NRCan lab in Hamilton helps honour a piece of Pearl Harbor history
A Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) laboratory was chosen to partake in a project honouring the 80th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Habour.
CanmetMATERIALS (CMAT) has rolled steel collected from the long-submerged USS Arizona - which sank during the Dec. 7, 1941 attack in Hawaii - into thin sheets suitable for the creation of custom Medals of Freedom.
Once complete, the USS Arizona Medals of Freedom will honour the 1,777 who died from this tragic event - including five Canadians who were lost in the sinking.
It will mark the first and only time that a medal from this dreadnaught will be available to the general public.
To further commemorate the 80th anniversary, CMAT kept a single ingot to roll at 2:05 p.m. on Dec. 7.
“The significance of this is this is probably the only bomb that we know exactly what time it exploded,” said Philippe Dauphin, Director General at CMAT. “8:05 a.m. at Pearl Harbour is when that devastating blast occurred on the USS Arizona.”
Eastern Standard Time is five hours ahead of Hawaii-Aleutian Standard Time.
“So it will be exactly 80 years to the minute of the time of explosion,” said Dauphin.
CMAT is located in Hamilton within the McMaster Innovation Park.
The project connects CMAT with its origins, bringing them full circle and commemorating their long history, said Dauphin.
The laboratory was created just a few months after the Pearl Habour attack when the Canadian government decided the nation required a metallurgic laboratory to assist with the technical challenges of World War II.
“I think the first problem they worked on was the tracks on the tanks, which typically failed after an average of 80 km travelled,” said Dauphin. “And after the metallurgists got working on that problem, the life of those tracks were extended by a factor of ten. So 800 km.
“It shows that science when applied properly can address problems,” he added, noting they are currently working on ways to transport hydrogen, and are developing advanced materials to help with Canada’s clean energy future.
He was honoured when the Lauren F. Bruner USS Arizona Memorial Foundation contacted him for this project.
Ed McGrath, Foundation Executive Director, was looking for a group that could roll about 661 lbs. of steel. They had received the metal from the USS Arizona, submerged in the waters of Oahu for many years, but needed somewhere to properly roll it into the thin, 1/16” thick sheets required to create the medals.
A mill in Alabama was able to melt the steel and create the ingots, but there was nowhere in America available to roll such a relatively small quantity.
“300 kilos of steel is actually a very small quantity by industrial standards,” said Dauphin, adding the CMAT rolling mill is very versatile.
CMAT lab is unique as it can change the sample’s conditions in a way that industrial rollers cannot. The rolling mill can be configured to roll hot (for steel, up to 1200˚C) or cold (at room temperature). Each type of rolling imparts different properties to the metal being rolled, not just making it thinner. Both are needed for the project, and this ability allows companies and academia to test out rolling methods without shutting down production.
CMAT’s pilot-scale rolling mill is capable of industry-level work and produces high-quality sheets without having to shut down an entire mill to test out a single strip, said Dauphin.
The metal was a gift to the Foundation.
“The US Navy gave a small quantity of steel from that superstructure to Lauren Bruner, who was the second-to-last man to leave the ship alive, “ said Dauphin.
Fire Control Chief Petty Officer Bruner was wounded twice by machine-gun fire from an enemy aircraft and burned over 73 per cent of his body from the subsequent explosion.
Though Bruner spent decades saying nothing about the attack, the floodgates opened once he met McGrath. Bruner then wrote a book, Second to the Last to Leave USS Arizona - Memoir of a Sailor, and established the Lauren F. Bruner USS Arizona Memorial Foundation to preserve the history and honour the memory of all those lost.
Once the ingots are rolled out, they will be shipped back to the United States to be incorporated into the Medals of Freedom.
