Page 27 – LIFE

The New Crew: Women Testing Weapons During World War II

July 14, 2023July 14, 2023 by Bill Syken

Maryland’s Aberdeen Proving Ground opened in 1917 and today is the military’s oldest weapons-testing facility in the United States. It’s a big operation. At its peak in World War II, Aberdeen had housing for more than 27,000, and today it still employs more then 12,000 people.

Through its first decades Aberdeen was a man’s world. But that changed during World War II. LIFE covered extensively the real-life Rosie the Riveters who moved into industrial jobs during that era, and the women who became weapons-testers for the first time in Aberdeen were part of that same phenomenon.

The story in LIFE’s Feb. 1, 1943 issue described how the soldiers who once worked the testing grounds but had been deployed overseas were at first replaced by male civilians. Then “as the draft hit hard, the civilians began to disappear and in their place came thousands of women.”

And who were these women?

The women come from everywhere. Many have husbands in the Army. Others have husbands who also work at Aberdeen. They wear bright-colored slacks, and their “firing fronts” are a rippling blend of pink. blue and orange, mixed with white and black powder from the guns. They serve on crews of all weapons up to the 90-mm A.A.’s. [anti-aircraft guns]. They handle highly technical instruments. They drive trucks, act as bicycle messengers, swab and clean vehicles. A few of them have even been tested as tank drivers, but that work, with its physical bruises, is still a little too tough for them.

The declaration of that last sentence reflected a time when women were making their first inroads to military service. In 1942 the WACs had just come into being (see LIFE’s coverage of the first WACs here) and the change in attitudes about what roles women could play was slow and incremental. It was not until 2015 that the Department of Defense opened all military occupations and positions to women.

The photographs by Myron Davis and Bernard Hoffman capture a world in transition. Some pictures indulge in the novelty of the moment—such as the photo of a woman who looks like a schoolmarm set up behind the sites of a machine gun with an ammunition belt being fed through it. But in other photos the women, such as Mrs. Ruby Barnett, a grandmother who had never fired a gun before coming to work at Aberdeen, look right at home in their new jobs. Those pictures seem to ask the question about the women taking on this new line of work: Well, why not?

A woman tested a 30 caliber machine gun at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, 1942.

Bernard Hoffman/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women loaded shells into an anti-aircraft gun at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, 1942.

Myron Davis/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A group of men and women tested a 90 mm anti-aircraft gun at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland, 1942.

Bernard Hoffman/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Viola Testerman carried a 41-pound shell at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, 1942.

Bernard Hoffman/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Betty Wainwright and Opal Burchette fed cartridges into magazines at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, 1942.

Bernard Hoffman/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Nealie Bare at work at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, 1942. Here she hammered a plug into a test shell to keep the shell’s sand from running out.

Bernard Hoffman/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mrs. Ruby Barnett, a grandmother, had never fired a gun before coming to work at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland during World War II.

Bernard Hoffman/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mrs. Ruby Barnett at work at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, 1942.

Myron Davis/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mrs. Ruby Barnett was among the women who tested artillery at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, 1942.

Myron Davis/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mrs. Ruby Barnett, a grandmother, tested a carbine at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, 1942.

Bernard Hoffman/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women fired machine guns at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, 1942.

Myron Davis/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women tested machine guns at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, 1942.

Myron Davis/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A woman loaded a bullet aircraft cannon at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, 1942.

Myron Davis/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A women tested a 20 millimeter aircraft cannon at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, 1942.

Myron Davis/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Aerial view of testing range at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, 1942.

Bernard Hoffman/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

That Time We Were Promised Jet Packs

July 7, 2023July 7, 2023 by Bill Syken

The idea that we would all be flying around with jet packs one day has enough cultural currency that a Scottish indie rock band could call itself We Were Promised Jet Packs with no further explanation needed. It’s a shorthand way of saying that the future we now inhabit isn’t what we once imagined it would be.

But was there ever actually a promise about jet packs in the first place?

The idea of a jet pack was first hatched in 1919, about sixteen years after the first flight of the Orville Brothers, when a Russian inventor drew up a design that was never actually built. The idea then progressed in fits and starts, inching closer to a working prototype around 1960.

That prototype, known as the Rocket Belt, was presented to readers of LIFE in its June 18, 1961 issue, when a picture by Ed Clark showed Harold Graham making the first public untethered flight. The sight of a man soaring through the air was more than enough to capture the imagination—though the text might have kept expectations closer to Earth. The caption explained that the Graham could not go up very high, move all that fast or stay airborne for very long:

At an altitude of 15 feet, a ground speed of 10 knots, Bell Engineer Harold Graham flew gently above a track without benefit of airplane. Graham was strapped to a hydrogen-peroxide-fueled rocket which will keep a man up half a minute through its jets of invisible steam. The Army, which financed it, hopes it will someday make foot soldiers all look like Buck Rogers.

