VIII. TANKS
The tank, more than any other weapon born of the great war, may be called the joint enterprise of the three principal powers arrayed against Germany--America, France, and Great Britain. An American produced the fundamental invention, the caterpillar traction device, which enables the fortress to move. A Frenchman took the idea from this and evolved the tank as an engine of war. The British first used the terrifying monster in actual fighting.
There is a common impression throughout America that the British Army invented the tank. The impression is wrong in two ways. The French government has recently awarded the ribbon of the Legion of Honor to the French ordnance officer who is officially hailed as the tank's inventor. His right to the honor, however, is disputed by a French civilian who possesses an impressive exhibition of drawings to prove that he and not the officer is the inventor. As this is written a lively controversy over the point is in progress in France. Wherever the credit for the invention belongs, the French were first to build tanks, building them only experimentally, however, and not using them until after the British had demonstrated their effectiveness.
In the second place, it was not the British Army which adopted them first in England, but the British Navy. The tank as an idea shared the experience of many another war invention in being skeptically received by the conservative experts. The British Navy, indeed, produced the first ones in England; but to the British Army goes the glory of having first used them in actual fighting and of establishing them in the forefront of modern offensive weapons.
Brought forth as a surprise, the tanks made an effective début in the great British drive for Cambrai. Later the enemy affected to scoff at their usefulness. The closing months of the tanks' brief history, however, found them in greater favor than ever, and they were used by both sides in increasing numbers.
Up to the beginning of the summer of 1917 there was little accurate information in this country regarding the tanks. Somewhat hazy specifications then began to come from Europe about the designs of the different tanks at that particular time in use on the battle front, but these specifications were exceedingly rough and sketchy, consisting in the main of merely the fact that the machines should be able to cross trenches about 6 feet wide, that each should carry one heavy gun and two or three machine guns, and that their protection should consist of armor plate about five-eighths of an inch thick.
With these facts as a guide, two experimental machines were decided upon, and work on them was begun immediately. With these machines it was determined to test the relative advantages of a specially articulated form of caterpillar tractor with wheeled traction, making use of very large wheels, and to develop the possibilities between the gas-electric and steam systems of propulsion.
In September, 1917, decision had been made to supply the American Army with two types of tanks--one the large size, typical of that used by the British and capable of containing a dozen men, and the other a smaller one patterned after the French two-man model and known as the Renault. In September one of our officers charged with tank production was dispatched to Europe for a more intimate study of the machines used abroad and for the purpose of getting more detailed information respecting the merits of the various types of tanks, as well as to make arrangements for sending specimens here.
The decision to equip the American forces in Europe with tanks of two sizes was made only after thorough and somewhat protracted conferences with British, French, and American officers in Europe. Complete drawings and samples of the small tank were obtained from the French and shipped to this country. As all of the drawings were made in accordance with the metric system of measurements, it was necessary before anything could be done toward actual production to remake the drawings, as the machine shops here were not equipped to use the metric system.
The large British tank had been successful in its operations on the battle front, but its very decided limitations, recognized by British authorities, caused our officers to think it best to redesign the large tank in preference to copying the existing big British tank with its limitations.
General "fighting" specifications for the big tank were laid down by the British general staff at the conference at British headquarters at which American officers were present. It was agreed that this big tank, known as the Mark VIII, should be of Anglo-American design and construction. Arrangements were made for producing 1,500 of this type. To do this, Great Britain and the United States entered into a working agreement that provided for England to furnish the hulls, guns, and ammunition, while the United States was to furnish the power plant and driving details of the monster. Roughly speaking, each tank would cost about $35,000, of which $15,000 represented the American part of the job, on which some 72 contractors were at once engaged. About 50 per cent of the work on these tanks had been completed when the armistice was signed, and the first units were undergoing trials.
It was confidently expected that all of the 1,500 contracted for would have been completed by March, 1919. While these Anglo-American tanks were in the process of construction there were also being built here 1,450 all-American tanks of the large English type, and for this all-American tank 50 per cent of the work had also been done at the signing of the armistice.
In December, 1917, a sample French tank of the Renault type reached this country along with detailed drawings and a French engineer. Much difficulty then ensued in getting American concerns to take on production of this machine, because of the difficult nature of its manufacture. Considerable time, too, was taken up in changing the drawings from the French metric dimensions to the American dimensions, and this involved redesigning many parts.
In the manufacture of the armor built for the Renault type of tank the French made no attempt to adhere to simple shapes, and for this reason practically a new source of supply for this kind of armor had to be developed. Contracts for 4,440 of the Renault type of tanks were finally made. The approximate cost of each one of these machines was $11,500. Manufacturing activities for the various parts had to be divided up among more than a score of plants, so that many plants were turning out parts for these machines, while the assembling was done at only three plants, which also made a portion of the parts.
The three assembly plants were the Van Dorn Iron Works, of Cleveland, Ohio; the Maxwell Motors Co., of Dayton, Ohio; and the C. L. Best Co., also of Dayton.
Finished machines of this type started to come through in October. When the armistice was signed 64 of these 6-ton Renault tanks, each designed to carry two men and a machine gun, were completed, while up to the end of December the number of those finished amounted to 209, with 289 in the process of assembly. There is every reason to believe that had the armistice not been signed, the entire original program would have been completed by April.
During the summer and fall of 1918 our tank program had been augmented by the development of two entirely new types of tanks. One was a two-man tank weighing 3 tons, built by the Ford Motor Co. and costing in the neighborhood of $4,000. This tank, mounting one machine gun, has a speed of about 8 miles an hour. Of this type 15 had been built; and, up to the 1st of January, 1919, 500 were to have been finished, after which they were to have been turned out by the Ford Co. at the rate of 100 a day.
The other new tank developed was a successor to the French Renault, designed for production in great volume. This tank was to carry three men, instead of two, as the original Renault machine, and mount two guns, one a machine gun and the other a 37-millimeter gun. Some Renault tanks were equipped with 37-millimeter cannon instead of machine guns. Cost of production of this machine would have been very much less than that of the original Renault, while the weight of the machine would have been substantially the same and its fighting power much greater.
An outlay of about $175,000,000 was projected in the tank program, but this, of course, was greatly reduced upon the signing of the armistice. This outlay would have included, besides the cost of the machines, expenses at various plants for increased facilities for operation.
-------------------------+----------+----------+-----------+---------- | | Quantity | Quantity | Item. | Quantity | accepted | accepted | Floated | ordered. | Nov. 11, | Jan. 31, | to Nov. | | 1918. | 1919.[23] | 11, 1918. -------------------------+----------+----------+-----------+---------- Tanks: | | | | 6-ton | 4,440 | 64 | 291 | 6 Mark I | 1,000 | | | 3-ton | 15,015 | 15 | | 10 Mark 8 A. A. components | 1,500 | [24]1 | 1 | Mark 8 U. S. complete | 1,450 | | | -------------------------+----------+----------+-----------+----------
[23] Immediately upon signing of the armistice, production was slowed down as rapidly and as much as possible.
[24] Approximately 50 per cent of the production work on components for these 1,500 tanks had been completed by Nov. 11.
IX. MACHINE GUNS
The machine gun is typically and historically an American device. An American invented the first real machine gun ever produced. Another American, who had taken British citizenship, produced the first weapon of this type that could be called a success in war. Still a third American gave to the allies at the beginning of the great war a machine gun which revolutionized the world's conception of what that weapon might be; while a fourth American inventor, backed by our Ordnance Department, enabled the American forces to take into the field in France what is probably the most efficient machine gun ever put into action.
The machine gun as an idea is not modern at all. The thought has been engaging the attention of inventors for several centuries. The idea was inherent in guns which existed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but they should be called rapid-fire guns rather than machine guns, since no machine principle entered into their construction. They usually consisted of several gun barrels bound together and fired simultaneously.
The first true machine gun was the invention of Richard Jordon Gatling, an American, who in 1861 brought out what might be termed a revolving rifle. The barrels, from 4 to 10 in number, were placed parallel to each other and arranged on a common axis about which they revolved in such a manner that each barrel was brought in succession into the firing position. This gun was used to some extent in our Civil War and later in the Franco-Prussian War.
In 1866 Reffye, a French inventor, brought out the first mitrailleuse--a mounted machine gun of the Gatling type towing a limber and drawn by four horses. It had 25 rifled barrels and could fire 125 shots per minute. The weapon, however, during the Franco-Prussian War, turned out to be a failure for the reason that it proved an excellent target for the enemy's artillery and was not sufficiently mobile. Accordingly the French government abandoned it.
Sir Hiram S. Maxim, who was American born, in 1884 developed a machine gun which operated automatically by utilizing the force of the recoil. This gun was perfected and became a serviceable weapon for the British army in the Boer War. The Maxim gun barrel was cooled by the water-jacket system. When the water became hot it exhausted a jet of steam which could be seen for long distances across the South African veldt, making it a mark for the Boer sharpshooters. This defect was remedied in homemade fashion by carrying the exhaust steam through a hose into a bucket of water where it was condensed. This Maxim gun fired 500 shots a minute.
Meanwhile in this country the Gatling gun had been so improved that it became one of our standard weapons in the Spanish-American War. Later on it was used in the Russo-Japanese War.
The Colt machine gun also existed in 1898. This was the invention of John M. Browning, whose name has been prominently associated with the development of automatic firearms for the last quarter of a century.
In England the Maxim gun was taken up by the Vickers Co., eventually becoming what is known to-day as the Vickers gun. In 1903 or 1904 the American Government bought some Maxim machine guns which were then being manufactured by the Colt Co. at Hartford, Conn.
In no war previous to the one concluded in 1918 did the machine gun take a prominent place in the armaments of contending forces. The popularity of the earlier machine guns was retarded by their great weight. Some of them were so heavy that it took several men to lift them. All through the history of the development of machine guns the tendency has been toward lighter weapons, but it was not until the great war that serviceable machine guns were made light enough to give them great effectiveness and popularity. Such intense heat is developed by the rapid fire of a machine gun that unless the barrel can be kept cool the gun will soon refuse to function. The water jacket which keeps the gun cool proved to be the principal handicap to the inventors who were trying to remove weight from the device. The earliest air-cooled guns were generally unsuccessful, since the firing of a few rounds would make the barrel so hot that the cartridges would explode voluntarily in the chamber, thus rendering the weapon unsafe. The Benét-Mercié partly overcame this difficulty by having interchangeable barrels. As soon as one barrel became hot it could be quickly removed and its cool alternate inserted in its place.
These conditions led to the development of machine guns along two separate lines--the heavy type machine gun, which must be capable of long sustained fire, and the automatic rifle, whose primary requisite is extreme lightness. These requirements brought the ultimate elimination from ground use in France and in the United States of guns of the so-called intermediate weight as being incapable of fulfilling either of the above requirements to the fullest degree.
The machine gun produced by the American inventor, Col. I. N. Lewis, was a revelation when it came to the aid of the allies early in the great war. This was an air-cooled gun which could be fired for a considerable time without excessive heating, and it weighed only 25 pounds, no great burden for a soldier. The Lewis machine gun was hailed by many as the greatest invention brought into prominence by the war, although its weight put it in the intermediate class, with limitations as noted above.
Along in the first decade of the present century the Benét-Mercié automatic machine rifle was developed. This was an air-cooled gun of the automatic rifle type and weighed 30 pounds. Light as this gun was, it was still too heavy to be of great service as an automatic rifle, since a strong man would soon tire of holding 30 pounds up to his shoulder, and it was therefore in the intermediate class.
The Germans had apparently realized better than anyone else the value of machine guns in the kind of fighting which they expected to be engaged in, and therefore supplied them to their troops in greater numbers than did the other powers, having, an early report stated, 50,000 Maxim machine guns at the commencement of hostilities. The Austrian Army had adopted an excellent heavy type machine gun known as the Schwarzlose whose chief feature lay in the fact that it operated with only one major spring.
Such was the machine-gun situation, although incompletely set forth here, at the beginning of the great war. The nations, with the exception of Germany, had been slow to promote machine gunnery as a conspicuous phase of their military preparedness. In our Army we had a provisional machine-gun organization, but no special officers and few enthusiasts for machine guns. We were content with a theoretical equipment of four machine guns per regiment. The fact was that in no previous war had the machine gun demonstrated its tactical value. The chief utility of the weapon was supposed to lie in its police effectiveness in putting down mobs and civil disorders and in its value in other special situations, particularly defensive ones.
The three years of fighting in Europe before the United States was drawn in had demonstrated the highly important place which the machine gun held in modern tactics. Because of the danger of our position we had investigated many phases of armed preparedness, and in this investigation numerous questions had arisen regarding machine guns. The Secretary of War had appointed a board of five Army officers and two civilians to study the machine-gun subject, to recommend the types of guns to be adopted, the number of guns we should have per unit of troops, how these guns should be transported, and other matters pertaining to the subject. Six months before we declared war this board submitted a report strongly recommending the previously adopted Vickers machine gun and the immediate procurement of 4,600 of them. In December, 1916, the War Department acted on this report by contracting for 4,000 Vickers machine guns from the Colt Co. in addition to 125 previously ordered.
The Vickers gun belongs to what is known as the heavy type of machine gun. The board found that the tests it had witnessed did not then warrant the adoption of a light-type machine gun, although the Lewis gun of the intermediate type was then being manufactured in this country. The board, however, recommended that we conduct further competitive tests of machine guns at the Springfield Armory, in Massachusetts, these tests to begin May 1, 1917, the interval being given to permit inventors and manufacturers to prepare equipment for the competition.
The war came to us before these tests were made. On the 6th day of April, 1917, our equipment included 670 Benét-Mercié machine rifles, 282 Maxim machine guns of the 1904 model, 353 Lewis machine guns, and 148 Colt machine guns. The Lewis guns, however, were chambered for the .303 British ammunition and would not take our service cartridges.
Moreover, the manufacturing facilities for machine guns in this country were much more limited in extent than the public had any notion of then or to-day. Both England and France had depended mainly upon their own manufacturing facilities for their machine guns, the weapons which they secured on order from the United States being supplementary and subsidiary to their own supplies. We had at the outbreak of the war only two factories in the United States which were actually producing machine guns in any quantity at all. These were the Savage Arms Corporation, which in its factory at Utica, N. Y., was nearing the completion of an order for about 12,500 Lewis guns for the British and Canadian Governments, and the Marlin-Rockwell Corporation, which had manufactured a large number of Colt machine guns of the old lever type for the Russian Government. The Colt factory in the spring of 1917 was equipping itself with machinery to produce the 4,125 Vickers guns, the order for 4,000 of which had been placed the previous December by the War Department on recommendation of the Machine Gun Board. None of these guns, however, had been completed when the United States entered the war. The Colt Co. also held a contract for Vickers guns to be produced for the Russian Government.
It was therefore evident that we should have to build up in the United States almost a completely new capacity for the production of machine guns. Nevertheless, we took advantage of what facilities were at hand; and at once, in fact within a week after the declaration of war, began placing orders for machine guns. The first of these orders came on April 12, when we placed a contract with the Savage Arms Corporation for 1,300 Lewis guns, which, as manufactured by that corporation, had by this time been overhauled in design and much improved. This order was subsequently heavily increased. On June 2 we placed an order with the Marlin-Rockwell Corporation for 2,500 Colt guns, these weapons to be used in the training of our machine-gun units.
In this connection the reader should bear continually in mind that throughout the development of machine-gun manufacture we utilized all existing facilities to the limit in addition to building up new sources of supply. In other words, whenever concerns were engaged in the manufacture of machine guns, whatever their make or type, we did not stop the production of these types in these plants and convert the establishments into factories for making other weapons; but we had them continue in the manufacture in which they were engaged, giving them orders which would enable them to expand their facilities in their particular lines of production. Then when it became necessary for us to find factories to build Browning guns and some of the other weapons on which we specialized, we found new capacity entirely for this additional production.
Since we sent to France the first American division of troops less than three months after the declaration of war, they were necessarily armed with the machine guns at hand, which in this case proved to be the Benét-Mercié machine rifles.
Meanwhile the development of machine guns in Europe had been going on at a rapid rate. The standard guns in use by the French Army were now the Hotchkiss heavy machine gun and the Chauchat light automatic rifle, both effective weapons. Upon the arrival of our first American division in France the French Government expressed its willingness to arm this division with Hotchkiss and Chauchat guns; and thereafter the French facilities proved to be sufficient to equip our troops with these weapons until our own manufacture came up to requirements.
The 1st of May, 1917, brought the tests recommended by the investigation board, these tests continuing throughout the month. To this competition were brought two newly developed weapons produced by the inventive genius of that veteran of small-arms manufacture, John M. Browning. Mr. Browning had been associated with the Army's development of automatic weapons for so many years that he was peculiarly fitted to produce a mechanism that could adapt itself to the quantity production which our forthcoming effort demanded. Both the Browning heavy machine gun and the Browning light automatic rifle which were put through these tests in May had been designed with the view of enormous production quickly attained, so that their simplicity of design was one of their chief merits. After the tests the board pronounced these weapons the most effective guns of their type known to the members. The Browning heavy gun with its water jacket filled weighs 36.75 pounds, whereas the Browning automatic rifle weighs only 15.5 pounds. These May tests also proved the Lewis machine gun to be highly efficient. The board recommended the production of large numbers of all three weapons; the two Brownings and the Lewis. The board also approved the Vickers gun, which weighs 37.50 pounds, and we accordingly continued it in manufacture.
The first act of the Ordnance Department after this report had been received was to increase greatly the orders for Lewis machine guns with the Savage Arms Corporation, and the second to make preparation for an enormous manufacture of Browning machine guns and Browning automatic rifles. Mr. Browning had developed these weapons at the plant of the Colt's Patent Firearms Manufacturing Co., of Hartford, Conn., which concern owned the exclusive rights to both these weapons under the Browning patents. This company at once began the development of manufacturing facilities for the production of Browning guns. In July, 1917, orders for 10,000 Browning machine guns and 12,000 Browning automatic rifles were placed with the Colt Co. It should be remembered that the Colt Co. was in the midst of preparations for the production of large numbers of Vickers machine guns; and the Government required that the Browning manufacture should be carried on without interference with the existing contracts for Vickers guns. This requirement necessitated an enormous expansion of the Colt plant to take care of its growing contracts for Browning guns. The concern prepared to make the Browning automatic rifle, the lighter gun, at a new factory at Meriden, Conn.
In its arrangements with the Colt Co. the Government recognized that its future demands for Browning guns would be far beyond the capacity of this one concern to supply. Consequently, for a royalty consideration, the Colt Co. surrendered for the duration of the war, its exclusive rights to manufacture these weapons, this arrangement being approved by the Council of National Defense. Mr. Browning, the inventor of the guns, was also compensated by the Government for weapons of his invention manufactured during the war. In the arrangement the Government acquired the right to manufacture during the period of the emergency all other inventions that might be developed by Mr. Browning--an important consideration, since at any time the inventor might add improvements to the original designs or bring out accessories that would add to the efficiency or effectiveness of the weapons.
It may also be added that throughout this period Mr. Browning's efforts were constantly directed toward the perfection of these guns and the development of new types of guns and accessories. His services along these lines were of great value to the War Department.
When these necessary preliminary matters had been settled the Ordnance Department made a survey of the manufacturing facilities of the United States to determine what factories could best be set to work to produce Browning guns and rifles, always with special care that no existing war contracts, either for the allies or for the United States, be disturbed.
By September this survey was complete, and also by this time we had definite knowledge of the rate of enlargement of our military forces and their requirements for machine guns. We were ready to adopt the program of machine-gun construction that would keep pace with our needs, no matter what numbers of troops we might equip for battle. As a foundation for the machine-gun program, in September, 1917, we placed the following orders: 15,000 water-cooled Browning machine guns with the Remington Arms-Union Metallic Cartridge Co., of Bridgeport, Conn.; 5,000 Browning aircraft machine guns with the Marlin-Rockwell Corporation, of New Haven, Conn.; and 20,000 Browning automatic rifles with the Marlin-Rockwell Corporation. In this connection it should be explained that the Browning aircraft gun is essentially the heavy Browning with the water-jacket removed. It was practicable to use it thus stripped, because in aircraft fighting a machine gun is not fired continuously, but only at intervals, and then in short bursts of fire too brief to heat a gun beyond the functioning point.
At the same time these orders were placed the Winchester Repeating Arms Co., of New Haven, Conn., was instructed to begin its preliminary work looking to the manufacture of Browning automatic rifles; and less than a month later, in October, an order for 25,000 of these weapons was placed with this concern. Then followed in December an additional order for 10,000 Browning aircraft guns to be manufactured by the Marlin-Rockwell Corporation. A contract for Browning aircraft guns was also given to the Remington Arms-Union Metallic Cartridge Co.
Before the year ended the enormous task of providing the special machinery for this practically new industry was well under way. The Hopkins & Allen factory, at Norwich, Conn., had been engaged upon a contract for military rifles for the Belgian government. Before this order was completed the Marlin-Rockwell Corporation took over the Hopkins & Allen plant and set it to producing parts for the light Browning automatic rifles. Even this concern, however, could not produce the parts in sufficient quantities for the Marlin-Rockwell order, and the latter concern accordingly acquired the Mayo Radiator factory, at New Haven, and equipped it with machine tools for the production of Browning automatic-rifle parts. Such expansion was merely typical of what went on in the other concerns engaged in our machine-gun production. Immense quantities of new machinery had to be built and set up in all these factories. But still the Ordnance Department kept on expanding the machine-gun capacity. The New England Westinghouse Co., of Springfield, Mass., in January, 1918, completed a contract for rifles for the Russian government and was at once given an order for Browning water-cooled guns. For reasons which will be explained later, the original order for Browning aircraft guns, which had been placed with the Remington Arms Co., was later transferred to the New England Westinghouse Co. at their Springfield plant.
As soon as our officers in France could make an adequate study of our aircraft needs in machine guns, they discovered that in the three years of war only one weapon had met the requirements of the allies for a fixed machine gun that could be synchronized to fire through the whirling blades of an airplane propeller. This was the Vickers gun, which was already being manufactured in some quantity in our country, and for which three months before we entered the war we had given an order amounting to 4,000 weapons. On the other hand, the fighting aircraft of Europe were also finding an increased need for machine guns of the flexible type--that is, guns mounted on universal pivots, and which could be aimed and fired in any direction by the second man, or observer, in an airplane. The best gun we had for this purpose was the Lewis machine gun.
For technical reasons that need not be explained here, the Vickers gun was a difficult one to manufacture. The Colt Co., which was producing these weapons, in spite of their long experience in the manufacture of such arms and in spite of their utmost efforts, had been unable to deliver the finished Vickers guns on time, either to the Russian government or to this country. However, by expanding the facilities of this factory to the utmost, by the month of May, 1918, the concern achieved a production of over 50 Vickers guns per day. Doubtless, because of these same difficulties, neither the British nor the French governments had been able to procure Vickers guns as rapidly as they expanded the number of their fighting aircraft, and consequently when we entered the war we received at once a Macedonian cry from the allies to aid in equipping the allied aircraft with weapons of the Vickers type. An arrangement was readily reached in this matter. Our first troops in France needed machine guns for use on the lines. Our own factories had not yet begun the production of these weapons. Accordingly, in the fall of 1917, we arranged with the French high commissioner in this country to transfer 1,000 of our Vickers guns to the French air service, receiving in exchange French Hotchkiss machine guns for Gen. Pershing's troops.
Now while the demands of the allied service had brought forth only the Vickers machine gun as a satisfactorily synchronized weapon, we, shortly after our entry into the war, had succeeded in developing two additional types of machine guns which gave every promise of being satisfactory for use as fixed synchronized guns on airplanes. One of these, of course, was the heavy Browning gun, stripped of its water jacket; but because this was a new weapon, requiring an entirely new factory equipment for its production, the day when Brownings would begin firing at the German battle planes was remote, indeed, as time is reckoned in war.
On the other hand, our inventors had been improving a machine gun known as the Marlin, which was, in fact, the old Colt machine gun, Mr. Browning's original invention, but now of lighter construction and with a piston firing action instead of a lever control. In the face of considerable criticism at the time, we proposed to adapt this weapon to our aircraft needs as a stop-gap until Brownings were coming from the factory in satisfactory quantities. We took this course because we were prepared to turn out quantities of the Marlin guns in relatively quick time. As has been said, the Marlin resembled the Colt. The Marlin-Rockwell Corporation was already tooled up for a large production of Colt guns, and this machinery with slight modifications could be used to produce the Marlin.
We decided upon this course shortly after the declaration of war, and there followed a severe engineering and inventive task to develop a high-speed hammer mechanism and a trigger motor which would adapt the gun for use with the synchronizing mechanism. But then occurred one of those surprising successes that sometimes bless the efforts of harassed and hurried executives at their wits' end to meet the demand of some great emergency. The improvements added to the Marlin gun eventually transformed it in unforeseen fashion into an aircraft weapon of such efficiency that not only our own pilots but those of the French air forces as well were delighted with the result.
When it was proposed to adapt the Marlin gun for synchronized use on airplanes, the Ordnance Department detailed officers to cooperate with the Marlin company in its efforts. For technical reasons of design the original gun apparently had little or no adaptability to such use. Many new models were built only to be knocked to pieces after the failure of some feature to perform properly the work for which it was designed. Nevertheless the enthusiasm of the company for its project could not be chilled, and it continued the development until the gun finally became a triumph in gas-operated aircraft ordnance.
In the latter part of August we were using the Marlin gun at the front, and cablegram after cablegram told us of the surprisingly excellent performances of this weapon in actual service. It is sufficient here to quote one of these messages from Gen. Pershing, dated February 23, 1918:
Marlin aircraft guns have been fired successfully on four trips 13,000, 15,000 feet altitude, and at temperature of minus 20° F. On one trip guns were completely covered ice. Both metallic links and fabric belts proved satisfactory.
(Cartridges are fed into the fixed aircraft guns inserted in belts made of metallic links which disintegrate as the guns are fired.)
On November 2, 1918, just before the armistice was signed, Gen. Pershing cabled as follows, in part:
Marlin guns now rank as high as any with pilots, and are entirely satisfactory.
The French government tested the Marlin guns and declared them to be the equal of the Vickers. In order to meet the ever-increasing demands of the Air Service for machine guns capable of synchronization, the original order for 23,000 Marlin guns, placed in September, 1917, with the Marlin-Rockwell Corporation, was afterwards increased to 38,000. Along in 1918 the French tried to procure Marlins from this country, but by that time the Browning production was reaching great proportions, and the equipment at the Marlin plant was being altered to make Brownings.
The original order for Lewis guns, placed with the Savage Arms Corporation, had contemplated their use by our troops in the line; but when it became evident that the available manufacturing capacity of the United States would be strained to the utmost to provide enough guns for our airplanes, we diverted the large orders for Lewis guns entirely to the Air Service. This action was confirmed by cabled instructions from Gen. Pershing. For this flexible aircraft work the weapon was admirably adapted.
To the machine-gun tests, May, 1917, the producers of the Lewis gun brought an improved model, chambered for our own standard .30-caliber cartridges, instead of for the British .303 ammunition, with some 15 modifications in design in addition to those which had been presented to us before, and some added improvements in construction and in the metallurgical composition of its materials. From our point of view, this new model Lewis was a greatly improved weapon. The fact should be stated here that the Lewis gun, as so successfully made for the British service by the Birmingham Small Arms Co., had never been procurable by the United States, even in a single sample for test.
The Lewis accordingly became the standard flexible gun for our airplanes. The Savage Arms Corporation was able to expand its facilities to fulfill every need of our Air Service for this type of weapon, and therefore we made no effort to carry the manufacture of Lewis guns into other plants. Before 1917 came to an end the Savage company was delivering the first guns of its orders.
During the difficulties on the Mexican border the United States secured from the Savage Arms Co. several hundred Lewis guns made to use British ammunition. In order to be sure that the guns would be properly used, experts from the factory were sent out to instruct the troops who were to receive the guns. Ordnance officers also went out on this instruction work and established machine-gun schools along the border. The troops did not find the guns entirely satisfactory, in spite of expert instruction that they received from men from the factory. The trouble with the guns at this time was due to the fact that the company making them in the United States had been engaged in the manufacture of machine guns for a short time only and had run into several minor difficulties in the design and manufacture, difficulties which caused considerable trouble in operating the guns in the field, and which were subsequently corrected in the 15 changes mentioned above. The machine-gun schools which were established on the border taught not only the mechanism of the Lewis gun, but also those of the other types of guns with which the various troops were armed. The first thing that these schools developed was the fact that much of the trouble which had been encountered in machine guns was undoubtedly due to the fact that our soldiers were unfamiliar with the operation of the weapons. In fact, at that time we had few experts in the operation of any make of machine guns.
Soon after the establishment of machine-gun schools on the border it became apparent that the system of instruction devised by our ordnance officers had gone a long way toward overcoming the difficulties which the Army had encountered in the use of machine guns. The advantage of these schools was so marked that on the outbreak of the war with Germany the Ordnance Department established a machine-gun school at Springfield Armory. The first class of this school consisted of a large number of technical graduates from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other such schools. These men were employed as civilians, and were taught the mechanism of machine guns in a theoretical way in as thorough a manner as could possibly be done, and were given an opportunity to fire the guns and find out for themselves just what troubles were likely to occur. Many of these men were afterwards commissioned as officers in the Ordnance Department and were sent to the various cantonments throughout the United States to establish schools of instruction in the mechanism of the various machine guns.
After this class of civilians had been graduated from the Springfield school, a number of training-camp candidates were instructed and were afterwards commissioned. When the full success of this school was realized, it was enlarged and expanded, and it instructed not only civilians and training-camp candidates, but also officers of the Ordnance Department, who were trained as armament officers, instructors, etc. Later the school was still further expanded to include a large class of enlisted men for duty as armorers. In all, over 500 officers were instructed at the Springfield school.
When the war with Germany ceased, the graduates of the Springfield Armory machine gun school were found in almost every line of endeavor connected with arms, ammunition, and kindred subjects.
Now, let us look at the first results of the early effort in machine-gun production. Within a month after the first drafted troops reached their cantonments we were able to ship 50 Colt guns from the Marlin-Rockwell Corporation to each National Army camp, these guns to be used exclusively for training our machine-gun units. Before another 30 days passed we had added to the machine-gun equipment of each camp 20 Lewis guns of the ground type, and 30 Chauchat automatic rifles which we bought from the French. (The Lewis ground gun was almost identical with the aircraft type, except that its barrel was surrounded by an aluminum heat radiator for cooling, a device not needed on the guns of airplanes because of the latter's shorter periods of fire.) Also, in the autumn of 1917 we were able to issue to each National Guard camp a training equipment consisting of 30 Colt machine guns, 30 Chauchat automatic rifles, and some 50 to 70 Lewis ground guns.
At the beginning of 1918 our machine-gun manufacture was well under way. Such was the industrial situation at this time: the Savage Arms Corporation was producing Lewis aircraft machine guns of the flexible type; the Marlin-Rockwell Corporation was manufacturing large quantities of Marlin aircraft machine guns of the synchronizing type; the Colt's Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Co. was building Vickers machine guns of the heavy, mobile type; and a number of great factories were tooling up at top speed for the immense production of Browning guns of all types soon to begin. Meanwhile we kept increasing our orders as rapidly as conditions warranted.
By May, 1918, the first 12 divisions of American troops had reached France. They were all equipped with Hotchkiss heavy machine guns and Chauchat automatic rifles--both kinds supplied by the French government. During May and June, 11 American divisions sailed, and the heavy machine-gun equipment of these troops was American built, consisting of Vickers guns. For their light machine guns these 11 divisions received the French Chauchat rifles in France. After June, 1918, all American troops to sail were supplied with a full equipment of Browning guns, both of the light and heavy types. Part of these Brownings were issued to the troops before they sailed, and the rest upon their arrival in France.
The Savage Arms Corporation built nearly 6,000 Lewis guns of the ground type before diverting their manufacture to the aircraft type exclusively. On May 11, 1918, this concern had built 16,000 Lewis guns for the American Government, of which more than 10,000 were for use on airplanes. By the end of July the company had turned out 16,000 aircraft Lewis guns, not to mention 6,000 of the same sort which it had built and supplied to the American Navy. By the end of September we had accepted over 25,000 Lewis aircraft guns. On the date of the signing of the armistice approximately 32,000 of these guns had been completed.
By the first of May, 1918, the Marlin-Rockwell Corporation had turned out nearly 17,000 Marlin aircraft guns with the synchronizing appliances. Thirty days later its total had reached 23,000. On October 1 the entire order of 38,000 Marlin guns had been completed, and the company began the work of converting its plant into a Browning factory.
On May 1, 1918, the Colt Co. had delivered more than 2,000 Vickers guns of the ground type. Before the end of July this output totaled 8,000, besides 3,000 Vickers guns which were later converted to aircraft use. In addition the Colt Co. had undertaken another machine-gun project of which nothing has been said before. This concern had completed manufacture of about 1,000 Vickers guns for the Russian government. At this time the aviators at the front began using machine guns of large caliber, principally against observation balloons and dirigible aircraft. The allies had developed an 11-millimeter Vickers machine gun for this purpose, which means a gun with a bore diameter of nearly one-half inch. The Ordnance Department undertook to change these Russian Vickers guns into 11-millimeter aircraft machine guns. This undertaking was successfully carried through by the Colt Co., which delivered the first modified weapon in July and had increased its deliveries to a total of 800 guns by November 11, 1918.
When the fighting ceased the Colt Co. had delivered 12,000 heavy Vickers guns and nearly 1,000 of the aircraft type. As was mentioned before, a considerable quantity of Vickers ground guns had been subsequently converted to aircraft use. The production of ground-type Vickers ceased on September 12, 1918, by which date the manufacture of Browning guns had developed sufficiently to meet all of our future needs. Thereafter the Colt plant produced the aircraft types of Vickers guns only. We shipped 6,309 Vickers ground guns overseas before the armistice was signed, besides equipping six France-bound divisions of troops with these weapons in this country, making a total of 7,653 American-built Vickers in the hands of the American Expeditionary Forces. Later, we planned to replace these weapons with Brownings, turning over the Vickers guns to the Air Service.
But America's greatest feat in machine-gun production was the development of the Browning weapons. These guns, as has been noted, were of three types: the heavy Browning water-cooled gun, weighing 37 pounds, for the use of our troops in the field; the light Browning automatic rifle, weighing 15.5 pounds, and in appearance similar to the ordinary service rifle, also for the use of our soldiers fighting on the ground; and, finally, the Browning synchronized aircraft gun of the rigid type, which was the Browning heavy machine gun made lighter by the elimination of its water-jacket, speeded up to double the rate of fire, and provided with the additional attachment of the synchronized firing mechanism. Let us take up separately the expansion of the facilities for manufacturing these types.
In the first place, the Colt Co., which owned the Browning rights, in September, 1917, turned over to the Winchester Repeating Arms Co. the task of developing the drawings and gauges for the manufacture of Browning automatic rifles on a large scale. The latter concern did a splendid job in this work. Early in March, 1918, the Winchester Co. had tooled up its plant and turned out the first Browning rifles. These were shipped to Washington and demonstrated in the hands of gunners before a distinguished audience of officers and other Government officials, and their great success assured the country that America had an automatic rifle worthy of her inventive and manufacturing prestige. By the first of May the Winchester Co. had turned out 1,200 Browning rifles.
The Marlin-Rockwell Corporation attained its first production of Browning rifles in June, 1918, by which time the Winchester Co. had built about 4,000 of them. Before the end of June the Colt Co. added its first few hundreds of Browning rifles to the expanding output. By the end of July the total production of Browning rifles had reached 17,000, produced as follows: 9,700 by Winchester; 5,650 by Marlin-Rockwell; and 1,650 by Colt's. Two months later this total had been doubled--the exact figure being 34,500 Browning rifles--and on November 11, 1918, when the flag fell on this industrial race, the Government had accepted 52,238 light Browning rifles. Of these in round numbers the Winchester Co. had built 27,000; Marlin-Rockwell, 16,000; and Colt's, 9,000.
But these figures give only an indication of the Browning rifle program as it had expanded up to the time hostilities ceased. When the armistice was signed our orders for these guns called for a production of 288,174, and still further large orders were about to be placed. As an illustration of the size which this manufacture would have attained, we had completed negotiations with one concern whereby its factory capacity was to be increased to produce 800 Browning rifles every 24 hours by June of 1919. After the armistice was signed we canceled orders calling for the manufacture of 186,000 Browning automatic rifles.
Of the 48,082 of these weapons sent overseas, 38,860 went in bulk on supply transports, while the rest constituted the equipment of 12 Yankee divisions which carried their automatic rifles with them.
The Colt Co. itself developed the drawings and gauges for the quantity manufacture of the Browning gun of the ground type. It will be remembered that the New England Westinghouse Co. was the first outside concern to begin the manufacture of these weapons. The New England Westinghouse Co. received its orders in January, 1918, and within four months had turned out its first completed guns, being the first company to deliver these weapons to the Government. By the first of May it had delivered 85 heavy Brownings.
By the middle of May the Remington Co. came into production of the heavy Brownings. The Colt Co., which was required to continue its production of Vickers guns, was also retarded by the duty of preparing the drawings for the other concerns who had contracted to make heavy Brownings; and this factory, the birthplace of the Browning gun, was not able to produce any until the end of June. By this time the Westinghouse Co. had turned out more than 2,500 heavy Brownings, and Remington over 1,600.
By the end of July the production of Browning machine guns at all plants had reached the total of 10,000; and two months later 26,000 heavy Brownings were in the hands of the Government. In the following six weeks this production was enormously increased, the total receipts by the Government up to November 11 amounting to about 42,000 heavy Browning guns. In round numbers Westinghouse produced 30,000 of these, Remington 11,000, and Colt about 1,000.
We shipped in all 30,582 heavy Brownings to the American Expeditionary Forces, 27,894 going on supply ships and the rest in the hands of 12 divisions of troops.
These shipments actually put in France before the armistice was signed enough heavy Brownings to equip completely all the American troops on French soil. However, at the time these supplies were arriving the fighting against the retreating German Army was at its height, and there was no time for the troops on the line to exchange their British-built and French-built machine guns for Brownings, nor to replace their Chauchat automatic rifles with light Brownings, of which there was also an ample supply in France.
A report of the Chief Ordnance Officer, American Expeditionary Forces, as of February 15, 1919, shows that, except for antiaircraft use, Vickers and Hotchkiss machine guns with troops had been almost entirely replaced by heavy Brownings on that date, and that Chauchat automatic rifles had been replaced by light Brownings.
When the armistice was signed we had placed orders for 110,000 heavy Brownings and were contemplating still further orders. We later reduced these orders by 37,500 guns.
Because the Marlin aircraft gun had performed so satisfactorily, and because our facilities for the manufacture of this weapon were large, the production of the Browning aircraft guns had not been pushed to the limit, which latter action would have interfered with the production of the Marlin gun at a time when it was most essential to obtain an immediate supply of fixed synchronized aircraft guns. Only a few hundred Browning aircraft guns had been completed before the close of the fighting. In its tests and performances this weapon had been speeded up to a rate of fire of from 1,000 to 1,300 shots per minute, which far surpassed the performances of any synchronized gun then in use on the western front.
By the spring of 1918 it became evident that we would require a special machine gun for use in our tanks. Several makes of guns were considered for this purpose and finally discarded for one reason or another. The ultimate decision was to take 7,250 Marlin aircraft guns which were available and adapt them to tank service by the addition of sights, aluminum heat radiators, and handle grips and triggers. The rebuilding of these guns at the Marlin-Rockwell plant when the armistice was signed was progressing at a rate that insured the adequate equipment of the first American-built tanks.
Meanwhile the Ordnance Department undertook the production of a Browning tank machine gun. This gun was developed by taking a heavy Browning water-cooled gun, eliminating the water jacket and substituting an air-cooled barrel of heavy construction, and adding hand grips and sights. The work was begun in September, 1918, and the completed model was delivered by the end of October. Before the armistice was signed five sample guns had been built, demonstrated at the Tank Corps training camps, and unanimously approved by the officers of the Tank Corps designated to test it. After a test in France, the report stated: "The gun is by far the best weapon for tank use that is now known, and the Department is to be congratulated upon its development." An order for 40,000 Browning tank guns was given to the Westinghouse Co. This concern, already equipped for the manufacture of heavy Browning guns, was scheduled to start its deliveries in December, 1918, and to turn out 7,000 tank guns per month after January 1, 1919. After the signing of the armistice, however, the order was cut down to approximately 1,800 guns. By March 27, 1919, the company had delivered 500 Browning tank guns, and the order for the remaining 1,300 was thereafter canceled.
After the entrance of the United States in the war the armies on both sides developed a new type of machine-gun fighting, which consisted in indirect firing, or laying down barrages of machine-gun bullets. This required the development of special tripods, clinometers for laying angles of elevation, and other special equipment; and speedy progress was being made in the quantity production of this matériel when the war came to an end.
In a complete machine-gun program not only must the guns themselves be built, but they must be fully equipped with accessories, such as tripods, extra magazines, carts for carrying both guns and ammunition, feed belts of various types, belt-loading machines, observation and fire control instruments, and numerous other accessories the manufacture of which is absolutely essential but usually unseen by the public. The extent of our work in accessories is indicated by a few approximate figures of deliveries up to the signing of the armistice: nonexpendable ammunition boxes, 1,000,000; expendable ammunition boxes, 7,000; expendable belts, 5,000; nonexpendable belts, 1,000,000; belt-loading machines, 25,000; water boxes, 110,000; machine-gun carts, 17,000; ammunition carts, 15,000; tripods, 25,000.
The aircraft machine guns also required numerous accessories, some of them highly complicated in their manufacture. This special equipment consisted in part of special mounts for the guns, synchronizing attachments, metallic disintegrating link belts, electric heaters to keep the guns warm at the low temperatures at the high altitudes of the aviator's battle field, and many other smaller items.
Not only our own forces but the allied armies as well were enthusiastic about the Browning guns of both types, as soon as they had seen them in action. The best proof of this is that in the summer of 1918 the British, Belgian, and French Governments all made advances to us as to the possibility of the United States producing Browning automatic rifles for their respective forces. On November 6, a few days before the end of hostilities, the French high commissioner requested that we supply 15,000 light Browning rifles to the French Army. We would not make this arrangement at the time because we thought it inadvisable to divert any of our supplies of these guns from our own troops until the spring of 1919, when we expected that our capacity for making light Brownings would exceed the demands of our own troops. Our demand for the lighter guns, incidentally, was far greater than we had originally expected it to be. As soon as the Browning rifle was seen in action the General Staff of our Expeditionary Forces at once increased by 50 per cent the number of automatic rifles assigned to each company of troops, and we were manufacturing to meet this augmented demand when the war ended. By spring of 1919 we expected to be furnishing light Brownings to the British and French Armies as well as to our own.
Both types of Browning guns proved to be unqualified successes in actual battle, as numerous reports of our Ordnance officers overseas indicated. The following report from an officer, in addition to carrying historical information of interest to those following our machine-gun development, is typical of numerous other official descriptions of these weapons in battle use:
The guns [heavy Brownings] went into the front line for the first time in the night of September 13. The sector was quiet and the guns were practically not used at all until the advance, starting September 26. In the action which followed, the guns were used on several occasions for overhead fire, one company firing 10,000 rounds per gun into a wood in which there were enemy machine-gun nests, at a range of 2,000 meters. Although the conditions were extremely unfavorable for machine guns on account of rain and mud, the guns performed well. Machine-gun officers reported that during the engagement the guns came up to the fullest expectations and, even though covered with rust and using muddy ammunition, they functioned whenever called upon to do so.
After the division had been relieved, 17 guns from one company were sent in for my inspection. One of these had been struck by shrapnel, which punctured the water jacket. All of the guns were completely coated with mud and rust on the outside, but the mechanism was fairly clean. Without touching them or cleaning them in any way, except to run a rod through the bore, a belt of 250 rounds was fired from each without a single stoppage of any kind.
