The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

FRONTISPIECE.

"THE END OF THE WAR."

A GRAPHIC RECORD.

One minute before the hour.

All guns firing.

Nov. 11, 1918. 11 A. M.

One minute after the hour.

All guns silent.

This is the last record by sound ranging of artillery activity on the American front near the River Moselle. It is the reproduction of a piece of recording tape as it issued from an American sound-ranging apparatus when the hour of 11 o'clock on the morning of November 11, 1918, brought the general order to cease firing, and the great war came to an end. Six seconds of sound recording are shown. The broken character of the records on the left indicates great artillery activity; the lack of irregularities on the right indicates almost complete cessation of firing, two breaks in the second line probably being due to the exuberance of a doughboy firing his pistol twice close to one of the recording microphones on the front in celebration of the dawn of peace. The two minutes on either side of the exact armistice hour have been cut from the strip to emphasize the contrast. Sound ranging was an important means of locating the positions and calibers of enemy guns. A description of these wonderful devices, which were a secret with America and the Allies, is given in Book III, chapter 4.

America's Munitions
1917-1918

REPORT
OF
BENEDICT CROWELL

THE ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF WAR
DIRECTOR OF MUNITIONS

WASHINGTON
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
1919

Washington, D. C., December 24, 1918.

Dear Mr. Crowell: American munitions production, which for some time has been in your charge, played an important part in the early decision of the war, yet the very immensity and complexity of the problem has made it difficult for this accomplishment to be adequately understood by the public or in fact by any except those who have had occasion to give the matter special study. As the whole people have been called upon to make sacrifices for the war, all the people should be given an opportunity to know what has been done in their behalf in munitions production, and I therefore ask that you have prepared a historical statement of munitions production, so brief that all may have time to read it, so nontechnical that all may be able readily to understand it, and so authoritative that all may rely upon its accuracy.

Cordially yours,

Newton D. Baker,
Secretary of War.

Hon. Benedict Crowell,
The Assistant Secretary of War.

Washington, D. C., May 10, 1919.

Dear Mr. Secretary: Responding to your request, I transmit herewith a brief, nontechnical, authoritative history of munitions production during the recent war. The several chapters have been prepared in the first instance by the officers who have been directly responsible for production, and have been assembled and edited, under my direction, by Hon. Robert J. Bulkley, assisted by Capt. Robert Forrest Wilson and Capt. Benjamin E. Ling. Capt. Wilson has undertaken responsibility for the literary style of the report, and has rewritten the greater part of it, consulting at length with the officers who supplied the original material, and with officers of the statistics branch of the General Staff, in order to insure accuracy.

Maj. Gen. C. C. Williams, Chief of Ordnance; Brig. Gen. W. S. Peirce, Acting Chief of Ordnance; Maj. Gen. C. T. Menoher, Chief of Air Service; Maj. Gen. W. M. Black, Chief of Engineers; Maj. Gen. W. L. Sibert, Chief of Chemical Warfare Service; Maj. Gen. H. L. Rogers, Quartermaster General; Mr. R. J. Thorne, Acting Quartermaster General; Maj. Gen. G. O. Squier, Chief Signal Officer; Brig. Gen. Charles B. Drake, Chief of Motor Transport Corps; and Maj. Gen. W. M. Ireland, the Surgeon General, have cooperated in the preparation of the material transmitted herewith.

Special acknowledgment for the preparation and correction of the several chapters is due to the following officers:

The ordnance problem, Col. James L. Walsh.

Gun production, Col. William P. Barba.

Mobile field artillery, Col. J. B. Rose.

Railway artillery, Col. G. M. Barnes and Maj. E. D. Campbell.

Explosives, propellants, and artillery ammunition, Col. C. T. Harris and Maj. J. Herbert Hunter.

Sights and fire-control apparatus, Col. H. K. Rutherford and Maj. Fred E. Wright.

Motorized artillery, Col. L. B. Moody and Lieut. Col. H. W. Alden.

Tanks, Lieut. Col. H. W. Alden.

Machine guns, Col. Earl McFarland and Lieut. Col. Herbert O'Leary.

Service rifles, Maj. Lewis P. Johnson and Maj. Parker Dodge.

Pistols and revolvers, Lieut. Col. J. C. Beatty and Maj. Parker Dodge.

Small arms ammunition, Lieut. Col. J. C. Beatty, Maj. Lee O. Wright, Maj. A. E. Hunt, and Capt. C. J. Evans.

Trench warfare material, Lieut. Col. E. J. W. Ragsdale, Capt. J. R. Caldwell, Capt. R. D. Smith, and Lieut. J. T. Libbey.

Miscellaneous ordnance equipment, Lieut. Col. S. H. MacGregor, Maj. Bashford Dean, Capt. A. L. Fabens, and Capt. James S. Wiley.

The aircraft problem and airplane production, Lieut. Col. George W. Mixter.

The Liberty engine and other airplane engines, Lieut. H. H. Emmons, United States Navy.

Aviation equipment and armament, Lieut. Col. E. J. W. Ragsdale, Maj. E. Bradley, Capt. Robert D. Smith, Capt. H. E. Ives, and Lieut. John M. Hammond.

The airplane radio telephone, Col. C. C. Culver and Lieut. Col. Nugent H. Slaughter.

Balloons, Capt. H. W. Treat.

The Engineers in France, Lieut. Col. J. B. Cress and Capt. C. Beard.

Military railways, Col. J. M. Milliken and Mr. S. M. Felton.

Engineer activities at home, Lieut. Col. J. B. Cress and Lieut. Col. R. W. Crawford.

Sound and flash ranging and searchlights, Lieut. Col. J. B. Cress and Maj. W. D. Young.

Toxic gases, Col. M. T. Bogert, Col. W. A. Walker, Lieut. Col. E. M. Chance, and Lieut. Col. William McPherson.

Defensive gas equipment, Col. Bradley Dewey and Lieut. Col. A. L. Besse.

Subsistence, Lieut. Col. J. H. Adams and Capt. S. B. Johnson.

Clothing and equipage, Lieut. Col. F. A. Ellison and Capt. W. H. Porter.

Miscellaneous quartermaster undertakings: Music, Maj. George H. Richards; fuel, oil, and paints, Mr. J. Elliott Hall; brushes, Capt. T. W. S. Phillips; rolling kitchens, Capt. J. G. Williams and Mr. M. A. Dunning; tools and tool chests, Mr. W. F. Fusting and Mr. M. E. Moye; hardware, Lieut. Col. H. P. Hill and Mr. William A. Graham; factory enterprises, Lieut. Col. H. P. Hill; shoe fitting, Col. F. A. Ellison; meat cutting, Dr. W. O. Trone; packing, Capt. R. H. Moody; horses and mules, Maj. A. Cedarwald.

Motor and horse-drawn vehicles: Motor vehicles, Col. Fred Glover; horse-drawn vehicles, Maj. A. Volgeneau.

Medical and dental supplies, Lieut. Col. J. P. Fletcher and Capt. W. G. Guth.

Salvage, Col. J. S. Chambers and Capt. F. C. Simpson.

Mr. W. L. Pollard, Mr. Aaron Rachofsky, and Lieut. J. J. Cameron have rendered very valuable assistance in assembling data concerning quartermaster activities.

Cantonments and camps, and miscellaneous construction, Maj. W. G. Maupin.

Signal Corps material, Brig. Gen. C. McK. Saltzman and Capt. Donald MacGregor.

The accuracy of all statistics and direct statements of fact has been checked and approved by the statistics branch of the General Staff, under the direction of Maj. W. R. Burgess.

Respectfully submitted,

Benedict Crowell,
The Assistant Secretary of War,
Director of Munitions.

Hon. Newton D. Baker,
Secretary of War.

PREFACE.

Except in one or two instances, this account of the production of munitions in America for the war against Germany and her allies contains nothing about secret devices invented during the period under discussion. When the necessity for silence with respect to vital matters brought about a voluntary censorship in American publications, the land was filled with rumors of new and revolutionary developments in war matériel, particularly of new weapons of offense. It is fair to the American public to-day to state that such rumors were not without foundation. American inventiveness rose splendidly to the emergency. The expected American offensive in 1919 would have had its "surprises" in numbers, some of which might well have proved to be decisive. Certain of these inventions had been put in large production before the armistice was declared, others had been carried to an advanced experimental stage that insured their success. Since the value of these innovations as part of the Nation's permanent military assets depends largely upon their secret nature, it would be obviously unwise to mention or describe them at this time.