The last line of that text is, in retrospect, revealing. The Army funded the development of jet packs for a specific military use, rather than public consumption. You could argue that we were never really promised jet packs.

But pictures can make promises more powerful than words, and the sight of Graham in midair would be enough to ignite jetpack dreams—and not unreasonably. Technology tends to improve exponentially, after all. The first computers took up entire rooms, and now devices that are more powerful slip easily into our pockets. So if in 1961 Harold Graham was going aloft for 30 seconds, shouldn’t it mean that in a few decades people would be jet-packing themselves from, say, New York City to the Hamptons?

But the jet packs have proved to be a stubborn exception. The reports on their continuing development, while full of enthusiasm, still talk about the packs as having niche uses for the military and for rescue workers. The reason that jet packs still don’t make sense for everyday consumers is the weight of the fuel. The amount needed to sustain a trip of more than a couple minutes would prevent it from ever getting off the ground.

For now. But who knows, maybe one day….

Bell engineer Harold Graham demonstrating the Rocket Belt jet pack at Ft. Bragg, 1961.

Ed Clark/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Aircraft Carrier Summer: All Hands on Deck

July 5, 2023July 5, 2023 by Bill Syken

The aircraft carrier known as the U.S.S. Hornet has a storied history. The version you see in these photos began its journey in 1943, and was named in honor of a previous Hornet that was sunk in the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands during the Guadalcanal campaign of World War II. This ship took the previous Hornet’s place in the Pacific theater, eventually launching the first carrier strikes on Japan. After Japan’s formal surrender, the Hornet ferried veterans of the Pacific War home to California.

In the late 1960s the warship landed a glamorous assignment when it used in the recovery operations for astronauts who had returned from the Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 missions and needed to be pulled from the ocean. It was in 1969, during its astronaut-rescue period and in its final year of service, that LIFE photographer Lynn Pelham traveled on the Hornet and documented how the crew spent its leisure time.

The crew seemed to be having a ball, at least some of the time. Splash pools, volleyball games, drum kits, basking in the sun, general horseplay. With activities like these, who needs shore leave?

Well, probably they all did, and desperately. In those days, aircraft carriers didn’t even have their own Starbucks and gyms and other amenities found aboard their modern counterparts.

The Hornet was decommissioned in 1970 and now serves as a museum in Alameda, California.

The crew of the USS Hornet enjoying some down time, 1969.

Lynn Pelham/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Crew members of the U.S.S. Hornet aircraft carrier, 1969.

Lynn Pelham/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Crew members of the U.S.S. Hornet aircraft carrier, 1969.

Lynn Pelham/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Life aboard the U.S.S. Hornet aircraft carrier, 1969.

Lynn Pelham/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Crewmen of the U.S.S. Hornet, 1969.

Lynn Pelham/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Life aboard the U.S.S. Hornet aircraft carrier, 1969.

Lynn Pelham/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Crew members play volleyball aboard the U.S.S. Hornet aircraft carrier, 1969.

Lynn Pelham/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Volleyball aboard the U.S.S. Hornet, 1969.

Lynn Pelham/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The crew of the U.S.S. Hornet aircraft carrier, 1969.

Lynn Pelham/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Crew members sunbathing on the U.S.S. Hornet, 1969.

Lynn Pelham/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Life aboard the U.S.S. Hornet aircraft carrier, 1969.

Lynn Pelham/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Front view of U.S.S. Hornet, 1969.

Lynn Pelham/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The L.A. Coliseum at 100: Remembering its Bizarre Baseball Years

July 4, 2023July 4, 2023 by Bill Syken

The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, which opened in 1923, has been home to a dizzying array of events in its 100 years of operation. The original main tenant was the USC college football team, but the stadium has also hosted Super Bowls, Olympics, UCLA football, Rams and Raiders football, political speeches and rock concerts.

Perhaps the oddest-fitting of all its tenants was the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The Dodgers moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles in 1958, but the team’s stadium would not be ready for occupancy until 1962. So for four years the Dodgers did the best they could in the enormous Coliseum.

The photos show the problem; playing baseball in the Coliseum meant sticking a diamond into the middle of an oval. We see fans with binoculars, straining to follow the action on the far-away field. Remember that this was before spectators could watch replays on giant video boards at the stadium. It its coverage of the first Dodgers game in their new home in its April 28, 1958 issue, LIFE wryly noted: “In the cavernous coliseum many had trouble seeing the game at all. But many came only to be seen.”

