/9 IN COMMEMORATION OF THE WORK OF THE EIGHT THOUSAND YALE MEN WHO TOOK FART IN THE WORLD WAR 1914-1918 HOW AMERICA WENT TO WAR THE GIANT HAND THE ROAD TO FRANCE I. THE ROAD TO FRANCE 11. THE ARMIES OF INDUSTRY I. THE ARMIES OF INDUSTRY II. DEMOBILIZATION HOW AMERICA WENT TO WAR AN ACCOUNT FROM OFFICIAL SOURCES OF THE NATION'S WAR ACTIVITIES 1917-1920 ^1 THE ARMIES OF INDUSTRY I. OUR NATION'S MANUFACTURE OF MUNITIONS FOR A WORLD IN ARMS 1917-1918 BY BENEDICT CROWELL THE ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF WAR AND DIRECTOR OF MUNITIONS 1917-1920 AND ROBERT FORREST WILSON FORMERLY CAPTAIN. UNITED STATES ARMY ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE COLLECTIONS OF THE WAR AND NAVY DEPARTMENTS NEW HAVEN YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON • HUMPHREY MILFORD • OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS MDCCCCXXI /i Copyright, 1921, by Yale University Press CONTENTS Introduction ......... XV Preface . XXV Chapter I. War Department Organization . . . . 1 II. The Ordnance Problem . . . . . 20 III. Gun Production ...... 42 IV. Mobile Field Artillery . . ' . 63 V. Railway Artillery ..... 105 VI. Motorized Artillery ..... 129 VII. Sights and Fire-control Apparatus 142 VIII. Explosives, Propellants, and Artillery Ammunitior I 154 IX. Tanks ....... 193 X. Machine Guns ...... 200 XL Service Rifles ...... 225 XII. Pistols and Revolvers .... 238 XIII. Small-arms Ammunition .... 244 XIV. Trench-warfare Material .... 256 XV. Miscellaneous Ordnance Equipment 285 XVI. Navy Ordnance ..... 299 XVII. Airplanes ...... 325 XVIII. The Liberty Engine ..... 362 XIX. Other Airplane Engines .... 383 XX. Aviation Equipment and Armament 399 XXI. The Airplane Radio Telephone . 437 XXII. Balloons ....... 447 XXIII. Warships and Flying Boats 463 XXIV. Toxic Gases ...... 488 XXV. Gas Masks ...... 509 XXVI. General Engineering Supplies 538 XXVII. Listening Gear and Searchlights . 55S XXVIII. Signal Material ..... 566 XXIX. Food ....... . 587 XXX. Clothing and Equipage .... 610 XXXI. Miscellaneous Quartermaster Undertakings . 639 XXXII. Vehicles ....... . 662 XXXIII. Medical Supplies ..... 677 XXXIV. Index America's Industrial Role .... . 684 . 69c ILLUSTRATIONS Railway Gun in Action A Gas Attack ....... Munitions and Navy Buildings, Washington, D. C. Making Liberty Engine Cylinders The War Council ...... American-built Ordnance at Aberdeen, Maryland Interior of a Great Shell Factory 8-inch Howitzers Built in America . Caissons Parked in Proving Ground . Charging Floor of an Open Hearth Furnace Building Big Guns Ready to be Shipped . Ladle Receiving Molten Steel . Casting Gun Ingot ..... Hydraulic Forging Press in Gun Plant . 155-millimeter Gun Tubes Ready for Heating Boring 240-millimeter Recuperators . Shop in War Ordnance Plant . In the 155-millimeter Recuperator Plant . Making 240-millimeter Recuperators . French 75 Made in U. S. A. American-built 155-millimeter Gun . 75-millimeter Carriages Ready for Wheels Assembling 75-millimeter Gun Carriages . Erecting Trails for 155-millimeter Howitzer Carriages Manufacturing Carriages for 155-millimeter Howitzers The 240-millimeter Howitzer . Completed 75-millimeter Gun Carriages Caissons on Shipping Platform . Shipping 75-millimeter Gun Carriages The American 7-inch Railway Gun . 8-inch Railway Gun .... 12-inch Rifle on Sliding Railway Mount The 16-inch Howitzer Emplacement of German Long-range Gun U. S. Naval Battery No. 1 Speaks . Havoc Wrought by U. S. Naval Gun at Laon 1400-pound Projectiles Fired by Naval Railway Guns 3-inch Gun on Self-propelled Mount 8-inch Howitzer Climbing Railroad Embankment The Navy's Caterpillar Mount .... ^Yz-ton Artillery Tractor ..... Frontispiece, Vol. I Frontispiece, Vol. II Opposite page 12 12 13 32 32 33 33 46 46 47 47 56 56 51 57 66 66 67 67 82 82 83 83 96 96 97 97 no no 111 111 124 124 125 125 132 >32 133 133 ILLUSTRATIONS 5-ton Artillery Tractor ...... 20-ton Artillery Tractor Grinding Lenses and Prisms ..... Manufacturing Trench Periscopes .... Smokeless Powder on Conveyor at Powder Factory . Casting Shell in Flasks ...... Furnaces and Quenching Tanks for Heat-treating Shell Rough-turning Nose of 8-inch Shell .... Machining Room in Shell Plant .... Completing Manufacture of Shell .... Shell, without Fuses, ready for Government Inspection Shell Ready for Packing and Shipment Renault-type 6-ton Tank ...... American Mark VIII Tank Fording Stream The Anglo-American Tank (Tonirnission American Mark VIII Tank Topping a Hill Assembling Mark VIII Tanks in Rock Island Arsenal Marlin Synchronized Aircraft Gun .... Benct-Mercie Machine Rifle ..... Chauchat Automatic Rifle ...... The Browning Heavy Machine Gun Assembling Tripods for Browning Machine Guns Browning Light Automatic Rifle .... Lewis Machine Gun, Ground Type .... Hotchkiss Heavy Machine Gun .... Straightening Rifle Barrels ..... Walnut Logs to be Made into Rifle Stocks Part of Factory Making Pistols for Army Machining Rough Pistol Castings .... Types of Small-arms Ammunition .... Woman Worker in Small-arms Ammunition Factory . Hand Grenades ....... Waterproofing Rifle Grenades ..... Vertical Cross Section of Livens Projector Manufacturing Trench Mortar Shell 6-inch Trench Mortar ...... Firing 3-inch Mortar ...... 6-inch Trench Mortar Shell ..... 240-millimeter Trench Mortar with Shell Ready for Action War Plant Engaged in Manufacture of Trench Mortars Assembling Large Trench Mortars . American Armor ..... Two Views of American Experimental Helmet Manufacturing Bayonets .... Making Trench Knives .... The 3-inch, 23-caliber Boat Gun War Ordnance Shop Crowded with Navy Work Naval 8-inch Howitzer ..... Opposite page 142 142 " 143 " 143 164 164 " 165 " 165 " 182 " 182 " 183 " 183 " " 196 " " 196 " 197 " " 200 200 " " 201 " " 201 201 " 218 " 218 219 " " 219 " " 219 " 238 " 238 " 239 " 239 256 256 " 257 " 257 " " 270 " " 270 " 271 " 271 " 278 " 278 " 279 " 279 " " 292 292 " 293 " 293 " 306 " 306 " 307 ILLUSTRATIONS XI and Depth-charge Launching Gear . Mark VI Mine Resting on Anchor . American Mine Anchor Open to Show Drum Explosion of Depth Charge American Mine Squadron Planting Northern Manufacturing Airplane Wings In the Dayton-Wright Airplane Factory . Wings for De Haviland Planes Panel Department in Great Airplane Factory Seaming Fabric for Wings Assembling Engines in Fuselages Applying Dope to Wing Fabric Building Fuselages at Curtiss Plant The U. S. De Haviland 9-A . Airplanes Ready for Shipment from Factory Stenciling Insignia on Wing Panels . Airplanes on Texas Flying Field The Martin Bomber .... Fitting Out Lepere Biplanes Army Airplanes over San Diego German Armored Plane Shot Down in France Forgings for Liberty Engine Cylinders Girl Student Mechanics at Engine Plant . Liberty Engines Moving down Assembling Line Adjusting Ignition System of Liberty Engines Testing Field for Liberty Engines . Liberty Engines Ready for Shipment Unveiling the Ten Thousandth Liberty Engine Installing Liberty Engines in Lepere Fuselages Assembling Curtiss "OX" Engines . Machining Small Parts for "OX" Engines Installing Hall-Scott Engines in Training Planes Manufacturing Parts for Airplane Engines Foundry in Aerial Bomb Plant . Presses Used in Making Drop Bombs Making Incendiary Bombs Machining Airplane Bombs Welding Nose Castings on Drop Bombs 1,000-pound and 550-pound Airplane Bombs Oxygen Helmet with Telephone Attachment Inspecting Airplane Drop Bombs Aviators Wearing Telephone Head Sets . Airplane Radio Telephone Set . Women Workers in War Balloon Factory Rubberizing Balloon Cloth Cutting and Cementing Balloon Cloth Panels Assembling Balloons .... American Caquot Balloon Ascending Cable Barrage Opposite page 307 " 320 " 320 " 321 " 321 " 332 " 332 " 333 " 333 " 340 " 340 " 341 " 341 " 350 " 350 " 351 " 351 " 360 " 360 " 361 " 361 " 368 " 368 " 369 " 369 " 380 " 380 " 381 " 381 " 390 " 390 " 391 " 391 410 " " 410 " 411 " 411 " 430 " 430 " 431 " 431 " 446 " 446 " 447 " 447 " 456 " 456 " 457 xii ILLUSTRATIONS American Windlass for Observation Balloon . Building Destroyer in Covered Slip at Squantum Building an Eagle Boat . A Submarine Chaser .... Eagle Boats on River Rouge, Detroit An HS-2 Seaplane .... Paravanes in Operation Navy Dirigible of B Class The NC-4 at Fayal, Azores Chlorpicrin Plant at Edgewood Arsenal One of Eight Cell Rooms in Edgewood Chlorine Plant Filling 1-ton Containers with Phosgene . Filled Gas Shell and Drums Stored for Leakage Test Filling 75-millimeter Shell with Mustard Gas . Filling Livens Drums with Phosgene Gas Cloud from Bursting Gas Shell Painting Gas Shell to Denote Contents . Employees at Government Gas Mask Factory . Masks Worn in World War ..... Sewing Room in Mask Factory .... Assembling Gas Masks ...... Mountain of Apricot Pits at San Francisco Carbon Plant Five Thousand Tons of Peach Stones for Mask Carbon The American K-T Mask ..... Type of Mask Chiefly Worn by A. E. F. . American Ration Train in France .... Locomotives on Wheels Packed in Transport Narrow-gauge Steam Locomotive Supplied to A. E. F. Narrow-gauge Gasoline Locomotive Supplied to A. E. F. Army Mobile Machine Shop Armored Car with Gun and Searchlight Surface Sound-ranging Set Geophone ...... Microphone .... "The End of the War" . American Parabloid .... 6o-inch Portable Open-type Searchlight 6o-inch Seacoast-type Searchlight Military Telephone School at University Signal Equipment Installed in Dugout Soldiers Studying Printing Telegraph Field Work with Radio . Hash for Soldiers Canning Fruit for the Army The Home of "Corned Willie" Packing Tobacco on Army Orders Outfit Worn by American Troops in Siberia Reclaimed Army Shoes .... of Michigan Opposite page 457 " 468 " 468 " 469 " 469 " 482 " 482 " 483 " 483 " 494 " 494 " 495 " 495 " 504 " 504 " 505 " 505 " 518 " 5»8 " 519 " 519 " 530 " 530 " 531 " 531 " 544 " 544 " 545 " 545 " 554 " 554 " S5S " SS5 " 555 562 562 " 563 " 563 " 574 " 574 " 575 " 575 " 598 " 598 " 599 " 599 622 " " 622 ILLUSTRATIONS Xlll Making Overseas Caps In a Uniform Factory Crated Caissons Park of American Rolling Kitchens Army Horse Collars in Storage . Method of Storing Rolling Kitchens Storage of Chassis Making Steel Wheels for Artillery Trucks War-built Wagon Wheels in Storage Army Wagon Bodies Ready for Shipment Opposite page 623 623 650 650 651 651 672 672 673 673 FIGURES Page 1. Actual Troop Sailings Compared with Programs . . . xx 2. British and American Expeditionary Forces on Western Front . xxi 3. Organization of War Department in 1917 ..... 3 4. Organization of War Department in 1918 ..... 7 5. Organization of War Department under Act of June 4, 1920 . 17 6. Expenditure of Artillery Ammunition in Modern Battles . . 27 7. Rates of Artillery Fire per Gun per Day in Recent Wars . . 29 8. Expenditure of Artillery Ammunition in Recent Wars . . 31 9. Comparative Production of Rifles, Machine Guns, Ammunition . 