The Director of Munitions wishes to acknowledge the debt of America, so far as the production of munitions is concerned, to the Navy for its cooperation in industrial matters at home and its strong aid in the safe transport of munitions to France, and to all the other Government departments, each one of which contributed in numerous and important ways to the success of the munitions enterprise. The debt also extends heavily to the War Industries Board, its functions of creating facilities for manufacture, opening up new sources of raw materials, allocating materials, decreeing priorities, fixing prices, and acting as purchasing agent for the allies, making it the national industrial clearing house through which the War Department could work without waste effort. Acknowledgment is made to such essential agencies as the United States Railroad Administration, the United States Fuel Administration, the War Trade Board, and the United States Food Administration, and to all official or volunteer activities looking to the conservation and mobilization of our national resources. Without this entire cooperation the history set forth in these pages would not be what it is.

CONTENTS.

AMERICA'S MUNITIONS, 1917-18

INTRODUCTION.

As our war against Germany recedes into the past its temporal boundaries become more sharply defined, and it assumes the character of a complete entity—a rounded-out period of time in which the United States collected her men and resources, fought, and shared in the victory.

As such it offers to the critic the easy opportunity to discover that certain things were not done. American airplanes did not arrive at the front in sufficient numbers. American guns in certain essential calibers did not appear at all. American gas shells were not fired at the enemy. American troops fought with French and British machine guns to a large extent. The public is familiar with such statements.

It should be remembered that the war up to its last few weeks—up to its last few days, in fact—was a period of anxious suspense, during which America was straining her energies toward a goal, toward the realization of an ambition which, in the production of munitions, dropped the year 1918 almost out of consideration altogether, which indeed did not bring the full weight of American men and matériel into the struggle even in 1919, but which left it for 1920, if the enemy had not yet succumbed to the growing American power, to witness the maximum strength of the United States in the field.

Necessarily, therefore, the actual period of hostilities, between April 6, 1917, and November 11, 1918, was devoted in this country to laying down the foundations of a munitions industry that should bring about its overwhelming results at the appointed time. What munitions of the more difficult sort were actually produced in this period might almost be termed casual to the main enterprise—pilots of the quantities to come.

The decision to prepare heavily for 1919 and 1920 and thus sacrifice for 1917 and 1918 the munitions that might have been produced at the cost of any less adequate preparation for the more distant future, was based on sound strategical reasoning on the part of the Allies and ourselves.

On going back to the past we find that on April 6, 1917, the United States scarcely realized the gravity of the undertaking. There was a general impression, reaching even into Government, that the Allies alone were competent to defeat the Central Powers in time, and that America's part would be largely one of moral support, with expanding preparation in the background as insurance against any unforeseen disasters. In line with this attitude we sent the first division of American troops to France in the spring of 1917 to be our earnest to the governments and peoples of the Allies that we were with them in the great struggle. Not until after the departure of the various foreign missions that came to this country during that spring did America fully awake to the seriousness of the situation.

All through the summer of 1917 the emphasis upon American man power in France gradually grew, but no definite schedule upon which the United States could work was reached until autumn or early winter, until the mission headed by Col. Edward M. House visited Europe to give America place on the Supreme War Council and in the Interallied Conference. The purpose of the House mission was to assure the Allies that America was in the war for all she was worth and to determine the most effective method in which she could cooperate.

In the conferences in London and Paris the American representatives looked into the minds of the allied leaders and saw the situation as it was. Two dramatic factors colored all the discussions—the growing need for men and the gravity of the shipping situation. The German submarines were operating so effectively as to make exceedingly dark the outlook for the transport on a sufficient scale either of American troops or of American munitions.

As to man power, the Supreme War Council gave it as the judgment of the military leaders of the Allies that, if the day were to be saved, America must send 1,000,000 troops by the following July. There were in France then (on Dec. 1, 1917) parts of four divisions of American soldiers—129,000 men in all.

The program of American cooperation, as it crystallized in these conferences, may be summarized as follows:

1. To keep the Allies from starvation by shipping food.

2. To assist the Allied armies by keeping up the flow of matériel already in production for them in the United States.

3. To send as many men as could be transported with the shipping facilities then at America's command.

4. To bend energies toward a big American Army in 1919 equipped with American supplies.

In these conferences sat the chief military and political figures of the principal European powers at war with Germany. In the Supreme War Council were such strategists as Gen. Foch for the French and Gen. Robertson for the British, Gen. Bliss representing the United States. The president of the Interallied Conference was M. Clemenceau, the French prime minister. Mr. Winston Churchill, the minister of munitions, represented Great Britain, while Mr. Lloyd-George, the Prime Minister of England, also participated to some extent in the conferences.

Out of bodies of such character came the international ordnance agreement. It will be apparent to the reader that this agreement must have represented the best opinion of the leaders of the principal Allies, initiated out of their intimate knowledge of the needs of the situation and concurred in by the representatives of the United States. The substance of this agreement was outlined for Washington in a cabled message signed by Gen. Bliss, a document that had such an important bearing upon the production of munitions in this country that its more important passages are set down at this point:

The representatives of Great Britain and France state that their production of artillery (field, medium, and heavy) is now established on so large a scale that they are able to equip completely all American divisions as they arrive in France during the year 1918 with the best make of British and French guns and howitzers.

The British and French ammunition supply and reserves are sufficient to provide the requirements of the American Army thus equipped at least up to June, 1918, provided that the existing 6-inch shell plants in the United States and Dominion of Canada are maintained in full activity, and provided that the manufacture of 6-inch howitzer carriages in the United States is to some extent sufficiently developed.

On the other hand, the French, and to a lesser extent the British, require as soon as possible large supplies of propellants and high explosives: and the British require the largest possible production of 6-inch howitzers from now onward and of 8-inch and 9.2-inch shell from June onward.

In both of these matters they ask the assistance of the Americans.

With a view, therefore, first to expedite and facilitate the equipment of the American armies in France, and, second, to secure the maximum ultimate development of the ammunition supply with the minimum strain upon available tonnage, the representatives of Great Britain and France propose that the American field, medium, and heavy artillery be supplied during 1918, and as long after as may be found convenient, from British and French gun factories; and they ask: (A) That the American efforts shall be immediately directed to the production of propellants and high explosives on the largest possible scale; and (B) Great Britain also asks that the 6-inch, 8-inch, and 9.2-inch shell plants already created for the British service in the United States shall be maintained in the highest activity, and that large additional plants for the manufacture of these shells shall at once be laid down.

In this way alone can the tonnage difficulty be minimised and potential artillery development, both in guns and shells, of the combined French, British, and American armies be maintained in 1918 and still more in 1919.

This agreement had a profound effect upon American production of munitions. Most important of all, it gave us time; time to build manufacturing capacity on a grand scale without the hampering necessity for immediate production; time to secure the best in design; time to attain quality in the enormous output to come later as opposed to early quantity of indifferent class.

In the late autumn of 1917, shortly after Russia collapsed and withdrew from the war, it became evident that Germany would seize the opportunity to move her troops from the eastern front and concentrate her entire army against the French and British in 1918.

This intelligence at once resulted in fresh emphasis upon the man-power phase of American cooperation. As early as December, 1917, the War Department was anticipating the extraordinary need for men in the coming spring by considering plans for the transport of troops up to the supposed limit of the capacity of all available American ships, with what additional tonnage Great Britain and the other Allies could spare us. It is of record that the actual dispatch of troops to France far outstripped these early estimates.

Then came the long-expected German offensive, and the cry went up in Europe for men. England, "her back against the wall," offered additional ships in which to transport six divisions over and above the number of troops already scheduled for embarkation, agreeing further to feed and maintain these men for 10 weeks while they were brigaded with British units for final training. After the six additional divisions had embarked there was still need of men, and the British continued their transports in our service. The high mark of shipment was in July, when 306,000 American soldiers were transported across the Atlantic, more than three times the number contemplated for July in the schedule adopted six months earlier.

ACTUAL TROOP SAILINGS COMPARED WITH PROGRAMS.

