ARTILLERY
There was a great deal more to the demobilization of the war ordnance
industry than the mere office operation of settling with the
contractors. It included an immense field activity of utmost practical
interest both to the War Department and to the public. The armistice
found the United States in a state of industrial preparation for war
that would have been unattainable under any other circumstances. The
world situation had forced us to turn American industry into a vast
munitions plant which, at the cessation of hostilities, was just
beginning to get into production with some of the most essential
materials of warfare. That plant had been acquired only at the cost of
heavy mortgage (in the form of government war bonds) placed upon the
future, and hence it would have been folly to close out the business
entirely with nothing to show for the whole effort but debts and the
realization that the existence of the business had had a psychological
effect in winning the war and protecting the United States. The
sensible thing to do was to save out of the dismantling of war industry
a material equipment which should afford national military insurance
for years to come; and that was what the Ordnance Department did.
In building up this equipment the Ordnance Department was confronted
with the three major questions of (1) what quantities of materials to
allow the industry to go on and produce before closing down finally,
(2) what to do with the buildings and machinery which the Government
had provided for the enterprise, and (3) what disposition to make of
surpluses of both materials and facilities beyond the Government’s
future needs.
Artillery constitutes the most important of all war supplies. Upon the
production of artillery and its ammunition the Government expended
more money than upon any other single class of materials. From a
manufacturing standpoint, a unit of artillery consists of three
principal parts--the gun tube itself, the recuperator (or recoil
mechanism), and the carriage with its attending caissons. Each of
these manufacturing phases called into existence during 1917–1918 huge
industries. On the day of the armistice nineteen mills, built new from
the ground up, were turning out gun and howitzer tubes at the rate of
nearly 800 a month, a figure that may be contrasted with the annual
American production of seventy-five guns before 1917. Five great
plants, built new at a cost of many millions, were engaged in building
recuperators of French design, and other producers were manufacturing
American- and British-type recoil mechanisms. The carriages, limbers,
and caissons, being, after all, wheeled vehicles, offered no particular
manufacturing problem, and it was therefore unnecessary to create a
new industry to produce them. Nevertheless, the carriage contracts
engaged a large section of the car- and truck-building industries
of the United States. Yet, for the reason that the vehicle builders
could come quickly into the production of artillery carriages, the
physical demobilization of this branch of the industry offered little
difficulty, the chief problems centering around the termination of
the production of gun tubes and recuperators. These problems involved
questions of reserves to be produced before the industries were
dissolved and the storage afterwards of the manufacturing facilities
to give the United States a potential producing capacity that could be
quickly utilized in the event of another war.
[Illustration:
_Photo by Howard E. Coffin_
HAVOC WROUGHT BY GERMAN GUNS AT FORT NEAR RHEIMS]
[Illustration:
_Photo by Howard E. Coffin_
“WIPERS” READY FOR TOURISTS]
Several important considerations influenced the responses to these
questions. In the first place our whole artillery manufacturing project
had been aimed at the year 1919, and in the interim the American
Expeditionary Forces purchased heavy quantities of artillery in France
and England--in all, nearly 5,500 field guns of the latest and best
designs. Including captured _matériel_, the A. E. F. sent back to
the United States after the armistice about 6,000 guns, with their full
equipment of limbers, caissons, and supply vehicles. This in itself
was a quantity sufficient to arm a large field force; and, on the face
of it, this reserve seemed to make unnecessary any post-armistice
production at all from our own ordnance plants. As a counterbalance,
however, there was the industrial situation. The gun plants were heavy
employers of labor. To close them all down forthwith might have created
a serious amount of unemployment, to the detriment of the national
prosperity. Then, too, it was good business to order the completion
of _matériel_ almost complete on the day of the armistice, and this
procedure was adopted as a general policy.
[Illustration:
_Photo by Howard E. Coffin_
FRENCH AND GERMAN AIRPLANE ENGINES AFTER COMBAT]
[Illustration:
_Photo by Howard E. Coffin_
RUINED TANKS NEAR CAMBRAI]
General rules and policies could at best serve the field men of the
Ordnance Department only as rough guides. Each of the nineteen gun
factories supplied its own special problems in demobilization. The
process of closing down the factories may be shown by the example
of what went on after the armistice at the plant of the Bullard
Engineering Works at Bridgeport, Connecticut.
