the Paradise Ocean Club is today.

The clubs also offered other off-duty activities, and the nurses were usually allowed a half day a week off post. However, with only 12 nurses, the hospital would have kept them plenty busy as well. Each nurse had a daily seven hour shift, with about one full day off a month, and the possibility of leave every four months.

Although there were nurses at Fort Monroe before the WAC arrived, once they came, the WAC soon outnumbered the nurses. Although all nurses were granted officer ranks, the WAC included both enlisted and commissioned personnel. The first WACs officers arrived in late 1943. Eleven enlisted women arrived at Fort Monroe in January 1944. By the end of May, the contingent had grown to 58 WACs working for the Coast Artillery School, led by Lieutenant Mary E. Slack. The WAC was housed and fed separately from the men, and the unit included a staff of cooks, bakers, clerks, and others to make up a “normal company household” as a May 1944 Daily Press article termed it. Other women worked in “almost every non-combat duty to which soldiers are assigned… clerks and typists… artists and draftsmen … welders, parts clerks, drivers and a dispatcher in the motor pool; dark room technicians, a blueprint machine operator and motion picture projector operators.” Other positions open to them were listed to include “typists, draftsmen, artist, proofreaders, truck drivers and clerk-typists.” A February 1945 article, from the Hazelton, Pennsylvania, Plain Speaker listed other positions available in the WAC Detachment at the Coast Artillery School at Fort Monroe including linotype operator, photographer, photoengraver, retouch artist, stenographer, chauffeur, auto, file clerk, proofreader, message center clerk, messenger, and supply clerks.

Fort Monroe was not the only local post to have WACs. The Hampton Roads Port of Embarkation, in Newport News, Virginia, and Fort Story, near Cape Henry, also employed WACs, while Fort Lee near Richmond was a major WAC training center.

Most of the WACs at Fort Monroe were enlisted, but they still had access to recreation opportunities on post including “a modern theater [that] plays first-run motion pictures; two libraries,[…] a beach and tennis courts.” The article also specified that “two day rooms for recreation has [sic] been set up, one solely for the women’s use, and one to which they may invite their friends.”

Although Fort Monroe did not receive a WAC detachment until fairly late in World War II, the women clearly made an important impact on the fort, and, as advertising slogans of the day pointed out, each one also helped to “free a man to fight.” Army WACs, wherever they were stationed, helped break down gender stereotypes by taking jobs often previously held only by men. For example, women draftsmen, who were mentioned in both newspaper articles about the WAC at Fort Monroe, were extremely rare before World War II. Fort Monroe continued to have a WAC detachment until the Women’s Army Corps was disbanded in the 1970s and women were integrated into the army.

Army nurses were also breaking new ground during World War II. Even their physical fitness training at Fort Monroe was hammering away at gender stereotypes, due to the reasons given for the training described in the Altoona Tribune. The article was published only one month before D-Day, when US Army nurses were banned from landing on D-Day itself because of fears of bad press and the effect on home front moral if a nurse was killed or wounded that day (in contrast US Army nurses had landed on D-day in North Africa the year before, and British nurses went ashore on D-Day in Normandy in British sectors). However, the article frankly admits that “Army nurses, who in this war customarily minister to the wounded under fire and take the bumps of a combat soldier in anything from jeeps to transport planes, need and are getting more physical conditioning than ever before.” It later states that “if [Lieut.] Steindel has her way they will be in condition mentally and physically to go wherever the war may take them.”

Women played many important roles at Fort Monroe during World War II, from the more traditional role of nurse to newer jobs such as truck drivers and draftsmen. They contributed to both the work of Fort Monroe during World War II and to the opening of new opportunities for women. Civilian women also played important roles at Fort Monroe during World War II, such as with the fort’s YMCA and with the American Red Cross.

 

Contemporary caption: "Becomes Head Nurse: First Lieut. Elizabeth E. Steindel, Army Nurses Corps, has been made chief nurse at the Fort Monroe Hospital. She entered the Army in July 1942 and has been assistant chief nurse at the hospital."

 

"More nurses are needed! All women can help - learn how you can aid in army hospitals". Office for Emergency Management. Office of War Information. Domestic Operations Branch. Bureau of Special Services. (03/09/1943 - 09/15/1945)

 

"Nurses are needed now. Army Nurse Corps." Office for Emergency Management. Office of War Information. Domestic Operations Branch. Bureau of Special Services. (03/09/1943 - 09/15/1945)

 

An WAC recruiting poster:  "WHICH ONE OF THESE WAC JOBS WOULD YOU LIKE?" "JOIN THE WAC NOW". Office for Emergency Management. Office of War Information. Domestic Operations Branch. Bureau of Special Services. (03/09/1943 - 09/15/1945) (National Archives and Records Administration, cataloged under the National Archives Identifier (NAID) 516151)

 

First WAC Director Oveta Culp Hobby (circa 1953). (United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cph.3b13862)

 

The first Women’s Army Corps (WAC) cadre arrive for duty with the Coast Artillery School in 1944. The women are soon recognized by the school for taking over skilled positions, including those in the finance, hospital, and quartermaster departments.