The effect of this stepping up of the man-power program upon the shipment of supplies was described by Lieut. Col. Repington, the British military critic, writing in the Morning Post (London) on December 9, 1918, in part as follows:

* * * they (the British war cabinet) also prayed America in aid, implored her to send in haste all available infantry and machine guns, and placed at her disposal, to her great surprise, a large amount of transports to hasten arrivals. * * *

The American Government acceded to this request in the most loyal and generous manner. Assured by their Allies in France that the latter could fit out the American infantry divisions on their arrival with guns, horses, and transport, the Americans packed their infantry tightly in the ships and left to a later occasion the dispatch to France of guns, horses, transport, labor units, flying service, rolling stock, and a score of other things originally destined for transport with the divisions. If subsequently—and indeed up to the day that the armistice was signed—Gen. Pershing found himself short of many indispensable things, and if his operations were thereby conducted under real difficulties of which he must have been only too sensible, the defects were not due to him and his staff, nor to the Washington administration, nor to the resolute Gen. March and his able fellow workers, but solely to the self-sacrificing manner in which America had responded to the call of her friends.

BRITISH AND AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES ON WESTERN FRONT.

The really amazing thing which America did was to place in France in 19 months an army of the size and the ability of the American Expeditionary Force. The war taught us that America can organize, train, and transport troops of a superior sort at a rate which leaves far behind any program for the manufacture of munitions. It upset the previous opinion that adequate military preparedness is largely a question of trained man power.

When the war touched us our strategical equipment included plans ready drawn for the mobilization of men. There were on file at the Army War College in Washington detailed plans for defending our harbors, our coasts, and our borders. There were also certain plans for the training of new troops.

It is worthy of note, however, that this equipment included no plan for the equally important and equally necessary mobilization of industry and production of munitions, which proved to be the most difficult phase of the actual preparation for war. The experience of 1917 and 1918 was a lesson in the time it takes to determine types, create designs, provide facilities, and establish manufacture. These years will forever stand as the monument to the American genius of workshop and factory, which in this period insured the victory by insuring the timely arrival of the overwhelming force of America's resources in the form of America's munitions.

B. C.

Washington, May, 1919.

BOOK I.
ORDNANCE.

CHAPTER I.
THE ORDNANCE PROBLEM.

To arm the manhood called to defend the Nation in 1917 and 1918, to make civilians into soldiers by giving them the tools of the martial profession—such was the task of the Ordnance Department in the late war.

The off-hand thought may identify ordnance as artillery alone. It may surprise many to know that in the American ordnance catalogue of supplies during the recent war there were over 100,000 separate and distinct items. Thousands of the items of ordnance were distinctly noncommercial, meaning that they had to be designed and produced specially for the uses of war.

While the principles of fighting essentially have changed not one whit since the age when projectiles were stones hurled by catapults, nearly every advance in mechanical science has had its reflection in warfare, until to-day the weapons which man has devised to destroy the military power of his enemy make up an intricate and an imposing list. When America accepted the challenge of Germany in 1917, part of the range of ordnance had already been produced in moderate quantities in the United States, part of it had been developed by the more militaristic nations of the world in the last decade or quarter century, and part of it was purely the offspring of two and one-half years of desperate fighting before America entered the great struggle. Yet all of it, both the strange and the familiar, had to be put in production here on a grand scale and in a minimum of time, that the American millions might go adequately equipped to meet the foe. Let us examine the range of this equipment, seeing in the major items something of the character of the problem which confronted the Ordnance Department at the outset of the great enterprise.

Starting with the artillery, there was first in order of size the baby two-man cannon of 37 millimeters (about an inch and a half) in the diameter of its bore—a European development new to our experience, so light that it could be handled by foot troops in the field, used for annihilating the enemy's machine-gun emplacements.

Then the mobile field guns—the famous 75's, the equivalent in size of our former 3-inch gun, the 155-millimeter howitzer, the French 155 millimeter G. P. F. (Grand Puissance Filloux) gun of glorious record in the war, and its American prototypes, the 4.7-inch, 5-inch, and 6-inch guns—all of these employed to shell crossroads and harass the enemy's middle area.

Beyond these were the 8-inch and 9.2-inch howitzers and the terrific 240-millimeter howitzer, for throwing great weights of destruction high in air to descend with a plunge upon the enemy's strongest defenses.

Then there were the 8-inch, 10-inch, 12-inch, and 14-inch guns on railway mounts, for pounding the depots and dumps in the enemy's back areas. These weapons were so tremendous in weight when mounted as to require from 16 to 24 axles on the car to distribute the load and the recoil of firing within the limits of the strength of standard heavy railway track.

All of these guns had to be produced in great numbers, if the future requirements of the American forces were to be met, produced by the thousands in the cases of the smaller ones and by the hundreds and scores in the cases of the larger.

These weapons would be ineffective without adequate supplies of ammunition. In the case of the mobile held guns this meant a requirement of millions of shell or shrapnel for the incessant bombardments and the concentrated barrages which characterized the great war. The entire weight of projectiles fired in such an historic engagement as Gettysburg would supply the artillery only for a few minutes in such intensive bombardments as sowed the soil of Flanders with steel.

The artillery demanded an immense amount of heavy equipment—limbers, caissons, auto ammunition trucks, and tractors to drag the heavy and middle-heavy artillery. Some of them were fitted with self-propelled caterpillar mounts which could climb a 40° grade or make as high as 12 miles an hour on level ground. These, the adaptations to warfare of peaceful farm and construction machine traction, for the first time rendered the greater guns exceedingly mobile, enabling them to go into action instantly upon arrival and to depart to safety just as soon as their mission was accomplished.

Then, too, this artillery equipment must have adequate facilities for maintenance in the field, and this need brought into existence another enormous phase of the ordnance program. There must be mobile ordnance repair shops for each division, consisting of miniature machine shops completely fitted out with power and its transmission equipment and mounted directly on motor trucks. Then there must be semi-heavy repair shops on 5-ton tractors, these to be for the corps what the truck machine shop was to the division. Each army headquarters called for its semipermanent repair shop for artillery and still larger repair shops for its railway artillery.

And in addition to all these were the base repair shops in France, which were erected on a scale to employ a force three times as large as the combined organizations of all the manufacturing arsenals of the United States in time of peace, having a capacity for relining 1,000 cannon and overhauling and repairing 2,000 motor vehicles, 7,000 machine guns, 50,000 rifles, and 2,000 pistols every month. This equipment of artillery and its maintenance organization implies the flow from American industry of enormous quantities of repair parts and spare parts to keep the artillery in good condition.

Coming next to the more personal equipment of the soldier, we find the necessity confronting the Ordnance Department to manufacture shoulder rifles by the million and cartridges for them by the billion. The great war brought the machine gun into its own, requiring in the United States the manufacture of these complicated and expensive weapons by the tens of thousands, including the one-man automatic rifle, itself an arm of a deadly and effective type.

Simultaneously with the mass employment of machine guns in the field came the development of the modern machine gun barrage, the indirect fire, of which required sighting instruments of the most delicate and accurate sort, and tripods with finely calibrated elevating and traversing devices, so that the gunner might place the deadly hail safely over the heads of his own unseen but advancing lines and with maximum damage to the enemy. These thousands of machine guns required water jackets to keep their barrels cool and specially built carts to carry them.

The personal armament of the soldier also called for an automatic pistol or a revolver for use in the infighting, when squads came in actual contact with soldiers of the enemy. These had to be produced by the hundreds of thousands.

The requirements of the field demanded hundreds of thousands of trench knives, murderous blades backed by the momentum of heavily weighted handles, which in turn were protected by guards embodying the principle of the thug's brass "knucks" armed with sharp points.

Then there were the special weapons, largely born of modern trench warfare. These included mortars, ranging from the small 3-inch Stokes, light enough to go over the top and simple enough to be fired from between the steadying knees of a squatting soldier, to the great 240-millimeter trench mortar of fixed position. The mortars proved to be exceedingly effective against concentrations of troops, and so there was devised for them a great variety of bombs and shell, not only of the high explosive fragmentation type, but also containing poison gas or fuming chemicals. Great quantities both of mortars and their ammunition were required.