This was a plant producing 155-millimeter guns--the tubes only. The
155, a French weapon, was the highest-powered fieldpiece used by the
A. E. F., the railroad guns not being considered to be field guns.
The supply of the useful 155 was never equal to the demand. The
French factories could not deliver as many as the A. E. F. needed;
and, because of the difficulty of producing the recuperator, our own
industry did not succeed in turning out a single completely assembled
unit before the armistice, although all parts had been successfully
produced ready for assembling. Here, then, was an important class of
artillery in which a shortage existed, and therefore the Ordnance
Department was liberal in allowing production after the armistice.
The Bullard Engineering Works held contracts calling for the production
of 1,400 155-millimeter gun tubes. On the first day of the armistice
it had delivered forty-five finished tubes, and 500 others were
progressing through the plant in various stages of completion. Many
of these incomplete units had passed through the difficult shrinking
process. Guns are built up in layers of steel, each one heated,
superimposed upon the adjoining one, and then shrunk on in various
cooling processes, thus putting into the steel strata a compression
that enables the gun to sustain tremendous interior pressures without
distortion. The ordnance officers looked at the status of work at the
Bullard plant and ordered the completion of the 500 units in process,
terminating the rest of the great contract.
This action was taken on the eleventh day of the armistice. The company
expected to be able to complete the remaining 500 guns in six months, a
course that would enable the manufacture to taper off and the gunmakers
to find other employment. Two months later it was found that other
industry was readily absorbing the excess labor of the gun plant, and
therefore another cut was made in the contemplated production, the
number of completions ordered being reduced to 262 in number. These
were to be finished by April 15, 1919, after which war work at the
plant was to cease entirely.
Note, now, the measures adopted in terminating the work. It is
evident that the post-armistice operation was going to deliver to
the Government 262 finished guns and 238 unfinished ones. The latter
would stand for a government expenditure of millions of dollars. As
an industrial commodity these unfinished tubes would have value only
as scrap steel, to be melted up and made into other things. Yet to
the Government they possessed a real military value. In the event
of another war occurring before the present-day types of artillery
become obsolete, the Army would need not only reserves of guns ready
for use, but also another great gunmaking industry, to produce for
an indefinitely expanding field force. Therefore proper war reserves
should consist not only of guns, but also of reserve facilities
for manufacturing guns--machinery and tools, designs, plans, and
instructions, and, especially, the rough forgings of gun elements,
so that, the moment a new gun factory was organized and equipped, it
could start working, without having to wait weeks and months until
the raw materials came up from the forging plants. The Bullard
Works were instructed to stop work on the incompleted units at such
points as would enable future gunmakers, if necessary, to resume
the work without difficulty. All incomplete units, however, were to
be carried through the shrinking process before being dropped. The
various hoops and jackets which are shrunk upon gun tubes are machined
to a precision expressed in thousandths of an inch. In heavy metal
working, such exactness is ordinarily unknown. It is evident that
only a little rusting would destroy the fit of the contact surfaces
and ruin the unassembled jackets and hoops, and therefore the company
was instructed to assemble these otherwise perishable elements before
stopping the work. After the shrinking, all uncompleted pieces were
slushed in grease, packed for protection, and stored away, to be used,
according to the plan, in the manufacture which will be necessary in
the peace-time maintenance of the artillery equipment. Some of the
incomplete Bullard tubes of the 155’s were later transferred to the
Watervliet Arsenal and finished with the machinery there. The arsenal
completed 300 guns of this size after the armistice.
This, essentially, so far as the partially finished units were
concerned, was the procedure followed by the Ordnance Department in all
nineteen emergency gun plants. Although the mills turning out rough
forgings for the gun plants were taken from this branch of war work
immediately after the armistice, the Ordnance Department reserved and
stored a supply of forgings in order to keep the future gun plants in
operation until new forging mills can come into production.
Seventeen of the emergency gun plants were closed out altogether after
the armistice. Two remain among the war assets of the United States,
held “in ordinary,” as the phrase goes, meaning that they are closed,
but ready with machinery and materials in all stages of completion to
start up in full operation as soon as the workmen can be recruited
and the fires started. These two additions to our arsenal system were
named the Rochester Gun Plant and the Erie Howitzer Plant; and at these
two plants and at the government arsenals the Ordnance Department
concentrated the great equipment of machinery, tools, plans, and
materials left on its hands after the dissolution of the gunmaking
industry created by the war, all stored so systematically that the War
Department, at any time for years to come, can, in theory, at any rate,
quickly reëstablish a gun industry on the scale known in 1918. Recently
it has been proposed to transfer the facilities at Rochester to some
other place.
