which, barring a few European heavy cavalry regiments, had not been used
by any civilized army since Cromwell’s time. The British helmet was
originally adopted by our forces as a temporary expedient, in order to
gain time until experiments would show whether it was possible to produce
a better one. After a lengthy series of tests, however, it was decided
to retain the British model, manufactured from steel with a considerable
manganese alloy, rolled by an American process. Any possibility of the
position of our troops being betrayed by the reflection of light from
the surfaces of their “tin hats,” as was occasionally the case with
the Germans’ steel head-gear, was eliminated by dipping the helmet in
olive-drab paint, scattering sawdust over the surface with a blast
of air, and then repainting after the first coat had hardened, thus
producing an extremely coarse sanded appearance. The netting used in the
lining of the American helmet was, however, a distinct improvement on
the British design, as it lessened the inconvenience caused by the very
considerable weight—slightly over two pounds—and the small pieces of
rubber around the edge of the lining served to keep the metal away from
the head, so that even relatively large dents caused by bullets or shell
splinters did not reach the wearer’s skull. The task of designing our
helmets and body armor was intrusted, fittingly enough, to Major Bashford
Dean, who was admirably fitted for the duty by reason of the fact that
he has been for many years curator of the armor collection in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is a curious fact, and indicative of the
extent to which Army Ordnance converted to war purposes countless peace
industries, that the steel for our helmets was furnished by the American
Tin Plate Company—no wonder that the soldiers called them “tin hats”!—the
linings were produced by various shoe manufacturers, and the helmets were
assembled and painted by the Ford Motor Car Company!
I tried to make it clear at the very outset of this chapter that the
story of Ordnance is so stupendous that the best I could hope to do in
such a narrative as this would be to dwell briefly on its most salient
points. This necessitates my passing by with a few words discoveries and
developments of the greatest interest and importance, and of dismissing
amazing achievements with a paragraph. Take the Nitrate Division of the
Ordnance Department, for example. Were it to receive its due, an entire
chapter should be devoted merely to outlining its problems, while a whole
book could be written on how it solved them.
Nitric acid is the basis of all modern explosives. A country possessing
no nitric acid would be virtually unable to fire a single shot. Before
our entry into the war we depended for our supply of this essential
ingredient upon the sodium-nitrate beds of Chile—the only country in the
world where nitrates have been found. Germany had done the same, having
had the foresight, moreover, to accumulate a reserve supply estimated
at 375,000 tons. Had she not taken steps, however, to replenish this
enormous stock by producing nitrates from the air by the so-called
“fixation method,” she would inevitably have been compelled to capitulate
when her supply became exhausted. It quickly became apparent that if
we continued to rely upon Chile for our supply of nitrates we would
be courting disaster, for Chile, though neutral, had decided German
leanings, and there was always the danger, therefore, that German
diplomacy or threats might cause her to place an embargo on nitrate
exports. Even had this danger not existed, our available tonnage was
extremely limited and a few torpedoings of nitrate ships would have
stopped our supply, thereby automatically paralyzing our manufacture
of explosives. It was determined, therefore, to make the United States
wholly independent of any outside source by the erection of four enormous
plants for the manufacture of nitrates by the synthetic ammonia and
cyanamide processes.
Two of these projects—U. S. Nitrate Plant No. 1, at Sheffield, Alabama,
and U. S. Nitrate Plant No. 2, on the Tennessee River at Muscle Shoals,
Alabama—were both completed before the signing of the Armistice. Plant
No. 1, which has a capacity of about 22,000 tons of ammonium nitrate a
year, cost approximately $13,000,000. Plant No. 2 makes five times that
amount of ammonium nitrate and cost five times that sum. Plant No. 3, at
East Toledo, Ohio, and Plant No. 4, at Ancor, near Cincinnati, were about
one-quarter completed when the Armistice was signed, but, because of the
changed conditions governing the supply of Chilean nitrates as well as
the facilities which we now possess in Alabama for manufacturing them
ourselves, they have been discontinued. In addition to these enormous
projects, a chemical plant was erected at Saltville, Virginia, at a cost
of $2,750,000, for the manufacture of sodium cyanide to be used in the
production of poison-gas. Though no operations are now (May, 1919) being
carried on at any of these plants, it is believed that their products
will be in wide demand for farm fertilizers, a project being under
consideration whereby nitrates can be produced at these plants and sold
to farmers at about three-quarters of the price paid for the Chilean
product.
This chapter already so bristles with statistics that a few more can
do no harm. They may open your eyes, moreover, to the magnitude of our
preparations for producing nitrates—a project which has cost the American
people more than $120,000,000, but of which not 1 in 10,000 of them
has so much as heard. Take Plant No. 2, at Muscle Shoals, for example.