34 10. Comparative Production of Artillery Ammunition ... 36 11. Rounds of Artillery Ammunition Produced Each Month . . 37 12. Units of Mobile Artillery Produced Each Month ... 38 13. Comparative Production of Artillery ...... 40 14. Comparative Production of Explosives ..... 155 15. Improvement of Field Guns Since Napoleonic Wars . . . 188 16. De Haviland-4 Airplanes Produced Each Month during 1918 . 348 17. U. S. Airplane Squadrons at the Front ..... 360 18. Liberty Engines Produced Each Month during 1918 . . . 380 MAP The Shelling of Paris Opposite page 118 INTRODUCTION A S we look back at it now, our war against Germany is /-% beginning to draw into focus as it recedes down the JL jL. corridor of time. That which only a brief space ago seemed to the world an interminable agony, running without hope of end, now is seen to have been not an indefinite thing after all. It had boundaries, limits, a beginning and an end; and for us the beginning and the end were the 6th of April, 1917, and the 11th of November, 1918. Here, then, was our war, the greatest in which we ever engaged — a few days more than nineteen months of it. For that struggle we marshaled our resources as they had never been mobilized before. What showing did our resources make, our magnificent industrial resources, in that war, in those nine- teen months and five days? What weight of American artillery did they put on the front*? How many airplanes and machine guns and high-explosive shell did they materialize, in that war of the definite beginning and the definite ending that now seems almost to have been predestined, if it were not actually foretell able by human judgment? The answers to some of these questions are disappointing; and the critic who adopts the censorious point of view can make an impressive argument. But that is neither the fair nor the intelligent way of looking at the results of our munitions production in the World War. To gain a correct judgment of the industrial effort one must relive in imagination those months of suspense during most of which there was not the faintest paling of the darkness to foretoken the dawn of peace and victory. Then one can understand why America in her war industry strained every energy toward an ambition that was little concerned with the year 1918; toward an indomitable purpose which admittedly did not bring the full weight of American materiel into the struggle even in 1919; which xvi INTRODUCTION rather left it for 1920, if the enemy should not yet have suc- cumbed to the crushing American power, to witness the maxi- mum strength in the held of which the United States was capable. Therefore we find the actual period of hostilities — the period between April 6, 1917, and November 11, 1918 — devoted to building the foundations of a munitions industry that should be big enough to accomplish this overwhelming result. We might have made a better showing with our finished war mate- rials, we might have aimed at a quick victory — and we might have failed. We did not take this course. America demanded the insurance that existed in the complete utilization of all her resources; and in the progress of welding those resources into a single vast war machine, such munitions of the more diflficult sort as were actually produced may almost be regarded as casual to the main enterprise — mere harbingers of the quantities to come. The decision to prepare heavily for 1919 and 1920 and thus sacrifice in 1917 and 1918 the munitions which could have been produced at the cost of a less adequate fundamental prep- aration, was based on sound strategical reasoning on the part of the Allies and ourselves. Looking back at the past, we find that on April 6, 1917, the United States scarcely realized the gravity of what she was undertaking to do. 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 conformity with this attitude we sent the first division of American troops to France, in the spring of 1917, to be our earnest to the gov- ernments and peoples of the Allies that we were with them in the great struggle. Not until after the departure of the various foreign missions which 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 Ameri- can man power in France gradually grew; but no definite INTRODUCTION xvii schedule upon which the United States could work was reached until autumn or early winter, when the mission headed by- Colonel Edward M. House visited Europe to give America place on the Supreme War Council and in the Interallied Con- ference. 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 repre- sentatives 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 turn exceedingly dark the outlook for the transport on a sufficient scale of either American troops or 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 December 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 materiel 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. This general agreement or program was a most practical proposition, based on things as they were and not as they might have been. The negotiators looked at the situation with their eyes wide open. At an earlier point in this record* we have maintained the thesis that, due to the failure of those * See Authors' Foreword, The Giant Hand. xviii INTRODUCTION in authority to provide an effective form of organization for the War Department, the first six months of the manufactur- ing program were largely futile, wasted, and abortive, and that in consequence the general munitions-production curve was always at least half a year below what it should have been. Had the industrial situation been different in the fall of 1917, if the war industry had then been reaching the production stage in the more difficult and important branches of supply, instead of being, as it was, still in the planning, development, and preparatory stage, no doubt the Allies would have asked America to play a part even more significant than the one as outlined above. The hope of victory might not have been so long deferred. In the conferences which laid down the first concerted pro- gram of American cooperation 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 General Foch for the French and General Robertson for , the British, General Bliss representing the United States. The president of the Interallied Conference was M. Clemenceau, the French prime minister. Mr. Winston Churchill, the min- ister of munitions, represented Great Britain. Mr. Lloyd- George, the Prime Minister of England, also participated to some extent in the conferences. Out of such men and such minds came the Interallied Ordnance Agreement. It will be evident to the reader that this agreement must have represented the best opinion of the lead- ers of the principal Allies. It was developed out of their inti- mate 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 mes- sage signed by General Bliss, of which the 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 INTRODUCTION xix 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 suffi- cient 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 explo- sives : 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 shell shall at once be laid down. In this way alone can the tonnage difficulty be minimized and poten- tial artillery development, both in guns and shell, 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 pro- duction 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 enor- mous 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 east- XX INTRODUCTION ern 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 antici- pating the extraordinary need for men in the coming spring by considering plans for the transport of troops up to the sup- posed limit of the capacity of all available American ships, FIGURE 1 Actual Troop failings Compared with, Programs Men 2,500,000 2,000,000 1,600,000 1,000,000 500,000 _^ ^ 2,087,000 .^/ y ^^V M ., A ^-1,647,000 / 4t^? ,.1^0,000 ,^ 1,157,000 // gc*^'^ .-i^ l> y /. ^^^l .^^' ^ /< .--" '^ Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. May Jun. JuL Aug. Sep. Oct Nov. Dec. 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 divi- sions over and above the number of troops already scheduled INTRODUCTION xxi for embarkation, agreeing further to feed and maintain these men for ten weeks while they were brigaded with British units for final training. After the six additional divisions had em- barked there was still need of men, and the British continued their transports in our service. The high mark of shipment was reached in July, when 306,000 American soldiers were FIGURE 2 British and American ^expeditionary Forces on Western Front Troops 2,000,000 1,500,000 1,000,000 / / / / '^ \ - — — 1 1 / / / / -- — ' / / / / SI 500,000 y y^ 1915 1916 1917 1918 transported across the Atlantic — more than three times the number contemplated for July in the schedule adopted six months earlier ! The effect of this stepping-up of the man-power program upon the shipment of supplies was described by Lieutenant Colonel Repington, the British military critic, writing in the Morning Post (London) on December 9, 1918, in part as follows : xxii INTRODUCTION . . . they [the British war cabinet] also prayed America in aid, im- plored her to send in haste all available infantry and machine guns, and placed at her disposal, to her great surprise, a large amount of trans- ports 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 — General 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 . . . but solely to the self-sacrificing manner in which America had responded to the call of her friends. The really amazing thing which America did was to place in France in nineteen months an army of the size and ability of the American Expeditionary Forces. The war taught us that America can organize, train, and transport troops of a supe- rior sort at a rate which leaves far behind any practicable program for the manufacture of munitions. It upset the pre- vious 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, coasts, and 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 mobiliza- tion 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 most signal monument to the American genius of work- INTRODUCTION xxiii shop and factory, which in this period ensured the victory by ensuring the timely arrival of the overwhelming force of America's resources in the form of America's munitions. B. C. & R. F. W. Washington, D. C, June, ig2i. PREFACE MUCH of the text of this account of the production of American munitions during the World War was published by the War Department as the report of Benedict Crowell, the Assistant Secretary of War and Director of Munitions in the War Government. The authors of the report were four — the two who have signed this revision and Messrs. Robert J. Bulkley and Benjamin