A war job "thought impossible"

the long version

In February, 1945, Chrysler completed one of its war jobs. This was the making of 5,500 gyro-compasses for the Navy. "The completion of this compass," Rear Admiral E. L. Cochrane, chief of the Bureau of Ships, wrote the Corporation, "will mark the completion of one of industry's war contracts originally considered impossible; that is, the manufacture of an intricate, delicate gyro-compass by other than a manufacturer especially trained and skilled in the art." In order to manufacture a precision instrument with ordinary labor, management broke the compass and its machining down into simple components and operations easily taught a novice, so engineered the tooling that the accuracy was transferred from the mechanic to the machine tool. - p. 1-5.