I would be willing to wager almost anything you please that you have
never heard of Muscle Shoals before. For your information it is on the
Tennessee River, in northern Alabama, about midway between Nashville and
Chattanooga. The power-house of this plant, with its capacity of 135,000
horse-power, has the largest annual output of any steam-power plant in
the world, developing two-thirds as much power as all the hydroelectric
plants at Niagara Falls put together. It contains a 90,000 horse-power
steam-turbine—the largest ever built. The ammonia-gas plant is the
largest in the world. The liquid-air plant is five times larger than
any other installation of its kind in existence. At its peak the camp
at Muscle Shoals had a total population of 21,000. One of its score or
more of mess-halls seats 4,000 persons at one time; in it 750 gallons
of soup have been prepared and 2 tons of meat have been roasted for a
single meal. More than a thousand hogs were raised on the waste from this
mess-hall alone. (Attention of Mr. Hoover!) The camp laundry washed 6,000
blankets in a single day. That may give you some idea of the labor and
money involved in preparing to make our own nitrates.
* * * * *
When it is considered that the personnel of the Ordnance Department,
at home and overseas, consisted of 6,000 officers and nearly 100,000
enlisted men—almost as many as we had in the entire Regular Army before
the war—and that these officers and men were called upon to perform
work of a highly technical and specialized nature, it will be seen how
important was the work of the Training Division. Among the innumerable
activities of this division was the Ordnance Engineering School, where
in three months a technically trained engineer was given an insight into
the design and manufacture of ordnance materials; the Powder School at
Carney’s Point; the Ordnance Supply School at Fort Hancock, and the
Machine-Gun School at Springfield. In addition to these there was a
school for tractor operators, a school for instruction in the repair and
maintenance of ordnance trucks, another for the repair and maintenance of
railway-artillery, and still another for training men in the repair of
optical and precision instruments. It is sufficient for an infantryman
to know how to use a pistol, a rifle, and a machine-gun, but the men who
wear on their collars the insignia of the Ordnance Department have to
know not only how to operate those weapons, and how to give instruction
in their operation to others, but they have to be familiar with every
detail of their manufacture and repair.
By far the most fascinating feature of Ordnance activities in America
is the great proving-ground at Aberdeen, Maryland, thirty miles from
Baltimore, on the shores of Chesapeake Bay. On this remote and jealously
guarded reservation is tested every weapon and device, with the exception
of small arms, produced by the Ordnance Department. During the height of
our war preparations, more shots were fired here in a single day than
were fired at the old proving-grounds at Sandy Hook in a year. A far
greater quantity of explosive was expended daily than was used in many of
the important battles of the Civil War. Here can be seen in action every
type of American artillery from the vicious, hard-hitting little 37-mm.
infantry cannon to the camouflaged monsters on railway-mounts, streaked
like zebras and spotted like giraffes, which can drop a ton of explosive
on a given target thirty miles away. Giant tanks, looking for all the
world like some strange species of prehistoric monster, smash their way
through patches of woodland or take twelve-foot trenches in their stride;
field-guns of all calibres, camouflaged and tractor-mounted, go rocking
and reeling across the broken fields; airplanes, circling in the blue,
drop their half-ton bombs upon the targets marked out on the fields
below; showers of shrapnel from the antiaircraft guns burst about the
target parachutes in suddenly unfolding blossoms of white and scarlet.
In the recovery-fields hundreds of men are at work with pick and shovel
retrieving the fragments from the shell-bursts in order that they may
be studied by the experts in the laboratories. (In order to facilitate
this extremely important work, there has recently been built a huge
concrete reservoir, known as a “recovery-tank,” into which the shell
are fired, the fragments being recovered by means of giant magnets.) In
the powder-bag department one can see storerooms filled to the ceiling
with rolls of the heavy silk used for making the bags in which the
propelling charges are contained; in adjoining rooms—“sweat-shops” they
are jokingly called—scores of enlisted men, trained in the clothing-shops
of New York’s East Side, cut and stitch the silk into cylindrical sacks
in sizes to fit the various calibres of guns, and some distance away, in
small, isolated buildings, other men fill the sacks with greenish-yellow
granules which look like mildewed macaroni, but which is really smokeless
powder. Over _ten thousand miles_ of this silk was required for our war
programme. And it had to be the finest quality of silk, for no other
material could be depended upon not to leave smouldering fragments in the
barrel after its discharge, which would mean a burst gun and death to the
crew when the next charge was inserted. Everything considered, one can
get more thrills and see more things of interest at Aberdeen than at any
place I know.