Another oddity was that the left-field fence was a very short 250 feet down the line. (Since then baseball has established rules for new stadiums that require a minimum distance of 325 feet). A 40-foot screen was erected to keep down the number of home runs, but the complaints from the players were many. Dodgers star pitcher Don Drysdale commented, “It’s nothing but a sideshow. Who feels like playing baseball in this place?”

Most of the photos in this story are by Leonard McCombe and Allan Grant, and come from the Dodgers first home games in 1958, played against the San Francisco Giants, who had also just moved from New York to California. A couple other photos are by Ralph Crane amd come from 1959 World Series, when the Dodgers defeated the Chicago White Sox in six games—though again the pictures, by Ralph Crane, emphasized the odd setting more than the on-the-field action.

With a seating capacity of more than 90,000, the Coliseum remains the largest stadium ever to serve as the home field for a major league team. In 1967 it would host the first Super Bowl, between Green Bay and Kansas City. In 2028 the Coliseum will host its third Olympics.

A vendor outside the first game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants in Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, California, 1958

Television actress Juli Reding spoke with Dodgers outfielder Elmer Valo during the first home game at the Los Angeles Coliseum, 1958.

Leonard McCombe/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Willie Mays of the San Francisco Giants during the Dodgers’ first home game at the Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles, California, 1958

Leonard McCombe/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Scene from the first home game for the Dodgers at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, 1958.

Allan Grant/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dodgers fans needed binoculars to follow the action in the cavernous Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, where the team played for four seasons after moving from Brooklyn, 1958.

Allan Grant/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Dodgers home game at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, where the team played for four seasons after moving from Brooklyn, 1958.

Allan Grant/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dodgers fans at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum cheer the team in in their first home game after moving from Brooklyn, 1958.

Allan Grant/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dodgers during the team’s first home game at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, 1958.

Allan Grant/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Scene from the first home game for the Dodgers at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, 1958.

Allan Grant//Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A crowd watching the Dodgers’ first home game at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, 1958.

Leonard McCombe/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Fans at the Dodgers’ first home game at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, 1958.

Leonard McCombe/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Dodgers’ first home game at Los Angeles Coliseum, 1958.

Leonard McCombe/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The crowd at Los Angeles Coliseum for the first game between the L.A. Dodgers and San Francisco Giants in Los Angeles, 1958.

Leonard McCombe/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

People watched the first Dodgers home game at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, 1958.

Leonard McCombe/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Game 3 of the 1959 World Series between the White Sox and the Dodgers at L.A. Memorial Coliseum, 1959.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shuttetstock

The 1959 World Series between the Chicago White Sox and the Los Angeles Dodgers, at L.A. Memorial Coliseum.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shuttetstock

Thomas Hart Benton: The Artist’s Days in Martha’s Vineyard

June 23, 2023June 23, 2023 by Bill Syken

Thomas Hart Benton is a Missouri-born artist best known for his vibrant depictions of everyday life. Perhaps his most famous work is America Today, a sprawling mural which illustrated life across various regions of the country, a kind of visual “This Land is Your Land” in ten panels. He painted representative art and a time when many of his contemporaries, including his most famous disciple, Jackson Pollock, veered toward abstraction. and he is described as “a champion of mid-western rural America” on the official website for his work.

But Benton, like so many others, was not immune to the charms of Martha’s Vineyard, the island off the coast of Massachusetts, and he visited there regularly during the summer, starting in 1920 and going until his death in 1975. During those years Martha’s Vineyard began its transformation from an earthier and more bohemian retreat to a vacation spot for the rich and fashionable.

It was on this island off the coast of Massachusetts that LIFE staff photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt visited for a big story on Benton in the Oct. 3, 1969 issue. Benton could be a colorful and outspoken character, and the story carried the headline “Tom Benton, at 80, Still at War With Boobs and Bores.”

But despite the cantankerous headline, LIFE’s story described an island routine for Benton and his wife Rita that sounded idyllic:

The Bentons rise, as they always have, with the sun which, in the early summer, is 4 a.m., swim and work until noon. Rita fastens herself to the ocean bed as if she had grown out of it, and clams. “I find the clams with my foot,” she says luxuriantly, “and then dig them up with my heel, and reach down and pick them up with my hand. Wonderful!” Tom paints or, when he can discover something before Rita has attended to it herself, putters. This summer it was regluing the bottoms of their lawn chairs. “He spent three weeks,” scoffs Rita. “If he had spent three weeks painting, I could have bought the whole house again.”

While most of the photos in this set were taken for that 1969 story, two others are from 25 years earlier, when Eisenstaedt also snapped a couple frames of Benton while in Martha’s Vineyard working on a story on writer W. Somerset Maugham.