It can be concluded from the try-out in this division that the gun in its operation and functioning when handled by men in the field is a success.
The Browning automatic rifles were also highly praised by our officers who had to use them. Although these guns received hard usage, being on the front for days at a time in the rain and when the gunners had little opportunity to clean them, they invariably functioned well.
On November 11 we had built 52,238 Browning automatic rifles in this country. We had bought 29,000 Chauchats from the French. Without providing replacement guns or reserves, this was a sufficient number to equip over 100 divisions with 768 guns to the division. This meant light machine guns enough for a field army of 3,500,000 men. In heavy machine guns at the signing of the armistice we had 3,340 of the Hotchkiss make, 9,237 Vickers, and 41,804 Brownings, or a total of 54,627 heavy machine guns--enough to equip the 200 divisions of an army of 7,000,000 men, not figuring in reserve weapons.
The daily maximum production of Browning rifles reached 706 before our manufacturing efforts were suddenly stopped, and that of Browning heavy machine guns 575. At the peak of our production a total of 1,794 machine guns and automatic rifles of all types was produced within a period of twenty-four hours.
Based upon our output in July, August, and September, 1918, we were producing monthly 27,270 machine guns and machine rifles of all types, while the average monthly production of France was at this time 12,126 and that of Great Britain 10,947.
In total production between April 6, 1917, and November 11, 1918, we had turned out 181,662 machine guns and machine rifles, as against 229,238 by France and 181,404 by England in that same period.
One of the important features which contributed to the success of the machine-gun program was the cordial spirit of cooperation which the War Department met from the machine-gun manufacturers. Competitive commercial advantages weighed not at all against the national need, and the Department found itself possessed of a group of enthusiastic and loyal partners with whom it could attack the vast problem of machine-gun supply. Without these partners and this spirit, the problem could not have been solved. The United States, starting almost from the zero point, developed in little more than a year a machine-gun production greater than that of any other country in the world, although some of those countries had been fighting a desperate war for three years and building machine guns to the limit of their capacity.
_Acceptances of automatic arms, by months, in United States and Canada on United States Army orders only._
-------------------+------+----------------------------------------- | | 1918 | +------+------+------+------+------+------ | To | | | | | | | Jan. | | | | | | | 1. | Jan.| Feb.| Mar.| Apr.| May.| June. -------------------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------ _Ground machine | | | | | | | guns._ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Browning heavy | | | | | 12| 922| 2,620 Vickers field | 2,031| 1,021| 951| 1,386| 1,341| 1,208| 1,349 Colt | 2,500| | | | | | 305 Lewis field | 2,209| 291| | | | | Lewis caliber .303 | 750| | | | 300| | | | | | | | | _Aircraft machine | | | | | | | guns._ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Browning | | | | | | | Marlin | 12| 3,134| 3,850| 3,419| 5,750| 6,250| 219 Lewis flexible | 6| 540| 1,085| 1,568| 1,333| 2,629| 4,342 Vickers caliber .30| | | | | | | Vickers 11-mm | | | | | | | 72 | | | | | | | _Tank machine | | | | | | | guns._ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Browning | | | | | | | Marlin | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Automatic rifles.| | | | | | | | | | | | | | Browning light | | | 15| 548| 363| 1,822| 3,876 +------+------+------+------+------+------+------ Total | 7,508| 4,986| 5,901| 6,921| 9,099|12,831|12,783 -------------------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------
-------------------+-----------------------------------------+-------- | 1918 | |------+------+------+------+------+------+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | July.| Aug.| Sept.| Oct.| Nov.| Dec.| Total. -------------------+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------- _Ground machine | | | | | | | guns._ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Browning heavy | 4,225| 9,182| 8,838|14,639| 6,654| 9,516| 56,608 Vickers field | 1,565| 789| 381| 103| | | 12,125 Colt | 11| | | | | | 2,816 Lewis field | | | | | | | 2,500 Lewis caliber .303 | | | | | | | 1,050 | | | | | | | _Aircraft machine | | | | | | | guns._ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Browning | | | | 211| 363| 6| 580 Marlin | 6,356| 7,269| 1,691| 50| | | 38,000 Lewis flexible | 4,338| 5,595| 3,973| 5,857| 3,792| 4,142| 39,200 Vickers caliber .30| | | 307| 575| 373| 1,221| 2,476 Vickers 11-mm | 263| 95| 254| 117| 161| 276| 1,238 | | | | | | | _Tank machine | | | | | | | guns._ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Browning | | | | | 3| 1| 4 Marlin | [25]103| [25]9[25]316[25]460[25]582[25]1,470 | | | | | | | Automatic rifles.| | | | | | | | | | | | | | Browning light | 8,196|12,517| 6,896|13,687|11,368|10,672| 69,960 +------+------+------+------+------+------+-------- Total |24,954|35,447|22,340|35,239|22,714|25,834| 226,557 -------------------+------+------+------+------+------+------+--------
[25] Modified from aircraft, not included in total.
X. SERVICE RIFLES
Although in the 19 months of American belligerency in the great war we had sent to France upward of two million soldiers, each rifleman among them as he stepped aboard his transport carried his own gun. This weapon, which was to be his comrade and best friend in the perilous months to come, was an American rifle, a rifle at least the equal of any in use by soldiers of other nations, a rifle manufactured in an American plant. It may have been one of the dependable Springfield rifles. More likely, it was a modified 1917 Enfield, built from a design British in fundamental character, but modified for greater efficiency by American ordnance officers after the actual entry of the United States in the great struggle. When it is considered that even a nation of such military genius as France, especially skilled as she was in the construction of military weapons, was three years developing her full ordnance program, even though working at top speed, the rifle production of the United States stands out as one of the feats of the war.
The story of the modified 1917 Enfield, which was the rifle on which the American Expeditionary Forces based their chief dependence, is an inspiring chapter in our munitions history. To get this weapon we temporarily forsook the most accurate Army rifle the world had ever seen and straightway produced in great quantities another one, a new model, that proved itself to be almost, if not quite, as serviceable for the kind of warfare in which we were to engage. It is the story of triumph over difficulties, of American productive genius at its best.
America, since the days of Daniel Boone a nation of crack shots, was naturally the home of good rifles. Hence, perhaps, it is not surprising that the United States should be the nation to produce the closest shooting military rifle known in its day. This was the United States rifle, model of 1903, popularly called the "Springfield."
The Springfield rifle had superseded in our Army the Krag, which we had used in the Spanish-American War. In that conflict the Spanish Army used a rifle of German design, the Mauser. Our ordnance officers at that time considered the Krag to be a more accurate weapon than the Mauser. Still we were not satisfied with the Krag, and, after several years of development, in 1903 we brought out the Springfield, the most accurate and quickest firing rifle that had ever come from an arsenal.
There was no questioning the superiority of the Springfield in point of accuracy. Time after time we pitted our Army shooting teams against those of the other nations of the earth and won the international competitions with the Springfield. We won the Olympic shoot of 1908 over England, Canada, France, Sweden, Norway, Greece, and Denmark. Again, in 1912, we won the Olympic shoot against England, Sweden, South Africa, France, Norway, Greece, Denmark, Russia, and Austria-Hungary. In 1912 the Springfield rifle, in the hands of Yankee marksmen, won the Pan American match at Buenos Aires, and in 1913 it defeated Argentina, Canada, Sweden, and Peru. In all of these matches the Mauser rifle was fired by various teams; but the Springfield never failed to defeat this German weapon, which it was to meet later in the fighting of the great war.
Altogether the Springfield rifle defeated the military rifles of 15 nations in shooting competitions prior to the war, and in 1912, at Ottawa, an American team firing Springfields set marksmanship records for 800 yards, 900 yards, and 1,000 yards that have never been broken. Much is to be said for the men behind these guns, but due credit must be given to the rifles that put the bullets where the marksmen aimed.
Such was the history of this splendid arm when the United States neared the brink of the great conflict. But as war became inevitable for us and we began to have a realization of the scale on which we must prosecute it, our ordnance officers studying the rifle problem became persuaded that our Army could not hope to carry this magnificent weapon to Europe as its chief small-arms reliance. A brief examination of the industrial problem presented by the rifle situation in 1917 should make it clear even to a man unacquainted with machinery and manufacturing why it would be humanly impossible to equip our troops with the rifle in developing which our ordnance experts had spent so many years.
The Model 1903 rifle had been built in two factories and only two--the Springfield Armory, Springfield, Mass., and the Rock Island Arsenal at Rock Island, Ill. Our Government for several years prior to 1917 had cut down its expenditures for the manufacture of small arms and ammunition. The result was that the Rock Island Arsenal had ceased its production of Springfields altogether, while the output of rifles from the Springfield Armory had been greatly reduced.
This meant that the skilled artisans once employed in the manufacture of Springfield rifles had been scattered to the four winds. When in early 1917 it became necessary to speed up the production of rifles to the limit in these two establishments those in charge of the undertaking found that they could recover only a few of the old, trained employees. Yet even when we had restaffed these two factories with skilled men their combined production at top speed could not begin to supply the quantity of rifles which our impending Army would need. Therefore, it was obviously necessary that we procure rifles from private factories.
Why, then, was not the manufacture of Springfields extended to the private plants? Some ante bellum effort, indeed, had been made looking to the production of Springfields in commercial plants, but lack of funds had prevented more than the outlining of the scheme.
Any high-powered rifle is an intricate production. The 1917 Enfield is relatively simple in construction, yet the soldier can dismount his Enfield into 86 parts, and some of these parts are made up of several component pieces. Many of these parts must be made with great precision, gauged with microscopic nicety, and finished with unusual accuracy. To produce Springfields on a grand scale in private plants would imply the use of thousands of gauges, jigs, dies, and other small tools necessary for such a manufacture, as well as that of great quantities of special machines. None of this equipment for Springfield rifle manufacture had been provided, yet all of it must be supplied to the commercial plants before they could turn out rifles.
We should have had to spend preliminary months or even years in building up an adequate manufacturing equipment for Springfields, the while our boys in France were using what odds and ends of rifle equipment the Government might be able to purchase for them, except for a condition in our small-arms industry in early 1917 that now seems to have been well-nigh providential.
Among others, both the British and the Russian Governments in the emergency of 1914 and 1915 had turned to the United States to supplement their sources of rifle supply while they, particularly the British, were building up their home manufacturing capacity. There were five American concerns engaged in the production of rifles on these large foreign orders when we entered the war. Three of them were the Winchester Repeating Arms Co., of New Haven, Conn.; the Remington Arms-Union Metallic Cartridge Co., of Ilion, N. Y.; and the Remington Arms Co. of Delaware at its enormous war-contract factory at Eddystone, Pa., later a part of the Midvale Steel & Ordnance Co. These concerns had developed their manufacturing facilities on a huge scale to turn out rifles for the British Government. By the spring of 1917 England had built up her own manufacturing facilities at home, and the last of her American contracts were nearing completion.
Here, then, was at hand a huge capacity which, added to our Government arsenals, could turn out every rifle the American Army would require, regardless of how many troops we were to put in the field.
But what of the gun that these plants were making--the British Enfield rifle? As soon as war became a certainty for us the Ordnance Department sent its best rifle experts to these private plants to study the British Enfield in detail. They returned to headquarters without enthusiasm for it; in fact, regarding it as a weapon not good enough for an American soldier.
A glance at the history of the British Enfield will make clear some of our objections to it. Until the advent of the 1903 Springfield, the German Mauser had occupied the summit of military-rifle supremacy. From 1903 until the advent of the great war these two rifles, the Mauser and the Springfield, were easily the two leaders. The British Army had been equipped with the Lee-Enfield for some years prior to the outbreak of the great war, but the British ordnance authorities had been making vigorous efforts to improve this weapon. The Enfield was at a disadvantage principally in its ammunition. It fired a .303-caliber cartridge with a rimmed head. From a ballistic standpoint this cartridge was virtually obsolete.
In 1914 a new, improved Enfield, known as the Pattern '14, was brought out in England, and the British Government was on the point of adopting it when the great war broke out. This was to be a gun of .276 caliber and was to shoot rimless, or cannelured, cartridges similar to the standard United States ammunition. The war threw the whole British improved Enfield project on the scrap heap. England was no more equipped to build the improved Enfields than we were to produce Springfields in our private plants. The British arsenals and industrial plants and her ammunition factories were equipped to turn out in the quantities demanded by the war only the old "short Enfield" and its antiquated .303 rimmed cartridges.
Now England was obliged to turn to outside sources for an additional rifle supply, and in the United States she found the three firms named above willing to undertake large rifle contracts. Having to build up factory equipment anew in the United States for this work, England found that she might as well have the American plants manufacture the improved Enfield as the older type. To produce the 1914 Enfield without change in America and the older-type Enfield in England would complicate the British rifle-ammunition manufacture, since these rifles used cartridges of different sizes and types. Accordingly, the British selected the improved Enfield for the American manufacture, but modified it to receive the .303 rimmed cartridges.
This was the gun, then, that we found being produced at New Haven, Ilion, and Eddystone in the spring of 1917. The rifle had many of the characteristics of the 1903 Springfield, but it was not so good as the Springfield in its proportions, and its sights lacked some of the refinements to which Americans were accustomed. Yet even so it was a weapon obviously superior to either the French or Russian rifle. The ammunition which it fired was out of the question for us. Not only was it inferior, but, since we expected to continue to build the Springfields at the Government arsenals, we should, if we adopted the Enfield as it was, be forced to produce two sizes of rifle ammunition, a condition leading to delay and unsatisfactory output. The rifle had been designed originally for rimless ammunition and later modified; so it could be modified readily back again to shoot our standard .30-caliber Springfield cartridges.
It may be seen that the Ordnance Department had before it three courses open, any one of which it might take. It could spend the time to equip private plants to manufacture Springfields, in which case the American rifle program would be hopelessly delayed. It could get guns immediately by contracting for the production of British .303 Enfields, in which case the American troops would carry inferior rifles with them to France. Or, it could take a relatively brief time, accept the criticism bound to come from any delay, however brief such delay might be and however justified by the practical conditions, and modify the Enfield to take our ammunition, in which case the American troops would be adequately equipped with a good weapon.
The decision to modify the Enfield was one of the great decisions of the executive prosecution of the war--all honor to the men who made it.
The three concerns which had been manufacturing the British weapons conceded that it should be changed to take the American ammunition. Each company sent to the Springfield Armory on May 10, 1917, a model modified rifle to be tested. The test showed the weapons still to be unsatisfactory, principally because they had not been standardized. Standardization was regarded as an essential for two reasons, one of them a matter of practical tactics in the field and the other relating to production speed.
To begin with, the soldier on the battle field is his own rifle repairman. His unit usually has on hand a supply of weapons damaged or out of commission for one reason or another. If, therefore, any part of the soldier's rifle is broken or damaged, he can go to the stock of unused guns on hand and take from another rifle the part which he requires; and it will fit his gun, provided there has been standardization in the rifle manufacture at home. But if the guns have not been standardized and each weapon is a filing and tinkering job in the assembly room of the factory, then the soldier in the field is not likely to be able to find a part that will fit on his gun; and his rifle, if damaged, goes out of commission. Or, if he finds a part which fits but does not fit perfectly, his gun may break as he fires it, and he himself may suffer serious injury.
In the second place, standardization is essential to great speed in production. If one plant producing rifles encounters a shortage in any of the parts of the gun, it can send to another plant and secure a supply of these parts, a favorable condition in manufacture that is impossible if the weapon has not been standardized. The value of standardization in speeding up manufacture, however, is best shown in the actual records of rifle production during the war. The fastest mechanic in any of the three Enfield factories before 1917 had set an assembly record of 50 rifles in one working day for the British gun. After we had standardized the Enfield the high assembly record was 280 rifles a day, while the assemblers in the plants averaged 250 rifles a day per man when the work was well started.
The Enfields sent to the Springfield Armory test were not standardized at all, but were largely hand fitted. Little or no attempt had been made to obtain interchangeability of parts among the rifles turned out by the three plants. Even the bolt taken from one company's rifle would not enter the receiver of another company's.
The Ordnance Department was confronted with the dilemma of approving and issuing a weapon pronounced unsuitable by its own experts and thus obtaining speedy production, or of delaying until interchangeability was established. It chose the latter course.
On July 12 a second set of rifles had been tested. These came more nearly up to our ideas of standardization, but were still not entirely satisfactory. Nevertheless we decided to go ahead with production and improve the standardization as we went along. The Winchester and Ilion plants elected to start work on that understanding, but Eddystone preferred to wait for the final requirements. Ilion afterwards decided to postpone production until the final specifications were adopted. It would have been well if the same course had been followed at the Winchester plant, for word came later from Europe not to send over rifles of Winchester manufacture of that period. The final drawings of the standardized and modified Enfield did not come from the plants until August 18. Six days later the thousands of dimensions had been carefully checked and finally approved by the ordnance officers, and after that production started off in earnest.
The wisdom of adopting the Enfield rifle and modifying it to meet our requirements instead of extending the manufacture of Springfields was almost immediately apparent, for in August, almost as soon as the final drawings were approved, the first rifles were delivered to the Government. This was possible because the modifications which we adopted did not require any fundamental changing of machinery.
The principal equipment of these plants was in place and ready to begin manufacturing Enfields at once; and while the changes in the rifle were under discussion, the manufacturers were producing their gauges and small tools as each modification was decided upon.
While we did not succeed in attaining, nor did we attempt to attain, in fact, complete standardization and interchangeability of the parts of the Enfields, we did all that was practicable in this direction, several tests showing that the average of interchangeability was about 95 per cent of the total parts.
Meanwhile we were building up the working staffs of the Rock Island Arsenal and Springfield Armory and speeding the production of Springfields. Before the war ended the Rock Island Arsenal, which was making spare parts for Springfields, reached an output equaling 1,000 completed rifles a day, while the Springfield Armory attained a high average of 1,500 assembled rifles a day in addition to spare parts equaling 100 completed rifles daily.
The Eddystone plant finished its British contracts on June 1, Winchester produced its last British rifle on June 28, and Ilion on July 21, 1917. Winchester delivered the first modified Enfields to us on August 18, Eddystone on September 10, and Ilion about October 28.
The progress in the manufacture was thereafter steadily upward. During the week ending February 2, 1918, the daily production of military rifles in the United States was 9,247, of which 7,805 were modified Enfields produced in the three private plants, and 1,442 were Springfields built in the two arsenals. The total production for that week was 50,873 guns of both types, or nearly enough for three Army divisions. In spite of the time that went into the standardization of the Enfield rifle, all troops leaving the United States were armed with American weapons at the ports of embarkation.
Ten months after we declared war against Germany we were producing in a week four times as many rifles as Great Britain had turned out in a similar period after 10 months of war, and our production was then twice as large in volume as Great Britain had attained in the war up to that time. By the middle of June, 1918, we had passed the million and one-half mark in the production of rifles of all sorts, this figure including over 250,000 rifles which had been built upon original contracts placed by the former Russian government.
The production of Enfields and Springfields during the war up to November 9, 1918, amounted to a total of 2,506,307 guns. Of these 312,878 were Springfield rifles produced by the two Government arsenals. We had started the war with a reserve of 600,000 Springfield rifles on hand, and in addition stored in our armories and arsenals were 160,000 Krags. These latter had to be cleaned and repaired in large part before they could be used. From the Canadian Government we purchased 20,000 Ross rifles. The deliveries of Russian rifles totaled 280,049. This gave us a total equipment of 3,575,356 rifles. Since approximately one-half of the soldiers of an army as actually organised carry rifles, the number of rifles procured in all by the Ordnance Department was sufficient to arm both for fighting and for training an army of 7,000,000 men, disregarding reserve and maintenance rifles.
The Enfield thus became the dominant rifle of our military effort. With its modified firing mechanism it could use the superior Springfield cartridges with their great accuracy. The Enfield sights, by having the peep sight close to the eye of the firer, gave even greater quickness of aim than the Springfield sights afforded. In this respect the weapon was far superior to the Mauser, which was the main dependence of the German Army. All in all to a weapon that made scant appeal to our ordnance officers in a few weeks we added improvements and modifications that made the 1917 Enfield a gun that for the short-range fighting in Europe compared favorably with the Springfield and was to the allied cause a distinct contribution which America substantially could claim to be her own.
Standardization not only made possible the ultimate speed with which our rifles were produced but, together with the care of the Government in purchasing raw materials and in drawing contracts, it saved a great deal of money in the cost of these weapons. The British had been paying approximately $42 apiece for Enfields produced in the United States. The modified Enfields cost the Government approximately $26 each. Thus in the total production of 2,202,429 modified Enfields, we saved $37,441,293 compared with what this weapon had cost in the past.
Both the Springfield and the 1917 Enfield rifle possessed advantages of accuracy and speed of fire over the German Mauser. It is true that the Mauser fired a heavier bullet than that of our standard ammunition and sent it with somewhat greater velocity; but at the longer fighting ranges the Mauser bullet is not so accurate as the United States bullet. Due to its peculiar shape, the Mauser bullet is apt to tumble end over end at long ranges--"key-holing," the marksmen call it--particularly when the wind blows across the range. Such tumbling causes a bullet to curve as a baseball thrown by a good pitcher, destroying its accuracy.
Early in our fighting with Germany we captured Mauser rifles and hastened to compare them with the Springfields and modified Enfields. We found in the American rifles a marked superiority in the rapidity of fire, the quickness and ease of sighting, and in the accuracy of shots fired. The accuracy was due not only to our standard Springfield ammunition, but also to the greater mechanical accuracy in the finish of the chamber and bore of the American rifles. The rapidity of fire of the American guns was due to the position and shape of the bolt handle, which is the movable mechanism on the rifle with which the soldier ejects a spent shell and throws in a fresh one.
How we developed this bolt handle is an interesting story in itself. In 1903, when we brought out the first Springfield rifle, we decided to abandon the old carbine which had been carried by our Cavalry regiments and, by making a rifle with a comparatively short barrel, furnish a gun which could be used by both Infantry and Cavalry. The original bolt handle of the Springfield, like the one on the present Mauser, had projected horizontally from the side of the chamber. It was found that this protuberance did not fit well in the saddle holster of the cavalryman, but jammed the side of the rifle against the leather of the holster, with frequent injury to the rifle sight. For this primary reason the rifle designers bent the bolt handle down and back. This modification incidentally brought the bolt handle much nearer to the soldier's hand as he fingered the trigger than it had been before. The Enfield design had carried this development even farther, so that the bolt handle was practically right at the trigger, and the rifleman's hand was ready to pull the trigger the instant after it had thrown in a new cartridge.
Let us see what effect this design of the bolt handle had in the recent war. The Mauser still clung to the old horizontal bolt handle well away from the trigger grip. Some of our best riflemen practiced with the captured Mausers and, firing at top speed with them, could not bring the rate of shooting anywhere near up to the marks set by the Enfields and Springfields. One enthusiast has even maintained that the speed of the Mauser is not over 50 per cent of that of the 1917 American rifle, but this may be an underestimate. On such a basis the result was that under battle conditions with equal numbers of men on a side the Americans had in effect two rifles to the Germans one.
To put it another way, by bending back the bolt handle we had placed two men on the firing line where there was only one before; but the added man required no shelter, nor any clothing, nor rations, nor water, nor pay. Although he sometimes needed repairing, he did not get sick, nor did he ever become an economic burden nor draw a pension. His only added cost to the Government was an increased consumption of cartridges.
When American troops were in the heat of the fighting in the summer of 1918, the German government sent a protest through a neutral agency to our Government asserting that our men were using shotguns against German troops in the trenches. The allegation was true; but our State Department replied that the use of such weapons was not forbidden by the Geneva Convention as the Germans had asserted. Manufactured primarily for the purpose of arming guards placed over German prisoners, these shotguns were undoubtedly in some instances carried into the actual fighting. The Ordnance Department procured some 30,000 to 40,000 shotguns of the short-barrel or sawed-off type, ordering these from the regular commercial manufacturers. The shell provided for these guns each contained a charge of nine heavy buckshot, a combination likely to have murderous effect in close fighting.
Such was the rifle record of this Government in the war. The Americans carried into battle the best rifles used in the war, and America's industry produced these weapons in the emergency at a rate which armed our soldiers as rapidly as they could be trained for fighting. Success in such a task looked almost impossible at the start; but that it was attained should forever be a source of gratification to the American people.
Rifle production to Nov. 9, 1918.
-------------------+----------+-----------+-------+-------+--------+--------- Months. |Eddystone.|Winchester.| Ilion.|Spring-| Rock | Total. | | | | field | Island | | | | |Armory.|Arsenal.| -------------------+----------+-----------+-------+-------+--------+--------- Before August, 1917| | | | 14,986| 1,680| 16,666 Aug. 1, 1917 to | | | | | | Dec. 31, 1917 | 174,160| 102,363| 26,364| 89,479| 22,330| 414,696 | | | | | | 1918 | | | | | | January | 81,846| 39,200| 32,453| 23,890| 7,680| 185,069 February | 98,345| 32,660| 39,852| 6,910| 2,460| 180,227 March | 68,404| 42,200| 49,538| 120| 420| 160,682 April | 87,508| 43,600| 36,377| 2,631| | 170,116 May | 84,929| 41,628| 54,477| 3,420| 550| 185,004 June | 104,110| 34,249| 52,995| 6,140| 619| 198,113 July | 135,080| 35,700| 60,413| 14,841| 2,038| 248,072 August | 106,595| 20,030| 65,144| 27,020| 1,597| 220,386 September | 110,058| 31,550| 58,027| 29,770| 3,813| 233,218 October | 100,214| 33,700| 53,563| 35,920| 3,256| 226,653 Nov. 1-9, 1918 | 30,659| 9,100| 16,338| 10,500| 808| 67,405 -------------------+----------+-----------+-------+-------+--------+--------- Total | 1,181,908| 465,980|545,541|265,627| 47,251|2,506,307 -------------------+----------+-----------+-------+-------+--------+---------
NOTE.--Eddystone, Winchester, and Ilion plants turned out the United States rifle, caliber .30, model 1917, popularly known as the Enfield, while the Springfield Armory and the Rock Island Arsenal produced the United States rifle, caliber .30. model 1903, popularly known as the Springfield rifle. The months marked by a drop in the production at Springfield and at Rock Island were months in which the components manufactured were not assembled but were used for spare parts.
XI. PISTOLS AND REVOLVERS
The American pistol was one of the great successes of the war. For several years before the war came the Ordnance Department had been collaborating with private manufacturers to develop the automatic pistol; but none of our officers realized until the supreme test came what an effective weapon the Colt .45 would be in the hand-to-hand fighting of the trenches. In our isolation we had suspected, perhaps, that the bayonet and such new weapons as the modern hand grenade had encroached upon the field of the pistol and revolver. We were soon to discover our mistake. In the hands of a determined American soldier the pistol proved to be a weapon of great execution, and it was properly feared by the German troops.
We had long been a nation of pistol shooters, we Americans, but not until the year 1911 did we develop a pistol of the accuracy and rapidity of fire demanded by our ordnance experts. The nations of Europe had neglected this valuable arm almost altogether, regarding it principally as a military ornament which only officers should carry. The result of Europe's neglect was that the small-caliber revolvers of the Germans and even of the French and English were toys in comparison with the big Colts that armed the American soldiers.
America owed the Colt .45 to the experiences of our fighters in the Philippines, and to the inventive genius of John Browning of machine-gun fame. In the earlier Philippine campaigns our troops used a .38-caliber pistol. Our soldiers observed that when the tough tribesmen were hit with these bullets and even seriously wounded they frequently kept on fighting for some time. What was needed was a hand weapon that would put the adversary out of fighting the instant he was hit, whether fatally or not. We therefore increased the caliber of the automatic pistol to .45 and slowed down the bullet so that it tore flesh instead of making a clean perforation. These improvements gave the missile the impact of a sledge hammer, and a man hit went down every time.
Moreover, in this development great improvement had been made in the accuracy of the weapon, the 1911 Colt being the straightest-shooting pistol ever produced in this country. Even the best of the older automatics and revolvers were accurate only in the hands of expert marksmen. But any average soldier with average training can hit what he shoots at with a Colt. The improvements in the automatic features brought it to the stage where it could be fired by a practiced man 21 times in 12 seconds. In this operation the recoil of each discharge ejects the empty shell and loads in a fresh one.
Only a few men of each infantry regiment carried pistols when our troops first went into the trenches. But in almost the first skirmish this weapon proved its superior usefulness in trench fighting. Such incidents as that of the single American soldier who dispersed or killed a whole squad of German bayoneteers which had surrounded him struck the enemy with fear of Yankee prowess with the pistol. The "tenderfoot's gun," as the westerners loved to call it, had come to its own.
By midsummer of 1917 the decision had been made to supply to the infantry a much more extensive equipment of automatic pistols than had previously been prescribed by regulations--to build them by hundreds of thousands where we had been turning them out by thousands. In February, with war in sight, realizing the limitations of our capacity then for producing pistols, the Colt automatic being manufactured exclusively by the Colt's Patent Firearms Manufacturing Co. at Hartford, Conn., and for a limited period by the Springfield Armory, we took up with the Colt Co. the proposition of securing drawings and other engineering data which would enable us to extend the production of this weapon to other plants. This work was in progress when in April, 1917, it was interrupted by the military necessity for calling upon every energy we had in the production of rifles.
In order to supplement the pistol supply, although the Colt automatic was the only weapon of this sort approved for the Army, the Secretary of War authorized the Chief of Ordnance to secure other small arms, particularly the double-action .45-caliber revolver as manufactured by both the Colt Co. and the Smith & Wesson Co. These revolvers had been designed to use the standard Army caliber-.45 pistol cartridges. The revolver was not so effective a weapon as the automatic pistol, but it was adopted in the emergency only to make it possible to provide sufficient of these arms for the troops at the outset.
At the start of hostilities the Colt Co. indicated that it could tool up to produce pistols at the rate of 6,000 per month by December, 1917, and could also furnish 600 revolvers a week beginning in April. As soon as funds were available we let a contract to the Colt Co. for 500,000 pistols and 100,000 revolvers, and to the Smith & Wesson Co. one for 100,000 revolvers. Although these contracts were not placed until June 15, in the certainty that funds would eventually be available both concerns had been working on the production of weapons on these expected contracts for many weeks.
When the order came from France to increase the pistol equipment, in addition to efforts to increase production at the plants of the two existing contractors we made studies of numerous other concerns which might undertake this class of manufacture. The proposal to purchase .38-caliber revolvers as a supplementary supply was abandoned for the reason that any expansion of this manufacture and of that for the necessary ammunition would be at the expense of the ultimate output of .45s and ammunition therefor.
In December, 1917, the Remington Arms-Union Metallic Cartridge Co. was instructed to prepare for the manufacture of 150,000 automatics, Colt model 1911, at a rate to reach a maximum production of 3,000 per day. Considerable difficulty was experienced in obtaining the necessary drawings and designs, because the manufacture of these pistols at the Colt Co. plant had been largely in the hands of expert veteran mechanics, who knew tricks of fitting and assembling not apparent in the drawings. The result was that the drawings in existence were not completely representative of the pistols. Finally complete plans were drawn up that covered all details and gave interchangeability between the parts of pistols produced by the Remington Co. and those by the Colt Co., which was the goal sought.
During the summer of 1918 in order to fill the enormously increased pistol requirements of the American Expeditionary Forces, contracts for the Colt automatic were given to the National Cash Register Co., at Dayton, Ohio; the North American Arms Co., Quebec; the Savage Arms Co., Utica, N. Y.; Caron Bros., Montreal; the Burroughs Adding Machine Co., Detroit, Mich.; the Winchester Repeating Arms Co., New Haven, Conn.; the Lanston Monotype Co., Philadelphia, Pa.; and the Savage Munitions Co., San Diego, Calif.
All of these concerns, none of which had ever before produced the .45-caliber pistol, were proceeding energetically with their preparations for manufacture when the armistice came to cancel their contracts. No pistols were ever obtained from any except the Colt's Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Co. and the Remington Arms-Union Metallic Cartridge Co.
Difficulty was experienced in securing machinery to check the walnut grip for the pistols, and to avoid delay in production the Ordnance Department authorized the use of Bakelite for pistol grips in all the new plants which were to manufacture the gun. Bakelite is a substitute for hard rubber or amber, invented by the eminent chemist Dr. Baekeland.
At the outbreak of the war the Army owned approximately 75,000 .45-caliber automatic pistols. At the signing of the armistice there had been produced and accepted since April 6, 1917, a total of 643,755 pistols and revolvers. The production of pistols was 375,404 and that of revolvers 268,351. In the four months prior to November 11, 1918, the average daily production of automatic pistols was 1,993 and of revolvers 1,233. This was at the yearly production rate of approximately 600,000 pistols and 370,000 revolvers. These pistols were produced at an approximate cost of $15 each.
Production of pistols and revolvers to Dec. 31. 1918.
---------------+------------------------+-----------------------+------- | Pistols. | Revolvers. | +-------+-------+--------+-------+-------+-------+ Total | | | | | | |pistols | |Reming-| Total | |Smith &| Total | and | Colt. | ton |pistols.| Colt. |Wesson.|revolv-|revolv- | |U.M.C. | | | | ers. | ers. ---------------+-------+-------+--------+-------+-------+-------+------- Apr. 6 to Dec. | 58,500| | 58,500| 20,900| 9,513| 30,413| 88,913 29, 1917 | | | | | | | January, 1918 | 11,000| | 11,000| 8,700| 7,500| 16,200| 27,200 February, 1918 | 14,500| | 14,500| 8,800| 8,550| 17,350| 31,850 March, 1918 | 21,300| | 21,300| 11,800| 12,400| 24,200| 45,500 April, 1918 | 22,400| | 22,400| 10,400| 10,650| 21,050| 43,450 May, 1918 | 35,000| | 35,000| 11,100| 12,150| 23,250| 58,250 June, 1918 | 37,800| | 37,800| 11,100| 14,250| 25,350| 63,150 July, 1918 | 39,800| | 39,800| 11,600| 11,555| 23,155| 62,955 August. 1918 | 40,400| | 40,400| 11,300| 13,358| 24,658| 65,058 September, 1918| 32,100| 640| 32,740| 11,100| 12,650| 23,750| 56,490 October, 1918 | 42,300| 3,881| 46,181| 13,500| 16,675| 30,175| 76,356 November, 1918 | 45,800| 4,102| 49,902| 11,900| 12,660| 24,560| 74,462 December, 1918 | 24,600| 4,529| 29,129| 9,500| 11,400| 20,900| 50,029 ---------------+-------+-------+--------+-------+-------+-------+------- Total |425,500| 13,152| 438,652|151,700|153,311|305,011|743,663 ---------------+-------+-------+--------+-------+-------+-------+-------
XII. SMALL-ARMS AMMUNITION
Prior to the war with Germany the Ordnance Department, in providing .30-caliber ammunition for our Army rifles and machine guns, had thought in terms of millions and had placed its ammunition orders on that scale. But when hostilities were at hand and steel and walnut were being assembled into rifles to arm the indefinitely increasing millions of Yankee soldiers that we would send and keep on sending to Europe until victory was ours, small-arms ammunition stepped out of the million class and became an industry whose units of production were reckoned by the billion.
The war increased the human strength of the American Army approximately thirty times. That ratio of increase was carried over into a production of ammunition for rifles and machine guns. The story of ammunition in the war is the story of a three-billion output forced from a hundred-million capacity. In this effort we find another of those frequent industrial romances which the war produced in America; for, when called upon to do more than an industrial possibility, as we regarded such things in 1917, the contriving executive and organizing ability and the skillful hands of the ammunition industry made good.
Our .30-caliber ammunition capacity in the United States prior to the war was about 100,000,000 cartridges per year. We actually produced in the war period the huge total of 3,507,023,300 small-arms cartridges. Pushed at feverish haste, such expansion naturally recorded its mistakes and its failures; but none of these was fatal or irremediable. The fact will always remain that a difficult art was enlarged in time to take care of every demand of the American Army for small-arms ammunition, and that no military operation on our part was held up by lack of this ammunition. Hence it is submitted that the production of small-arms cartridges was one of the genuine achievements of our Ordnance Department.
Let us consider first the production of the .30-caliber service ammunition, which may be regarded as the standard product of the ammunition industry. This was the ammunition used in our two service rifles, the Springfield or United States model of 1903 and the United States model of 1917, which is a modification of the British rifle, pattern 1914, and in most of the machine guns which we fired in France, although we used the 8-millimeter cartridge with the Chauchat machine rifle. When the war broke out we had on hand approximately 200,000,000 rounds of .30-caliber cartridges. Most of these had been manufactured by the Government at the Frankford Arsenal, which was, in fact, practically the only plant in the United States equipped to produce this ammunition in any appreciable quantities.
For some years prior to the war, however, the Government had adopted the policy of encouraging the manufacture of Army ammunition in private plants. This was done by placing with various concerns small annual orders for this type of ammunition. These orders were usually in the neighborhood of 1,000,000 rounds each. The purpose of such orders, insignificant as they were, was to scatter throughout the principal private ammunition factories the necessary jigs, fixtures, gauges, and other tooling required in the production of cartridges for Army rifles and machine guns. These small orders might also be expected to educate the operating forces of the private plants in this manufacture. By this means the Government hoped to have in an emergency a nucleus of skill and equipment which could be quickly expanded to meet war requirements.
As a further means of stimulating interest in this peace-time undertaking the Ordnance Department conducted each year a sort of competition among the private manufacturers of small-arms ammunition. The output of each factory accepting the Government orders was tested for proper functioning and accuracy; and those cartridges which won in this competition were used as the ammunition shot in the national rifle matches. Thus the winning concern could use its achievement in its advertising.
But these educational efforts on the part of the Government failed to create a capacity that was anywhere near to being adequate to meet the demands of such a war as that into which we were plunged in the year 1917. We had built up no large reserves of ammunition, and the orders placed with private manufacturers had been so small that they had resulted in virtually no factory preparation at all for great quantity production. To all practical purposes the entire ammunition manufacturing capacity of .30-caliber cartridges in 1917 was encompassed within the walls of the Frankford Arsenal.
There was, however, in the ammunition industry a fortunate condition existing when we entered the war. For some time numerous American concerns had been working on the manufacture of cartridges for both the British and the French Governments. The cartridges being turned out under these contracts were not suitable for our use, being of different caliber than those taken by American weapons, and this meant that the machinery in existence could not be converted to the production of American ammunition without radical and time-consuming alteration of tools, etc. However, cartridges are cartridges, regardless of their size; and the manufacture which was supplying France and England had resulted in educating thousands of mechanics and shop executives in the production of ammunition. Consequently, when we went into the war, we had the men and the skill ready at hand; we needed only to produce the tools and the machinery in addition to the raw materials.
Yet this in itself was a problem. How should we meet it? Three courses seemed to be possible for the Government. In the first place, we could build from the ground up an immense Government arsenal having an annual capacity of 1,000,000,000 rounds, or ten times that of the great Frankford Arsenal. Or we could interest manufacturers in a project of building a private cartridge factory capable of producing 1,000,000,000 rounds per year. Both of these methods were predicated on the assumption that the existing cartridge factories had their hands full with orders. The third plan was to place our cartridge demands with the existing ammunition plants and let them increase their facilities to take care of our orders.
As soon as the early orders had been given and all available capacity had been set going, this problem engaged the study and attention of the Ordnance Department. In the early fall of 1917 a meeting of the manufacturers of small-arms ammunition was held in Washington to discuss the matter. Principally on account of the difficulties in providing a trained working force for a new Government arsenal or private plant, the opinion was unanimous that the existing concerns should expand in facilities and trained personnel to handle the cartridge project. Out of this meeting grew the American Society of Manufacturers of Small Arms and Ammunition. Thereafter until the close of the war this society or its committees met about once every two weeks to discuss problems arising in the work. The officers of the Ordnance Department in charge of the ammunition project attended all of these meetings. The result of such cooperation was gratifyingly shown not only in the standardization of manufacturing processes in the various plants but also in the output of cartridges.
The success of this effort is best shown in the production figures in the period from April, 1917, to November 30, 1918. In that time the United States Cartridge Co. turned out 684,334,300 rounds of our caliber-.30 service ammunition; the Winchester Repeating Arms Co., 468,967,500 rounds; the Remington Arms-Union Metallic Cartridge Co., 1,218,979,300; the Peters Cartridge Co., 84,169,800; the Western Cartridge Co., 48,018,800; the Dominion Arsenal, 502,000; the Frankford Arsenal, 76,739,300; and the National Brass & Copper Tube Co., 22,700,400.
This production record to some extent was made possible by a leniency on the part of the Ordnance Department which we had not displayed before the war. When we could take plenty of time in ammunition manufacture our specifications for cartridges were extremely rigid. It soon became apparent that if we adhered to our earlier specifications we would limit the output of cartridges. It was found in a joint meeting of ordnance officers and ammunition manufacturers that certain increased tolerances could be permitted in our specifications without affecting the serviceability of the ammunition. Consequently new specifications for our war ammunition were drawn, enabling the plants to get into quantity production much more quickly than would have been possible if we had not relaxed our prewar attitude.
The ordinary service cartridge consists of a brass cartridge case, a primer, a propelling charge of smokeless powder, and a bullet made with a jacket or envelope of cupronickel inclosing a lead slug or core. Cupronickel is a hard alloy of copper and nickel. Steel would be the ideal covering for a bullet because of its cheapness and availability, but steel has not been used because it is liable to rust and to destroy the delicate rifling of the gun barrel. Cupronickel is a compromise, being strong enough to hold the interior lead from deforming, but not so hard as to wear down excessively the rifling in the gun barrel.
Even as we entered the war the long continued fighting in Europe had created a shortage in cupronickel, and by the time the armistice came it was apparent that this shortage would soon become so acute that we would have to find a substitute for cupronickel. This shortage had already occurred in Germany, where the enemy ordnance engineers had produced a bullet incased in steel which in turn was clothed with a slight covering of copper. The soft copper coating kept the steel from injuring the gun barrel. We ourselves were experimenting with copper-coated steel bullets when peace came, and would have been prepared to furnish a substitute had cupronickel failed us.
Some of the earliest ammunition sent to our forces in France developed a tendency to hang fire and to misfire; and a liberal quantity of it, amounting to six months' production of the Frankford Arsenal, was condemned and withdrawn from use. This matter was aired fully in the newspapers at the time it occurred. It developed that the faulty ammunition had been produced entirely in the Frankford Arsenal and that the cause of the trouble was the primer in the cartridge.
The primer in a cartridge performs the same function that the flint did on the old-fashioned squirrel guns--it touches off the explosive propellant charge. But whereas the flint sent only a spark into the powder, the modern primer produces a long, hot flame.
The primers in the ammunition manufactured at the Frankford Arsenal had given ordinarily satisfactory results in 12 years of peace-time use. The flame charge in this primer contained sulphur, potassium chlorate, and antimony sulphide. Produced under normal conditions, with plenty of time for drying, this primer was satisfactory. But sulphur when oxidized changes to an acid extremely corrosive to metal parts, and oxidized primers are liable not to function perfectly. Heat and moisture accelerate the change of sulphur to acid; and if there happens to be bromate in the potassium chlorate of the priming charge, the change is even more rapid.
An investigation of the Frankford Arsenal showed that these very elements were present. Because of the haste of production of cartridges, too much moisture had been allowed to get into the arsenal dry houses. The potassium chlorate was also found to contain appreciable quantities of bromate.
The condition was remedied by adopting another primer composition. And then, to play doubly safe, the Government specifications were amended to prevent the use of potassium chlorate containing more than 0.01 per cent of bromate.
However, this condemned ammunition was but a trifling fraction of the total output or even of the production then going on. The primers used by the various private manufacturers of ammunition functioned satisfactorily.
While we were not rigid in our specifications for the bulk of the service ammunition, in one respect we were most meticulous, and this was in respect to the ammunition used by the machine guns mounted on our airplanes. For these weapons we created an A-1 class of service .30-caliber cartridges, since it was highly important that there be no malfunctioning of ammunition in the air. Every cartridge of this class had to be specially gauged throughout its manufacture. This care resulted in a slower production of airplane cartridges than that of those for use on the ground, but we always had enough for our needs.
Until we went to war with Germany our Army had known only the cartridge firing the hard-jacketed lead bullet. But we entered a conflict in which several novel sorts of small-arms projectiles were in familiar use; and it became necessary for us to take up the manufacture of these strange missiles at once. These included such special types as tracer bullets to indicate the path of fire in the air, incendiary bullets for setting on fire observation balloons, hostile planes, and dirigible airships, and, finally, armor-piercing bullets for use against armor plate with which airplanes and tanks are equipped. We had developed none of these in this country before the war, except that in the Frankford Arsenal our designers had done some little experimental work with armor-piercing ammunition, in fact carrying it to the point of an efficient design.
One of the first acts of the Ordnance Department was to send an officer to visit the ammunition factories of France and England to study the methods of manufacturing these special types of bullets. These friendly nations willingly gave us full information at first hand with respect to this complicated manufacture, which we were thus enabled to begin in September, 1917. Special machinery was required for loading the tracer bullet and also for producing the incendiary projectile. We adopted British practice for both of these. We ourselves were well equipped to begin the production of armor-piercing bullets, for which we had previously solved the problems of design; yet the production of metals to be used in this missile required some further experimental work. By February, 1918, however, our production of armor-piercing bullets was well under way and by the time the war came to an end we had produced nearly 5,000,000 of them.
The tracer bullet which we manufactured contained a mixture of barium peroxide and magnesium and in flight burned with the intensity of a calcium light. These bullets were principally used by machine gunners of aircraft, since in the air it is impossible to tell where machine-gun projectiles are going unless there is some device enabling the gunner to see the trajectory of the bullets. This is done by inserting tracer bullets at intervals in the belts of cartridges fed into the machine gun. The common conception of a tracer bullet is one that leaves a trace of smoke in its flight; whereas the truth is that our tracer and the British tracer were practically smokeless, the gunner observing the direction of aim by following the bright lights of the tracer bullets with his eye. These lights were plainly visible in the brightest sunlight. Although the slight quantity of the flaming mixture burned but a few seconds, it was sufficient to trace the flight for 500 yards or more from the muzzle of the machine gun.
The tracer bullet consisted of a cupronickel shell, the nose of which contained a leaden core to balance the bullet properly. The rear chamber of the bullet held a cup containing the mixture of barium peroxide and magnesium. The rear end of the bullet was left slightly open, and through this opening the mixture was ignited by the hot flame of the propelling powder discharge.
An entirely different principle was used in the construction of the incendiary bullet. This bullet was also incased in cupronickel; but the incendiary chemical, which was phosphorus, was contained in a chamber in the nose of the bullet. A serrated plug held the phosphorus in its chamber, and behind this plug was a solid plug of lead coming flush with the base of the bullet and soldered thereto. On one side of the missile was a hole drilled through the cupronickel into one of the grooves of the serrated plug. This hole was stopped by a special kind of solder. The heat of friction developed in the infinitesimal space of time while the projectile was passing through the gun barrel served the double purpose of melting out the solder from the hole and igniting the phosphorus within the chamber. Thereafter the centrifugal force of the revolving bullet whirled the burning phosphorus out through the unplugged hole. Seen in the air the fire of the phosphorus could not be discerned, but the burning chemical threw off considerable smoke, so that the eye of the gunner could follow the blue spiral to its mark. Our incendiary bullet had an effective range of 350 yards, after which distance the phosphorus was burned out.
Equally interesting was the construction of the armor-piercing bullet. Heavy and solid as the jacketed lead bullet used in our service guns seems to be, when fired against even light armor plate it leaves only a small mark upon its objective. As soon as the cupronickel jacket strikes the armor plate it splits and the lead core flattens out and flies into fragments. The armor plate may not even be dented by this impact. Yet change the core of this missile from lead to hardened steel and an entirely different result is produced. Our armor-piercing bullet was made with a cupronickel jacket for the sake of the gun barrel. The inner side of this jacket was lined with a thin coat of lead which was made thicker in the nose of the bullet. Finally a core of specially heat-treated steel completed the construction of the projectile. When this missile is fired against armor plate the jacket splits and the lead lining virtually disappears from the impact, but the pointed steel core keeps on and bores a hole through the plate as it might through soft wood.
The production figures show the degree of success which we attained in the manufacture of this special ammunition. Up to November 30, 1918, the E. I. du Pont de Nemours Co. had produced 6,057,000 tracer cartridges of .30 caliber and 1,560,000 incendiary cartridges of the same size. The Frankford Arsenal turned out 22,245,000 tracer cartridges of this size, 14,148,000 incendiary cartridges, and 4,746,900 armor-piercing cartridges. We placed an additional order for armor-piercing projectiles with the Dominion arsenals, which delivered to us 1,980,000 of such cartridges.
We also set out to develop new manufacturing facilities for the production of this special aircraft ammunition. Excellent tracer bullets were produced by the National Fireworks Co., of West Hanover, Mass., and that company was getting into a satisfactory production stride when the armistice was signed. The Hero Manufacturing Co., of Philadelphia, Pa., also was turning out an approved incendiary bullet when peace came. These various special bullets were loaded in cartridges at the Frankford Arsenal.
When the fighting ceased we were working on the development of armor-piercing bullets that would also be incendiary; and armor-piercing bullets that would also contain a tracing mixture. It was thought that bullets of these types would be particularly valuable for aircraft use. While we had done considerable experimenting along both lines, no satisfactory types had yet been developed.
There was another class of small arms for which we also had to produce ammunition on a war scale. Our automatic pistols and revolvers demanded .45-caliber ball cartridges. In normal times the Frankford Arsenal had been almost our sole producer of these cartridges, and it had attained an annual output of approximately 10,000,000 rounds of them. This quantity was nowhere nearly adequate for our war needs, especially after the decision to equip our troops much more numerously with pistols and revolvers than had formerly been the case.
Consequently it was necessary for us to develop additional manufacturing facilities for .45-caliber ammunition. We did this by placing orders with some of the same manufacturers who were developing the .30-caliber production. Because it was necessary for us to give preference always to the rifle and machine-gun ammunition, the manufacture of pistol cartridges was not carried through as rapidly as some other phases of the ammunition program. However, a satisfactory output was reached in time to meet the immediate demands of our forces in the field, and this production was expanding and keeping ahead of the increased needs for this sort of cartridges. The total war production of .45-caliber ammunition by the various factories was as follows:
United States Cartridge Co. 75,500,000 Winchester Repeating Arms Co. 46,446,800 Remington Arms-Union Metallic Cartridge Co. 144,825,700 Peters Cartridge Co. 55,521,000 Frankford Arsenal 12,349,200
Early in 1918 our Air Service field forces saw the need of a machine gun of larger caliber than the quick-firing weapons in general use. The flying service of the principal allies had developed an 11-millimeter machine gun for use in attacking the captive balloons of the enemy. This gun fired a projectile only slightly less than one-half inch in diameter. To meet this new demand our Ordnance Department found at the Colt factory about 1,000 Vickers machine guns which were being built on order for the former Russian Government. The department took over these guns and modified them to take 11-millimeter ammunition, and that step made it necessary for us to produce machine-gun cartridges for these new weapons.
We at once developed a modified French 11-millimeter tracer incendiary cartridge, which in later use proved to be highly satisfactory. In an experimental order the Frankford Arsenal turned out about 100,000 of these cartridges, while at the time the armistice was signed the Western Cartridge Co. was prepared to produce this class of ammunition on a large scale.
Certain American concerns before April, 1917, had been producing 8-millimeter ammunition for the French government for use in its machine guns. When we entered the war our Ordnance Department found it necessary to continue the manufacture of these cartridges for the machine guns obtained from the French. Up to November 30, 1918, a total of 269,631,800 rounds had been produced under our supervision. These cartridges were manufactured by the Western Cartridge Co. and by the Remington Arms Co. at its Swanton plant.
How well and amply we were producing ammunition for our machine guns and rifles is indicated by the fact that our average monthly production, based upon our showing in July, August, and September, 1918, was 277,894,000 rounds as against a monthly average for Great Britain of 259,769,000 rounds and for France of 139,845,000.
Our total production of machine-gun and rifle ammunition during the 19 months of warfare was 2,879,148,000 rounds, while in that period England produced 3,486,127,000 rounds and France 2,983,675,000, but it must be remembered that they had been keyed up to that voluminous production by three years of fighting and that our monthly production rate indicated we would soon far surpass them in quantities.
The following table shows how our total production of ammunition for all small arms, including machine guns, rifles, pistols, and revolvers, grew month by month during the war:
Rounds. Nov. 30, 1917 156,102,792 Dec. 31, 1917 351,117,928 Jan. 31, 1918 573,981,712 Feb. 28, 1918 760,485,688 Mar. 31, 1918 1,021,610,956 Apr. 30, 1918 1,318,298,492 May 31, 1918 1,616,142,052 June 30, 1918 1,958,686,784 July 31, 1918 2,306,999,284 Aug. 31, 1918 2,623,847,546 Sept. 30, 1918 2,942,875,786 Oct. 31, 1918 3,236,396,100 Nov. 30, 1918 3,507,023,300 Dec. 31, 1918 3,741,652,200 Jan. 31, 1919 3,940,682,744
XIII. TRENCH-WARFARE MATERIAL
Like many of the other war implements produced by the Ordnance Department for use in France, the weapons employed in fighting from the trenches were entirely novel to American industry; and in the production of them we find the same story of the difficulties in the adoption of foreign designs, of the development of our own designs, of the delays encountered and mistakes made in equipping a new industry from the ground up, but, finally, of the triumphant arrival at quantity production in a marvelously brief time, considering the obstacles which had to be overcome.
When the movements of armies in the great war ceased and they were held in deadlock in the trenches, the fighters at once began devising weapons with which they could kill each other from below ground. For this purpose they borrowed from the experience of man running back to time immemorial. They took a leaf from the book of the Roman fire-ball throwers and developed the hand grenade beyond the point to which it had been brought in the European warfare of the last century. They called upon an industry which had once existed solely for the amusement of the people, the fireworks industry, for its golden rain and rainbow-hued stars for signals with which to talk to each other by night. Other geniuses of the trenches took empty cannon cartridges and, setting them up as ground mortars, succeeded in throwing bombs from them across No Man's Land into the enemy ranks. They even for a time resurrected the catapult of Trojan days, although this device attained no great success. But from all such activities new weapons of warfare sprang, crude at first, but later refined as only modern science and manufacture could perfect them.
America entered the war when this development of ordnance novelties had reached an advanced state. It became necessary for us, then, to make a rapid study of what had been done and then go ahead with our own production either from foreign designs or with inventions of our own.
To this end in April, 1917, a few days after we declared war with Germany, the Trench Warfare Section was organized within the Ordnance Department and given charge of the production of these novelties. The section did not entirely confine itself to trench-warfare materials, since one of its chief production activities was concerned with the manufacture of the various sorts of bombs to be dropped from airplanes. Also, at the start of its existence it had charge of the production of implements for fighting with poison gas and flame. Although in large part this phase of its work was taken away from it in the summer of 1917 and was later placed under the jurisdiction of the newly organized Chemical Warfare Service, the Trench Warfare Section continued to conduct certain branches of gas-warfare manufacture, in particular the production of the famous Livens projectors of gas and also the manufacture of the portable toxic-gas sets for producing gas clouds from cylinders.
All in all, the Trench Warfare Section was charged with the responsibility of producing some 47 devices, every one of them new to American manufacture and some extremely difficult to make. The backbone of the program consisted of the production of grenades, both of the hand-thrown and the rifle-fired variety, trench mortars, trench-mortar ammunition, pyrotechnics of various sorts, and bombs for the airplanes, with their sighting and release mechanisms.
In the production of these new devices there arose a new form of cooperation between Government and private manufacturers under the tutelage of the Trench Warfare Section. The manufacturers engaged in the production of various classes of these munition novelties joined in formal associations. There was a Hand Grenade Manufacturers' Association, under the capable leadership of William Sparks, president of the Sparks-Withington Co., of Jackson, Mich.; the Drop Bomb Manufacturers' Association, headed by J. L. Sinyard, president of A. O. Smith Corporation, Milwaukee; the Six-inch Trench-mortar Shell Manufacturers' Association, R. W. Millard, president of Foster-Merriam Co., Meriden, Conn.; the Rifle Grenade Manufacturers' Association, under the leadership of F. S. Briggs, president of the Briggs & Stratton Co., Milwaukee, Wis.; and the Livens Projector Manufacturers' Association. A similar association of manufacturers engaged in army contracts existed in the production of small-arms ammunition; but in no other branch of the Ordnance Department was the development of such cooperation carried on to the extent of that fathered by the Trench Warfare Section.
The existence of these associations was of inestimable benefit in securing the rapid development, standardization for quantity manufacture, and production of these strange devices. Each association had its president, its other officers, and its regular meetings. These meetings were attended by the interested officers of the Trench Warfare Section. In the meetings the experiments of the manufacturers and the short-cut methods developed in their shops were freely discussed; and, if modifications of design were suggested, such questions were thrashed out in these meetings of practical technicians, and all of the contractors simultaneously received the benefits.
The Trench Warfare Section produced its results under the handicap of being low in the priority ratings, many other items of ordnance being considered in Washington of more importance than the trench-fighting materials and therefore entitled to first call upon raw materials and transportation. In the priority lists the leader of 47 trench-warfare articles, the 240-millimeter mortars, stood twenty-second, and the others trailed after.
GRENADES.
The first of the trench-warfare weapons with which the rookie soldier became acquainted was the hand grenade, since this, at least in its practice or dummy form, was supplied to the training camps in this country. To all intents and purposes the hand grenade was a product of the war against Germany, although grenades had been more or less used since explosives existed. All earlier grenades had been crude devices with only limited employment in warfare, but in the three years preceding America's participation in the war the grenade had become a carefully built weapon.
The extent of our production of hand grenades may be seen in the fact that when the effort was at its height 10,000 workers were engaged exclusively in its manufacture. The firing mechanism of the explosive grenades which we built was known as the Bouchon assembly. In the production of this item 19 of every 20 workers were women. In fact no other item in the entire ordnance field was produced so exclusively by women. Incidentally, at no time during the war was there a strike in any grenade factory.
For a long time in the trenches of France only one type of hand grenade was used. This was the so-called defensive grenade, built of stout metal which would fly into fragments when the interior charge exploded. As might be expected, such a weapon was used only by men actually within the trenches, the walls of which protected the throwers from the flying fragments. But, as the war continued, six other distinct kinds of grenades were developed, America herself contributing one of the most important of them; and during our war activities we were engaged in manufacturing all seven.
The defensive, or fragmentation, type grenade was the commonest, most numerous, and perhaps, the most useful of all of them. Another important one, however, was that known as the offensive grenade, and it was America's own contribution to trench warfare. The body of the offensive grenade was made of paper, so that the deadly effect of it was produced by the flame and concussion of the explosion itself. It was quite sure to kill any man within 3 yards of it when it went off, but it was safe to use in the open offensive movements, since there were no pieces of metal to fly back and hit the thrower.
A third development was known as the gas grenade. It was built of sheet metal, and its toxic contents were effective in making enemy trenches and dugouts uninhabitable. A fourth, a grenade of similar construction, was filled with phosphorus, instead of gas, and was known as the phosphorus grenade. This grenade scattered burning phosphorus over an area 3 to 5 yards in diameter and released a dense cloud of white smoke. In open attacks upon machine-gun nests phosphorus grenades were thrown in barrages to build smoke screens for the attacking forces.
As a fifth class there was a combination hand and rifle grenade, a British device adopted in our program. The sixth class of grenades was known as the incendiary type. These were paper bombs filled with burning material and designed for use against structures intended to be destroyed by fire. Finally, in the seventh class were the thermit grenades, built of terneplate and filled with a compound containing thermit, which develops an intense heat while melting. Thermit grenades were used principally to destroy captured guns. One of them touched off in the breech of a cannon would fuse the breech-block mechanism and destroy the usefulness of the weapon.
All of these grenades except the incendiary grenades used the same firing mechanism, and the incendiary grenade firing mechanism was the standard one modified in a single particular.
The earliest American requirement in this production was for defensive grenades, of the fragmentation type. Our first estimate was that we would need 21,000,000 of these for actual warfare and 2,000,000 of the unloaded type for practice and training work. But, as the war continued and the American plans developed in scale, we saw we would require a much greater quantity than this; and orders were finally placed for a total of 68,000,000 live grenades and over 3,000,000 of the practice variety.
By August 20, 1917, the Trench Warfare Section had developed the design and the drawings for the defensive grenade. The first contract--for 5,000 grenades--was let to the Caskey-Dupree Co. of Marietta, Ohio. This concern was fairly entitled to such preference, because the experimentation leading up to the design for this bomb was conducted almost entirely at its plant in Marietta.
Next came an interesting industrial development by a well-known American concern which had previously devoted its exclusive energy to the production of high-grade silverware, but which now, as a patriotic duty, undertook to build the deadly defensive grenades. This was the Gorham Manufacturing Co. of Providence, R. I. This firm contracted to furnish complete, loaded grenades, ready for shipment overseas, and was the only one to build and operate a manufacturing and loading plant. Elsewhere contracts were let for parts only, these parts to converge at the assembling plants later; and such orders were rapidly placed until by the middle of December, 1917, various industrial concerns were tooling up for a total production of 21,000,000 of these missiles.
The grenade which these contractors undertook to produce was an American product in its design, although modeled after grenades already in use at the front. Its chief difference was in the firing mechanism, where improvements, or what were then thought to be improvements, had been installed to make it safer in the hands of the soldier than the grenades then in use at the front. This firing mechanism with its pivoted lever was, in fact, a radical departure from European practice. The body of this grenade was of malleable iron, and the grenade exploded with a force greater than that of any in use in France.
The remodeling of factories, the building of machines, and the manufacture of tools for this undertaking, pushed forward with determined speed, was completed in from 90 to 120 days, and by April almost all of the companies had reached the stage of quantity production.
And then, on May 9, 1918, came a cablegram from the American Expeditionary Forces that brought the entire effort to an abrupt halt. The officers of the American Expeditionary Forces in no uncertain terms condemned the American defensive grenade. The trouble was that in our anxiety to protect the American soldier we had designed a grenade that was too safe. The firing mechanism was too complicated. In the operation required to touch off the fuse five movements were necessary on the part of the soldier, and in this the psychology of a man in battle had not been taken sufficiently into consideration. The well-known story of the negro soldier who, in practice, threw his grenade too soon because he could feel it "swelling" in his hand, applies to most soldiers in battle. In using the new grenade the American soldier would not go through the operations required to fire its fuse. Cases came to light, too, showing that in the excitement of battle the American soldier forgot to release the safety device, thus giving the German an opportunity to hurl back the unexploded grenade.
As the result of this discovery all production was stopped in the United States and the ordnance engineers began redesigning the weapon. The incident meant that 15,000,000 rough castings of grenade bodies, 3,500,000 assembled but empty grenades and 1,000,000 loaded grenades had to be salvaged, and that on July 1, 1918, the production of live fragmentation grenades in this country was represented by the figure zero. Some of the machinery used in the production of the faulty grenades was useless and had to be replaced by new, while the trained forces which had reached quantity production in April had to be disbanded or transferred to other work while the design was being changed.
By August 1 the new design had been developed on paper and much of the new machinery required had been produced and installed in the plants, which were ready to go ahead immediately with the production. It is a tribute to the patriotism of the manufacturers who lost time and money by this change that little complaint was heard from them by the Government.
In the production of hand grenades the most difficult element of manufacture and the item that might have held up the delivery of completed mechanisms was the Bouchon assembly. There was an abundant foundry capacity in the United States for the production of gray-iron castings for grenade bodies, and so this part of the program gave no anxiety. The Bouchon assembly threatened to be the choke point. In order to assure the success of defensive-grenade production, the Precision Castings Co. of Syracuse, N. Y., and the Doehler Die Castings Co. of Toledo, Ohio, and Brooklyn, N. Y., worked their plants 24 hours a day until they had built up a reserve of Bouchons and screw plugs and removed all anxiety from that source. The total production of Bouchons eventually reached the figure 64,600,000.
The first thought of the Ordnance Department was to produce grenades by the assembling and quantitative method; that is, by the production of parts in various plants and the assembling of those parts in other plants. But, due to delay in railway shipments and difficulties due to priorities, it was discovered that this method of manufacture, however adaptable it might be to other items in the ordnance program, was not a good thing in grenade production; and when the war ended the tendency was all in the direction of having the assembly contractors produce their own parts either by purchase from subcontractors or by manufacture in their own plants.
The orders for the redesigned grenades called for the construction of 44,000,000 of them. So rapidly had the manufacturers been able to reach quantity production this time that a daily rate of 250,000 to 300,000 was attained by November 11, 1918, and by December 6, less than a month after the fighting stopped, the factories had turned out 21,054,339 defensive grenades.
It should be remembered that the great effort in ordnance production in this country was directed toward the American offensive expected on a tremendous scale in the spring of 1919. Had the war continued the fragmentation grenade program, in spite of the delays encountered in its development, would have produced a sufficient quantity of these weapons.
Special consideration is due the following-named firms for their efforts in developing the production of defensive grenades:
Caskey-Dupree Co., Marietta, Ohio. Spacke Machine & Tool Co., Indianapolis, Ind. Stewart-Warner Speedometer Co., Chicago, Ill. Miami Cycle & Manufacturing Co., Middletown, Ohio. American Radiator Co., Buffalo, N. Y. International Harvester Co., Chicago, Ill. Doehler Die Castings Co., Brooklyn, N. Y. Precision Castings Co., Syracuse, N. Y.
The American offensive grenade was largely the production of the Single Service Package Corporation of New York, both in the development of its design and in its manufacture. The body of this grenade was built of laminated paper spirally wound and waterproofed by being dipped in paraffine. The top of this body was a die casting, into which the firing mechanism was screwed. Practically no changes were made in the design of this weapon from the time it was first produced, and the production record is an excellent one.
Our earliest thought was that we would need some 7,000,000 of these grenades and orders for that quantity of bodies were placed in January and March, 1918, with the Single Service Package Corporation. Then it became necessary to discover factories which could produce the metal caps. The orders for these were first placed with the Acme Die Castings Co. and the National Lead Casting Co. for 3,375,000 castings from each concern. But these companies failed to make satisfactory deliveries, and in May, 1918, a contract for 5,000,000 caps was let to the Doehler Die Castings Co. which reached quantity production in August. After that the Single Service Package Corporation, the chief contractor, forged ahead in its work and on November 11 was producing the bodies for offensive grenades at the rate of 55,000 to 60,000 daily. By December 6, 1918, the Government had accepted 6,179,321 completed bodies. The signing of the armistice brought to an end a project to build 17,599,000 additional grenades of this type.
The production of gas grenades offered some peculiar difficulties. We set out at first to produce 3,684,530 of them. By January, 1918, the engineers of the Ordnance Department had completed the plans and specifications for the American gas grenade, and on February 12, an order for 1,000,000 of them was placed with the Maxim Silencer Co., of Hartford, Conn.
The gas grenades were to be delivered at the filling plants complete except for the detonator thimbles, which seal both gas and phosphorus grenades and act as sockets for the firing mechanism. It was seen that the construction of these thimbles might be a choke point in the construction of grenades of both types, and orders were early placed for them--1,500,000 to be delivered by the Maxim Silencer Co. and an equal quantity by the Bassic Co., of Bridgeport, Conn. On December 6, 1918, these concerns had produced 1,982,731 detonator thimbles.
The body of the gas grenade is built of two sheet-metal cups welded together to be gas-tight. Since, when we started out on this production, we did not know what kind of gas would be used or at what pressure it would be held within the grenade, we set the specifications to make grenade bodies to hold an air pressure of 200 pounds. The welding of the cups frequently failed to hold such pressure, so that the rejections of gas-grenade bodies under this test ran as high as 50 per cent. But in June, 1918, the gas for the grenades had been developed, and we were thereupon able to reduce the pressure of the standard test to 50 pounds. Under such a test the bodies readily passed inspection.
In September, 1918, we let additional contracts for gas grenades--500,000 to the Evinrude Motor Co., of Milwaukee; 500,000 to the John W. Brown Manufacturing Co., of Columbus, Ohio; and 400,000 to the Zenite Metal Co., of Indianapolis.
On November 11 gas grenade bodies were being produced at the rate of 22,000 per day, and the total production up to December 6 was 936,394.
The phosphorus grenade was similar to the gas grenade in construction. The plans and specifications for this weapon were ready in January, 1918. In February the following contracts were let: Metropolitan Engineering Co., Brooklyn, N. Y., 750,000; Evinrude Motor Co., Milwaukee, 750,000; Zenite Metal Co., Indianapolis, 500,000. On December 6, 1918, these concerns had delivered a total of 521,948 phosphorus grenade bodies.
The difficulties which had been experienced in the production of gas grenades were repeated in this project. The Evinrude Co. was especially quick in getting over the obstacles to quantity production. The Metropolitan Engineering Co. was already engaged with large orders for adapters and boosters in the heavy-gun ammunition manufacture for the Ordnance Department and found that the order for phosphorus grenades conflicted to a considerable extent with its previous war work. The matter was thrashed out in the Ordnance Department, which gave the priority in this plant to the adapters and boosters, with the result that this firm was able to make only a small contribution to the total production of phosphorus grenade bodies.
The development of thermit grenades was still in the experimental stage when the armistice was signed. There was no actual production in this country of grenades of this character. In October, however, the development of the grenade in design had reached a stage where we felt justified in letting a contract for 655,450 die-casting parts to the Doehler Die Castings Co., at its Toledo plant, and for an equal number of bodies with firing-mechanism assemblies to the Stewart-Warner Speedometer Corporation at Chicago.
The incendiary grenade not only did not get out of the development stage, but even a perfected model was regarded as of doubtful value by the officers of the American Expeditionary Forces. Nevertheless, the Chemical Warfare Service was of the opinion that such a grenade should be worked out, and an order for 81,000 had been given to the Celluloid Co., of Newark, N. J. Experimental work was progressing satisfactorily when the armistice was signed.
When the war ended, we were adapting to American manufacture a combination hand and rifle phosphorus grenade, borrowed from the English. The body of this grenade was built of terneplate and it had a removable stem, so that it could be thrown by hand or fired from the end of a service rifle. The American Can Co. built 1,000 of these to try out the design and strengthen the weak features.
-----------------------+----------------+--------------+-------------- Article. | Completed to | Completed to |Sent overseas. | Nov. 8, 1918. |Feb. 1, 1919. | -----------------------+----------------+--------------+-------------- Dummy hand grenade | 415,870 | 415,870 | Practice hand grenade | 3,605,864 | 3,605,864 | Defensive hand grenade | 17,477,245 | 25,312,794 | 516,533 Offensive hand grenade | 5,359,321 | 7,000,000 | 173,136 Gas hand grenade | 635,561 | 1,501,176 | 249,239 Phosphorus hand grenade| 505,192 | 521,948 | 150,600 Thermit hand grenade | | | -----------------------+----------------+--------------+-------------- NOTE.--In above figures all grenades are unloaded with the exception of those sent overseas, which were loaded.
RIFLE GRENADES.
In the construction of our rifle grenades there was another unfortunate experience due to a faulty design. The rifle grenade fits in a holder at the muzzle of an ordinary service rifle. When the rifle is fired the bullet passes through a hole in the middle of the grenade, and the gases of the discharge following the bullet throw the grenade approximately 200 yards. Any man within 75 yards of an exploding rifle grenade is likely to be wounded or killed. The rifle grenade is used both as a defensive and offensive weapon, since the firer is well out of range of the exploding missile.
In developing a rifle grenade for American manufacture our engineers adopted the French Viven-Bessiere type. The French service ammunition is larger than ours, and it was therefore necessary to design our grenade with a smaller hole. But in the anxiety to produce this weapon in the shortest time possible the models were not sufficiently tested, and no consideration was taken of the difference in design between a French bullet and an American bullet. The result was that the French grenade did not function well with our ammunition, due to the splitting of the Springfield bullet as it passed through the grenade. The result was that in May, 1918, several months after the manufacture of this grenade had been in progress, the entire undertaking was canceled pending the development of new designs; and 3,500,000 completed grenades had to be salvaged.
The original contract for rifle grenades had been let to the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Co. of Pittsburgh. This called for the production of all parts by the Westinghouse Co. and the assembling of them in the Westinghouse plant to the number of 5,000,000 grenades. But there was such a diversity of material employed in the manufacture of rifle grenades that succeeding contracts were let for parts and for assembling separately.
After the rifle grenade had been redesigned new contracts were let for a total of 30,115,409 of them. In August, a few weeks later, the daily production of these grenades in the various plants had reached a total of 130,000 and by the end of October the daily production was 250,000. The goal toward which this production was aiming was the expected spring offensive of the American Expeditionary Forces in 1919. We should have met this event adequately because, while only 685,200 American rifle grenades had actually been shipped overseas when the fighting ceased, we had 20,000,000 of them ready for loading at that time and the production was already heavy and constantly increasing.
Special consideration is due the following-named firms for their efforts in developing the production of rifle grenades:
Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Co., Pittsburgh, Pa. Briggs & Stratton Co., Milwaukee, Wis. Holcomb & Hoke, Indianapolis, Ind. Stewart-Warner Speedometer Corporation, Chicago, Ill. Cutler-Hammer Manufacturing Co., Milwaukee, Wis. American Radiator Co., Buffalo, N. Y. Link-Belt Co., Indianapolis, Ind. Doehler Die Castings Co., Brooklyn, N. Y.
TOXIC GAS EQUIPMENT.
America entered the war nearly two years after the Germans had made their first gas attack. In those intervening months gas warfare had grown to be a science in itself, requiring special organizations with each army to handle it.
The employment of toxic gas had developed along several lines. The original attack by the Germans upon the mask-less Canadians at Ypres had been in the form of a gas cloud from projectors, these latter being pressure tanks with nozzle outlets. For some time the Germans continued the use of gas solely by this method. Retaliation on the part of the allies quickly followed. However, the employment of gas cloud attacks involved great labor of preparation and was absolutely dependent upon certain combinations of weather conditions. In consequence, the launching of a gas attack in this form could not be timed with regard to other tactical operations. Therefore the allies were put to the necessity of developing other means of throwing toxic gases, and this they did by inclosing the gas in shell shot from the big guns of the artillery, in grenades thrown by hand from the trenches, and--most effectively of all--by the agency of an ingenious invention of the British known as the Livens projector.
The Livens projector was deadly in its effect, since it could throw suddenly and in great quantity gas bombs, or drums, into the enemy's ranks. It is notable that although the British used this device with great success throughout much of the latter period of the war, and though the French and Americans also adopted it and used it freely, the Germans were never able to discover what the device was that threw such havoc into their ranks, nor were they ever able to produce anything that was similar to it. The Livens projector remained a deep secret until the close of hostilities, and the Government offices in Washington, where the design was adapted to American manufacture, and the American plants producing the parts, were always closely guarded against enemy espionage.
Without going into details of the construction of the Livens projector it may be said that it was usually fired by electricity in sets of 25 or multiples thereof. The drums, which were cylindrical shell about 24 inches long and 8 inches in diameter, were ejected from long steel tubes, or barrels, buried in the ground resting against pressed-steel base plates. At the throwing of an electric switch a veritable rain of these big shell, as many as 2,500 of them sometimes, with their lethal contents, would come hurtling down upon the enemy. The Livens projectors could throw their gas drums nearly a mile.
The projector was entirely a new type of munition for our manufacturers to handle. The Trench Warfare Section of the Ordnance Department took up the matter late in 1917 and by May, 1918, had designed the weapon for home manufacture. Early in June the contracts were allotted for barrels and gas drums, or shell. The production of barrels was exclusively in the hands of the National Tube Co., of Pittsburgh, Pa., and the Harrisburg Pipe & Pipe-Bending Co., of Harrisburg, Pa. These companies reached the production stage in August, 1918, and completed about 63,000 barrels before the armistice was signed. Their respective plants reached a daily production rate of approximately 600 barrels per day.
Somewhat later in the spring of 1918 the contracts for base plates, on which the barrels rest when ready for firing, muzzle covers, and for various other accessories were closed. Over 100,000 base plates were produced by the Gier Pressed Steel Co., of Lansing, Mich., and the American Pulley Co., of Philadelphia, Pa. The Perkins-Campbell Co., of Philadelphia, built the muzzle covers, 66,180 of them. Cartridge cases were manufactured by Art Metal (Inc.), of Newark, N. J., and the Russakov Can Co., of Chicago, the former producing 288,838 and the latter 47,511.
The Ensign-Bickford Co., of Simsbury, Conn., produced 334,300 fuses for Livens shell; the Artillery Fuse Co., of Wilmington, Del., assembled 26,000 firing mechanisms; the E. I. du Pont Co., at its Pompton Lakes (N. J.) plant, manufactured 20,000 detonators, and 487,350 detonators were produced by the Aetna Explosives Co., at Port Ewan, N. Y.; while the American Can Co., at Lowell, Mass., assembled 256,231 firing mechanisms.
Shear wire pistols were used in the operation of the Livens projector. The Edison Phonograph Co., of Orange, N. J., produced 181,900 of these, and the Artillery Fuse Co., of Wilmington, Del., 11,747. The adapters and boosters of the shell were all built by the John Thompson Press, of New York. The Waterbury Brass Goods Co., of Waterbury, Conn., made the fuse casing. Adapters and boosters to the number of 334,500 were turned out by the former, and 299,900 fuse casings by the latter.
The manufacture of gas drums for the projectors was delayed for some time because of difficulties in welding certain parts of the drums. Acetylene and arc welding processes were tried out, and a good many shell were made by such welding; but the lack of expert welders for these processes, and the rejections of shell due to leakage in the welded joints, caused the manufacturer to turn to fire welding, the process for which had been developed by the Air-tight Steel Tank Co., of Pittsburgh, Pa. At the time the armistice was signed the welding problem had been overcome and the production was going forward at a rate to meet the requirements of the expected fighting in the spring of 1919. The shell delivered were produced as follows:
By the Federal Pressed Steel Co., of Milwaukee, Wis., 5,609; by the Pressed Steel Tank Co., also of Milwaukee, 20,536; by the Air-tight Steel Tank Co., of Pittsburgh, Pa., 600; by the National Tube Co., of Pittsburgh, 27,098; by the Truscon Steel Co., of Youngstown, Ohio, 19,880. The entire Livens shell program, as it existed in November, 1918, called for the production of 334,000 shell.
TRENCH MORTARS.
The production of trench mortars was not only an important part of our ordnance program but it was an undertaking absolutely new to American experience. Not only did we have to produce mortars, but we had to supply them with shell in great quantities, this latter in itself an enterprise of no mean proportions.
Some seven different types of mortars were in use when we came into the war. Our ordnance program contemplated the manufacture of all seven of them, but we actually succeeded in bringing only four types into production. These four were the British Newton-Stokes mortars of the 3-inch, 4-inch, and 6-inch calibers, and the French 240-millimeter mortar, which had also been adopted by the British. As usual in the adoption of foreign devices, we had to redesign these weapons to make them adaptable to American shop methods. We encountered much difficulty throughout the whole job, largely because of insufficient information furnished from abroad, and because in spite of this handicap we had to produce mortars and ammunition that would be interchangeable with French and British munitions stocks.
The first one of these weapons which we took up for production here was the 3-inch Newton-Stokes. The first contract for the manufacture of mortars of this size was placed with the Crane Co., of Chicago, on November 8, 1917, for 1,830 mortars. This concern at once arranged with the Ohio Seamless Tube Co., of Shelby, Ohio, for the drawing of steel tubes for the mortar barrels. This latter concern, however, was already handling large contracts for the Navy and for the aircraft program, and these operations took priority over the mortar contracts. But the Crane Co. took advantage of the interim to build the accessories for the weapons--the tripods, clinometers, base plates, and tool boxes. In the spring of 1918 the company received the first barrel tubes and began producing completed weapons. But when these mortars were sent to the proving ground the test-firing deformed the barrels and broke the metal bases. Finally it was decided that the propelling explosive used was not a suitable one for the purpose. Another was substituted. The new propellant permitted as great a range of fire without damage to the mortar in firing.
The Crane Co. was eventually able to reach a production of 33 of the 3-inch mortars a day, and up to December 5, 1918, it had built 1,803 completed weapons, together with the necessary tools and spare parts. In the early fall of 1918 an additional contract for 677 of these mortars was placed with the Crane Co. and another for 2,000 mortars of this size with the International Harvester Co., of Chicago. Neither of these two latter contracts ever came to the production stage.
A few days after the original contract for 3-inch mortars was let the Trench Warfare Section took up the matter of producing ammunition for these weapons. Two sorts of shell were to be required--live shell filled with high explosive and practice shell made of malleable iron. The original program adopted in November, 1917, called for the production of 5,342,000 live shell for the 3-inch mortars and 1,500,000 practice shell.
The plan was adopted of building these shell of lap-welded, 3-inch steel tubing, cut into proper lengths. The contracts for the finished machined and assembled shell were placed with the General Motors Corporation at its Saginaw (Mich.) plant, with H. C. Dodge (Inc.), at South Boston, Mass., and with the Metropolitan Engineering Co., of Brooklyn, N. Y. In order to facilitate production, the Government agreed to furnish the steel tubing. For this purpose it ordered from the National Tube Co., of Pittsburgh, Pa., 1,618,929 pieces of steel tubing, each 11 inches in length, and from the Allegheny Steel Co., at Brakenridge, Pa., 2,332,319 running feet of tubing. These tube contracts were filled by the early spring of 1918.
The railroad congestion of February and March, 1918, held up the delivery of tubing, but the assembly plants utilized the time in tooling up for the future production. All the plants thereafter soon reached a quantity production, the General Motors Corporation in particular tuning up its shop system until it was able to reach a maximum daily production in a 10-hour shift of 35,618 completed shell.
The casting of malleable iron bodies for the practice shell of this caliber was turned over to the Erie Malleable Iron Co., of Erie, Pa., and to the National Malleable Castings Co., with plants at Cleveland, Chicago, Indianapolis, and Toledo. The former concern cast 196,673 bodies and the latter 1,015,005. The Gorham Manufacturing Co., of Providence, R. I.; the Standard Parts Co., of Cleveland, Ohio; and the New Process Gear Corporation, of Syracuse, N. Y., machined and assembled the practice shell. When the armistice was declared, these three contracts were approximately seven-tenths complete.
We were dissatisfied with our 3-inch shell, for the reason that they tumbled in air and were visible to the eye. The French had developed a mortar shell on the streamline principle which was invisible in flight and had twice the range of ours. Had the war continued the Trench Warfare Section would have produced streamline shell for mortars.
The second mortar project undertaken was the manufacture of the 240-millimeter weapon. This was the largest mortar which we produced, its barrel having a diameter of approximately 10 inches. It proved to be one of the toughest nuts to crack in the whole mortar undertaking. The British designs of this French weapon we found to be quite unsuited to our factory methods, and for the sake of expediency we frequently modified them in the course of the development. The total contracts called for the production of 938 mortars.
It was obvious that the manufacture of this and of other larger mortars would fall into three phases. The forging of barrels, breechblocks, and breech slides was a separate type of work, and we allotted the contracts for this work to the Standard Forging Co., of Indiana Harbor, Ind. The machining of these parts to the fine dimensions required by the design was an entirely separate phase of manufacturing, and we placed this work with the American Laundry Machine Co., of Cincinnati. Still a third class of work was that of assembling the completed mortars, and this contract went to the David Lupton Sons Co., of Philadelphia, who also engaged to manufacture the metal and timber bases and firing mechanisms. These big mortars had to have mobile mountings, and the contract for the mortar carts we placed with the International Harvester Co., of Chicago. These contracts were signed in December, 1917.
The Lupton plant had difficulty in securing the heavy machinery it needed for this and for other mortar contracts, its machinery being held up by the freight congestion. Early in 1918 the American Expeditionary Forces advised us to redesign the 240-millimeter mortar to give it a stronger barrel. Consequently all work was stopped until this could be done. The first mortars of the new design to be tested were still unsatisfactory with respect to the strength of the barrels; and as a consequence the Standard Forging Co. urged that nickel steel be substituted for basic open-hearth steel as the material for the barrels. This change proved to be justified.
There was also trouble at the shops of the American Laundry Machine Co., its equipment not having the precision to do machining of the type required in these weapons. Accordingly a new machining contract was made with the Symington-Anderson Co., of Rochester, N. Y., which concern was eventually able to reach a production of 20 machined barrels per week.
In all we produced 24 of the 240-millimeter mortars in this country. Certain of the parts were manufactured up to the total requirements of the contracts, but others were not built in such numbers. The International Harvester Co. built all 999 carts ordered.
The production of shell for these big mortars was another difficult undertaking. After consultation with manufacturers we designed shell of two different types. One of these was a shell of pressed plates welded together longitudinally; and a contract for the production of 283,096 of these was placed with the Metropolitan Engineering Co. The other form was that of two steel hemispheres welded together. The Michigan Stamping Co., of Detroit, undertook to build 50,000 of these.
These shell contracts were placed in December, 1917. The Michigan Stamping Co. had to wait five months before it could secure and install its complete equipment of machinery. It was September before all of the difficulties in the Detroit plant's project could be overcome and quantity production could be started. The concern eventually, before and after the signing of the armistice, built 9,185 shell of this type at a maximum rate of 56 per day.
Greater promise seemed to be held forth by the Metropolitan Engineering Co.'s project to build shell of pressed-out plates, electrically welded. The Government undertook to furnish the steel plates for this work and secured from the American Rolling Mills Co., of Middletown, Ohio, a total production of 6,757 tons of them. The Metropolitan Engineering Co. had great difficulty in perfecting a proper welding process; and the concern lost a great deal of money on the contract, yet cheerfully continued its development without prospect of recompense in order that we might have in this country the knowledge of how to build such shell. In all, including production after the armistice was signed, the Metropolitan Engineering Co. built 136,189 shell bodies of this size at a maximum rate of 987 per day.
During the summer of 1918 a single-piece shell body of the 240-millimeter size, produced by a deep-drawing process, was worked out. A contract for 125,000 of them was given to the Ireland & Matthews Manufacturing Co., of Detroit, Mich. The armistice brought this contract to an end before it had produced any shell of this new and most promising type.
Early in 1918 we received the first samples of the 6-inch trench mortar. By April all the plans were ready for American production. Again this work was divided by types. The National Tube Co., of Pittsburgh, contracted to build 510 rough forgings of mortar barrels at its Christy Park plant. The Symington-Anderson Co. undertook to machine these barrels. The David Lupton Sons Co. agreed to assemble the mortars, as well as to produce the metal and timber bases for them.
The first machined barrels reached the Lupton plant in June and found bases ready for them. But, as the assembling was in progress, the American Expeditionary Forces cabled that the British producers of mortars had changed their designs, and that we must suspend our manufacture until we also could adopt the changes. The altered plans reached us some weeks later; yet, nevertheless, we were able to make good our original promise to deliver 48 of the 6-inch Newton-Stokes mortars at the port of embarkation in October, 1918.
Meanwhile we had increased the contracts by an additional requirement of 1,577 mortars of this size. The National Tube Co. eventually reached a maximum daily production of 60 barrel forgings. The Symington-Anderson Co. machined the barrels finally at a 33-per-day clip. As many as 11 proof-fired guns per day came from the David Lupton Sons Co.
An interesting fact in connection with the production of shell for the 6-inch mortars is that they were built principally by American makers of stoves. The 6-inch mortar-shell bodies were of cast iron instead of steel, and thus were adaptable to manufacture in stove works. Each shell weighed 40 pounds without its explosive charge. Such shell were used at the front for heavy demolition purposes.
The contracts for these shell were placed in March, 1918. The Trench Warfare Section was immediately called upon to secure favorable priority for the pig iron required for this purpose. The various stove works did not have the necessary machinery for building these shell, and so a special equipment in each case had to be built. At the tests the first castings which came through the foundry were found to leak, and this required further experiments in the design, holding up production until July, 1918.
Because of the many troubles encountered in this work the various stove makers in the summer of 1918 formed an association which they called the Six-inch Trench-mortar Shell Manufacturers' Association. This association held monthly meetings and its members visited the various plants where shell castings were being made. The United States Radiator Corporation, the Foster-Merriam Co., and the Michigan Stove Co., were especially active in improving methods for making these shell.
The various concerns producing 6-inch mortar shell and the amounts turned out were as follows:
Foster Merriam Co., Meriden, Conn. 33,959 U. S. Radiator Corporation, Detroit, Mich. 240,700 Globe Stove & Range Co., Kokomo, Ind. 17,460 Rathbone, Sard & Co., Albany, N. Y. 97,114 Michigan Stove Co., Detroit, Mich. 100,000
The following concerns shortly before the armistice was signed received contracts for the production of 6-inch mortar shell, orders ranging in quantity from 50,000 to 150,000, but none of these concerns started production:
Wm. Crane Co., Jersey City, N. J. Frontier Iron Works, Buffalo, N. Y. Henry E. Pridmore, (Inc.), Chicago, Ill. Best Foundry Co., Bedford, Ohio. McCord & Co., Chicago, Ill.
It was not until July, 1918, that the plans were ready for the 4-inch Newton-Stokes trench mortars. The American Expeditionary Forces estimated that they would require 480 of these weapons. A total of 500 drawn barrel tubes was ordered from the Ohio Seamless Tube Co., of Shelby, Ohio. This concern was able to ship one-fifth of its order within 10 days after receiving it. The barrels were sent to the Rock Island Arsenal for machining. The Crane Co., of Chicago, held the contract for building the bases, tripods, spare parts, and tools, and also for the assembling of the completed mortars. This factory was already equipped with tools for this work, since it had been building similar parts for 3-inch mortars. Consequently, the Crane Co., in August, almost within a month of receiving its contract, was producing completed 4-inch mortars and sending them to the Rock Island Arsenal for proof firing. The Ohio Seamless Tube Co. reached a high daily production of 83 barrel forgings per day; the Rock Island Arsenal, 10 machined barrels per day; and the Crane Co., 19 assembled mortars per day.
We planned to build only smoke shell and gas shell for the 4-inch mortars. Large contracts for various parts of these shell were placed and the enterprise was gaining great size when the armistice was declared, but no finished smoke shell and only a few gas shell for 4-inch trench mortars had been produced. The contracts for the smoke shell were let in October, 1918, and work had not started further than the procurement of raw material before the armistice came. A large number of contractors expected to produce the parts for the 4-inch gas shell, and considerable of the raw materials were actually produced; but only one of the machining and assembling contractors, the Paige-Detroit Motor Car Co., actually completed any of these shell, and production at this plant did not start until December 5, 1918.
Production of trench mortars and trench-mortar ammunition.
TRENCH MORTARS. -----------------------------+------------------+-----------------+---------- | Completions to | Completions to | Shipped Character. | Nov. 11, 1918. | Feb. 1, 1919. | overseas. -----------------------------+------------------+-----------------+---------- 3-inch | 1,609| 1,830| 843 4-inch | 444| 778| 6-inch | 368| 500| 48 240-millimeter (9.45 inches) | 29| 30| -----------------------------+------------------+-----------------+---------- TRENCH-MORTAR AMMUNITION. -----------------------------+------------------+-----------------+---------- | Completions | Completions | Shipped Character. | to Nov. 11 | to Feb. 1 | overseas | 1918 (unloaded). |1919 (unloaded). | (loaded). -----------------------------+------------------+-----------------+---------- | Rounds. | Rounds. | Rounds. 3-inch live | 3,136,275 | 3,741,237 | 157,785 3-inch practice | 607,178 | 782,340 | 4-inch gas | | 212 | 4-inch smoke | | | 6-inch live | 292,882 | 492,404 | 240-millimeter (9.45 inches) | 67,829 | 131,124 | -----------------------------+------------------+-----------------+----------
TOXIC GAS SETS.
Another extensive project in the trench-warfare program was the manufacture of the so-called toxic gas sets. Each set consisted of a one-man portable cylinder equipped with a nozzle and a firing mechanism. Each set was ready for firing as soon as it was placed in position.
In August, 1918, the toxic-gas-set project was taken up by the Trench Warfare Section. Contracts for cylinders were awarded to the Ireland-Matthews Manufacturing Co., of Detroit, Mich., who produced 13,642 cylinders, and to the American Car & Foundry Co. at its Milton, Pa., plant, which concern turned out 11,046 cylinders.
The Pittsburgh Reinforcing, Brazing & Machine Co. produced 9,765 valves for the cylinders in two months after receiving the contract. The Yale & Towne Manufacturing Co., of Stamford, Conn., which received the contract for nozzles on September 5, 1918, manufactured 20,501 of them before the armistice was signed; and J. N. Smith & Co., of Detroit, Mich., who did not receive their contract until September 26, built 3,252 nozzles before the fighting stopped. The Liquid Carbolic Co., of Chicago, and the Ruud Manufacturing Co., of Pittsburgh, had the contracts for the firing mechanism; but none of these was produced because at the time the armistice was signed the firing mixture to be used with the cylinders had not been developed.
In connection with the production of materials for gas warfare the Ordnance Department also designed several types of containers for the shipment of poison gas, these including not only the portable cylinders but larger tanks and even tank cars.
PYROTECHNICS.
A few years ago, when we allowed the adventurous American boy to blow off his fingers and hands by the indiscriminate use of explosives in celebrating the Nation's birthday, we had an extensive fireworks industry in this country. But the spread of the sane Fourth reform had virtually killed this manufacture, so that when we entered the war there were only three or four plants in the United States making fireworks. These concerns kept the trade secrets closely guarded. However, as we approached the brink of hostilities it was evident we would have to build up a large production capacity for the pyrotechnics demanded by the various new types of fighting which had sprung into existence since 1914. Fireworks were extensively used principally for signaling at night and as an aid to aviators in the dark.
One of the men to foresee this need was Lewis Nixon, who had long been in the public eye and was known especially for his advocacy of an American merchant marine. He organized a pyrotechnics concern known as the Nixon Fulgent Products Co., built a plant at Brunswick, N. J., and was ready to talk business with the Government when the war began.
Also there had long been in existence that perennial delight of children and adults alike known as Paine's Fireworks, whose spectacular exhibitions are familiar to most city dwellers in the United States. This concern had its own manufacturing plant, which was ready to expand to meet Government war requirements.
In addition, two other concerns of the formerly declining industry were ready to increase their facilities and produce pyrotechnics for war purposes. These were the Unexcelled Manufacturing Co., of New York, and the National Fireworks Co., of West Hanover, Mass. The four concerns proved to be able to meet every war requirement we had.
Prior to the war some few military pyrotechnics had been procured by the Signal Corps, the Coast Artillery, the Engineer Corps, and also by the Navy; but on September 27, 1917, the design of all Army pyrotechnics was centralized in the Trench Warfare Section.
Much experimentation was necessary before specifications could be prepared, since the entire fire-signaling field had long been in confusion. We had made our own designs and were proceeding with production in the spring of 1918, when the American Expeditionary Forces made the positive recommendation that the entire French program of pyrotechnics be adopted by the United States. This meant a fresh start in the business, but nevertheless pyrotechnic devices were developed to meet all of our needs. These devices included signal rockets, parachute rockets, signal pistols and their ammunition, position and signal lights, flares, smoke torches, and lights to be thrown by the V. B. discharger, the French device attached to the end of the rifle in which a rifle grenade fits.
At the outset of our efforts we started to build signal rockets, position lights, rifle lights, signal lights, and lights for use with the Very signal pistol. The Very signal pistol, which we adopted first, had the caliber of a 10-gauge shotgun, and its cartridges resembled shotgun shells in appearance, although containing Roman candle balls of various colors instead of leaden shot. The orders from abroad in the spring of 1918 changed the caliber of the Very pistol to 25 millimeters and brought into our requirements some 16 different styles of star and parachute cartridges. In addition to these, there were required about 20 styles of star and parachute cartridges for the French V. B. discharger. The recommendations from France brought in 13 new styles of signal rockets, as well as smoke torches, wing-tip flares for airplanes, parachute flares for lighting the ground under bombing airplanes, and also 12 styles of cartridges for a new 35-millimeter Very pistol for the use of aviators.
After we received these instructions there was great uncertainty here as to the quantity of each item that should be produced; and this matter was not settled until August 5, 1918, when an enormous program of requirements was issued. At first it seemed that the Government itself must build new factories to take care of these needs, but a careful examination showed that the existing facilities could be expanded to take care of the production. The placing of contracts in this undertaking was under way when the armistice stopped the work.
The following table indicates the size of the pyrotechnic undertaking and also what was accomplished. All of this production came from the plants of the four companies which have been named. In addition to the fireworks themselves, accessories were produced by a number of other concerns. The Japan Paper Co., New York City, manufactured and imported from Japan approximately 3,000,000 paper parachutes. The Remington Arms Co., New Haven, Conn., built about 2,500,000 10-gauge signal-pistol cartridges, except for the stars they contained. The Empire Art Metal Co., College Point, N. Y., produced nearly 2,000,000 Very pistol cartridge cases. The Winchester Repeating Arms Co., Bridgeport, Conn., supplied nearly 5,000,000 primers for these cartridges. Rose Bros. & Co., Lancaster, Pa., produced 65,600 silk parachutes for Very cartridges. Cheney Bros., South Manchester, Conn.; D. G. Dery (Inc.), Allentown, Pa.; Stehli Silk Corporation, New York City; Sauquoit Silk Co., Philadelphia; Lewis Roessel & Co., Hazleton, Pa.; Schwarzenback-Huber Co., New York City; and the Duplane Silk Corporation, Hazleton, Pa., produced a total of 1,231,728 yards of silk for parachutes to float airplane flares. The parachutes themselves for the airplane flares, a total of 28,570 of them, were manufactured by the Duplane Silk Corporation; Folmer-Clogg Co., Lancaster, Pa.; and Jacob Gerhardt Co., Hazleton, Pa. The Edw. G. Budd Manufacturing Co., Philadelphia, built 41,020 metal cases for the airplane flares.
--------------------------------+-----------+---------------+-------------- Articles. | Ordered. | Completed to | Completed to | | Nov. 8, 1918. | Feb. 1, 1919. --------------------------------+-----------+---------------+-------------- Signal rockets | 615,000 | 437,101 | 544,355 Position lights | 2,072,000 | 1,187,532 | 1,670,070 Rifle lights | 55,000 | 55,000 | 55,000 Signal lights | 3,110,000 | 2,661,008 | 2,710,268 V. B. cartridges | 1,215,000 | 110 000 | 673,200 Very cartridges, 25-millimeter | 300,000 | | Smoke torches | 500,000 | 31,000 | 188,102 Wing-tip flares | 112,000 | 70,000 | 100,865 Airplane flares | 50,083 | 2,100 | 8,000 --------------------------------+-----------+---------------+--------------
We also contracted for the production of many thousands of Very signal pistols. Before the original program was canceled the Remington Arms Co. had produced 24,460 of the 10-gauge pistols in contracts calling for a total output of 35,000.
In August, 1918, we let contracts for 135,000 of the 25-millimeter pistols and for approximately 30,000 of the 35-millimeter pistols. The A. H. Fox Gun Co. completed 4,193 of the smaller pistols and the Scott & Fetzger Machine Co. turned out 7,750 of them. Other concerns which had taken contracts but had not come into production when the armistice was signed were the National Tool & Manufacturing Co., the Doehler Die Castings Co., the Hammond Typewriter Co., and Parker Bros.
Considerable experimental work of an interesting nature was carried out looking toward the development of incendiary devices. Three types of flame projectors, flaming bayonets, an airplane destroyer, incendiary darts, and the smoke knapsack were among the projects undertaken. Owing in large measure to changes in requirements by the American Expeditionary Forces none of these devices was actually turned out on any considerable scale.
XIV. MISCELLANEOUS ORDNANCE EQUIPMENT
The miscellaneous ordnance equipment of the American soldier in the recent war--that is, articles which he carried with him and which added to his comfort, his safety, or his efficiency as a fighter--while in many respects identical with the equipment used by our troops for many years, at the same time contained several novelties.
In the novelty class were helmets and armor. There is a widespread impression that helmets and body armor passed away with the invention of gunpowder and because of that invention. This impression is not at all true. Body armor came to its highest development long after gunpowder was in common use in war. The sixteenth century witnessed the most extensive use of armor; yet at that time guns and pistols formed an important part of the equipment of every army, and even a weapon which is generally fancied to be ultramodern, the revolver, had been invented.
The fact is that not gunpowder but tactics caused the decline of armor. Not that armor was unable to stop many types of projectiles shot from guns, but that its weight hampered swift maneuvering, caused it to be laid aside by the soldier. The decline of armor may be said to date from the Thirty Years' War. The armies in that period, and particularly that of the Swedes, began making long marches for surprise attacks, and the body armor of the troops was found to be a hindrance in such tactics. Thereafter armor went out of fashion.
Yet it never completely disappeared in warfare. Gen. Rochambeau is said to have worn body armor at the siege of Yorktown. Great numbers of corselets and headpieces were worn in the Napoleonic wars. The corselet which John Paul Jones wore in his fight with the Serapis is preserved at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The Japanese army was mailed with good armor as late as 1870. Breastplates were worn to some extent in the Civil War in the United States, and an armor factory was actually established at New Haven, Conn., about 1862. In the museum at Richmond, Va., is an equipment of armor taken from a dead soldier in one of the trenches at the siege of that city. There was a limited use of armor in the Franco-Prussian War. Some of the Japanese troops carried shields at Port Arthur. Helmets were worn in the Boer War. A notorious Australian bandit in the eighties for a long time defied armed posses to capture him because he wore armor and could stand off entire squads of policemen firing at him with Martini rifles at close range.
Thus it can not be said that armor, in coming into use again in the great war, was resurrected; it was merely revived. In its static condition during most of the four-year period, the war against Germany was one in which armor might profitably be used. This opportunity could scarcely be overlooked, and indeed it was not. Everybody knows of the helmets that were in general use; yet body armor itself was coming into favor again, and only the welcome but unexpected end of hostilities prevented it, in all probability, from becoming again an important part of the equipment of a soldier.
As a consequence of the attenuated but persistent use of armor by soldiers during the past two centuries and of the demand of the aristocratic for helmets and armor as ornaments, the armorer's trade had been kept alive from the days of Gustavus Adolphus to the present. The war efforts of the United States in 1917 and 1918 demanded a wide range of human talents and special callings; but surely the strange and unusual seemed to be reached when in the early days of our undertaking the Engineering Division of the Ordnance Department sought the services of expert armorers.
Through the advice of the National Research Council, which had established a committee of armor experts, the Ordnance Department commissioned in its service Maj. Bashford Dean, a life-long specialist in armor, curator in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, an institution which, learning of the Government's need, at once placed at its disposal its wonderful specimens of authentic armor, its armor repair shop where models could at once be made, and the services of Maj. Dean's assistant there whom he had brought from France, Daniel Tachaux, one of the few surviving armorers, who had inherited lineally the technical side of the ancient craft.
It may be said that there were but two nations in the great war which went to the Middle Ages for ideas as to protective armor--ourselves and Germany. The Germans, who applied science to almost every phase of warfare, did not neglect it here. Germany at the start consulted her experts on ancient armor and worked along lines which they suggested. The German helmet used in the trenches was undoubtedly superior to any other helmet given a practical use.
The first helmets to be used in the great war were of French manufacture. They were designed by Gen. Adrien, and 2,000,000 of them were manufactured and issued to the French Army. These helmets were the product of hasty pioneer work, but the fact that they saved from 2 to 5 per cent of the normal casualties of such a war as was being fought at once impelled the other belligerents to adopt the idea. Great Britain, spurred by the necessity of producing quickly a helmet in quantity, designed the most simple helmet to manufacture, which could be pressed out of cold metal.
When America entered the war she had, naturally, no distinctive helmet; and the English type, being easiest to make, was adopted to fill the gap until we could design a more efficient one ourselves. Consequently 400,000 British helmets were bought in England and issued to the vanguard of the American Expeditionary Forces. Our men wore them, became accustomed to them, and came to feel that they were the badge of English-speaking troops. The British helmet thus became a habit with our men, one difficult to change, a fact which mitigated against the popularity of the more advanced and scientific models which we were to bring out.
Now, the British helmet possessed some notable defects. It did not afford a maximum of protective area. The center of gravity was not so placed as to keep the helmet from wobbling. The lining was uncomfortable and disregarded the anatomy of the head. It was vulnerable at the concave surface where bowl and brim joined.
It is not an astonishing circumstance that some of the earlier helmets worn by the men-at-arms of the days of knighthood possessed certain of these same defects, notably, that they were apt to be top-heavy and uncomfortable. Only by centuries of constant application and improvement were the armorers of the Middle Ages able to produce helmets which overcame these defects and which embodied all of the principles of defense and strength which science could put into them. The best medieval helmets stand at the summit of the art. It was the constant aim of the modern specialist, aided by the facilities of the twentieth century industries, to produce helmets as perfect technically as those rare models which are the pride of museums and collectors.
Certainly in one respect we had the advantage of the ancients in that we have nowadays at our disposal the modern alloy-steels of great resistance. An alloy of this kind having a thickness of 0.036 of an inch is able to stop at a distance of 10 feet a jacketed, automatic pistol ball, .45 caliber, traveling at the rate of 600 feet a second. This was important not only from the standpoint of helmet production, but from the further inference that body armor of such steel might still be profitably used. The records of the hospitals in France show that 7 or 8 of every 10 wounded soldiers were wounded by fragments of shell and other missiles which even thin armor plate would have kept out. The German troops used body armor in large numbers, each set weighing from 19 to 24 pounds. In this country we believed it possible to produce body armor which would not be difficult to carry and which would resist the impact of a machine-gun bullet at fairly close range.
The production of helmets, however, was our first concern; and in order to be sure of a sufficient quantity of these protective headpieces, we adopted the British model for production in the United States and went ahead with it on a large scale. For the metal we adopted after much experimentation a steel alloy with a high percentage of manganese. This was practically the same as the steel of the British helmet. Its chief advantage was that it was easy to work in the metal presses in existence and it required no further tempering after leaving the stamping presses. Its hardness, however, wore away the stamping tools much more quickly than ordinary steel sheets would do.
While we adopted the British helmet in design and substantially in metal used, we originated our own helmet lining. The lining was woven of cotton twine in meshes three-eighths of an inch square. This web, fitting tightly upon the wearer's head, evenly distributed the weight of the two-pound helmet, and in the same way distributed the force of any blow upon the helmet. The netting, together with small pieces of rubber around the edge of the lining, kept the helmet away from the head, so that even a relatively large dent could not reach the wearer's skull.
It is an interesting fact that the linings for the American helmets were produced by concerns whose ordinary business was the manufacture of shoes. There were 10 of these companies taking such contracts. Steel for the helmet was rolled by the American Sheet & Tin Plate Co. The helmets were pressed and stamped into shape by seven companies which had done similar work before the war. These concerns were:
Contractor. Delivered.
Edward G. Budd Manufacturing Co., Philadelphia 1,150,775 Sparks, Withington Co., Jackson, Mich. 473,469 Crosby Co., Buffalo, N. Y. 469,968 Bossett Corporation, Utica, N. Y. 116,735 Columbian Enameling & Stamping Co., Terre Haute, Ind. 268,850 Worcester Pressed Steel Co., Worcester, Mass. 193,840 Benjamin Electric Co., Des Plaines, Ill. 33,600 --------- Total 2,707,237
The metal helmets and the woven linings were delivered to the plant of the Ford Motor Co. at Philadelphia, where they were painted and assembled. The helmets were painted in the olive-drab shade for protective coloring. While on dull days such objects could not be discerned at a great distance, in bright weather their rounded surfaces might catch and reflect sunbeams, thus betraying the positions of their wearers. To guard against this, as soon as the helmets were treated to a first coat of paint fine sawdust was blown upon the wet surface. When this had dried, another coat of paint was applied, and a nonreflective, gritty surface was thus produced.
We began receiving substantial quantities of finished helmets by the end of November of the first year of the war. On February 17, 1918, practically 700,000 had been shipped abroad or were ready for shipment at the ports of embarkation. Later in the spring of 1918, when we began sending men to France much beyond our earlier expectations, the orders for helmets were greatly expanded. In July the total orders reached 3,000,000, in August 6,000,000, and in September 7,000,000. This would give us enough to meet all requirements until June, 1919.
When the armistice was signed the factories were producing more than 100,000 helmets every four days, and were rapidly approaching the time when their daily output would be 60,000. The Government canceled all helmet contracts as soon as the fighting ceased, having received up to that time a total of 2,700,000 of them.
While this manufacture was going on we were developing helmets of our own. Major Dean went to France to collect information dealing with the actual needs of the service and to present numerous experimental models of helmets for the comment and criticism of the General Staff. In numerous cases these models were accepted for manufacture here in experimental lots.
In all we developed four models which seemed to have merits recommending their adoption. The first distinctive American helmet was known as model No. 2. The Ford Co. at Detroit pressed about 1,200 of these helmets. The helmet, however, was similar in appearance to the German helmet, and for that reason was disapproved by the American Expeditionary Forces.
Helmet model No. 3 was of a deep-bowl type, but it was rejected when the Hale & Kilburn Co., of Philadelphia, after a great deal of experimentation, found that the helmet was too deep for successful manufacture by pressing.
Model No. 4 was designed by the master armorer of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was also found too difficult to manufacture.
Helmet No. 5 was strongly recommended by American experts, but was not accepted by the General Staff. It was designed by the armor committee at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in conjunction with the Engineering Division of the Ordnance Department. Hale & Kilburn undertook to manufacture these helmets, which were to be painted, assembled, and packed by the Ford Motor Co. at its Philadelphia plant. Various component parts of the helmet were sublet in experimental quantities to numerous manufacturers.