The existence of this manufacturing equipment in the possession of
the Ordnance Department gives the United States a stronger military
potentiality than the nation ever possessed before. For the first time
in our history the Government itself during peace is in possession of
extensive facilities for the manufacture of light and medium-heavy
artillery. Before the war the Army procured all its field guns (and
those only in negligible quantities) principally from private makers.
Its two gunmaking arsenals, Watertown and Watervliet, turned out
principally large guns for fixed mounting at the coastal forts. Before
showing what was done at the Rochester and Erie plants, it is worth
while pausing to note the legacy received from the war industry of
1917–1918 by the two established gunmaking arsenals.
The Watertown Arsenal is to-day the War Department’s chief permanent
establishment for the production of gun forgings. Watervliet is the
great gun-finishing plant. At a cost of many millions these two
institutions were built up and expanded on a vast scale during the
war. After the armistice these two arsenals received the reserve
supply of machinery and materials used in making the heavier
field guns--principally 155-millimeter guns and 240-millimeter
howitzers--forging machinery at Watertown, finishing machinery at
Watervliet. For the manufacture of lighter guns, the machinery has been
stored principally at the new Rochester and Erie plants.
With the new equipment installed at the Watervliet Arsenal during
the war, that institution reached a productive capacity of sixty
155-millimeter guns a month and sixty 240-millimeter howitzers.
These facilities to-day are set up and ready for immediate operation.
But in addition to the arsenal’s own proper plant, the Ordnance
Department has stored at Watervliet reserve machinery sufficient to
manufacture fifty-two 155-millimeter howitzers, seventeen 4.7-inch
guns, and forty-nine 75-millimeter guns every month. This machinery,
in the event of another war, is to be shipped to emergency war plants
and set up in them. Besides this, all the war-time equipment for
producing anti-aircraft guns has been stored at Watervliet. One of
the later inventive developments of the World War was to increase
the power of the already powerful 155-millimeter gun by increasing
its caliber to 194 millimeters and adding to its length, making an
entirely new weapon, but one of the same type as the 155. None of
these guns was actually built during the war, but machinery able to
produce twenty of them every month is included within the equipment at
Watervliet, one-third of this machinery set up and needing only slight
rearrangement and modification to be ready for immediate operation.
All this equipment at Watervliet for the production of medium-weight
field guns is idle and probably will remain so as long as the great
reserve of finished artillery accumulated during the war continues to
have military value. Unless another great war comes to upset the plans,
the only production of light field artillery in this country for many
years henceforth will be that resulting from the operation of a small
experimental gun plant at Watervliet, to be maintained in operation to
the sole end that the United States may keep pace with the progress of
artillery manufacture. Whenever improvements are devised, the necessary
changes will, if Congress provides the funds and present ambitions are
realized, be made in the reserve machinery to enable it to turn out the
improved models from the start of operation.
Meanwhile Watervliet and Watertown will continue to be what they were
before 1917--the main reliance of the Army for its guns of the largest
calibers for use at the coastal forts and on railway mounts. At best,
the production of such weapons is a slow and intricate process, and
the only way to procure a supply of them is to keep producing them all
the time. Watertown makes the forgings for these guns, and Watervliet,
with its own great equipment augmented by machinery from the dismantled
war plants, can now manufacture guns up to 16 inches in caliber and
howitzers from 12 to 16 inches. At Watervliet, too, has been stored
some of the machinery from the American Ordnance Base Depot in France
for relining big guns and restoring them to use.
Now let us look at the two chief auxiliaries to the two gunmaking
arsenals, the Rochester Gun Plant and the Erie Howitzer Plant, which
are now “stand-by” factories for the production of field artillery of
the smaller sizes--75-millimeter and 4.7-inch guns and 155-millimeter
howitzers. The Rochester Gun Plant, with its own war tools and with the
equipment concentrated there during the demobilization, is now equipped
to turn out 360 75-millimeter guns every month. Its equipment includes
not only the elaborate finishing machinery, but also a shop capable of
heat-treating and rough-machining 200 sets of black forgings for the
gun every month. This plant alone can produce 75’s to keep pace with
the needs of a great army, including its battle wastage, until a new
gun industry can come into existence. All the buildings are new steel
and concrete structures. The plant was built on twelve and a half
acres of ground at Rochester during the war by the Symington-Anderson
Company for the Government. This site is now leased by the Government.
Its purchase would guarantee the continued existence of this important
military asset.
The Rochester plant is held entirely in ordinary: machinery slushed in
grease and boxed, and materials at hand in every department ready for
machining, but watchmen the only occupants of the buildings. Not the
least important part of the plant’s equipment is a book containing a
detailed mechanical description of every one of the 521 manufacturing
operations in the production of a 75-millimeter gun, and including
even a chart showing the correct organization of the working forces
at the plant. Even such complete plans, however, cannot be made to
include the small kinks and short cuts of shop practice, which must be
developed and learned by actual experience at the machines. Any future
force of plant operatives, therefore, would have to learn the obscure
secrets of manufacture before the plant could reach great efficiency.
At the Erie Howitzer Plant a similar procedure was followed. Here,
on eleven acres of what had been vacant ground in August, 1917, the
American Brake Shoe & Foundry Company six months later turned out
finished 155-millimeter howitzers and reached a productive capacity of
twelve howitzers daily before the armistice. The plant stands to-day
as a complete gun factory, although all its equipment is greased and
housed up, and its bays echo only to the steps of watchmen. While
it was selected chiefly to be the stand-by plant for the production
of 155-millimeter howitzers, at the shop has been concentrated the
machinery and tooling used by the Northwestern Ordnance Company to
produce 4.7-inch guns at its war plant at Madison, Wisconsin. This
machinery had a capacity of four such guns daily. The howitzer shop and
the gun shop occupy separate buildings. In the third building has been
installed machinery for producing shell for 155-millimeter guns.
The machinery set up at Erie is designed to allow for increases in
the powers of the two weapons to be made there. The howitzer can be
increased in length (thereby increasing its range), and the 4.7-inch
gun can be increased to 5 inches in caliber, without requiring
fundamental changes in the machinery.
The present industrial position of the United States with respect to
the manufacture of mobile field artillery may be seen in the following
tabular summing up of the preceding paragraphs:
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| _Place of _Monthly Production|
| Manufacture_ _Type of Weapon_ Capacity_ |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
|Rochester Gun Plant 75-millimeter gun 360 |
|Watervliet Arsenal 75-millimeter gun 49 |
|Erie Howitzer Plant 4.7-inch gun 100 |
|Watervliet Arsenal 4.7-inch gun 17 |
|Erie Howitzer Plant 155-millimeter howitzer 200 |
|Watervliet Arsenal 155-millimeter howitzer 52 |
|Watervliet Arsenal 155-millimeter gun 60 |
|Watervliet Arsenal 240-millimeter howitzer 60 |
| --- |
| Total monthly gunmaking capacity 898 |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
These fine weapons, all but one of which were designed by the French,
the builders of the finest field artillery known, and manufactured only
in France before the war, would be useless without recuperators, the
recoil-absorbing mechanisms which make modern quick firing possible.
Along with the guns there came to us the designs for the four French
hydropneumatic recuperators. The French hesitated in the beginning
about giving us their recuperator plans--not because they did not
desire us to have the best in artillery, but because they thought,
with much justification, that we should never be able to build them
in time to be of service in the World War, although it was possible
that after the war, by long and determined effort, we might be able to
train mechanics who could make them. Only the sudden termination of
the war, however, kept American-built French recuperators from serving
at the front, for every one was successfully produced in this country
before the armistice, including a single specimen of the perplexing
75-millimeter recuperator. Three immense, specially equipped plants and
two government arsenals produced them.
Millions of dollars were spent in preparing to build French
recuperators. The Singer Manufacturing Company built a great plant at
Elizabethport, New Jersey, to make 75-millimeter recuperators. The Rock
Island Arsenal equipped a new department to build this same mechanism.
Dodge Brothers spent $11,000,000 on an immense plant at Detroit for
the manufacture of the recuperators for 155-millimeter guns and
howitzers, separate designs, and separate manufacturing propositions.
The fourth type, the 240, was put in production at a plant equipped for
the purpose at Chicago by the Otis Elevator Company. Only one of the
mechanisms, the 155-millimeter howitzer recuperator, reached the stage
of quantity production before the armistice. For the millions spent on
the others the Government had only the experience and a quantity of
forgings and semi-finished recuperators possessing only scrap value
as they existed on the day of the armistice. Therefore the Ordnance
Department did not stop this vital production at once after the
armistice.
The Singer Company was working on orders for 2,500 75-millimeter
recuperators. Although it had not succeeded in turning out a single
acceptable recuperator by November 11, 1918, its processes had been
refined almost to the point where they could begin producing these
beautiful pieces of metallic sculpture in quantity. The Willys-Overland
Company had built about 300 carriages for the French 75 by the date of
the armistice, and it was decided to allow the Singer Company to build
recuperators for these carriages and an additional 450 as a reserve.
Considerations of economy later held the Singer Company to a total
production of 247 recuperators, resulting in a shortage as compared
with the carriages.
Meanwhile, be it remembered, the Rock Island Arsenal was working on
75-millimeter recuperators. It was decided to retain the recuperator
department as an active branch of the arsenal. The arsenal was a little
ahead of the Singer Company in the development, for it had actually
produced an acceptable recuperator before the armistice; and it had
542 others in process in the shop. The arsenal’s production proper
was therefore limited to this number, but the incomplete units from
Elizabethport were later transferred to Rock Island, and the arsenal
eventually completed 555 75-millimeter recuperators before closing down
the department. These were pronounced to be in every way the equal of
the French product.
The War Department provided no arsenal facilities for the production
of recuperators for the 155-millimeter guns and howitzers, but
centered its entire program for both mechanisms in the Dodge plant at
Detroit. After the armistice it was first decided to retain the Dodge
factory as a stand-by recuperator plant. All machinery and materials
were protected against deterioration, and the plant, under guard,
was added to the arsenal system, ranking as a subsidiary to the Rock
Island Arsenal. Later the Dodge plant was sold, and nearly half of its
machinery was moved to Rock Island.
The plan of artillery demobilization and industrial preparedness in
this direction is now evident. Watertown Arsenal is the development
center for the raw materials of artillery manufacture. Watervliet
Arsenal, with its stand-by plants at Rochester and Erie, is the
gun-producing center. Rock Island Arsenal is the center for gun
carriages and recuperators.
One exception to this scheme is to be noted. The war-time producers of
the 240-millimeter recuperators were two--the Otis Elevator Company at
Chicago and the Watertown Arsenal. The Otis plant, originally having
orders for 1,000 recuperators, was ordered to finish 250 of them
after the armistice. Thereafter some of its machinery was transferred
and stored at the Watertown Arsenal, which thus remains as the
manufacturing center for this heavy mechanism.
There was no need for the Ordnance Department during the demobilization
to exercise so much care looking to the future production of artillery
carriages, and for the reason mentioned, that the manufacture of
carriages was easier than the manufacture of guns and recuperators.
Carriages can be produced with machinery essentially the same as that
used in making motor trucks, street cars, and other heavy vehicles.
Consequently, the War Department contented itself with reserving enough
machinery to equip at Rock Island Arsenal a model carriage-building
department large enough to maintain the existing reserves of artillery
and to experiment with new designs. This plant can now manufacture
every month one hundred carriages for the lighter field artillery--for
the 75’s, the 4.7’s, and the 155’s, both howitzers and guns. In
addition, at Rock Island have been concentrated jigs, fixtures,
gauges, and special tools used by the war factories, this equipment
being boxed, catalogued, and ready for instant shipment to commercial
factories that may be called upon to build artillery carriages in a
hurry. No machine tools used in carriage building, however, have been
retained.
The same economic, military, and business reasons that influenced the
post-armistice production of guns and recuperators, controlled also
the closing down of the carriage plants. There was a considerable
production of field artillery carriages after the immediate military
need for them had passed.
The artillery war orders called for the production of about 20,000
complete units, a unit being a gun, recuperator, carriage, and
accompanying limbers and caissons. The total production attributable
to the war was 6,663 complete units, produced about half before the
armistice and half afterwards. The value of this _matériel_, together
with the semi-finished components retained, was about $300,000,000.
After the armistice the General Staff adopted the policy that in the
demobilization sufficient mobile field artillery should be retained
to equip an army of twenty divisions--800,000 men--with reserves to
take care of battle wastage over a period of six months, during which
interval a new artillery industry would be brought into existence. It
is interesting to note how completely the Ordnance Department met this
policy. Including the 6,000 field guns brought back by the American
Expeditionary Forces (this figure not including captured _matériel_),
the Army now has an equipment of about 10,000 artillery units.[7] The
staff plan indicates 2,583 as the proper number of 75-millimeter guns
to be in reserve: the Army actually possesses 6,000. The projected
army of twenty divisions needs 986 155-millimeter howitzers: the
War Department owns 2,171. The projected force should have 976
155-millimeter guns: the Army to-day owns 993. These liberal margins
obtain throughout the range of mobile field guns.
