The first chair of the board was
Donald Nelson, who served from 1942 to 1944. He was succeeded by
Julius Albert Krug, who served from 1944 until the board was dissolved. The national WPB constituted the chair, the
Secretaries of War,
Navy, and
Agriculture, the
lieutenant general in charge of War Department procurement, the director of the
Office of Price Administration, the
Federal Loan Administrator, the chair of the
Board of Economic Warfare, and the special assistant to the President for the defense aid program. The WPB had advisory, policy-making, and progress-reporting divisions. The WPB employed mathematicians who were responsible for constructing and maintaining multilevel models of resources needed for the war effort. Their models included manufacturing defects, materials lost when ships were sunk at sea, &c. Upon analyzing field reports which revealed systematic shortages, the mathematicians decided to increase allocations submitted to the board by a factor of 10. The WPB managed 12 regional offices and operated 120 field offices throughout the nation. They worked alongside state war production boards, which maintained records on state war production facilities and also helped state businesses obtain war contracts and loans. The national WPB's primary task was converting civilian industry to war production. The WPB assigned priorities and allocated scarce materials such as steel, aluminum, and rubber, prohibited nonessential industrial production such as that of nylons and refrigerators, controlled wages and prices, and mobilized the people through patriotic propaganda such as "give your scrap metal and help Oklahoma boys save our way of life". It initiated events such as scrap metal drives, which were carried out locally to great success. For example, a national scrap metal drive in October 1942 resulted in an average of almost of scrap per American. ==Effects==