The No. 5 helmet, complete, weighed 2 pounds, 6½ ounces. It combined the virtues of several types of helmets. It gave a maximum of protection for its weight. It was comparatively easy to produce. This helmet, with slight variations, was later adopted as the standard helmet of the Swiss Army. The latest German helmet, it is interesting to note, was approaching similar lines.
We also produced helmets for special services--one with a visor to protect machine gunners and snipers, and another, known as model 14, for aviators, it being little heavier than the leather helmet which airmen wore in the war and twenty times as strong a defense for the head. A third special helmet, known as model 15, was for operators of tanks. It was provided with a neck guard of padded silk to stop the lead splash which penetrated the turret of the tank. The Ordnance Department turned out 25 of these in 10 days and sent them by courier to France for a test.
The Germans issued body armor only to troops holding exposed positions under heavy machine-gun and rifle fire; but such use was distinctly valuable, as was shown by captured German reports.
The Engineering Division of the Ordnance Department developed a body defense including a light front and body plate, these together weighing 9½ pounds. One lot of 5,000 sets was manufactured by the Hale & Kilburn Corporation. The linings of these plates were of sponge rubber, and they were made by the Miller Rubber Co., of Akron, Ohio. All of these sets were shipped abroad for testing; but the report was not favorable, as the American soldier did not wish to be hampered with armor. He had learned to wear his helmet, but he had yet to be convinced of the practical value of body armor.
We developed a heavy breast plate with thigh guards, weighing 27 pounds, which stopped machine gun bullets at 150 yards. An experimental lot of these were completed in 26 days by the Mullins Manufacturing Co., of Salem, Ohio. These were also shipped abroad for test.
A few defenses for arms and legs were prepared which, although light in weight, would protect the wearer from an automatic-pistol ball at 10 feet. About 70 per cent of the hospital cases in France were casualties caused by wounds in the arms and legs. These defenses, however, were rejected on account of their impeding to a certain degree the movements of the wearer.
Our development in armor also produced an aviator's chair weighing 60 pounds. It would protect the pilot from injury from below and from the back, withstanding armor-piercing bullets fired at a distance of 50 yards. Since the piercing of the gas mask canister by a bullet might result in the death of the soldier by admitting gas directly into the breathing system of his mask, the Ordnance Department designed an armored haversack for the gas mask and its canister, this haversack incidentally serving as a breast defense.
BAYONETS AND TRENCH KNIVES.
Another large ordnance operation was the production of bayonets for the service rifles. The British bayonet had proved to be highly satisfactory in the war; and, since it was already designed to fit the Enfield rifle, which we had adopted for our own, we took the British bayonet as it was and, with only one slight alteration, set out to produce it in this country.
The Government found both the Remington Arms-Union Metallic Cartridge Co. at its Bridgeport, Conn., works, and the Winchester Repeating Arms Co. building these bayonets for the English Government. The latter's bayonet needs by 1917 were being well supplied by home manufacture, and this permitted us to buy approximately 545,500 bayonets which had already been manufactured for the British.
The Ordnance Department at once started out these two concerns on contracts for bayonets for the American Government, Remington with total orders for 2,820,803 bayonets and Winchester with orders for 672,500. Remington delivered in all 1,565,644 bayonets and Winchester 395,894. This was a total of 1,961,500 bayonets.
The total production of 1917 rifles was about 2,520,000. These figures indicate that we were short over 500,000 bayonets at the time hostilities ceased; and as a matter of fact this shortage had already become acute, especially in the training camps.
The bayonets had not come as rapidly as we had expected, because to produce them at the rate originally planned would have interfered with the more essential production of rifles by these same companies. Accordingly in 1918 additional contracts for bayonets were made. Landers, Frary & Clark, of New Britain, Conn., engaged to manufacture 500,000 bayonets, and the National Motor Vehicle Co., 255,000. These latter contracts, however, were suspended after the armistice was signed. The additional orders had made it certain that there would be no bayonet shortage by the spring of 1919.
While this production was under way we were also manufacturing bayonets for the model 1903 Springfield rifle. The Springfield Armory produced 347,533 of these and the Rock Island Arsenal 36,800. In addition the Springfield Armory delivered 50,000 bayonet blades as spare parts.
We not only had to provide bayonets but also the scabbards to hold them in. The scabbard of the 1917 bayonet was of simple manufacture and there were no difficulties in securing sufficient quantities. The Jewell Belt Co. delivered 1,810,675 of them; Graton & Knight delivered 1,669,581; while the Rock Island Arsenal produced 3,000. This gave us a total of 3,480,000 scabbards, a quantity greatly in excess of the production of either bayonets or rifles.
A new weapon which had come into use during the great war as part of the soldier's individual equipment was the trench knife. The question of making such knives was taken up by the Government with various manufacturers throughout the country and they were given a general idea of what was required and, in conjunction with the Ordnance Department, were requested to develop details. The design submitted by Henry Disston & Sons, of Philadelphia, received the most favorable consideration. This knife was manufactured and known as model 1917. It was a triangular blade 9 inches long. The triangular blade was deemed the most efficient because of the ease with which it would pierce clothing and even leather. This knife was slightly changed as regards handle and given a different guard to protect the man's knuckles, and was known as model 1918. These knives were sent abroad in large quantities to be used by the American Expeditionary Forces. Landers, Frary & Clark produced 113,000 of these knives and the Oneida Community (Ltd.), Oneida, N. Y., 10,000.
On June 1, 1918, the American Expeditionary Forces made an exhaustive test, comparing the various trench knives used abroad. The four knives tested were as follows; United States, model 1917; Hughes; French; and British knuckle knife. These tests were made to determine the merits of the different knives as to the following points:
(a) Serviceability--ability to carry in hand and function other arms.
(b) Quickness in action.
(c) If the soldier were knocked unconscious, would knife drop from hand?
(d) Suitability to carry in hand when crawling.
(e) Probability of being knocked out of hand.
(f) Weight, length, shape of blade.
(g) Shape of handle.
It was found that the model 1917, although a satisfactory knife, could be improved. Therefore the trench knife known as Mark I was developed partially by the American Expeditionary Forces and partially by the Engineering Division of Ordnance. This knife was entirely different from the model 1917, having a flat blade, metal scabbard, and a cast-bronze handle. It was a combination of all the good points of all the knives used by the foreign armies.
The Government placed orders for 1,232,780 of the new knives. Deliveries were to have begun in December, but before that time peace had come and the orders had been reduced to 119,424. The new model knives were to have been manufactured by A. A. Simons & Son, Dayton, Ohio; Henry Disston & Son, Philadelphia; Landers, Frary & Clark, and the Oneida Community (Ltd.). All contracts were canceled except the one with Landers, Frary & Clark.
PERISCOPES, BELTS, ETC.
Another new article in the equipment of our soldiers was the trench periscope, a device enabling a man to look over the edge of the trench without exposing himself to fire. The ordinary periscope was merely a wooden box 2 inches square and 15 inches long, with an inclined mirror set at each end. Production was commenced in October, 1917, by two companies, and 81,000 were delivered by the middle of January. In August, 1918, an additional lot of 60,000 was ordered, but the deliveries of these were slow.
An even simpler periscope was merely a mirror about three inches long and an inch and a half wide which could be placed on a bayonet or a stick and set up over the trench so that it gave a view of the ground in front. A total of 100,000 of these was delivered before the end of July, 1918, and 50,000 additional ones before November. Further facts about periscopes are set down in the chapter in this report relating to sights and fire-control apparatus.
At the beginning of the war all textile equipment, such as cartridge belts, bandoleers to carry ammunition, haversacks, pack carriers, pistol holsters, canteen covers and similar material were supplied in woven material. Only two concerns in this country could manufacture articles of this quality. They were the Mills Woven Cartridge Belt Co., Worcester, Mass., and the Russell Manufacturing Co., Middletown, Conn. Although these two concerns practically doubled their output and worked day and night to supply the material, the demand was too great, and belts and carriers were designed to be stitched and sewn and not woven. Equipment made in this manner is inferior to the woven article. However, the Mills Woven Cartridge Belt Co. produced approximately 3,200,000 of these articles and the Russell Manufacturing Co., 1,500,000. Large producers of the stitched and sewn material were the Plant Brothers Co., Boston, Mass.; R. H. Long Co., Framingham, Mass.; L. C. Chase Co., Watertown, Mass.
For the Browning automatic rifle and the Browning machine gun there were specially designed belts and bandoleers. The rifleman had his own special belt, and his first and second assistants had their own individual belts, and the assistants also had two bandoleers each, one right and one left, which were carried across their shoulders. These were manufactured in quantities by the following manufacturers:
R. H. Long Co., Framingham, Mass. 175,000 Plant Bros., Boston, Mass. 75,000 L. C. Chase Co., Watertown, Mass. 20,000
Many small articles of textile equipment were produced in immense quantities. There were approximately four and a half million canteen covers produced prior to November 1. Large contracts were placed with the following concerns: Perkins-Campbell Co., Cincinnati, Ohio; Brauer Bros., St. Louis, Mo.; L. C. Chase Co., Watertown, Mass.; Miller-Hexter Co., Cleveland, Ohio; Powers Manufacturing Co., Waterloo, Iowa; R. H. Long Co., Framingham, Mass.; Bradford Co., St. Joseph, Mich.; Galvin Bros., Cleveland, Ohio; Progressive Knitting Works, Brooklyn, N. Y.
Approximately four and a half million haversacks were produced and delivered prior to November 1, 1918. Large manufacturers producing these were as follows: Canvas Products Co., St. Louis, Mo.; Rock Island Arsenal, Rock Island, Ill.; Plant Bros., Boston, Mass.; Simmons Hardware Co., St. Louis, Mo.; R. H. Long Co., Framingham, Mass.; Liberty, Durgin (Inc.), Haverhill, Mass.; Wiley, Bickford & Sweet, Hartford, Conn.
It is impossible here to enumerate the entire range of ordnance munitions produced, outside of the development of guns and their ammunition; but their manufacture, in orders that ordinarily amounted to the millions of individual pieces, engaged the activities of a large number of manufacturers of the United States.
The Government ordered about 1,200,000 axes to be used in trench operations, of which 661,690 were delivered. Bags of all sorts for horse feed, grain, rations, and supplies totaled in their deliveries about 2,250,000. The Government received 809,541 saddle blankets; about 3,750,000 carriers for entrenching shovels, axes, and picks; nearly 4,450,000 covers for the breech locks of rifles; over 1,000,000 currycombs; 76,230 lariats; 727,000 entrenching picks; nearly 4,750,000 first-aid pouches, and over 2,000,000 pouches for small articles; 234,689 Cavalry saddles; 134,092 Field Artillery saddles; 15,287 mule saddles; 482,459 saddle bags; nearly 1,800,000 entrenching shovels; 2,843,092 spur straps; 70,556 steel measuring tapes each 5 feet long.
These figures selected at random from thousands of miscellaneous items indicate to some extent the scale on which America went into the war.
The old model 1910 American wire cutter, although efficient in times past, was not capable of cutting specially constructed manganese wire which the Germans used. Therefore it became necessary for this country to develop a better cutter. A meeting of the plier manufacturers of the country was called and the question was put before them. The spirit of cooperation of the American manufacturers was evident, inasmuch as over 90 per cent of the manufacturers attended the meeting.
The model submitted by Kraeuter & Co., Newark, N. J., was adopted and 5,000 were manufactured and sent to France. Although this was the best cutter developed in this short time, it was evident that it was not the right article, and the Engineering Division of Ordnance continued experimenting to make a more satisfactory one. In this connection a one-hand wire cutter was developed by the William Schollhorn Co., of New Haven, Conn. This cutter was a very efficient and satisfactory article, and, although it was never adopted by the American Army during the war, it is worthy of consideration. The American Expeditionary Forces eventually sent back drawings and sample of the French wire cutter, which was developed abroad and known as model 1918. This was a large, two-handed cutter. Production was started. The article was found difficult to manufacture, but the manufacturers undertook it with a will and production was well under way when the armistice was signed.
The mess equipment of the soldier included the following items: meat can, condiment can, canteen and cup, knife, fork, and spoon. These articles were practically the same as the Army had always used, with one exception--the meat can. Advice was received from the American Expeditionary Forces that the meat cans in which the soldiers' food was placed by the cooks of the various organizations were not large enough to hold the portions that the American doughboys needed when they were fighting at the front. Although production was well under way with various American manufacturers on the old model, a new model can was designed which was half an inch deeper. The American manufacturers immediately, with a great deal of trouble to themselves, changed their dies and tools and manufactured a new meat can which was larger than the old. Thousands of cans were turned out daily.
Production data.
CONDIMENT CANS. ---------------------------------------------+------------+----------- Contractor. | Contract. | Completed | | and | | delivered. ---------------------------------------------+------------+----------- American Can Co., New York City | 3,553,940 | 3,553,940 Tin Decorating Co., Baltimore, Md. | 2,003,640 | 2,003,640 Gotham Can Co., Brooklyn, N. Y. | 500,000 | 500,000 |------------+----------- Total | 6,057,580 | 6,057,580 ---------------------------------------------+------------+----------- BACON CANS. ---------------------------------------------+------------+----------- Sturgis & Burns, Chicago | 2,303,800 | 1,731,000 Landers, Frary & Clark, New Britain, Conn. | 534,360 | 534,360 Rock Island Arsenal, Rock Island, Ill. | 1,658,000 | 1,358,570 Wisconsin Metal Products Co., Racine, Wis. | 50,000 | 50,000 Acklin Steel Co., Toledo, Ohio | 250,000 | 250,000 Cleveland Metal Products Co., Cleveland, Ohio| 300,000 | 21,750 Whittaker, Glessner Co., Wheeling, W. Va. | 500,000 | 131,880 |------------+----------- Total | 5,596,160 | 4,077,560 ---------------------------------------------+------------+----------- MEAT CANS. ---------------------------------------------+------------+----------- Aluminum Co. of America, Pittsburgh | 3,385,955 | 3,385,955 Landers, Frary & Clark, New Britain, Conn. | 3,000,000 | 3,000,000 J. W. Brown & Co., Columbus, Ohio | 641,945 | 641,945 Wheeling Stamping Co., Wheeling, W. Va. | 940,812 | 940,812 Edmunds & Jones Co., Detroit, Mich. | 138,360 | 138,360 Rock Island Arsenal | 138,862 | 138,862 |------------+----------- Total | 8,245,934 | 8,245,934 ---------------------------------------------+------------+----------- CANTEENS. ---------------------------------------------+------------+----------- Aluminum Co. of America, New York | 3,470,000 | 3,470,000 Landers, Frary & Clark | 2,862,150 | 2,862,150 Aluminum Goods Co., Manitowoc, Wis. | 2,370,000 | 2,370,000 J. W. Brown Co. | 861,471 | 861,471 Buckeye Aluminum Co., Wooster, Ohio | 776,014 | 776,014 Rock Island Arsenal | 361,000 | 361,000 |------------+----------- Total | 10,700,635 | 10,700,635 ---------------------------------------------+------------+----------- KNIVES. ---------------------------------------------+------------+----------- American Cutlery Co., Chicago | 2,865,910 | 2,865,910 Landers, Frary & Clark | 7,286,550 | 7,286,550 Rock Island Arsenal | 527,600 | 527,600 International Silverware Co. | 473,000 | 473,000 Hinckley Manufacturing Co. | 130,000 | 130,000 |------------+----------- Total | 11,283,060 | 11,283,060 ---------------------------------------------+------------+----------- FORKS. ---------------------------------------------+------------+----------- R. Wallace & Co. | 8,585,000 | 8,585,000 Wallace Bros. | 367,810 | 367,810 Rock Island Arsenal | 200,000 | 200,000 Charles Parker Co., Meriden, Conn. | 810,000 | 810,000 Wm. B. Durgin Co., Concord, N. H. | 500,000 | 500,000 |------------+----------- Total | 10,462,810 | 10,462,810 ---------------------------------------------+------------+----------- SPOONS. ---------------------------------------------+------------+----------- R. Wallace & Co. | 8,037,600 | 8,037,600 National Enameling & Stamping Co. | 906,400 | 906,400 Wm. B. Durgin Co. | 500,000 | 500,000 Charles Parker Co. | 902,000 | 902,000 |------------+----------- Total | 10,346,000 | 10,346,000 ---------------------------------------------+------------+-----------
I. THE AIRCRAFT PROBLEM
When the United States entered the war against Germany in 1917 there was no phase of her forthcoming industrial effort from which so much was expected as from the building of airplanes and equipment for aerial warfare; yet there was no phase of the immense undertaking in which the United States was so utterly unprepared. In many other branches of the work of providing matériel for a modern army, however inadequately acquainted America might be with the developments which had gone on in Europe since 1914, yet she had splendid resources of skill and equipment which could quickly turn from the pursuits of peace to the arts attending warfare. But there was no large existing industry in the United States which could turn easily to the production of airplanes, since such airplanes as were known in Europe in 1917 had never been built in the United States.
It seems difficult now for us to realize how utterly unlearned we were, both in official and technical quarters, in the design, the production, or the use of aeronautical equipment in those early days of 1917. Here in America mechanical flight had been born; but we had lived to see other nations develop the invention into an industry and a science that was a closed book to our people. In the three years of warfare before American participation, the airplane had been forced through a whole generation of normal mechanical evolution. Of this progress we were aware only as nontechnical and distant observers. Such military study of the progress as we had conducted was casual. It had, in fact, brought to America scarcely a single basic fact on which we could build our contemplated industry.
When the United States became a belligerent no American-built airplane had ever mounted a machine gun or carried any other than the simplest of necessary instruments. Such things as oxygen apparatus, electrically heated clothing for aviators, radio-communication with airplanes, landing and bombing flares, electric lighting systems for planes, bomb-dropping devices, suitable compasses, instruments for measuring height and speed, and the like--in short, all the modern paraphernalia that completes the efficiency of combat airplanes--these were almost entirely unknown to us.
The best of the prewar activities of America in this line had produced some useful airplane engines and a few planes which the countries then at war were willing to use only in training of aviators.
Within the Army itself there was small nucleus of skill around which could be built an organization expert and sophisticated. We had in the official files no adequate information as to sizes, capacities, and types of planes or engines, or character of ordnance, armament, or aeronautical appliances demanded by the exacting service in which our young birdmen were soon to engage. Even the airplanes on order in April, 1917 (over 350 of them), proved to be of such antiquated design that the manufacturers of them, in the light of their increased knowledge of war requirements a few months later, asked to be released from their contracts.
Nor was there in the United States any industry so closely allied to airplane manufacture that its engineers and designers could turn from one to the other and take their places at once abreast of the progress in Europe. There was little or no engineering talent in the United States competent to design fully equipped military aircraft which could compete with Europe. Our aircraft producers must first go to France and England and Italy, and ground themselves in the principles of a new science before they could attempt to produce their own designs or even before they could be safe in selecting European designs for reproduction in this country.
The first consideration of the whole program by the Joint Army and Navy Technical Board indicated a figure of 22,000 as the number of airplanes, including both training and battle types, which should be furnished for the use of the Army during the 12 months following July 1, 1917. This figure represented the determination of America to play a major part in aerial warfare. It was not possible for the board to realize at that time all of the problems which would be encountered, and the figures indicated confidence in the ability of the industrial organizations of the United States to meet a difficult situation, rather than an exact plan under which such production might be developed.
It is probable that it was not fully realized that the production of this program, with the proper proportion of spare parts required for military operations, meant the manufacture of the equivalent of about 40,000 airplanes.
Without an industry then, and with little knowledge or understanding of the problems of military aerial equipment, we faced the task of securing the equivalent of 40,000 airplanes in 12 brief months beginning July, 1917.
In one respect we were in a degree prepared in professional skill and mechanical equipment to go ahead on broad lines. This was in the matter of producing engines. The production of aviation engines in America had, indeed, been comparatively slight, but in the automobile industry had been developed a vast engine-building capacity. The detail equipment of automobile shops was not entirely suited to aviation engines, but, nevertheless, it furnished the basis for the future successful production of the Liberty engine and the other engines called for by the air program.
America succeeded, once the requirements were known, in producing the various accessories of aerial warfare. It was necessary first to learn from foreign sources what these accessories were and how they should be built; but as a rule it was possible to adapt American production resources to the problem, and the difficulties experienced were rather those of determining requirements and the exact adaptation of the various articles to specific airplanes.
The achievements of America in aircraft production during the war period may be summarized as follows:
In our 19 months of warfare we outdid any one of the belligerent nations in Europe in the production of airplanes in its first 19 months of intensive production. In our second year of war we nearly equaled the record of England in her third.
At the end of the effort, after our designers had saturated themselves in the science and were abreast of the developments of Europe, they produced several typical American airplanes which gave promise of being superior to any that Europe was turning out.
We created one of the three or four best airplane engines, if not the best of all, that the world had seen, and produced it in great quantities. We took a standard but complicated aero-engine from Europe and not only duplicated it in quantity here but turned out a finer product than the original French makers had been able to obtain with their careful and more leisurely methods.
In the steel cylinders of all the aero-engines we built was a capacity for producing some seven or eight million horsepower, an energy equivalent to one-fifth of the commercially practicable water power of the United States. The Liberty engines built could alone do the work of the entire flood of Niagara and have a million horsepower to spare.
In three years of warfare the allies had been able to develop only a single machine gun that could be successfully synchronized to fire through a revolving airplane propeller. In 12 months of actual effort America produced two others as good, both susceptible of factory quantity production.
We developed new airplane cameras. We carried to new stages the science of clothing aviators. We developed in quantity the wireless airplane telephone that stilled in the ears of the pilot the bedlam of wind and machine guns and engine exhaust and placed him within easy speaking radius of his ground station and his commander in the air.
We built balloons at a rate to supply more than our own needs.
When the shortage of linen threatened the entire airplane output of the nations opposing Germany, we developed cotton wing fabric that not only substituted for linen, but proved to be better; and in producing a liquid filler to make this fabric wind-tight we established on a large scale an entirely new chemical industry in the United States.
Such were the high points in the history of America's aircraft production for war. The details of the developments which led to these results are set forth on the following pages.