When time has given it the justice of perspective, the war-effort of
Army Ordnance will be recognized as the greatest industrial achievement
in the history of mankind. The more one learns of it the more it staggers
the imagination. In nineteen months the Ordnance Department effected
the most complete mobilization of science and industry the world has
ever seen; it produced munitions of certain classes in unprecedented
quantities; it developed and supplied material of such superior design
and workmanship as to win the praise of our allies and the grudging
admiration of our enemies; it designed, manufactured, and sent overseas
the best service rifle, the best automatic rifle, the best pistol, the
best machine-gun, the best field-gun, the best railway-artillery, the
best tractor, and the best motor-truck possessed by any army in the
world, and it stood ready, when the Armistice was signed, to turn loose
on Europe such an avalanche of munitions as the world had never dreamed
of. The American people seem to have completely overlooked the fact
that we had in full swing, after we had been at war less than forty
weeks, a mightier munitions programme than Germany could attempt after
preparations which took forty years. But, though the American people did
not realize the stupendous magnitude of their own effort, the Germans
did. It was the news of the programme adopted by Army Ordnance, and the
realization _that it was going through_, which, more than any single
factor, perhaps, convinced Germany of the utter futility of further
resistance. The Ordnance Department, like the biblical prophet, was not
without honor save in its own country.
VI
FIGHTERS OF THE SKY
At about the time that the German War Lord, resplendent in the
eagle-crowned helmet and silver cuirass of the Guard Cuirassiers, was
haranguing in sonorous phrases the punitive expedition which was about
to depart for China, two young mechanics in greasy overalls were at work
in an obscure machine-shop in an Ohio city on a strange invention which
was destined to prove a far more potent weapon than the Kaiser’s boasted
“shining sword.” Now it is certain that at this period the All Highest
had never heard of these young mechanics, and though they, of course,
had heard of him, I imagine that to the accounts of his spectacular
doings which appeared almost daily in the newspapers they paid about
as much attention as they did to the gaudy lithographs on the local
bill-boards which heralded the annual visit of the circus. Yet, could
William of Hohenzollern have looked a dozen years into the future, he
would have seen that these two silent, earnest, unassuming brothers from
the Middle Western town were destined to have a profounder effect on the
future of the great empire which he ruled, and, indeed, on the history
of the world, than he and all the princes, soldiers, and statesmen who
surrounded him.
Notwithstanding the jibes and forebodings of the professional critics,
the ponderous sarcasms of senators and congressmen, and the sensational
stories of failure which have appeared in the press, there are few
more brilliant chapters in our national history than the story of the
airplane. Do you realize, I wonder, that the airplane is the development
of barely a decade? Had a life-insurance company, ten years ago,
learned that one of its policy-holders was planning to take a ride in a
“flying-machine,” it would promptly have cancelled his policy. Yet to-day
planes carrying the air-post between the cities of the Eastern seaboard
go booming down the air-lanes as regularly as express-trains and without
attracting much more attention.
The story of the airplane, so far as its relation to the American Army
is concerned, begins on the little flying-field of Fort Myer, on the
Virginia side of the Potomac, opposite Washington. In the late winter
of 1907 the Signal Corps had issued an advertisement and specifications
for a heavier-than-air flying-machine, the chief requirement being that
it must remain in the air for an hour without landing. Most of us will
remember the world-wide interest which was aroused by this promised
realization of the dream of the ages. During the trials the eyes of the
world were centred on the parade-ground at Fort Myer. The President
and the members of his cabinet were in frequent attendance and even
Congress adjourned when it was announced that a flight would take place.
The story of how the strange contrivance, looking like a combination
of a box-kite, a baby-carriage, and a windmill, which had been brought
on from Dayton by the two sober-faced brothers, was trundled out onto
the field; how, after skimming along the ground, it rose into the air
as gracefully as a swallow, and how, after fulfilling every condition
imposed by the War Department, the first machine was purchased by the
government, needs no elaboration here. The most amazing feature of the
affair, barring only the performance of the airplane itself, was the fact
that during the eight years following the demonstration at Fort Myer
_the entire appropriations by the government for military aeronautics
amounted to less than a million dollars_. Think of it, my friends!
With the secret of aerial navigation in our hands—a secret which had
been sought for by scientists all down the ages—Congress devoted less
money to its development during the first eight years than it spent on
many a post-office or government building. But the astounding apathy
which characterized our attitude toward this epoch-making invention
did not extend to the great European nations. They, always seeking to
obtain military superiority, instantly recognized the significance and
the potentialities of those early flights at Fort Myer. France, in
particular, during the next few years making marked advances in aircraft
design and construction. Thus it came about that when the war-cloud burst
over Europe in the summer of 1914 the United States, where the airplane
had its birth and where it had first demonstrated its practicability,
possessed only a few decrepit and almost obsolete training-machines,
while our fliers could almost have been numbered on the fingers of one’s
two hands. Whose was the fault for this deplorable and inexcusable
condition? A certain amount of blame undeniably attaches to the army,
for in those days many of our higher officers were graduates of the
old Indian-fighting school, who regarded with doubt and scepticism the
claim that these new-fangled flying-machines could have any real military
value. I think, however, that the real cause of the neglect in developing
the airplane could have been found in the building with the great white
dome which stands at the far end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
As a direct consequence of our systematic discouragement of airplane
development, when we entered the war there was no such thing as an
aviation industry in the United States and the number of aeronautical
engineers and designers was so small as to be practically negligible.
In this respect the problem of developing an air-fleet was unique. The
United States had built ships before, it had manufactured cannon, rifles,
ammunition, it had fed and clothed and housed armies, and it had at its
command thousands of men qualified to do these things and do them well,
but, barring a handful of experts in Dayton and Buffalo, there was no one
in this country with experience in the designing or building of either
training or fighting planes. In short, the government was faced with the
problem not merely of developing a new industry, but of _creating_ it.
* * * * *
In April, 1917, there were being built in the United States only four
makes of aircraft engines that were sufficiently developed to be of any
military value, and even these were useful only for primary training.
We had no engines suited for service on the battle-front, or, indeed,
even for the advanced training of pilots. Though the largest engine
manufactured in the United States at this time developed about 220
horse-power, it had not measured up to the exacting requirements
of combat. The other American-built engines ranged from 90 to 135
horse-power. It being evident, therefore, that the existing American
engines could be used only for purposes of preliminary instruction,
it was accordingly decided that their further manufacture should be
limited to the training requirements. As a result of this decision,
by far the greater part of the primary training of pilots has been
conducted with the Curtis 90 horse-power engine, a quantity production
of which was obtained early in the war, this engine being particularly
valuable owing to the very satisfactory training-plane which had been
designed around it. Considerable use was also made of the Hall-Scott
100 horse-power engine until the Curtiss motor could be manufactured
in sufficient numbers to meet all demands for primary training. Two
European engines, the Gnome 100 horse-power and the Hispano-Suiza 150
horse-power, were also being put into production in the United States
at this time. These engines represented the highest product of European
design and engineering skill, and were in a perfected and standardized
state, at least according to European ideas, when their manufacture was
undertaken in this country. But the changes involved in adapting them to
manufacture by American methods required so much time, and the advances
made in aeronautical engineering were so rapid, that before they could
be produced in sufficient numbers they were almost obsolete for service
on the front. These two engines were, however, of unquestioned value
for advanced training purposes, the Hispano-Suiza in particular playing
an important part in this work. Later another European engine, the 80
horse-power Rhone, was also put into production.
* * * * *
One of the serious mistakes into which the Allies had fallen at the
time the United States entered the war was the development of such a
multiplicity of types of engines and planes that it was impossible to
have a large number of any one of them. Indeed, by the spring of 1917,
there were almost as many types of planes skimming over the Western Front
as there were types of motor-cars skimming over American roads. As a
direct consequence of this condition, the trained personnel had grown to
such proportions that it was estimated that from thirty to fifty men were
required on the ground to keep each plane in the air. It was obvious,
therefore, that unless this large number of trained attendants could
be materially reduced, it would be hopeless to expect to put thousands
of fighting planes into the air within a reasonable time, for, on this
basis, 1,000 planes would require from 30,000 to 50,000 men to take care
of them. It was realized, moreover, that copies of foreign designs could
not be made available in time to answer the insistent demand that America
should put on the front an air force of overwhelming proportions.
Although, immediately upon the declaration of war, an aircraft commission
had been sent to Europe for the purpose of gathering first-hand
information, public sentiment would not have permitted the government
to sit idly by and wait with folded hands for this commission to make
its report. What the country demanded was action with a capital A. Now
it is not generally known, perhaps, that, instead of engines being
designed for certain types of aircraft, the most successful airplanes are
designed around specific engines. And, as the development of the engine
requires the greatest expenditure of effort and time, some one suggested
that, instead of waiting for the members of the commission to come home
and tell about the European engines they had seen, to manufacture which
under American conditions might well prove impracticable, an all-American
engine, combining the best features of the various European types but
particularly adapted for manufacture under domestic conditions, be
designed by the best engineering talent in the country and immediately
placed in production. At a meeting of representatives of the Signal
Corps—which then had charge of military aeronautics—and the Aircraft
Production Board it was decided to put this suggestion into immediate
execution, at the same time purchasing in Europe whatever equipment might
be available in order to tide over the period while the all-American
engine was being put into production.