E. Ling, both of Cleveland. Mr. Bulkley, a former member of Congress, served in the War Department as a "doUar-a-year man." Mr. Ling was formerly a captain in the Construction Division, United States Army. In the preparation of the report the authors were assisted by about one hundred officers and civilian officials who compiled data and checked the accuracy of statement in the manuscript. In substance, and to a considerable extent in text, this report has been embodied in the chapters that follow. Certain chap- ters, however, that dealt with subjects not strictly related to domestic munitions production have been dropped. When the original report was prepared, final production figures either did not exist or were of questionable accuracy. The statistical tables which appear in the present revision have been corrected in the light of later official information, and for the more important munitions items they tell the complete tale. Some few errors of fact inevitably crept into the original report. In so far as they have been brought to the attention of the authors, these mistakes have been corrected. Considerable new material has been added, notably the section dealing with the evolution of the War Department's internal organization during the war and those which summarize the activities of the Navy Department in the production of war vessels and supplies; an index has been supplied; and the whole text has been edited and somewhat rearranged. THE ARMIES OF INDUSTRY CHAPTER I WAR DEPARTMENT ORGANIZATION THE most important forward step taken in the manu- facture of the supplies which were the fruition of the nation's whole industrial program during the World War was an act which might not ordinarily be considered a part of the production process at all. This step had nothing to do with machinery or materials, with designs or specifica- tions, with labor or transportation. Yet it was as truly a part of the process of turning out guns, ammunition, and airplanes as were the procurement of machine tools and the erection of factory buildings. It was even more essential to the program than these tangible things; because, before the step was taken, we had spent many millions of dollars for ores, metals, machinery, and buildings, and the millions had apparently gone into a hole from which few supplies had issued. The great paraphernalia of manufacture with which the Govern- ment was providing itself, at such cost and with such effort, seemed to be a futile implement in our hands, unresponsive to all the driving force which the combined industrial talent of the country could put behind it — until, in a few quiet offices in Washington, there was brought about, somewhat tardily, to be sure, a relatively simple rearrangement of executive functions, a realignment of them, a creation of new channels for the flow of authority. And then, although there was little disturbance to the existing personnel^ the reorganization of the business administration of the War Department made the industrial equipment effective at last and brought success out of failure. The part it played in bringing about the fall of the German Empire has perhaps not been justly estimated. It is given to only a few men to have executive part in great 2 THE ARMIES OF INDUSTRY affairs. A good half of the people of the United States are engaged in individual enterprises — they are farmers, lawyers, doctors, storekeepers — and nine-tenths of the rest are cogs in big machines, not only unconcerned with the intricacies of management, but sometimes even contemptuous of them. Some of our so-called advanced thinkers hold that the cogs are, after all, the important things in the machine — once you turn on the power the thing will run of itself. "Let the directors in New York solemnly meet and agitate themselves with their organization schemes in the delusion that they are producers and valuable members of society," — so runs the modem argu- ment, — "but what do they know about industry and produc- tion? The real worker, the man who keeps the wheels turning, is the man out there on the job; and things would run along pretty much the same if all the executive offices in the world were wiped out at once. Industry would go right ahead pro- ducing necessities at its same rate and with no loss of efficiency." If there be readers of this book who entertain such views, their attention is invited to an adjoining chart (Figure 3) which shows the organization of the War Department from the declaration of war in the spring of 1917 until January, 1918. It will be noted that up to the date last mentioned four- teen administrative bureaus reported directly to the Secretary of War. This meant that fourteen different kinds of sets of problems came up to him for decision and action. Now, this may have been a possible arrangement during the time of peace. But when the war came to expand the business of some of these bureaus as much as twenty tirries, it became physically impossible for one man to look after so many affairs. "But what of it*?" — again we are paraphrasing our serious thinkers — "Everybody knows that the Secretary of War is a figurehead anyhow — usually a lawyer who knows nothing about the science of making war, but who is put in there to act as a sort of official yes-man to give legal authenticity to the acts of the bureau chiefs, who are the real organization and who know their jobs and know how to keep s 5^ o 2 s^'s — Is. 2 1 1 IB — ?1 e p S = — — — 1 1 p c 11 "s - &■ 4 THE ARMIES OF INDUSTRY things running from one administration to another. Fourteen bureaus'? What difference did it make — fourteen, or two dozen, or fifty? As long as the Secretary of War could avoid writer's cramp everything would be all right, wouldn't it? The bureaus themselves would know how to conduct their own business." The complete answer to these questions was found in the condition of our war program in December, 1917. To those in Washington, that month brought the darkest days of the war. The various war department bureaus had indeed known their jobs, and known them only too well. As their business ex- panded, as it became less and less possible to apprise the Secretary of War of what they were doing, they grew out of touch with the executive direction which was supposed to exist; and each production bureau in its own province of indus- try became virtually a sovereign potentate, unchecked, uncon- trolled. They knew their work only too well, and that work was to produce the supplies for which each was charged with responsibility, and to get those supplies to France. In that direction lay success. And since it soon became evident that the industry and transportation of the country were not going to be sufficient to allow every bureau to satisfy its ambitions to the full, the proper tactics for the bureau chief were to get his program through first and let the others look out for themselves. It was not as if only one or two bureaus adopted this atti- tude: every single bureau responsible for producing supplies for the Army conducted its affairs in just this spirit of com- petition. There were five such bureaus at first, and eight later on, scarcely one of which but was prosecuting a business greater than that of the War Department as a whole before the declaration of war. There was in the War Department's organization nothing that could put an effective curb upon their individualistic operations. Six months of this sort of thing brought the inevitable consequences which any good business man could have foreseen from the start. The crisis came in December, 1917. WAR DEPARTMENT ORGANIZATION 5 Nature itself that year seemed to share in the hostility of the other inanimate forces which the Government had found it impossible to control; for the winter descended with a ferocity that will make the season remembered long for that reason alone. But there were other things besides the ice and the blizzards to make the outlook bleak for the officials in Washington. The munitions program was approaching a state of paralysis. Certain factories were loaded with contracts far beyond their ability to obtain materials, labor, transportation, or new factory facilities. In like manner certain whole manu- facturing districts were so overloaded with war business that their utmost in facilities, labor, fuel, transportation, and power was entirely inadequate to the handling of the contracts in any reasonable time. And while in these districts there was great labor scarcity, and while projects were being delayed as a consequence, in other districts not so attractive to the com- peting war bureaus there was actual unemployment both of men and of facilities. The congestion of war business within certain districts was a heavy contributing cause of the fuel shortage that nearly disrupted industry in those weeks. The unwise concentration of contracts also resulted in shortages in electric power in these districts. Every bureau dispatched its finished products to the ports as rapidly as it succeeded in procuring them. There the port officers had to take into consideration the balanced lading of vessels and also the immediate and more pressing needs of the A. E. F., for the available tonnage was scant. Consequently, they were unable to ship many of the materials reaching the ports. Army freight choked the ports and, back- ing up, clogged the rails so far back from tidewater that freight transportation for a time almost altogether ceased. The public began to hear rumors of serious failures in the program of supply. Some of the troops taken by the draft and concentrated in cantonments found themselves compelled to drill with dummy riiies made of wood instead of with real guns. This was bad enough; but worse was the fact that in the camps existed shortages in clothing, in hospital equipment, 6 THE ARMIES OF INDUSTRY and in other supplies. Pneumonia became epidemic in some of the camps, and it was openly charged that the failure of the War Department to provide sufficient clothing and shelter for the troops was primarily responsible for the deaths which re- sulted. Because of the railroad congestion and the shortage in fuel, all but the most essential manufacturing operations suf- fered a partial suspension, and the civil population shivered on a reduced ration of coal. Food supplies grew short. Ocean ships, unable to secure bunker coal promptly in our ports, were unable to operate efficiently. The whole world was aware that the Germans were planning a sinister and final military drive in the spring of 1918; and while we were doing all we could to send men to France to meet that contingency, there was in official quarters an apprehension that we might not be able to support our overseas troops and those of the Allies with food and other essential supplies. That was what the original organization