From the security of the trenches the soldiers first threw out grenades, which burst in the enemy's trenches opposite and created havoc. From the original device were developed grenades of various sorts—gas grenades for cleaning up dugouts, molten-metal grenades for fusing the firing mechanisms of captured enemy cannon and machine guns, paper grenades to kill by concussion. Then there were the rifle grenades, each to be fitted on the muzzle of a rifle and hurled by the lift of gases following the bullet, which passed neatly through the hole provided for it. The production of grenades was no small part of the American ordnance problem.

In addition to these trench weapons were the Livens projectors, which, fired in multiple by electricity, hurled a veritable cloud of gas containers into a selected area of enemy terrain, usually with great demoralization of his forces.

Bayonets for the rifles, bolos, helmets, periscopes for looking safely over the edges of the trenches, panoramic sights, range finders—these are only a few of the ordnance accessories of general application.

Then those innovations of the great war—the tanks—the 3-ton "whippet," built to escort the infantry waves, the 6-ton tanks, most used of all, and the powerful Anglo-American heavy tanks, each mounting a 37-millimeter cannon and four machine guns.

The war in the air put added demands upon ordnance. It required the stripped machine gun firing cartridges so rapidly that their explosions merged into a single continuous roar, yet each shot so nicely timed that it passed between the flying blades of the propeller. There had to be electric heaters for the gun mechanisms to prevent the oil which lubricated them from becoming congealed in the cold of high altitudes. The airplane guns required armor-piercing bullets for use against armored planes, incendiary bullets to ignite the hydrogen of the enemy's balloon or to fire the gasoline escaping through the wound in the hostile airplane's fuel tank, and tracer bullets to direct the aim of the aerial gunner. Other equipment for the airman included shot counters, to tell him instantly what quantity of ammunition he had on hand, and gun sights, ingeniously contrived to correct his aim automatically for the relative speed and direction of the opposing plane. These were all developments in ordnance brought about by the great war, and in each case they involved problems for the production organization to solve.

Then there were the drop bombs of aerial warfare, of many gradations in weight up to 500 pounds each, these latter experimental ones forecasting the day when bombs weighing 1,600 pounds would be dropped from the sky; then bomb sights to determine the moment when the missile must be dropped in order to hit its target, sights which corrected for the altitude, the wind resistance, and the rate of speed of the airplane; and then mechanisms to suspend the bombs from the plane and to release them at the will of the operator.

The list might be stretched out almost indefinitely—through pyrotechnics, developed by the exigencies in Europe into an elaborate system; through helmets and armor, revivals from medieval times to protect the modern soldier from injury; through the assortment of heavy textiles, which gave the troops their belts, their bandoleers, their haversacks, and their holsters; through canteens, cutlery for the mess in the fields, shotguns, and so on, until there might be set down thousands of items of the list which we know as modern ordnance.

It will be noted that the most important articles in this range are articles of a noncommercial type. In other words, they are not the sort of things that the industry of the country builds in time of peace, nor learns how to build. Many other war functions came naturally to a country skilled in handling food supplies for teeming populations, in solving housing problems for whole cities, and in managing transportation for a hundred million people; there was at hand the requisite ability to conduct war enterprises of such character smoothly and efficiently. Yet there was in the country at the outbreak of war little knowledge of the technique of ordnance production.

The declaration of war found an American Ordnance Department whose entire commissioned personnel consisted of 97 officers. Only 10 of this number were experienced in the design of artillery weapons. The projected army of 5,000,000 men required 11,000 trained officers to handle every phase of ordnance service. While a portion of this production would have to do with the manufacture of articles of a commercial type, such as automobiles, trucks, meat cans, mess equipment, and the like, yet the ratio of 97 to 11,000 gives an indication of the amount of ordnance knowledge possessed by the War Department at the outbreak of war as compared to what it would need to equip the first 5,000,000 men for battle.

The Government could obtain commissary officers from the food industry; it could turn bank tellers into paymasters, or convert builders into construction quartermasters; find transportation officers in the great railway systems, Signal Corps officers in the telegraph companies, or medical officers in professional life. But there was no broad field to which ordnance could turn to find specialized skill available. The best it could do was to go into the heavy manufacturing industry for expert engineers who could later be trained in the special problems of ordnance.

Prior to 1914 there were but six Government arsenals and two large private ordnance works which knew anything about the production of heavy weapons. After 1914, war industry sprang up in the United States, yet in 1917 there were only a score or so of firms engaged in the manufacture of artillery ammunition, big guns, rifles, machine guns, and other important ordnance supplies for the allies. When the armistice was signed nearly 8,000 manufacturing plants in the United States were working on ordnance contracts. While many of these contracts entailed production not much dissimilar to commercial output, yet here is another ratio—the 20 or more original factories compared with the ultimate 8,000—which serves as an indication of the expansion of the industrial knowledge of the special processes incident to ordnance manufacture.

When we found ourselves in the war the first step was to extend our ordnance knowledge as quickly as possible. The war in Europe had developed thousands of new items of ordnance, many of them carefully guarded as military secrets, with which our own officers were familiar only in a general way. As soon as we became a belligerent, however, we at once turned to the allies, and they freely and fully gave us of their store of knowledge—plans, specifications, working models, secret devices, and complete manufacturing processes.

With this knowledge at hand we adopted for our own program certain French types of field guns and howitzers and British types of heavy howitzers. The reproduction of the British types caused no unusual difficulties, but the adoption of French plans brought into the situation a factor the difficulties of which are apt not to be appreciated by the uninitiated.

This new element for consideration was the circumstance that the entire French system of manufacture in metals is radically different from our own in its practices and is not readily adapted to American methods.

The English and the American engineers and shops use inches and feet in their measurements, but the French use the metric system. This fact means that there was not a single standard American drill, reamer, tap, die, or other machine-shop tool that would accurately produce the result called for by a French ordnance drawing in the metric system. Moreover, the French standards for metal stocks, sheets, plates, angles, I-beams, rivet holes, and rivet spacing are far different from American standards.

It was discovered that complete French drawings were in numerous cases nonexistent, the French practice relying for small details upon the memory and skill of its artisans. But even when the complete drawings were obtained, then the American ordnance engineer was confronted with the choice of either revolutionizing the machining industry of the United States by changing over its entire equipment to conform to the metric system, or else of doing what was done—namely, translating the French designs into terms of standard American shop practice, a process which in numerous cases required weeks and even months of time on the part of whole staffs of experts working at high tension.

Nor do the French know the American quantity-production methods. The French artisan sees always the finished article, and he is given discretion in the final dimensions of parts and in the fitting and assembling of them. But the American mechanic sees only the part in which he is a specialist in machining, working with strict tolerances and producing pieces which require little or no fitting in the assembling room. Consequently, in the translating of French plans it was necessary to put into them what they never had before, namely, rigid tolerances and exact measurements.

[1] Artillery preparation lasted 35 minutes.

[2] Artillery preparation lasted 4 hours.

[3] Artillery preparation intermittent 7 days.

One of the most striking developments of the present war has been the great increase in the use of artillery to precede infantry action in battle. This is illustrated by a comparison of the expenditure of artillery ammunition in characteristic battles of recent wars with that in important battles of the present war. The special features of the several battles should be kept in mind. Chickamauga was fought in a heavily wooded region; Gettysburg and St. Privat over open farm land. The latter battles, together with Nan Shan, and all the battles of the present war considered below, involved artillery preparation for assault upon armies in defensive position. The expenditures, therefore, are roughly comparable.

The high mark of the use of artillery in offensive battle was reached at the Somme and Messines Ridge, before the effective use of tanks was developed.

When an army of 100,000 men expands and becomes an army of 3,000,000, it becomes a job just 30 times bigger to feed the 3,000,000 than it was to feed the 100,000. A soldier of a campaigning army eats no more than a soldier of a quiet military post. The same is true approximately in the case of clothing an army. But the army's consumption of ammunition in time of war is far out of proportion to its numerical expansion to meet the war emergency.

For instance, an Army machine gun in time of peace might fire 6,000 rounds in practice during the year. This was the standard quantity of cartridges provided in peace. Yet it is necessary to provide for a single machine gun on the field in such a war as the recent one 288,875 rounds of ammunition during its first year of operation, this figure including the initial stock and the reserve supply as well as the actual number of rounds fired. Thus the machine gun of war increases its appetite, so to speak, for ammunition 4,700 per cent in the first year of fighting.

[4] Siege of Sebastopol.

[5] Field gun ammunition only.

The rates are based upon total expenditure and average number of guns in the hands of field armies for the period of the wars.

A large part of the heavy expenditure of artillery ammunition in the present as compared with other modern wars can be attributed to the increased rate of fire made possible by improved methods of supply in the field and by the rapid-fire guns now in use. In wars fought before the introduction of quick-firing field guns, four or five rounds per day was the greatest average rate. Even this was reached only in the siege of Sebastopol, where armies were stationary and supply by water was easy, and in the American Civil War, which was characterized by advanced tactical developments. The guns of the allied armies in France fired throughout the year 1918 at a rate about seven times greater than these previously high rates.

In the case of larger weapons the increase in ammunition consumption is even more startling. Prior to 1917 the War Department allotted to each 3-inch field gun 125 rounds of ammunition per year for practice firing. Ammunition for the 75-millimeter guns (the 3-inch equivalent) was being produced to meet an estimated supply of 22,750 rounds for each gun in a single year, or an increased consumption of ammunition in war over peace of 18,100 per cent.

[6] Average, year ended Nov. 10, 1918.

[7] Year ended June 30, 1864.

[8] Year ended Nov. 10, 1918.

The industrial effort necessary to maintain modern armies in action may be measured to a certain extent by their expenditure of artillery ammunition. European wars of the past 100 years were for the most part decided before peace-time reserves had been exhausted. The American Civil War, however, required for its decision an industrial mobilization at that time unprecedented, which, like the use in that war of intrenchments by field armies, was more truly indicative of the trend of modern warfare than were the conditions of the more recent European wars.

Thus when a peace army of 100,000 becomes a war army of 3,000,000 its ammunition consumption becomes not 30 times greater, but anywhere from 48 to 182 times 30 times greater—an increase far out of proportion to its increase in the consumption of food, clothing, or other standard supplies. Modern invention has made possible and modern practice has put into effect a greatly augmented use of ammunition. Figures 1, 2, and 3 show graphically how ammunition expenditure has increased in modern times.

Another circumstance that complicated the ordnance problem was the increasing tendency throughout the great war to use more and more the mechanical or machine methods of fighting as opposed to the older and simpler forms in which the human or animal factor entered to a greater extent.

At the time the United States entered the war the regulations prescribed 50 machine guns as the equipment for an infantry division. When the armistice was signed the standard equipment of a division called for 260 heavy machine guns and 768 light automatic rifles. Of the heavy machine guns with a division, only 168 were supposed to be in active service, the remainder being in reserve or in use for antiaircraft work. However, the comparison in the two standards of equipment shows the tendency toward machine methods in the wholesale killing of modern warfare and indicates the fresh demands made upon the ordnance organization to procure this additional machinery of death. Moreover, when the fighting came to an end the A. E. F. was on the point of adding to its regimental and divisional equipment a further large number of automatic rifles.

The day of the horse was passing in the great war as far as his connection with the mobile artillery was concerned, and the gasoline motor was taking his place, this tendency being accelerated particularly by America, the greatest nation of all in automotivity. Trucks and tractors to pull the guns, motor ammunition trucks displacing the old horse-drawn caissons and limbers, even self-propelling platforms for the larger field guns, with track laying or caterpillar mounts supplying not only mobility for the gun but aiming facilities as well; these were the fresh developments. Some of these improvements were produced and put in the field, the others were under development at the signing of the armistice. The whole tendency toward motorization served to complicate ordnance production in this country, not only in the supply of the weapons and traction devices themselves, but in the production of increased supplies of ammunition, since these improvements also tended to increase the rapidity with which bullets and shell were consumed.

The total cost of the ordnance alone required to equip the first 5,000,000 Americans called to arms was estimated to be between $12,000,000,000 and $13,000,000,000. This was equal to about half of all the money appropriated by Congresses of the United States from the first Continental Congress down to our declaration of war against Germany, out of which appropriations had been paid the cost of every war we ever had, including the Civil War, and the whole enormous expenses of the Government in every official activity of 140 years. To equip with ordnance an army of this size in the period projected meant the expenditure of money at a rate which would build a Panama Canal complete every 30 days.

Above are sketched some of the difficulties of the situation. In our favor we had the greatest industrial organization in the world, engineering skill to rank with any, a race of people traditionally versatile in applying the forces of machinery to the needs of mankind, inventive genius which could match its accomplishments with those of the rest of the world added together, a capacity for organization that proved to be astonishingly effective in such an effort as the nation made in 1917 and 1918, enormous stores of raw materials, the country being more nearly self-sufficient in this respect than any other nation of the globe, magnificent facilities of inland transportation, a vast body of skilled mechanics, and a selective-service law designed to take for the Army men nonessential to the Nation's industrial efforts for war and to leave in the workshops the men whose skill could not be withdrawn without subtracting somewhat from the national store of industrial ability.

It only remains to sketch in swift outlines something of the accomplishments of the American ordnance effort. In general it may be said that those projects of the ordnance program to which were assigned the shorter time limits were most successful. There never was a time when the production of smokeless powder and high explosives was not sufficient for our own requirements, with large quantities left over for both France and England.

America in 19 months of development built over 2,500,000 shoulder rifles, a quantity greater than that produced either by England or by France in the same period, although both those countries in April, 1917, at the time when we started, had their rifle production already in a high stage of development. (See fig. 4.) However, the Franco-British production of rifles dropped in rate in 1918 because there was no longer need for original rifle equipment for new troops.

In the 19 months of war American factories produced over 2,879,000,000 rounds of rifle and machine-gun ammunition. This was somewhat less than the production in Great Britain during the same period and somewhat less than that of France; but America began the effort from a standing start, and in the latter part of the war was turning out ammunition at a monthly rate twice that of France and somewhat higher than that of Great Britain. (See fig. 4.)

Between April 6, 1917, and November 11, 1918, America produced as many machine guns and automatic rifles as Great Britain did in the same period and 81 per cent of the number produced by France; while at the end of the effort America was building machine guns and machine rifles nearly three times as rapidly as Great Britain and more than twice as fast as France. (Fig. 4.) When it is considered that a long time must elapse before machine-gun factories can be equipped with the necessary machine tools and fixtures, the effort of America in this respect may be fairly appreciated.

British and French production of rifles during 1918 was at a lower rate than had been attained because there was no longer need for original equipment of troops.

Prior to November 11, 1918, America produced in the 75-millimeter size alone about 4,250,000 high-explosive shell, over 500,000 gas shell, and over 7,250,000 shrapnel. Of the high-explosive shell produced 2,735,000 were shipped to France up to November 15, 1918. In all 8,500,000 rounds of shell of this caliber were floated—nearly two-thirds of it being shrapnel. American troops on the line expended a total of 6,250,000 rounds of 75-millimeter ammunition, largely high-explosive shell of French manufacture drawn from the Franco-American ammunition pool. American high-explosive shell were tested in France by the French ordnance experts and approved for use by the French artillery just before the armistice.

THE MUNITIONS BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D. C.

The Lincoln Memorial and the Potomac River in the background.

A PARK OF AMERICAN-BUILT 155-MILLIMETER HOWITZERS AT ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND.

AMERICAN-BUILT G. P. F. 155-MILLIMETER GUNS STORED AT ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND.

GUNS OF VARIOUS SORTS AND SIZES RETURNED FROM FRANCE BY AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES JUST AS THEY WERE UNLOADED FROM TRAIN AT ABERDEEN.

AMERICAN-BUILT ORDNANCE MATERIAL, PARKED ON ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND.

AMERICAN-BUILT ORDNANCE STORES AT ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND.

A PARK OF AMERICAN-BUILT CAISSONS, BACK FROM FRANCE, AT ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND.

CHARGING FLOOR OF AN OPEN-HEARTH FURNACE.

The charging floor of an "open-hearth" furnace building, showing two furnaces on the side into which the raw materials are "charged." Each of these furnaces is 75 feet long and 15 feet wide, and the melted steel lies in a shallow bath inside the three doors, into one of which the man is looking. The pool or "bath," as it is termed, is 33 feet long by 12 feet wide and approximately 2½ feet deep, weighs approximately 60 tons, and is composed of pig iron and well-selected scrap steel from previous operations, which are placed in the furnace through the three doors shown, the furnace being all the time at a temperature so high that the naked eye may not look within the furnace, but must be protected with blue glass or smoked glass, exactly as when looking at the noonday sun. The eye can see nothing in the atmosphere of the bath in which the steel is being melted and refined, due to the exceedingly high temperature, which gives a light as white as that of the sun.