On the theory (and it is a correct theory) that all the money put into
artillery before the armistice should be charged off as part of the
cost of victory, the post-armistice production of field artillery was
a prudent transaction for the War Department. By spending $6,000,000
on the completion of 75-millimeter _matériel_ after the armistice,
the Government obtained property worth over $14,500,000. By spending
$11,000,000 in the 155-millimeter gun project after the armistice, the
Government secured artillery worth $18,000,000. By spending $9,000,000
for 155-millimeter howitzers after the armistice, the Government
obtained _matériel_ valued at $15,000,000.
The storage of the vast reserves of field artillery presented a special
problem to the Ordnance Department after the armistice. Not only the
guns themselves, but also the accessory vehicles, had to be stored,
and the latter outnumbered the guns several times. For example, the
American factories built 18,000 caissons and 20,000 caisson limbers for
75-millimeter guns alone, and accessory vehicles in like proportions
were brought back from France by the A. E. F. It required about
5,000,000 square feet of storage space to house all the _matériel_.
The Rock Island Arsenal was selected as the storage center for field
artillery, augmented by storage facilities created at the Savanna
Proving Ground in Illinois, the Erie Proving Ground in Ohio, and the
Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. Some of the artillery was stored
at Raritan Arsenal in New Jersey and at Fort D. A. Russell in Wyoming.
For storing the artillery the Ordnance Department used brick warehouses
and also portable steel storehouses built originally to protect the
reserve American artillery in France. The Ordnance Department retained
a complete engineering collection of the captured enemy artillery,
one example of every type, and this has been set up as an exhibit at
Aberdeen. The collection includes a complete unit of the famous German
42-centimeter howitzer used against the fortifications of Liège and
Verdun.
In demobilizing the industry which was producing our railway
artillery, the Ordnance Department again availed itself of the
opportunity to provide for the future defense of the United States;
and in this branch of war industry, too, we find the same tapering-off
process after the armistice, the completion of some materials which
were nearing completion at the time of the armistice, and the retention
of machinery to provide for a possible future industry. As a result
of these measures, the Atlantic seaboard is now defended by a system
of powerful guns mounted on railway cars and capable of being moved
on the regular railroad tracks, supplemented by new tracks laid both
during and since the war by the Coast Artillery Corps, to any point
which may be in need of defense. Before 1917 all our coast-defense
guns were mounted on fixed emplacements at the forts. Camp Abraham
Eustis, which sprang into existence during the war as the embarkation
camp for artillery at Newport News, has been turned over permanently
to the Coast Artillery Corps and is now the headquarters for the Coast
Artillery Railway Brigade. Fortunately the railway units nearest
completion on the day of the armistice were those best suited for use
along the seacoast.
The project to build railway artillery, it should be understood,
was one of producing mounts for guns most of which were already in
existence. These guns came principally from the fixed mounts in the
coastal defenses, but some of them from the Navy and other sources.
The guns ranged in size from the 7-inch rifles, procured from the
Navy, to 16-inch howitzers, one of which had been built experimentally
by the Ordnance Department before 1917. Two or three of the railway
projects--such as that of the 7-inch navy guns and that of the three
12-inch guns originally manufactured for Chile, but commandeered
at the gun plant by the United States--were complete on the day
of the armistice. When the Ordnance Department faced the task of
terminating the industry, there were eight incomplete projects in
railway artillery. Two were canceled outright; in three others partial
production after the armistice was permitted; and the final three were
carried through completely.
One of the projects completed after the armistice was that providing
for railway mounts for forty-seven 8-inch, 35 calibers, seacoast
rifles. The two contractors--the Morgan Engineering Company of
Alliance, Ohio, and the Harrisburg Manufacturing & Boiler Company
of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania--had built eighteen complete units,
each consisting of a gun car and numerous accessory ammunition and
repair cars, a whole train in itself, and had manufactured all the
parts for the rest. These parts were ordered assembled. This purely
American mount possesses the advantage of permitting the gun to fire
at any angle, the mount revolving upon a barbette carriage, and the
disadvantage that in traveling on narrow-gauge track (such as is being
laid at isolated places along the coast) its gun must be transferred
to a special gun car--a transfer, however, quickly effected by the
machinery which the gun train itself carries. Seventy-seven ammunition
cars for these guns, built as they were for operation in French railway
trains and therefore useless in this country, were sold to the French
Government for about $250,000, a price which covered every cent spent
in their production.
