How Vince Schaefer Helped Win the War
On June 24, 1942, the smoke generator invented by Vincent Schaefer filled the valley around Vroman’s Nose with a massive 100-foot screen of smoke, demonstrating for high-ranking military officials a powerful technology by which to protect American ships and troops. (Photo by Michael Schaefer.)
By Dan Forbush
It's early 1942. America is at war. The U.S. Navy has just suffered a devastating blow at Pearl Harbor. Irving Langmuir, whom Vincent has just returned to GE's headquarters in Schenectady from a high-level meeting with military strategists in Washington. He sits down with Vince and explains the situation. Based on Vince's account, we can assume Langmuir says something like this:
"The Germans have come up with a technology that enables them to conceal their warships and other military assets with huge quantities of a smoke-like fog. They're hiding the Bismarck in a Norwegian fjord with a smoke so dense our bombers have no way to see through it. The Navy needs this same capability and thy've asked us to deliver it -- fast."
A few months before, Vince had built a tiny fog generator to test some Canadian smoke filters. He immediately attempts to scale up the design, but fails. Discouraged, he's passing th GE glass blowers shop when "a serendipitous event" occurs.
"I glanced into a room and saw a Langmuir-type mercury vapor pump in operation...It occurred to me in a flash that it might be possible to vaporize a high boiling point oil, such as I had used in my smaller generator, and then let the vapor exhaust into the atmosphere where it would condense to form a cloud of oil droplets."
Vince immediately sets out to test the idea, which requires heating an oil can over a Bunsen burner while simultaneously heating its spout.
An outlook on Vroman’s Nose. (Photo by Dave Bourque)
"The vapor immediately condensed to form a white turbulent stream of smoke that looked like the steam jet of a locomotive. As the vapor condensed to form the beautiful white cloud of microscopic oil droplets, it filled my laboratory with what appeared to be a highly stable and persistent smoke."
Vince had made the critical discovery.
"The success of this experiment was quite exciting since it looked like there was no limit to the size that could be further developed. Unfortunately, the Boss was away on one of his frequent trips, so I had to contain my enthusiasm. While the work on the project was not yet classified, I felt that it would be desirable to keep from talking about it at least until Langmuir evaluated its possibilities."
Over the next five pages, Vince describes how, in just a few months, he came up with an an "artificial fog machine" or "smoke generator" that performs the job the Navy needs done.
He designs a bigger "oil can" and tests it on the roof his laboratory. The smoke cloud quickly engulfs the entire area below the parapet on lab's flat roof.
"The smoke was so dense that I could see only a few feet. All of a sudden, I heard a shout and out of the smoke came a group of firemen lugging a hose and looking for a fire!"
They had been forced in their heavy clothing and rubber boots to carry their fire-fighting equipment up multiple flights of stairs.
"When they saw me and the little device, from which was emerging a high velocity jet of white smoke, I heard some choice expletives. Charlie Goethe, the fire chief, looked at me in exasperation as he slowly regained his breath and composure."
To further scale up the device, Vince tried fine-tuning the diameter of orifice through which the smoke streamed. He performed the first test of a larger device near the base of the Bellevue Bluffs near the GE plant and another at Cushing Stone Quarry in Scotia.
With the coming of spring, they had to conduct a test and demonstrate the device on a much larger scale. "I proposed to the Boss that we make use of the Schoharie Valley about 20 miles west of Schenectady, using the top of Vroman's Nose as an observation site."
They climbed to the summit, a spectacular east/west rocky ridge that rises abruptly from the flat flood plain bordering Schoharie Creek.
"The valley flats of this region extend for nearly ten miles in a southwesterly direction, while the land is about a mile wide along that course. Thus we had a test area that was about 50,000 feet long, 5,000 feet wide and more than 600 feet deep."
"The Boss was much impressed with the Nose as a vantage point and the great flats as a test area."
The Heil Company of Wisconsin and Todd Shipbuilding built thousands of "M-1 Generators" based on the technology Vince Schaefer demonstrated at Vroman’s Nose. (Photo source: Carl Weideman of the Duanesburg Historical Society.)
Tests conducted on May 7 and May 12 were so successful that engineers at Esso Laboratories in New Jersey were enlisted to create a device with ten times the throughput. Within a month, they had a field unit that was ready for testing.
"It was a spectacular and fearsome thing," Vince recalled, made with parts pulled from the laboratory's scrap heap. "It looked like an ancient wood-fired donkey engine of the middle 1800s."
Preliminary runs were conducted on June 21 and June 23 on the George Wilber farm in the middle of the Flats south of Vroman's Nose. Then on June 24 came the full dress demonstration with 30 key visitors who had come in from Washington and put up at Schenectady's Van Curler Hotel.
The demonstration was to be made at the break of dawn. They would have to leave the hotel at 3 a.m. "Despite some mild protests, everyone agreed to be ready," Vince recalled.
It took an hour to get there. Some hiked to the summit in darkness. Others rode in a convoy of army jeeps.
"Arriving at the summit, everyone had a light breakfast and then watched the action."
Vince described the scene this way:
"Before the sun rose, a patch of smoke appeared at the generator site and quickly enlarged into a massive smoke screen, which rose a hundred feet or so to the top of the night time inversion and spread northerly, flowing down the valley in the drainage wind. It was opaque and quite a sight to see! Everything had worked exactly as Languir had predicted. The smoke screen slowly lifted as the rising sun began to create small thermals, but the smoke screen continued to expand and remain intact."
Many thousands of "M-1 Generators" would be made by the end of the war first by the Heil Company of Wisconsin and then Todd Shipbuilding.
"They were used in many places during WWII, including the Anzio beachhead in Italy, the North African campaign, the crossing of the Rhine, and to ward off Kamikazee attacks in the South Pacific," Vince reported.
"Although we obtained a joint patent on the smoke generator, the General Electric Company never exploited its use."
The Vroman’s Nose Loop Trail is an easy 1.5-mile hike.