In artillery ammunition rounds of all calibers America at the end of the war was turning out unfilled shell faster than the French and nearly as fast as the British; but, due to the shortage in adapters and boosters, a shortage rapidly being overcome at the end of the war, the rate of production of completed rounds was only about one-third that of either Great Britain or France. In total production during her 19 months of belligerency America turned out more than one-quarter as many unfilled rounds as Great Britain did in the same time and about one-quarter as many as came from the French munition plants. In completed rounds alone did America lag far behind the records of the two principal allies during 1917 and 1918. (Fig. 5.)

The production of completed rounds of artillery ammunition was gaining rapidly, beginning with the early summer of 1918, and in the month of October was approaching half the rate of manufacture in Great Britain or in France. Figure 6 shows graphically the rate at which the artillery ammunition deliveries were expanding.

In artillery proper the war ended too soon for American industry to arrive at a great production basis. The production of heavy ordnance units is necessarily a long and arduous effort even when plants are in existence and mechanical forces are trained in the work. America in large part had to build her ordnance industry from the ground up—buildings, machinery, and all—and to recruit and train the working forces after that. The national experience in artillery production in the great war most like our own was that of Great Britain, who started in from scratch, even as we did. It is interesting, then, to know how Great Britain expanded her artillery industry, and the testimony of the British ministry of munitions may throw a new light on our own efforts in this respect. In discussing artillery in the war the British ministry of munitions issued a statement from which the following is an excerpt:

It is very difficult to say how long it was before the British army was thoroughly equipped with artillery and ammunition. The ultimate size of the army aimed at was continually increased during the first three years of the war, so that the ordnance requirements were continually increasing. It is probably true to say that the equipment of the army as planned in the early summer of 1915 was completed by September, 1916. As a result, however, of the battle of Verdun and the early stages of the battle of the Somme, a great change was made in the standard of equipment per division of the army, followed by further increases in September, 1916. The army was not completely equipped on this new scale until spring, 1918.

Thus it took England three and a half years to equip her army completely with artillery and ammunition on the scale called for at the end of the war. On this basis America, when the armistice came, had two years before her to equal the record of Great Britain in this respect.

As to the production of gun bodies ready for mounting, the attainments of American ordnance were more striking. At the end of the fighting America had passed the British rate of production and was approaching that of the French. In totals for the whole war period (Apr. 6, 1917, to Nov. 11, 1918) the American production of gun bodies could scarcely be compared with either that of the British or that of the French, this due to the fact that it required many months to build up the forging plants before production could go ahead.

In completed artillery units the American rate of production at the end of the war was rapidly approaching both that of the British and that of the French. In total production of complete units in the 19 months of war, American ordnance turned out about one-quarter as many as came from the British ordnance plants and less than one-fifth as many as the French produced in the same period. Figure 8 represents visually America's comparative performances in the production of gun bodies and complete artillery units.

Stress has sometimes been laid upon the fact that the American Army was required to purchase considerable artillery and other supplies abroad, the latter including airplanes, motor trucks, food and clothing, and numerous other materials. Yet, balanced against this fact is that every time we spent a dollar with the allied governments for ordnance, we sold ordnance, or materials for conversion into munitions to the allied governments to the value of five dollars. The interallied ordnance agreement provided that certain munitions plants in the United States should continue to furnish supplies to the allies, and that additional plants for the allies should be built up and fostered by us. Thus, while we were purchasing artillery and ammunition from the allies we were shipping to them great quantities of raw materials, half-completed parts, and completely assembled units, and such war-time commodities as powder and explosives, forgings for cannon and other heavy devices, motors, and structural steel. The following table shows the ordnance balance sheet between America and the allied governments:

The credit for the ordnance record can not go merely to those men who wore the uniform and were part of the ordnance organization. Rather it is due to American science, engineering, and industry, all of which combined their best talents to make the ordnance development worthy of America's greatness.

CHAPTER II.
GUN PRODUCTION.

The sole use of a gun is to throw a projectile. The earliest projectile was a stone thrown by the hand and arm of man—either in an attack upon an enemy or upon a beast that was being hunted for food. Both of these uses of thrown projectiles persist to this day, and during all time, from prehistoric days until now, every man who had a projectile to throw was steadily seeking for a longer range and a heavier projectile.

The man who could throw the heaviest stone the longest distance was the most powerfully armed. In the Biblical battle between David and Goliath, the arm of David was strengthened and lengthened by a leather sling of very simple construction. Much practice had given the young shepherd muscular strength and direction, and his longer arm and straighter aim gave him power to overcome his more heavily armed adversary.

Later, machines were developed after the fashion of a crossbow mounted upon a small wooden carriage which usually was a hollowed trough open on top and upon which a heavy stone was laid. The thong of the crossbow was drawn by a powerful screw operated by man power, and the crossbow arrangement when released would throw a stone weighing many pounds quite a distance over the walls of a besieged city or from such walls into the camps and ranks of the besiegers. This again was an attempt by mechanical means to develop and lengthen the stroke of the arm and the weight of the projectile.

With the development of explosives, which was much earlier than many people suppose, there came a still greater range and weight of projectile thrown, although the first guns were composed of staves of wood fitted together and hooped up like a long, slender barrel, wound with wet rawhide in many folds, which, when dried, exerted a compressive force upon the staves of the barrel exactly as do the steel hoops of barrels used in ordinary commercial life to-day.

This, the first gun, sufficed for a long while until the age of iron came. And then the same principle of gun construction was followed as is seen in that historical gun, the "Mons Meg," in the castle at Edinburgh. The barrel of that gun is made of square bars of iron, placed lengthwise, and similar bars of iron were wrapped hot around the staves to confine them in place and to give more resisting power than was possible with the wooden staves and the rawhide hooping.

Thus, all during the age of iron, gun development went steadily forward. Every military power was always striving by the aid of its best engineers, designers, and manufacturers to get a stronger gun, either with or without a heavier projectile, but in every case striving for greater power. As a special development we find in March, 1918, the now famous long-range gun of the Germans, which was at that time trained upon Paris, where it successfully delivered a shell approximately 9 inches in diameter, punctually every 20 minutes for a good part of each day until the gun was worn out. This occurred after a comparatively small number of shots, probably not more than 75 in all. The rapid wearing out was due to the immense demands of the long range upon the material of the gun. The Germans in the shelling of Paris used three of these long-range weapons and 183 shells are known to have fallen in the city.

The Germans evidently calculated with great care and experience upon the factors leading up to this famous long-range type of gun, which had an effective shooting distance of approximately 75 miles, which range, in the opinion of our experts, it is now quite easy for an experienced designer and manufacturer to equal and excel at will. In fact, one would hesitate to place a limit upon the length of range that could be achieved by a gun that it is now possible to design and build. In this connection it is interesting to note that the great French ordnance works at Le Creusot in 1892 produced the first known and well-authenticated long-range gun, which was constructed from the design of a 12-inch gun, but bored down to throw a 6-inch projectile. And instead of the usual 8 miles expected from the flight of a 6-inch shell this early Creusot long-range gun gave a range of approximately 21 miles with a 6-inch projectile, using a 12-inch gun's powder charge.

Closely connected with the development of the gun itself, and a necessary element of the gun's successful use, is the requirement that the weapon itself be easily transported from point to point, where its available range and capacity for throwing the projectile can be made of maximum use. This requires a gun carriage which has within itself various functions, the primary one being to establish the gun in the desired position where it can be made most effective against the enemy. Then, too, the gun carriage must have stability in order to withstand, absorb, and care for the enormous recoil energies let loose by the firing of the gun. It is obvious that the force which propels the projectile forward is equal to the reacting force to the rear, and in order to care for, absorb, and distribute to the earth this reacting force to the rear the carriage must have within itself some very peculiar and important properties. To this end there is provided what is known as a "brake" which permits the gun, upon the moment of firing, to slide backward bodily within the controlling apparatus mounted upon a fixed carriage.