Benton left his mark on the island. The collection of the Martha’s Vineyard Museum includes Benton’s portrait of schooner captain Zeb Tilton, which he painted in front of an audience during a fundraiser for the local hospital. That museum in 2019 also staged an exhibition devoted to Benton.

It’s clear this child of the heartland had a special fondness for the island. A 2014 piece about Benton in Smithsonian Magazine began with his daughter Jessie in Martha’s Vineyard at the family home, and as the story’s writer was admiring a walkway and an artfully designed retaining wall on the way to the local pond, she informed him that Benton had made both himself. The daughter explained, “This was our world.”

Thomas Hart Benton posing next to a self-portrait, 1969.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Artist Thomas Hart Benton with one of his paintings in his studio on Martha’s Vineyard, 1969.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Thomas Hart Benton displaying his work, Martha’s Vineyard, 1969.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Thomas Hart Benton holding a sketch pad, Martha’s Vineyard, 1969.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Thomas Hart Benton sketching in Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., 1969.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Painter Thomas Hart Benton sketching near a shore in Martha’s Vineyard, 1969.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Artist Thomas Hart Benton walking along the beach on Martha’s Vineyard, 1969.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Painter Thomas Hart Benton working outdoors on Martha’s Vineyard, 1969.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Artist Thomas Hart Benton and wife at his home on Martha’s Vineyard, 1969.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Artist Thomas Hart Benton with his wife, daughter and granddaughter at his home on Martha’s Vineyard, 1969.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Artist Thomas Hart Benton overseeing construction of his new house on Martha’s Vineyard, 1969.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Portrait of artist Thomas Hart Benton, 1969.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Thomas Hart Benton was visited by writer W. Somerset Maugham at the artist’s studio, 1944.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Thomas Hart Benton, Martha’s Vineyard, 1944.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Thomas Hart Benton in Martha’s Vineyard, 1969.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Atlantic City: Scenes From a Beach Town’s Heyday

June 7, 2024June 21, 2023 by Bill Syken

In 1941 legendary LIFE photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt went to Atlantic City and chronicled the bustling activity and amusements of the beach town at its peak.

In these pictures you’ll see the 1940 Miss America, Frances Burke, who had been crowned the year before at Atlantic City’s Convention Hall, posing with her sash on the beach. You’ll see the crowds at night flocking to the legendary Steel Pier amusement park, while others enjoy fine dining in a grand hotel. You’ll see women wearing bathing caps into the ocean to protect their hairdos, as was common in those days. And you’ll see boardwalk attractions that were very much of their time: one booth charged people 15 cents (about $3 today) to have their blood pressure taken. The Sodamat” sold drinks for a nickel. People mobbed a Heinz 57 specialty store that was apparently trying to live up to its “57 varieties” slogan.

Also notable is the sheer prevalence of senior citizens, many of whom went out in the summertime sun wearing suits and dresses, as if they were going to a formal event rather than a day at the shore.

These photos were shot toward the end of the Atlantic City heyday that began in the early 20th century and waned as tourists moved on to other destinations. By 1977 the town’s fortunes had sagged enough that Atlantic City turned to legalized gambling, becoming the first U.S location outside Nevada to do so. The casinos that sprouted up along the boardwalk, some of them taking the place of the grand hotels of yesteryear, did provide a shot in the arm, but the benefits have proved fleeting, especially after competing casinos began popping up all around the country. In 2023 Atlantic City still claims 27 million visitors a year.

Its battle to recapture its glory days make Atlantic City something of an avatar for nostalgia itself. In 1980 Louis Malle directed a movie called Atlantic City in which a small-time mobster played by Burt Lancaster was so consumed by romantic visions of days gone by that he memorably declared to a younger character, “You should have seen the Atlantic Ocean in those days.”

In these photos you can do just that.

Aerial view of people at the beach, Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Frances Burke, winner of the 1940 Miss American pageant, joined Miss Atlantic City on the beach Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

People going onto the beach at Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The beach at Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Readers on a hotel terrace, Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Boardwalk at Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Atlantic City, N,J., 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Lifeguards in action, Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sketch artists on the beach, Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The boardwalk at Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Posted regulations, Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A wicker rolling chair passed by a Philip Morris tobacco shop, Atlantic City, N.J. , 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Crocheting on the boardwalk, Atlantic City, N.J, 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The boardwalk at Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

People crowded a hot dog stand on the boardwalk at Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The boardwalk at Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Boardwalk at Atlantic City, N.J,, 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An exterior view of the Brighton Hotel in Atlantic City, N.J. in 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Frances Green (right) of Baltimore and Charles McIntosh of Brampton, Ontatio enjoying a ride in a wicker rolling chair through the pergola at the Brighton Hotel en route to the beach, Atlantic City, N.J., 1941

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock