Finding aid for the Plum Brook Ordnance Works Collection

History of the Plum Brook Ordnance Works

On December 30, 1940, the United States War Department entered into a contract with the Trojan Powder Company for the purpose of manufacturing explosives trinitrotoluene (TNT), dinitrotoluene (DNT), and pentolite. Groundbreaking occurred on April 15, 1941 and production started on December 16, 1941. The sprawling plant was located on 9,000 acres of former farmland situated approximately 5 miles south of Sandusky, Ohio. The site produced more than one billion pounds of ordnance throughout World War II.

After the war's end, the facility sat idle. The U.S. Army decontaminated and decommissioned the buildings and structures associated with manufacturing the explosives. In 1956, NASA (then called the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) purchased 500 acres to build a test reactor to support atomic aircraft studies being conducted by the Atomic Energy Commission. In March 1963, NASA assumed custody of the entire property. The Agency sold about 2,500 acres of the land and used the rest to conduct further research on components for nuclear propulsion systems, high energy chemical population systems, and nuclear rocket systems. An arm of NASA's Lewis Research Center, the Plum Brook site was one of a number of nation-wide NASA installations with research and development of the technology and equipment necessary for space exploration. Lewis was NASA's primary propulsion and space electric power generation center.

The first major facility built by NASA at the Plum Brook site was the 60 million watt nuclear research reactor complex, designed to measure the effects of intense radiation and the extreme cold on materials. By 1973, the site contained seventeen buildings, including the reactor, a cryogenic propellant tank, a controls and turbine test site, a dynamics stand, a liquid hydrogen pump site, a hydraulics lab, two controls and instruments buildings, a turbo pump site, a fluorine pump site, an oxidizer hydraulics lab, a rocket dynamics and control facility, a high energy rocket engine research facility, a hypersonic tunnel facility, a spacecraft propulsion research facility, a space power facility, and an engineering building. During its operation, the Plum Brook Reactor conducted over 70 experiments, most of which examined the effects of radiation of various materials.

In 1973, after successfully landing humans on the Moon and returning them safely to Earth, NASA faced budget reductions from Congress. Significant post-Apollo budget cuts and the cancellation of the nation's nuclear rocket program resulted. The Plum Brook Reactor closed in 1973 and was placed into a "safe dry storage" mode. In 1987, NASA, other government agencies, and the private sector expressed renewed interest in the facilities at Plum Brook. Although its operations have been greatly limited since the 1970s, the Plum Brook Station continues to function for NASA as a facility for propulsion testing and research.

Scope and Content

The Plum Brook Ordnance Works Collection consists of approximately 212 items associated with the World War II munitions factory and the NASA research and experiment facility. The collection is source heavy in the World War II period of the facility, including 136 images of the site, bound news articles, newspapers, and contract information. There are a few sources related to the history of the NASA facility, including a pamphlet, a booklet, an informational letter, tour information, and a wall poster.

Statement of Arrangement

Indexing Terms

The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.

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Preferred Citation

Plum Brook Ordnance Works Collection, Sandusky Library Archives Research Center