The sliding of the whole gun to the rear by means of the mechanism of the brake is controlled, as to speed and time, by springs, by compressed air, by compressed oil, etc., either all together or in combinations of two or three of these agencies; so that the whole recoil energy is absorbed and the rearward action of the gun brought to rest in a fraction of a second and in but a very few inches of travel. The strains are distributed from the recoil mechanism to the fixed portion of the carriage that is necessarily anchored to the ground by means of spades, which the recoil force of each shot sets more firmly into the ground, so that the whole apparatus is thus steadily held in place for successive shots.

In mobile artillery, again, rapid firing is a prime essential. The 75-millimeter gun of modern manufacture is capable of being fired at a rate in excess of 20 shots a minute—that is, a shot every 3 seconds.

Rarely however, is a gun served as rapidly as this. The more usual rate of fire is 6 shots a minute or 1 about each 10 seconds, and this rate of fire can be maintained in the 75-millimeter gun with great accuracy over a comparatively long period.

The larger guns are served at proportionately slower rates, until as the calibers progress to the 14-inch rifles, which have been set up upon railway mounts as well as on fixed emplacements for seacoast defense, the rate of fire is reduced to one shot in three minutes for railway mounts, and to one shot a minute for seacoast mounts, although upon occasions a more rapid rate of fire can be reached.

Under rapid fire conditions, the gun becomes very hot, owing to the heat generated by the combustion of the powder within the gun at pressures as high as 35,000 pounds per square inch or more, which are generated at the moment of fire. This heat is communicated through the walls of the gun and taken off by the cooling properties of the air. Nevertheless, the wall of the gun becomes so hot that it would scorch or burn a hand laid upon it. The rapid fire and heating of the gun lessens the effective life of the weapon, due to the fact that the hot powder gases react more rapidly on hot metal than they do upon cold metal; hence a gun will last many rounds longer if fired at a slow rate than if fired at a rapid rate.

It may be helpful to keep in mind throughout that the sole purpose of a gun is to fire a projectile, as was stated at the very beginning of this chapter. All other operations connected with the life of a gun, its manufacture, its transportation to the place where it is to be used, its aiming, its loading and all its functions and operations are bound up in the single purpose of actually firing the shot.

Consider now for a moment, the life of, let us say, one of the 14-inch guns.

In the great steel mills it requires hundreds and perhaps thousands of workmen to constitute the force necessary to handle the enormous masses of steel through the various processes which finally result in the finished gun.

From the first operation in the steel mill it requires perhaps as long as 10 months to produce the gun ready for the first test. During the 10 months of manufacture of one of these 14-inch rifles there has been expended for the gun and its carriage approximately $200,000. Of course, while it requires 10 months to make a final delivery of one gun after its first operation is commenced, it should be remembered that yet other guns are following in series and that in a well-equipped ordnance factory two and perhaps three guns per month of this kind can be turned out continuously, if required.

Remembering now that it requires 10 months to produce one such 14-inch rifle and that its whole purpose is to fire a shot, consider now the time required to fire this shot. As the primer is fired and the powder charge ignited the projectile begins to move forward in the bore of the gun at an increasingly rapid rate, so that by the time it emerges from the muzzle and starts on its errand of death and destruction, it has taken from a thirtieth to a fiftieth of a second in time, depending upon certain conditions.

Assuming that a fiftieth of a second has been taken up and that the life of a large high-pressure gun at a normal rate of firing is 150 shots, it is obvious then that in the actual firing of these 150 shots only three seconds of time are consumed. Therefore, the active life of the gun, which it has taken 10 months to build, is but three seconds long in the actual performance of the function of throwing a shot.

However, after the gun has fired its life of 150 shots it is a comparatively simple and inexpensive matter to bore out the worn-out liner and insert a new liner, thus fitting the gun again for service, with an expenditure of time and money much less than would be required in the preparation of a new gun.

As the size of the powder charge decreases, a progressively longer life of the walls of the bore of a gun is attained, so that we have had the experience of a 75-millimeter gun firing 12,000 rounds without serious effect upon the accuracy of fire. Large-caliber guns, such as 12-inch howitzers, with the reduced powder charge required for the lower muzzle velocities employed in howitzer attack, have retained their accuracy of fire after 10,000 rounds.

From the fact that when in action guns are served with ammunition, aimed, fired, and cared for by a crew of men carefully trained to every motion involved in the successful use of the gun, it is most essential that the design and the material shall be such, both as to calculation in the design and as to manufacture in the material, as will insure the maintenance of the morale of the crew that serves the gun. Each man must be confident to the very last bit of fiber in his make-up that his gun is the best gun in the world, that it will behave properly, that it will protect him and his fellow soldiers who are caring for the welfare of their country, that it will respond accurately and well to every demand made upon it, that it will not yield or burst, that it will not shoot wild, but that it will in every respect give the result required in its operation.

To this end it has for generations been known that the requirements of manufacture of ordnance material, particularly for the body of the gun, are of the very highest order and call for the finest attainable quality in material, workmanship, and design.

It is well known and admitted that the steel employed in the manufacture of guns must be of the highest quality and of the finest grade for its purpose. It requires the most expert knowledge of the manufacture of steel to obtain this grade and quality. Until recently this knowledge in America was confined to the Ordnance officers of the Army and of the Navy and to a comparatively small number of manufacturers—not more than four in all—and only two of these manufacturers had provided the necessary equipment and appliances for the manufacture of complete guns.

Until 1914 the number of guns whose manufacture was provided for in this country as well as in the countries of Europe, excepting Germany, was very small. It might be stated that the sum total of guns purchased by the United States from the two factories mentioned did not exceed an average of 55 guns a year in calibers of from 3-inch to 14-inch, and that the stock of guns which by this low rate of increase of manufacture had been provided for us was pitifully small with which to enter a war of the magnitude of the one through which this country has just passed.

The two factories in question not having been encouraged by large purchases of ordnance material, as were similar industries in Germany, were not capable of volume production when we entered the war. But at the same time the gun bodies produced by these concerns at least equaled in quality those built in any other country on earth; so that while the big-gun-making art was in existence in this country and was maintained as to quality, it was most insufficient as to the quantity of the production available.

When the United States faced the war in April, 1917, arrangements were at once entered into to obtain in the shortest space of time an adequate supply of finished artillery of all calibers required by our troops and to get this supply in time to meet our men as they should set foot on the shores of France. Many thousands of forgings for guns, and finished guns too, had been ordered by the allies of the few gun makers in this country; and these makers were, at the time we got into the conflict, fully occupied for at least a year ahead with orders from the French and English ordnance departments. All of this production was immediately useful and available for the combined armies of the allies, and so it was allowed to go forward, the forgings preventing a gap in the output of the finished articles from the British and French arsenals which were then using the semifinished guns made in the old factories in existence in this country in April, 1917.

Some idea of the volume of this production in this country will be gained from the following table showing material supplied to the allies between April, 1917, and the date of the signing of the armistice, November 11, 1918.

In supplying all of this material from our regular sources of manufacture in this country to the finishing arsenals of the allies we were but maintaining our position as a part of the general source of supply. The plan of the French and British ordnance engineers at the outbreak of the war in 1914 was to build their factories as quickly and as extensively as could possibly be done. By the time the United States entered the war all of these factories were in operation and clamoring for raw material at a rate which was far in excess of that which could be supplied by the home steel makers in Great Britain and France. Consequently their incursions into the semifinished ordnance material supplies in the United States were necessary. In sending these large quantities of our own materials abroad, when we needed them ourselves, we were distinctly adding to the rate and quantity of the supply of finished ordnance for the use of our own Army in the field as well as being at the same time of inestimable value to the allies. This was because the French and British had agreed to supply our first armies with finished fighting weapons while we were giving them the raw materials which they needed so badly.

The four gunmakers in America meanwhile were being expanded into a total of 19 makers. All of these 19 factories during the month of October, 1918, were practically in full operation. Many of them were producing big guns at a faster rate than that for which the plants had been designed. In the month of October, 1918, with 3 of the 19 factories yet to have their machine-tool equipment completed, there were produced 2,031 sets of gun forgings between the calibers of 3-inch and 9.5-inch, which is at the rate of upward of 24,000 guns a year. This figure, of course, does not indicate anything of the gun-finishing capacity of the country; yet this expansion may be contrasted to the fact that our supply of finished guns prior to 1917 amounted only to 55 weapons a year.

[9] Carriages, recuperators, and sights had to be added to these cannon to make them complete units ready for service.