of the War De- partment did to the war program. That was the factory trying to run itself without overhead direction and control. The War Department went along in this fashion for about eight months after the declaration of war, and then it found that one of two things had to happen : either its whole industrial program would go to smash and it would stand forth as a confessed and notorious failure, or it must reorganize. It chose to reorganize, and it began its reorganization only just in the nick of time. That reorganization was the profoundest change in the War Department in modem times; and, as we have said before, it was the most important thing that could have happened in the production of our army supplies. The reorganization began about January 1, 1918. The accompanying chart (Figure 4) shows what occurred. In the first place, what is made apparent by a comparison of the two charts is the ostensible rise of the General Staff in power. Originally the General Staff existed on a plane of authority with the principal bureaus of the War Department. Although theoretically it was supposed to be the planning and coordi- nating agency of the Army, before the spring of 1917 it had PC s s Q 55 O I % ^ r V a 3 Is h ^ si N a g E t — < I sf * < -3 s s ^^1 — l|! IS? — a& * ^ — 1 ^ S 5 D 6 s. a S — £ ■3 jS. — II 1 g. f ^6 ^ p & ^ s s e ~ |3 < 1 ^ ^ 11 I i 1 1 ! " s I 6 s 8 THE ARMIES OF INDUSTRY never been able actually to wrest much authority away from the principal bureaus. But in the first months of the war the General Staff had succeeded in asserting its power. By de- grees, yet swiftly, it had assumed jurisdiction over the raising and training of armies; it had gained, in fact, complete charge of the organization and movement of the Army until it reached Europe, after which the troops came under the command of the organization of the American Expeditionary Forces. The significant fact of the reorganization, the abrupt and revolutionary development, is indicated at the extreme right of the chart (Figure 4). For the first time in the official set-up of military functions, the industrial side of waging war is accorded its due weight — is placed on an equality with the function of supplying trained troops to the field commander. For the first time, too, the scattered, but huge, activities of the War Department in the procurement of supplies are concen- trated and included within a single overhead business organi- zation, the Division of Purchase, Storage, and Traffic, to which the former autocratic and independent supply bureaus have become subsidiary. The Division of Purchase, Storage, and Traffic is now the central overhead purchasing agency of the War Department, supreme in everything that pertains to the effective overhead control and coordination of the industrial enterprises of the War Department. This, to be sure, is control and coordination only, but with the effectiveness of law behind it. The individual supply bureaus, now virtually departments of the Division of Purchase, Storage, and Traffic, still, but in line with the instructions of the overhead organization, create their designs, write their contracts, and otherwise attend to the concrete acts of procurement. Had this organization or a similar one been put in control at the time war was declared, many of the most acute economic embarrassments which afflicted the United States during the war would never have occurred. War industry would have proceeded with sanity and singleness of purpose instead of as a collection of competitors resembling traders battling in the wheat pit. The proof of this statement lies in the fact that the WAR DEPARTMENT ORGANIZATION 9 new organization, coming late as it did, at a time when it seemed almost as if no human power could rescue the supply- situation, actually and in the face of the most adverse condi- tions of weather, fuel supply, and transportation, brought the War Department's industry to order and made creditable its performance in the first ten months of 1918. In characterizing the change in the organization of the War Department we have used the word "abrupt" ; but from this it is not to be inferred that the reorganization was accomplished suddenly. The plan for the reorganization was worked out abruptly, — it was worked out during those days of December when it was evident that the existing organization must either reform or go to pieces, — but to plan the reorganization was far easier than to put the plan into effect. The War Depart- ment had to be kept as a going concern even while it was changing its internal structure. While the Department was setting its house in order, there could be no relaxation of the pressure upon the producers of supplies. There were, more- over, internal difficulties in the way of rapid reorganization — efficient elements to be retained and worked into the new scheme, legal obstacles to be hurdled (for all of the reorganiza- tion had to keep within the strictures of existing law), and the capabilities of various executives had to be taken into con- sideration. In fact, because of the conditions, the War De- partment was forced to lean heavily upon individual men ; and whenever an officer showed extraordinary ability as an execu- tive the reorganization was so conducted as to give him extraordinary powers to administer. The reorganizers were dealing with conditions rather than theories, and they built up their plans to take the utmost advantage of things as they were. It follows that the reorganization was nothing that could be put through in a day. The Division of Purchase, Storage, and Traffic was not brought formally into existence until April, 1918, although for weeks before that time the most important activities in the central control of war de- partment industry were in full and effective operation, and the industrial situation began to revive immediately. Not until lo THE ARMIES OF INDUSTRY the autumn of 1918 was the reorganization complete in every detail. Since the reorganization had to keep within the law, the central business office of the Department, the Division of Pur- chase, Storage, and Traffic, had to be given a military status. Its officers had to be commissioned in the Army, and the Divi- sion itself had to be fitted somewhere into the military organi- zation. There was no legal authority for placing it directly under civilian control. It should be remembered that this whole plan was formulated and largely carried out before the passage of the Overman Act, which gave the President blanket powers to rearrange the Government in any way he saw fit. Had the Overman Act antedated the reorganization of the War Department, it is possible that the overhead business office of the Department would have been made a civilian agency through and through. But there was no Overman Act; the only war department branch which had any legal right to coordinate and control the activities of the other branches was the General Staff; and therefore to the General Staff the new control agenc)^ the Division of Purchase, Storage, and Traffic, was attached. This necessity gave to the General Staff (see Figure 4) an appearance of power which it did not actually possess. In the chart the General Staff itself, through its Division of Pur- chase, Storage, and Traffic, has apparently become the great procuring agency of the War Department, in addition to its purely military functions. This, however, was only an ar- rangement pro forma to give authenticity to the acts of the Division of Purchase, Storage, and Traffic. Actually, a differ- ent arrangement was in effect. The ancient office of Assistant Secretary of War had long been more or less of a political sinecure — a place of consider- able honor, but almost without practical value or responsi- bility. The office had become an eddy into which had drifted a few incidental and inconsequential functions of the War Department, none of them directly related to the business of waging war. It characterizes the office to say that its principal WAR DEPARTMENT ORGANIZATION u duty had been administering the national cemeteries. When things began to go wrong with the war industrial program, the Secretary of War saw in this unused office the opportunity to give to the War Department the thing which it then most sorely needed — industrial ability at the top of its organization. In November, 1917, he called to the office a man whose train- ing and experience had been entirely in the industrial field and turned over to his administration all the industrial activities of the War Department — gave to him literally a blanket com- mission to rescue our war industry from the plight into which it had fallen. The Division of Purchase, Storage, and Traffic was thereupon plotted as the agency through which the Assist- ant Secretary, to whom later was also given the title "Director of Munitions," could gain control of the industry. Thereafter the Assistant Secretary of War was the industrial head of the War Department. But since this arrangement was one of agreement rather than of law, the executive decisions of the Assistant Secretary went down to the Division of Purchase, Storage, and Traffic as from the Secretary of War, through the technically legal channel of the General Staff. In spite of appearances, therefore, the General Staff remained a purely military body. The Chief of Staff was the Secretary of War's military adviser: the Assistant Secretary was the Secretary of War's industrial adviser. This explanation will make clear to anyone with a knowl- edge of military organization a situation at once puzzling and outwardly improper. Even a number of experts within and outside the War Department, taken in by appearances during the war, criticized the General Staff for its alleged assumption of the powers of procurement. Of course, no general staff of any army ever before attempted to turn itself into an agency of procurement. Nor did our General Staff do that, actually. Its administration of procurement was only a perfunctory one. The actual administration was always in the hands of men whose training was industrial. The reorganization of the General Staff was being studied and worked out in December, 1917, but it was evident that 12 THE ARMIES OF INDUSTRY we could not wait for the gradual upbuilding of that body. For eight months the whole War Department had been drift- ing along without a rudder. No one was directing — no one was doing any thinking in a large way. The work of the War Department was not being properly coordinated with that of other important war-making agencies, such as the Navy, the Shipping Board, and the War Industries Board. Immediate measures were necessary to prevent the failure then so immi- nent. No attention was being given to general policies. Defi- nite plans were entirely lacking. No major programs