A second project completed after the armistice placed twelve 12-inch
guns on French Batignolle railway mounts. This mount absorbs the gun
recoil in an enormous hydropneumatic recuperator, permitting rapid fire
and the fastening of the gun car to the track to avoid any retrograde
movement. (Several of the railway mounts slid backward and had to be
restored to aim after each shot.) The 12-inch mount, however, permits
only a small traverse swing to the gun, which, for correct aiming, has,
therefore, to run upon curved tracks, or epis, as they are called.
These mounts were built by the Marion Steam Shovel Company with
machinery partly the property of the Government. At the completion of
the work this machinery was shipped to the Watertown Arsenal.
The final completed project was the mounting of ninety 12-inch mortars
(seacoast weapons) upon railway cars. The Morgan Engineering Company
built a special plant costing $3,500,000 for this one job, providing
mount-building capacity twelve times that of the Watertown Arsenal
before 1917--and that arsenal had been the Army’s sole source of
big-gun mounts. On November 11, 1918, this plant had manufactured all
the parts for all ninety mounts, and the assembling of these mounts
was therefore ordered. About 100 ammunition cars of French design were
sold to the French Government for about $350,000, thus returning most
of the money put into them. The Alliance plant itself was too large and
expensive to maintain as a stand-by plant; and, after shipping most of
the special-purpose machinery to the Watertown Arsenal, the Ordnance
Department disposed of the building to a private buyer.[8]
The armistice cut short the joint Franco-American project to mount
thirty-six American seacoast 10-inch guns upon the Schneider railway
mount, a French design, America to produce the parts for the mounts and
France to assemble them. Four complete sets of parts had been sent to
France before the armistice. The contractors were three: the Harrisburg
Manufacturing & Boiler Company (mounts), the Pullman Car Company
(trucks for the gun cars), and the American Car & Foundry Company
(ammunition cars). The weapon is not ideal for coastal defense, because
the mount allows no traverse aiming, and the car therefore must be used
on curved track. The contractors were permitted to finish eighteen of
these mounts in all.
A gigantic piece of ordnance was the 16-inch howitzer mounted on a
railway truck during the war. In a project to build sixty-one such
weapons by the year 1920 the Government spent $6,000,000 on a special
plant at the mill of the Midvale Steel Company near Philadelphia. The
whole project was abandoned after the armistice, but one building had
been erected and the structural steel for the rest of the plant was on
the ground. Meanwhile the toolmakers of the country were working on the
vast projected manufacturing equipment for this plant; and a small
amount of this machinery was completed after the armistice and sent to
Watervliet and Watertown arsenals.
The Neville Island Gun Plant was projected in 1918 as a source of
supply for guns of the largest size for mounting upon railway cars. The
plant, which was to cost $150,000,000, a sum which would have made it
by far the largest gun plant in the world, was expected to manufacture
over 450 guns of the biggest sizes during 1919 and 1920--more railway
guns than the Germans owned altogether. The enterprise, which was
entirely abandoned after the armistice, cost the Government about
$9,000,000. Every ordnance officer, however, believes that the mere
project, actively started, had its effect in ending the war by
depressing the enemy morale. The war cost us about $50,000,000 a day.
If, therefore, the Neville project shortened the war by as much as
three days, it wrote off its entire estimated cost.
The project, immature though it was when terminated, placed in the war
reserves certain steel-working machinery of the heaviest sort. One
6,500-ton forging press, costing $500,000, was completed and turned
over to the Navy Department for installation in the navy gun-forging
plant at Charleston, West Virginia. Certain costly shell-making
machinery was completed after the armistice and either sold to private
buyers (at favorable prices, as compared with what the Ordnance
Department could have obtained for the unfinished machines) or else
stored at the Watertown Arsenal.
Watertown has thus become the producing center for railway artillery of
the future. The liquidation of war industry enormously expanded that
institution. Before 1917 the government investment in the Watertown
Arsenal was less than $4,000,000. After the concentration there of
the special-purpose gunmaking machinery acquired by the Government
during the war, the arsenal was worth, at a conservative valuation,
$20,000,000.