Our chain of gun factories, that were making this remarkable production, were built as follows:

One at the Watertown Arsenal, Watertown, Mass., near Boston, for the manufacture of rough machined gun forgings of the larger mobile calibers. This factory was entirely built and equipped on Government land with Government money and is splendidly able to produce rough machined gun forgings of the highest quality at the rate of two sets a day for the 155-millimeter G. P. F. rifles, and one set a day of the 240-millimeter howitzers.

At Watervliet Arsenal, Watervliet, N. Y., large extensions were made to the existing plant that had always been the Army's prime reliance for the finishing and the assembly of guns of all calibers, including the very largest. This plant was extended to manufacture complete four of the 240-millimeter howitzers each day, and two a day of the 155-millimeter G. P. F. guns.

At Bridgeport, Conn., there was constructed a complete new factory by the Bullard Engineering Works for the United States to turn out four 155-millimeter G. P. F. guns a day.

At Philadelphia, the Tacony Ordnance Corporation, as agents for the Government, erected complete a new factory officered and manned by experts well-trained and experienced in the difficult art of the manufacture of steel and gun forgings. On October 11, 1917, the grounds for this great undertaking had been merely staked out for the outline of the buildings. Seven months later, on May 15, 1918, the entire group of buildings, comprising a complete steel works from making the steel to the final completion of 155-millimeter gun forgings, was entirely erected at a cost of about $3,000,000. This difficult and rapid building operation was carried through successfully during the extraordinarily severe winter of 1917-18. On June 29, 1918, the first carload of gun forgings was accepted and shipped from this plant, so we have the marvelous enterprise of building a complete steel works from the bare ground forward to the shipment of its first forgings in a total elapsed time of only eight and one-half months.

At another, the works of the Midvale Steel Co. in Philadelphia, large extensions were made to enable some of the larger guns to be produced, to be finished later at the Watervliet Arsenal.

At the Bethlehem Steel Co.'s plant, Bethlehem, Pa., as early as May, 1917, orders were placed and appropriations allotted for expansions to this enterprise to enable a rapid output of a larger number of gun forgings and finished guns.

Large extensions were made at the works of the Standard Steel Works Co., Burnham, Pa., to increase their existing forging and heat treating facilities, so that at this plant two sets of 155-millimeter howitzers and one set of 155-millimeter gun forgings were produced each day.

At Pittsburgh, Pa., the plants of the Heppenstall Forge & Knife Co. and the Edgewater Steel Co. were extended so as to provide for the daily production at the first plant of forgings for one 3-inch antiaircraft gun and one 4.7-inch gun, and at the second plant of forgings for one 155-millimeter G. P. F. gun and one 240-millimeter howitzer per day.

At Columbus, Ohio, the Buckeye Steel & Castings Co. in combination with the works of the Symington-Anderson Co. at Rochester, N. Y., had their facilities extended to provide for the manufacture each day of six sets of forgings for the 75-millimeter guns.

At the Symington-Anderson Co. in Rochester, N. Y., there was provided a finishing plant for the 75-millimeter gun with a capacity of 15 finished guns per day.

At Erie, Pa., one of the most remarkable achievements in rapid construction and successful mechanical operation was performed by the erection of a plant that was commenced in July, 1917, and out of which the first production was shipped to the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in February, 1918. The American Brake Shoe & Foundry Co. built and operated this plant as agents for the Ordnance Department, and much credit is due them for their energy and organizing capacity.

It is doubtful if history records any similar enterprise in which guns were turned out in a plant seven months from the date of beginning the erection of the factory. This plant was laid out to manufacture 10 of the 155-millimeter Schneider-type howitzers a day, and before the signing of the armistice it had more than fulfilled every expectation by regularly turning out up to 15 howitzers a day, or 90 a week.

At Detroit, Mich., the Chalkis Manufacturing Co. adapted an existing plant, and additional facilities were erected for the manufacture of three of the 3-inch antiaircraft guns each day.

At Madison, Wis., the Northwestern Ordnance Co. erected for the United States an entire new factory, beautifully equipped for the manufacture of four guns a day of the 4.7-inch model.

At Milwaukee, Wis., the Wisconsin Gun Co. put up for the Government an entirely new works capable of finishing six 75-millimeter guns each day. The plants at both Milwaukee and Madison acquitted themselves very well and gave us guns of the highest quality.

At Chicago, the Illinois Steel Co. expanded existing facilities to produce more of the necessary electric furnace steel, which was forged into guns at several works producing gun forgings, both for the Army and Navy.

At Indiana Harbor, Ind., the works of the Standard Forgings Co., whose sole business had been the volume production of forgings with steam hammers and hydraulic presses, were expanded to the enormous degree of producing each day 10 sets of gun forgings for the 155-millimeter howitzer and 25 sets a day for the 75-millimeter gun. It should be stated that this was a triumph of organizing ability and that this factory was one of our main reliances for these guns.

At Gary, Ind., the American Bridge Co. created what is perhaps the finest gun-forging plant in the world, comprising four presses from 1,000 tons to 3,000 tons forging capacity and all the other necessary apparatus for the production each day of two sets of 155-millimeter G. P. F. guns and the equivalent of one and one-half sets a day of the 240-millimeter howitzers.

At Baltimore, Md., the plant of the Hess Steel Corporation was enlarged from its peace-time capacity and caused to produce at three times its normal rate the special steels required for gun manufacture.

It will become evident that the collection of machinery, buildings, and equipment necessary to produce these guns in the short space of time required and at the rate of production stipulated, was an enormous task in itself. It required the production of vast quantities of raw materials and the congregating in one place of large numbers of men capable of undertaking the exceedingly intricate mechanical processes of manufacture. The success of this plan and its carrying out is due largely to the loyalty of the manufacturers who unselfishly came forward early in 1917 and agreed at the request of the Ordnance Department to turn over their plants, lock, stock, and barrel, to the requirements of the department; agreed also to undertake the manufacture of products totally unfamiliar to them; agreed likewise to lend all of their organizing ability and great material resources to the success of the plants which the United States found necessary to build in the creation of a new art, in new locations and in an extent theretofore undreamed of.

THE MAKING OF A BIG GUN.

Steel, of course, and steel in some of its finest forms is the basis of gun manufacture. The word "steel" for the purpose of producing guns means much more than is ordinarily carried by the word in its everyday and most commonly accepted use. Only steel of the very highest quality is suitable for gun manufacture, as was indicated previously when attention was directed to the complete reliance which the operating crews must place in their guns and the severity of the uses to which the big guns are put.

Let us take a hasty trip through a big gun plant, watching the processes through which is finally evolved from the raw materials one of our hardy and efficient big guns.

Entering an open-hearth furnace building at one of our big gun plants, we find two large furnaces in which the raw materials are charged. Each of these furnaces is 75 feet long and 15 feet wide, and in them in a shallow bath or pool lies the molten steel. The pool is about 33 feet long by 12 feet wide and approximately 2½ feet deep. This pool, or "bath" as it is termed, weighs approximately 60 tons and is composed of pig iron and well-selected scrap steel from previous operations.

The furnace is at all times during the operation of melting these raw materials in the bath kept at such a high temperature that the eye may not look within at the molten mass without being protected with blue glass or smoked glass, exactly as when looking at the noonday sun. The eye can see nothing in the atmosphere of the bath in which the steel is being melted and refined because the temperature is so exceedingly high that it gives a light as white as that of the sun.

After 12 or 15 hours of refining treatment in this furnace the metal is tested, analyzed in the chemical laboratory, and, if found to be refined to the proper degree, it is allowed to flow out of the furnace on the opposite side from that through which it entered. Flowing out of the furnace the entire charge of 60 tons finds its way into a huge ladle which is suspended from a traveling crane capable of safely carrying this great weight.

The ladle is then transferred by the crane to a heavy cast-iron mold which is built so as to contain as much of the 60 tons of molten metal as is required for the particular gun forging under manufacture.

The mold, which we have before us now on our imaginary trip through the gun plant, will provide an "ingot" from the molten metal that will be 40 inches in diameter and 100 inches high. On top of this ingot is a brick-lined so-called "sinkhead." This sinkhead is that portion of the molten metal that has been allowed to cool more slowly in the brick lining than the ingot does in the cast-iron mold proper. The ingot with the sinkhead will weigh approximately 60,000 pounds.