had been worked out. No large industrial plans could be laid until the extent of our military participation was decided. Our military plans depended upon our ability to transport men and munitions to Europe. This meant shipping. The amount of shipping that could be allocated to our transatlantic trans- port fleets depended largely upon how much tonnage we could withdraw from the fleets which were supplying our industry with raw materials. Withdrawing tonnage from industry meant decreasing our importations of iron ore, manganese ore, chrome, nitrates, sugar, and other important commodities, and curtailing our water shipments of coal, on which New England so largely depended. The withdrawal of ships from these trades would cripple our war industries. How much tonnage could we afford to withdraw from commerce in favor of mili- tary transport*? That depended upon our military program. And there was no military program. These and many other questions had to be settled without further delay. It was obvious that what was needed was a small body of men, men with time to think, placed at the head of the War Department to work out programs and compose and harmonize divergent, but pressing, interests. We could not afford to drift any longer. The solution was the creation of the War Council — a temporary expedient to bridge over the time required for the reorganization of the General Staff. Theoretically the War Council was merely an advisory body, without authority. However, the Secretary of War, the Assist- ant Secretary of War, and the Chief of Staff were members Photo by U. S. Army Air Service MUNITIONS AND NAVY BUILDINGS, WASHINGTON, D. C. Photo from Ford Motor Covipany MAKING LIBERTY ENGINE CYLINDERS WAR DEPARTMENT ORGANIZATION 13 of it; and therefore its decisions were promptly carried out. It thus had real power to act. It is worth while to pause a moment to examine this body- about which so little has been published or said. Besides the officers named above, its members were: Major General Wil- liam Crozier, Major General E. M. Weaver, Major General E. H. Crowder, Major General Henry G. Sharpe, Major General George W. Goethals, Brigadier General Palmer E. Pierce, Mr. Charles Day, and Mr. E. R. Stettinius. The first meeting of the War Council, a meeting devoted to organizing, was held December 19, 1917; and at this meeting the Secre- tary of War outlined the functions of the War Council in substance as follows: The most important contribution toward the victorious completion of the war was brains in the conduct of it. . . . The members of the War Council were expected to keep in close touch with the situation in Europe, and for that pur- pose at least one member of the Council should be constantly absent in Europe getting information for its guidance. . . . It was essential for the Council to be a thinking body, and for this purpose to keep itself free from detail. ... It should give special attention to the question of coordination of mat- ters relating to the supplies for the Expeditionary Forces in France. . . . Consideration should be given each day to General Pershing's cablegrams. . . . Broad questions relating to the ports of embarkation should be considered. . . . The Secretary of War invited from the Council the freest initiative in the suggestion of fresh ideas. . . . He hoped and expected to receive from the Council any suggestions that tended toward securing final success. . . . For all these reasons he considered the Council the most important body in the War Depart- ment. . . . All information in the War Department and in other government departments would be given to the War Council. . . .* Under such auspices the War Council set to work with a will, meeting every morning; and gradually it saw order * Digested from the minutes of the War Council. 14 THE ARMIES OF INDUSTRY evolved out of chaos. Most of its members gave their entire time to the work of the Council. Thus they were freed from the details of administration and became able to visualize the war effort as a whole. For the first time since the declaration of war there was a discussion of complete programs. In these daily conferences first developed the realization of the need eventually filled by the creation of the Shipping Control Com- mittee; and the Shipping Control Committee, after its forma- tion, met with the War Council every Wednesday, in a ses- sion which was given over to consideration of the shipping situation and in which the shipping problems were frankly discussed and settled across the table without delay. To these Wednesday shipping meetings came also the Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Baruch (the chairman of the War Industries Board), Mr. Hurley (the chairman of the Shipping Board), Mr. Schwab (the director-general of the Emergency Fleet Corporation), Mr. McCormick (the chairman of the War Trade Board), and others. At its second meeting, on December 20, the W^ar Council got down to business, discussing questions arising in the ad- ministration of the draft and taking up the advisability of merging all the divisions of the Regular Army, National Guard, and National Army into a single Army of the United States. The first steps were taken toward getting together that mass of information from which was worked out our military program. The discussion on this theme led to the prompt creation (in February and March, 1918) of the Statistics Branch of the General Staff. From first to last the War Council considered all sorts of questions relating to the conduct of the war; but it was never more than temporarily diverted from its main task — that of formulating and adopting a comprehensive military program. After all the necessary figures and other data had been col- lected, studied, and digested, the program was outlined, taken to the President for his approval, approved by the President, and formally adopted. Thereafter the War Council was kept busy considering changes in the program made necessary by WAR DEPARTMENT ORGANIZATION 15 the ever shifting conditions in Europe during the first six months of 1918, and in investigating and strengthening what seemed to be the weak spots. The War Council held daily meetings until May 1, 1918. From then until July the meet- ings were not so frequent, and from July to the armistice only the Wednesday shipping meetings continued to be held. The vindication of the usefulness of the War Council, of the fact that it filled an important place in the administration of the War Department, came after the armistice. Congress, in reorganizing the War Department in conformity with the lessons learned during the war, created a permanent War Council, which exists to-day, ready to fulfill its part in the event of another emergency. Such an overhead planning body would have been of invaluable service, had it been created at the outbreak of the war in 1917, since we would have had from it an early solution of problems which under the old procedure hampered the war program for many months. The original reorganization of the War Department per- sisted for a year and a half after the armistice, the Division of Purchase, Storage, and Traffic — still attached to the General Staff — dealing with the numerous industrial problems that arose in the course of the demobilization. But as the War Department's business dwindled in volume and once more approached the normal, the time came to place the Depart- ment upon the permanent peace footing. It was a time to apply the lessons learned during the war, when the scars of old mistakes were still red and smarting. The old independent bureau system had been an egregious failure during the Span- ish-American War, but the country had not been wise enough after that brief conflict to apply the lesson and correct the organization before the World War. To repeat that error was unthinkable; and in the spring of 1920, as a measure in future preparedness. Congress took steps to give the War Depart- ment a permanent supply organization that could function effectively in the event of war. The question was whether to preserve the organization adopted during the war or to provide something different and i6 THE ARMIES OF INDUSTRY better. It was found to be no easy thing to make a change, for some of the highest officials of the General Staff had begun to take themselves seriously as producers of military supplies — shutting their eyes to the fact that the inclusion of the Divi- sion of Purchase, Storage, and Traffic within the General Staff had been only a measure of legal expediency — and urged the retention of the 1918 plan permanently. Since the arrange- ment which made the Assistant Secretary of War the director of the manufacturing enterprises had no legal foundation, it followed that, if the war organization were perpetuated in law as the peace organization, the General Staff was bound to become supreme in questions of producing supplies, and that the control of the Assistant Secretary over these affairs would depend each time upon the ability and aggressiveness of the Assistant Secretary who chanced to be in office. From the standpoint of good organization, any assumption by the General Staff of control over the production of supplies is fundamentally wrong, and in a great emergency it might prove to be as disastrous as the attempted operation of the War Department by its independent bureaus. To be sure, the General Staff is concerned with the production of supplies, and vitally so — as much concerned as it is with problems in 'personnel. The General Staff is the Army's great advisory and coordinating agency, and therefore the supply problems prop- erly fall within its jurisdiction. Its interest in these problems, however, is military rather than industrial — a distinction which many staff officers were unable to grasp. The range of supplies to be produced, the quantities of them, and the dis- tribution of the finished supplies are affairs in which the General Staff should be supreme. It should even dictate specifi- cations with the understanding that the specifications are mili- tary specifications and not manufacturing specifications. It can if it likes call for the production of airplanes with a speed of 200 miles an hour, or of field guns that can shoot 50 miles, but the moment it attempts to design these materials and to procure their manufacture, then it trespasses in a field not properly its own. i8 THE ARMIES OF INDUSTRY When the War Department approaches industry with de- mands for production on a modern war-time scale, to be effective it must deal with industry on a practical industrial basis. It must speak the language of the tribe. This the general staff officer is not fitted to do. His whole training has been in another field. A Chief of Staff must be a man of great military experience, one who has spent his life in military affairs. To expect him to be also a successful administrator of war indus- try is to expect too much. He is no more fitted by experience for such work than a Presbyterian synod is qualified to promote a prize fight. This view prevailed in Congress, and the permanent reor- ganization law of June 4, 1920, as indicated in our Figure 5, recognized the dual function of waging war — the military function and the industrial. Before the World War the pro- duction of munitions was supposed to be merely incidental to the larger project of raising an army and maneuvering it at the front. It took the experience in France to demonstrate to us that wars have become as much industrial as militar}' and that a nation at war is only as strong as its industry. The reorganization law set up the Assistant Secretary of War as the industrial head of the War Department and added appre- ciably to his salary, so that the office, with its great responsi- bilities, might attract from industry men of ability. In any estimate of the military assets which the World War provided for the United States, the fact should not be overlooked that, as long as the present law stands, we have in the War Depart- ment an organization which should enable war industry to proceed effectively from the first minute of our belligerency. To change from a peace to a war footing, all that will be necessary is to increase the number of workers in the office of the Assistant Secretary of War, as the expanding program demands the services of sub-executives. That this is the correct theory of organization for the War Department was stated unequivocally by a most able and expert authority, a man not unacquainted with the working of the Department: WAR DEPARTMENT ORGANIZATION 19 ... to prepare the country to meet a state of war with honor and safety, much must depend on the organization of our military peace establishment. . . . To give such an organization, the leading prin- ciples in its formation ought to be that at the commencement of hostili- ties there should be nothing either to new model or to create. The only difference, consequently, between the peace and war formation . . . ought to be in the increased magnitude of the latter; and the only change in passing from the former to the latter should consist in giving to it the augmentation which will then be necessary. These words were not written with the lesson of the World War fresh in mind, as they might seem to have been. They were the words of John C. Calhoun, the Secretary of War in President Monroe's cabinet, in his annual report for the year 1820. A century later we have written those principles into law — but not before going through a costly experience in disregarding them. CHAPTER II 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 casual mind may define ordnance as artillery alone. It will surprise many to learn 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 ; that is, they had to be designed and produced specially for the uses of war. Although the principles of fighting have changed essentially not one whit since the age when projectiles were stones hurled by catapults, nearly every advance in mechanical science has had its corollary in warfare, until to-day the weapons which man has devised to destroy the military power of his enemy- make up an intricate and imposing list. When America accepted the challenge of Germany in 1917, part of the range of ordnance had already been produced in moderate quanti- ties 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 some- thing of the caliber of the problem which confronted the Ordnance Department at the outset of the great enterprise. THE ORDNANCE PROBLEM 21 To begin with the artillery: First in order of size there was the baby two-man cannon of 37 millimeters (about an inch and a half) in the diameter of its bore — a European develop- ment 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 came the mobile field guns : the famous 75, 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 de- fenses. 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 tre- mendous 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 these guns had to be produced in great numbers, if the future requirements of the American forces were to be met; produced by thousands in the smaller sizes and by hundreds and scores in the larger. And these weapons would be ineffective without adequate supplies of ammunition. For the mobile field guns this meant a requirement of millions of shell or shrapnel, to sustain 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 for only a few minutes in such intensive bombardments as sowed the soil of Flanders with steel. The artillery demanded also an immense amount of heavy equipment — limbers, caissons, auto ammunition trucks, and tractors to drag the heavy and middle-heavy artillery. Some 22 THE ARMIES OF INDUSTRY of these vehicles were fitted with self-propelled caterpillar mounts which could climb a 40-degree grade or make as high as twelve miles an hour on level ground. These, the adapta- tions to warfare of peaceful farm- and construction-machine traction, for the first time rendered the greater guns exceed- ingly 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 artillerv^ equipment had to have adequate facilities for maintenance in the field, and this need brought into existence another enormous phase of the ordnance pro- gram. There had to 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. There had to be semi-heavy repair shops on 5-ton tractors, these to be to the corps what the truck machine shop was to the division. Each army head- quarters called for its semi-permanent repair shop for artillery and still larger repair shops for its railway artillery. And in addition to all these there were the base repair shops in France, 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. These shops had 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 artil- lery 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 Ordnance Department confronted by the necessity of manufacturing shoulder rifles by the million and cartridges for them by the billion. The World War brought the machine gun into its own, requiring in the United States the manufac- ture of these complicated and expensive weapons by tens of thousands, including the one-man automatic rifle, itself an arm of a deadly and effective type. THE ORDNANCE PROBLEM 23 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 advancing lines with maximum damage to the enemy. And the thousands of machine guns required water jackets to keep their barrels cool and specially built carts for carrying 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 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 bom of modern trench warfare. These included mor- tars, 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 there was devised for them a great variety of bombs and shell, not only of the high-explosive fragmentation type, but also of types containing poison gas or fuming chemicals. Great quantities both of mortars and of 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 dug- outs, 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 24 THE ARMIES OF INDUSTRY 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 con- tainers into a selected area of enemy terrain, usually with great demoralization of enemy 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 there were 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 which fired cartridges so rapidly that their explosions merged into a single continuous roar, yet timed each shot so nicely 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 gun 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 World War, and each involved problems for the production organiza- tion to solve. Then there were the drop bombs of aerial warfare, of many gradations in weight up to 500 pounds each, these latter ex- THE ORDNANCE PROBLEM 25 perimental 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 messes in the field, shotguns, and so on. 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, or 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 scope smoothly and efficiently. But 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 De- partment whose entire commissioned personnel consisted of ninety-seven officers. Only ten of this number were experienced in the design of artillery weapons. The projected army of 5,000,000 men required 1 1,000 trained officers to handle every phase of ordnance service. To be sure, a portion of this pro- duction 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 26 THE ARMIES OF INDUSTRY 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, convert builders into construction quartermasters, find trans- portation officers in the great railway systems, Signal Corps officers in the telegraph companies, medical officers in profes- sional 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; but 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 impor- tant ordnance supplies for the Allies. When the armistice was signed, nearly 8,000 manufacturing plants in the United States were working on ordnance contracts. It is true that many of these contracts entailed production not much dissimilar to commercial output; yet here is another ratio — the twenty or more original factories compared with the ultimate 8,000 — which serves to indicate the expansion of our industrial knowl- edge of the special processes incident to ordnance manufacture. When we found ourselves in the war, our 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 in only a general way. As soon as we became a belligerent, we at once turned to the Allies, and they freely and fully gave us of their store of knowledge — plans, specifications, working models, secret de- vices, and complete manufacturing processes. With this knowl- edge at hand, we adopted for our own program certain French THE ORDNANCE PROBLEM 27 vO <3 ^ ^ '^ (S r>- v^ w ji ■ - CTs ^ .'<* rt ^ 3 rt rt ^ ^ r^pH t; «J ii C H 3 E £ ■^vO^r^OOO — — — — — ^oooooo o^o^c^o^o^a\c^a^ i— I ■ — ! T3 4^ a Pi o o *-> iJ V *' »- ri ^ .0 rt rt '=i CI .:£ o 4; > to' u C 41 41 "rt C/3 H .^ 13 CO 4) TS J«3 •>. 4) CO .4-) S "^ Vt-i o O O 41 a O C 4^ CU 4> CO 4> 13 pj u. £-^ j:; 41 Ic "^ 4> o H 3 <+i 28 THE ARMIES OF INDUSTRY 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 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 the artisans. But even when the complete drawings were obtained, the Ameri- can 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; he works within strict tolerances and produces pieces which require little or no fitting in the assembling room. In the translating of French plans, therefore, it was necessary THE ORDNANCE PROBLEM 29 FIGURE 7 Rates of Artillery Fire per Gun per Day in Recent Wars Approximate rounds per gun War Army per day 1854-56, Crimean British and i French "" •* 1859, Italian Austrian 1861-65, Civil Union 1866, Austro-Prussian ■! „ [ r russian 1870-71, Franco-Prussian German 1904-05, Russo-Japanese Russian 1912-13, Balkan Bulgarian World War September, 1914 French hi^hi '8 Jan. i-Oct. 1, 1918 Italian ■■■■ ^8 Jan. i-Nov. 11, 1918 United States hhi^h^^^^^^^^ ^30 Jan. i-Nov. 11, 1918 French ^^aimmmmi^Kmaammmmmm ^34 Jan. i-Nov. 11, 1918 British m^mmmm^^mmmimm^a^m ^35 ^ Siege of Sebastopol. * Field-gun ammunition only. The rates are based upon total expenditure and average num- ber 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 last 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 a day was the greatest average rate. Even this was reached only in the siege of Sebastopol, where armies were sta- tionary 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 previous high rates. to put into them what they had never had before: namely, rigid tolerances and exact measurements. 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 30 THE ARMIES OF INDUSTRY of a campaigning army eats no more than a soldier of a quiet military post. The same law is true approximately of clothing an amiy. 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. But for a single machine gun on the field in such a war as the recent one, it is necessary to provide 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. For 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 ammuni- tion a year for practice firing. Ammunition for the 75-milli- meter guns (the equivalent of the 3-inch) was being produced in 1917-1918 to meet an estimated requirement of 22,750 rounds for each gun in a single year, or an increased consump- tion of ammunition in war over peace of 18,100 per cent. 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 consump- tion 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 6, 7, and 8 show graphically how ammunition expenditure has increased in modem times. Another circumstance that complicated the ordnance prob- lem was the increasing tendency throughout the World 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. THE ORDNANCE PROBLEM 31 5; o o o Tl-00 00 00 vo - - - 00 C\ a> o^ V-i dj flj a.) V- > rt C3 V , , c i- -T3 •-- t» t, 73 V > J^ V w ^- vt — ^3 rt -a U ^ o -° w j: ^ ►, "^ S „ "^ -5 ^ ^ ^ -.3^3 CO M c -C 4J 'Xj u rt M rt B 4J en N u. 06 .2 S rt 3 0\ b s b *-! o ^ :5 T rt .H v 7^ ■'«>--. '^"V''>Sl»^Hl£j^'^ ..- --„.-.-^ i Phut^ jt^iii OidnuhLL btiartmcnt 8-INCH HOWITZERS BUILT IN AMERICA Photo from Ordnance Department CAISSONS PARKED IN PROVING GROUND THE ORDNANCE PROBLEM 33 gresses of the United States from the first Continental Con- gress down to our declaration of war against Germany — out of which appropriations had been paid the cost of every war we ever fought, including the Civil War, and the whole enor- mous expense of the Government in every official activity of a hundred and forty 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 thirty days. So much for 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 tradition- ally versatile in applying the forces of machinery to the needs of mankind, inventive genius which could match its accom- plishments 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 outline 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 suc- cessful. There never was a time when the production of smoke- less powder and high explosives was not sufficient for our own requirements, with large quantities left over for both France and England. America, in nineteen months of development, built over 2,500,000 shoulder rifles, a quantity greater than that pro- duced by either England or France in the same period, al- though both those countries in April, 1917, at the time when 34 THE ARxMIES OF INDUSTRY FIGURE 9 Production of Rifles, Machine Guns, and Ammunition: France and United States Compared with Great Britain Average Monthly Rate, July, August, and September, 1918 Machine guns and machine rifles: Per cent of rate for Great Britain Great Britain 10,947 B^BMBBa^ 100 France 12,126 ^bb^^^b 11 1 United States 27,270 ^^^mMBassBBOB^^^^H 249 Rifles: Great Britain 112,821 ai^HmBH 100 France 40,522 g^B 36 United States 233,562 Rifle and machine gun ammunition: Great Britain 259,769,000 France 139,845,000 ^b^ 54 United States 277,894,000 Total Production, April 6, 1917 , to November 11, 1918 Machine guns and machine rifles: Per cent of rate for Great Britain Great Britain 181,404 ^^^^hhi 100 France 229,238 maaa^mi^^m 126 United States 181,662 Rifles: Great Britain 1,971,764 France 1,416,056 United States 2,506,742 Rifle and machine gun ammunition : Great Briuin 3,486,127,000 France 2,983,675,000 United States 2,879,148,000 we Started, had their rifle production already in a high stage of development. (See Figure 9.) (The Franco-British pro- duction of rifles dropped in rate in 1918, because there was no longer need for original rifle equipment for new troops.) THE ORDNANCE PROBLEM 35 In the nineteen months of war, American factories produced over 2,879,000,000 rounds of rifle and machine gun ammuni- tion. This was somewhat less than the production in Great Brit- ain 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 Figure 9,) 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 8 1 per cent of the number produced by France ; and 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. (Figure 9.) 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 can be fairly appreciated. 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 shrapnel. Ameri- can 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 ammu- nition 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. 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, because of the shortage of 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 36 THE ARMIES OF INDUSTRY Great Britain or France. In total production during her nine- teen 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. (Figure 10.) FIGURE 10 'Production of Artillery Ammunition: France and United States Compared with Great Britain [Types for use in A. E. F.] Monthly Rate at End of War Per cent of rate for Great Britain w^mmmmm^^^t^^i^mammm 100 Unfilled rounds: Great Britain 7,748,000 France 6,661,000 United States 7,044,000 Complete rounds: Great Britain 7,347.000 France 7,638,000 United States 2,712,000 86 ■ 91 100 ■ 104 37 Total Production, April U 1917, to November 11, 1918 Unfilled rounds: Per cent of rate for Great Britain Great Britain 138,357,000 mmimm^^a^^^^^mmm^^ 100 France 156,170,000 m^mMmmmm^^^^^^^^^^mam 113 United States 38,623,000 ^^^^ 28 Complete rounds: Great Britain 121,739,000 i^^^^^^^^m^K^^^m^mm 100 France 149,827,000 wmmmammm^mmmKt^^^^^m^^^^^ 123 United States 17,260,000 ■■■ 14 The production of completed rounds of artillery ammuni- tion 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 1 1 THE ORDNANCE PROBLEM 37 shows graphically the rate at which the artillery ammunition deliveries were expanding. FIGURE 11 Complete Rounds of Artillery Ammunition Produced for the A. E. F. Each Month during igi8 {Figures in Thousands of Rounds) 3062 130 138 Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. May Jun. Jul. Aug. Sep. Oct. Nov. Dec. In artillery proper, the war ended too soon for American industry to arrive on 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 had in large part to build her ordnance industry from the ground up — buildings, machinery, and all — and after that to recruit and train the working forces. The national experience in artillery production in the World 38 THE ARMIES OF INDUSTRY FIGURE 12 Complete Units of Mobile Artillery Produced for the Army 'Each Month during igi8 433 Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. May Jun. Jul. Aug. Sep. Oct. Nov. Dec. War most like our own was that of Great Britain, which started 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 THE ORDNANCE PROBLEM 39 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. In 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 (April 6, 1917, to November 11, 1918) the American production of gun bodies could scarcely be compared with that of either the British or the French, for the reason that it required many months to build up the forg- ing plants before production could go ahead. In completed artillery units the American rate of production at the end of the war was rapidly approaching that of the British and the French. In total production of complete units in the nineteen 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 13 represents visually America's comparative performances in the production of gun bodies and complete artillery units. (See also Figure 12.) Stress has sometimes been laid upon the fact that the Ameri- can Army was required to purchase considerable artillery and other supplies abroad, the latter including airplanes, motor trucks, food and clothing, and numerous other materials. Balanced against this fact is the consideration that every time we spent a dollar with the Allied governments for ordnance, we sold ordnance, or materials for conversion into munitions, 40 THE ARMIES OF INDUSTRY to the Allied governments to the value of five dollars. The Interallied Ordnance Agreement provided that certain muni- tions 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 artiller}^ and ammunition from the Allies we were FIGURE 13 Production of Artillery: France and United States Compared with Great Britain Average Monthly Rate at End of War Gun bodies {new): Per cent of rate for Great Britain Great Britain 802 mmmmma^^mmmm^m^m 100 France 1>138 ^^^^^^■^^^^^^■■■^■^^H 142 United States 832 ^^^^^^^^mi^^^ma^ 104 Complete units: Great Britain 486 ^^^^^^ammmm^^^^ 100 France 659 ^^^mmmmmmmmimmmm^^i^m^ 136 United States 412 mi^a^mmmimmmK^^ 85 Total Production, April 1, 1917, to November 11, 1918 Gun bodies {new): Per cent of rate for Great Britain Great Britain 11,852 m^^^m^m^m^^^mmm 100 France 19,492 ^mmmmm^ma^^mammmm^^^mm^^ 164 United States 4,275 i^h^^ 36 Complete units: Great Britain 8,065 ■■■■^■^^^^i^^^^ 100 France 11,056 mmmmmmm^^^^^K^^mmaammm 137 United States 2,008 t^^m 25 shipping to them great quantities of raw materials, half-com- pleted parts, and completely assembled units, and such war- time commodities as powder and explosives, forgings for can- non and other heavy devices, motors, and structural steel. The following table shows the ordnance balance sheet between America and the Allied governments : THE ORDNANCE PROBLEM 41 Purchases and Sales from April 6, 191 y. to November 11, igi8 Purchases : By Army Ordnance Department from Allied governments $ 450,234,256.85 Sales : By Army Ordnance Department to Al ments By United States manufacturers other Ordnance Department to Allied go Total ied govern- than Army vernments $ 2 $2 200,616,402.00 ,094,787,984.00 ,295,404,386.00 The credit for the ordnance record must go not merely to those men who wore the uniform and were part of the ordnance organization. Rather, it is due to American science, engineer- ing, and industry, all of which combined their best talents to make the ordnance development worthy of America's greatness. CHAPTER III 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, in an attack upon either an enemy or 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 has had a projectile to throw has been 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 strength- ened and lengthened by a leather sling of 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 accoutered adversary. Later, machines were developed after the fashion of a crossbow mounted upon a small wooden carriage, usually a hollowed trough open on top, 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 began much earlier than many persons suppose, there came a still greater range and weight of projectile thrown, although the first guns were composed of mere staves of wood fitted together and hooped up like a long, slender barrel, and wound with wet GUN PRODUCTION 43 rawhide in many folds, which, when dried, exerted a compres- sive 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 historic gun, the "Mons Meg," in the castle at Edinburgh, The barrel of that gun was made of square bars of iron placed lengthwise, around which similar bars of iron were wrapped hot 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 steadily progressed. Every military power was always striving, with the aid of its best engineers, designers, and manufacturers, to get a stronger gun, either with or without a heavier projectile; striving always for greater power. As a culminating develop- ment, 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 punctually every twenty 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 seventy-five 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 at a distance of about seventy miles, and 183 shell 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 gun, with its effective shooting distance of approxi- mately seventy miles, a range which, in the opinion of our experts, it is now fairly easy for an experienced designer and manufacturer to equal and excel at will. In fact, one would hesitate to place a limit upon the range attainable 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 produced in 1892 the first known and well- 44 THE ARMIES OF INDUSTRY authenticated long-range gun, which was constructed from the design of a 1 2-inch gun, but bored down to throw a 6-inch projectile. Instead of the usual eight miles expected from the flight of a 6-inch shell, this early Creusot long-range gun gave a range of approximately twenty-one miles with a 6-inch projectile, using a 1 2-inch gun's powder charge. Closely connected with the development of the modem 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 projectiles can be made of maximum use. This requires a gun carriage which contains within itself various functions, the primary one being that of establishing the gun in the position where it can be made most effective against the enemy. Then, too, the gun carriage must have stability in order to withstand and absorb 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 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, and by compressed oil, either all together or in combinations of two or three of these agen- cies; so that the whole recoil energy is absorbed and the rear- ward action of the gun brought to rest in a fraction of a second and in a few inches of travel. The strains are distributed from the recoil mechanism to the fixed portion of the carriage, 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. GUN PRODUCTION 45 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 twenty shots a minute — that is, a shot every three seconds. Seldom, however, is a gun served as rapidly as this. The more usual rate of fire is six shots a minute, or one about each ten 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 on railway mounts as well as on fixed emplace- ments 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 extremely hot, owing to the heat generated by the combustion of the powder within the gun at pressures as high as 35,000 pounds or more to the square inch, pressures 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. Rapid fire and the consequent heating of the gun lessen the effective life of the weapon, because the hot powder gases react more rapidly on hot metal than on cold; hence a gun will last many rounds longer if fired at a slow rate. It may be helpful to keep in mind throughout that, as was stated at the very beginning of this chapter, the sole purpose of a gun is to fire a projectile. 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, perhaps thousands, of workmen to constitute the force neces- 46 THE ARMIES OF INDUSTRY sary 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 ten months to produce the gun, ready for the first test. Dur- ing the ten 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, although it requires ten months to make a final delivery of one gun after the first process 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 a month of this kind can be turned out continuously, if required.) Remember- ing that it requires ten 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 for- ward 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 1 50 shots, it is obvious 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 ten months to build, is but three seconds long in terms of the actual performance of its function of throwing a shot. However, after the gun has lived 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 refitting the gun 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 re- Photo from Ordnance Depattinent CHARGING FLOOR OF AN OPEN HEARTH FURNACE BUILDING Photo from Midvale Steel Company BIG GUNS READY TO BE SHIPPED GUN PRODUCTION 47 duced powder charge required for the lower muzzle velocities employed in howitzer attack, have retained their accuracy of fire after 10,000 rounds. Because 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 its calculation and the material and its manufacture shall all be such as will foster 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 — in fine, that it will in every respect give the result required in its operation. It has been known for generations that to this end 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 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 knowl- edge of the manufacture of steel to obtain this grade and quality. Until recently this knowledge in America was con- fined 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 small. The sum total of guns purchased by the United States from the two factories mentioned did not exceed an average of fifty-five guns a year in calibers of from 3-inch to 14-inch; and the stock of guns which had been provided for us by this low rate of increase of manu- 48 THE ARMIES OF INDUSTRY facture was a pitifully small one 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 similar industries were in Germany, were not capable of volume pro- duction 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. The big-gun- making art was, then, in existence in this country and was maintained as to quality; but it was most insufficient as to the quantity of the production available. When the United States faced the war in April, 1917, arrangements were entered into to obtain in the shortest space of time an adequate supply of finished artillery of all calibers required by our troops. Many thousands of forgings for guns, and finished guns, too, had been ordered by the Allies from the few gunmakers in this country; and these makers were, when we entered the conflict, fully occupied for at least a year ahead with orders from the French and English ordnance depart- ments. All this production was immediately useful and avail- able for the combined armies of the Allies, and therefore 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 semi-finished 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 of material supplied to the Allies between April, 1917, and the signing of the armi- stice, November 11, 1918: Guns of calibers from 3-inch to 9.5-inch furnished to the Allies .......... 1,102 Additional gun forgings furnished to the Allies . tubes 14,623 Shell and shell forgings furnished to the Allies in this period ........ pieces 5,018,451 In supplying all this material from our regular sources of GUN PRODUCTION 49 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 be done. By the time the United States entered the war, all these factories were in operation and clamoring for raw material at a rate far in excess of that which could be attained by the home steel makers in Great Britain and France. Consequently their incursions into the semi-finished ordnance material sup- plies in the United States were necessary. In sending these large quantities of our 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 help to the Allies; for 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 so badly needed. The total of four gunmakers in America was meanwhile being expanded into a total of nineteen. All these nineteen factories, by the month of October, 1918, were in practically 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 three of the nineteen factories yet to have their machine-tool equipment completed, there were produced 2,059 ^^^^ ^^ S^^ forgings between the 3-inch and 240-millimeter calibers, which is production 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; but the expansion may be contrasted to the fact that our supply of finished guns prior to 1917 amounted to only fifty-five weapons a year. Our chain of gun factories — the factories which were accom- plishing this remarkable production — was forged of the fol- lowing links : One at the Watertown Arsenal, Watertown, Massachu- 50 THE ARMIES OF INDUSTRY e o ■a ^ D vO r~ vO D CO CO NO O r^ 4J vO O — 00 0\ -^ 0\ o t^ On Tl- t^OO T^ - ON vo -^ O;00 r< ■* (S '> r; CO •"i- f; ■^ (S — n W-, t^a. oT — vO «A — o U ■*~* It ^ O N+H CO s O Tj-QQ vO »^ Tj- Q O t^OO O lo lo C^ CO 1^ t^ cooo - r^ ty-, - CO NO NO ■* s 0\ — CO CO — q M -* fS q s:; 'c •"TSi (J O (N O vO 00 ■* o r^OO On t^ O O NO r^ P t! ^ <:> CO i^ o -ri- — — CO — v^ O NO — CO r^ Q n M \o (N -^ *^. u ^ ^1 a CO •* o — (S ■* — ^ On On i^ 1^ Tj- ■* vO ■* Q, o ^ (S CO Vo CO i -^ ^ y Mill Plan •v^ r< O - O — CO r- 55 NO «o M >^no — •* ON u — v^ r^ »^ «^ CO o >^ CO (S NO CO — CO •^ g <:i CO CO 00 Tt (N - - q ^ 55 § ON (s (s o — (s — M o On kn 00 NO -to 1^—00 On ■* t^NO r^ - - 00 . 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