Seabee Ingenuity

The words “ingenuity” and “Seabee” became synonymous during World War II. Finding themselves thousand of miles from spare parts and faced with the necessity of keeping every piece of machinery and equipment working up to 24 hours a day, Seabees had to improvise. The early construction battalions, hastily formed and rushed to war, were not well equipped and supplies of materials and spare parts were insufficient. None of this deterred the Seabees and their ingenuity.

Seabees used a thin sheet of metal and paper to replace gaskets on bulldozers, manufactured replacement condensers out of wax paper, and kept captured Japanese trucks in operation by improvising replacement radiators out of metal ammo boxes.

Soft drink bottles were used as insulators when power lines had to be extended quickly. Empty gasoline drums were split, flattened, and used as roofing, as lining for drainage ditches, culverts, and as dock shoring. Seabees blasted and dragged coral from the sea as surfacing for airfields.

Bulldozers, the machine characterized as the machine of a thousand uses, were used to pull landing ships ashore and push over trees in preparation for landing fields. Automobile transmissions were made into drill presses.