of the 200-foot tower on 2 Jan~ry and topped out nine days later.
The test erection of one of these towers in the vicinity of Albuquerque,
New Mexico, paid dividends in the time saved in the final site erection
because of the supervisionexperience gained and the fact that the
contractorwas able to nmtch mark the various structuralmembers properly.
The constmction work by the soldiers also progressedwithout delay.
The island was divided into two sectors; one platoon assigned the
responsibilityof constructionwithin one particular sector. One of
the nmt
time-consumingactivities was the paving and oiling of the area
around the tower, even though an appreciable amount of paving was
eliminated by virtue of the fact that the hard compacted airstrip surface falling within the area to be paved was oiled only. This change,
recotmnendedby the Joint Task Force En@neer, was approved by the Test
Director and the Scientific Director on their tisit to Engebi on
15 Febma~.
Itwasneceseary
to set up mck crushing facilities on the island
in order to obtain properly graded aggregate. A ~od borrow pit locationwas selected and amterial was crushed and screemd for use in the
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concrete at Engebi and the other islands. Concrete beams and cylinders
were rode, the former tested in a fidd testing laboratory which was
set up by the OCE representativeat Engebi, and the latter shipped by
air to the Honolulu Mstrict Engineer
for correlationwith field test
beams. A tabulation of laboratory testa was nmintained by the Joint
Task Force Engineer and it was found that strengths attained greatly
20
Section XVI
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