AMMUNITION AND OTHER ORDNANCE
The armistice found in the United States an enormous industry devoted
to the production of ammunition for the artillery. Including its
powder-making plants and its plants for the production of the raw
materials of powder, its scores of shell-making factories, and its
loading establishments, this industry overshadowed, in money invested
and operatives employed, even the artillery-manufacturing project.
The demobilization of this vast enterprise, therefore, afforded the
Ordnance Department one of its major problems after the armistice.
The production of powders, both high-explosive and propellant, in which
about 70,000 persons were engaged at the time of the armistice, was
terminated in a remarkably brief time. When the armistice was six weeks
old all manufacture of high explosives on war contracts had ceased, and
two weeks after that the last of the war-time propellant (smokeless)
powder was made. This termination left on the hands of the Ordnance
Department a considerable amount of special-purpose machinery which had
little or no market value. This machinery was therefore retained and
stored at various arsenals, particularly at the Frankford and Picatinny
arsenals, the permanent army ammunition production centers.
For a while the Old Hickory Powder Plant at Nashville, Tennessee,--its
daily capacity of 900,000 pounds of smokeless powder making it the
largest powder factory in the world,--was retained as a stand-by
plant, but later it was sold. The Nitro (West Virginia) Powder Plant,
another government institution nearly as large as Old Hickory, was
sold after the armistice, with the result that a new industrial city
is developing on its site. The War Department’s enormous ammonium
nitrate plant at Perryville, Maryland (ammonium nitrate being used
in the manufacture of the widely used war explosive amatol), the
equipment of which included several hundred model dwellings, was, after
the armistice, turned over to the Public Health Service to be used
as a hospital for ex-service men. The three government picric acid
plants--at Little Rock, Arkansas, Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Savannah,
Georgia--were sold. Briggs & Turivas, Chicago steel manufacturers,
bought the plant built by the Government at Senter, Michigan, for the
production of tetryl, an explosive used as the charge in boosters in
high-explosive shell. The Ordnance Department also closed out and sold
the facilities provided at Bound Brook, New Jersey, for the production
of tetranitroaniline, another booster charge.
In general, plants and machinery used in making powder could be used
also to some extent to make the commodities of peaceful commerce, and
therefore the Ordnance Department had little difficulty in disposing of
these surplus facilities at good prices. The powder-making facilities
created during the war by the DuPont Powder Company near Wilmington,
for instance, almost at once after the armistice turned to the
manufacture of dyestuffs. Another war powder plant, with practically
the same machinery, is to-day producing artificial silk, a cellulose
commodity similar in chemical composition to smokeless powder. A third
is making celluloid and artificial ivory; a fourth, paper.
[Illustration:
_Photo by Howard E. Coffin_
AMERICAN FIELD GUNS ON THE RHINE]
[Illustration:
_Photo by Howard E. Coffin_
AMERICAN GUN ON EHRENBREITSTEIN, COBLENZ]
Since trinitrotoluol (T. N. T.) was the most widely used of all
war explosives, the Ordnance Department was forced to go into the
production of the basic toluol itself as well as into the manufacture
of its nitrated compound. One war source of toluol was coal gas, and
to secure the chemical from this source the Ordnance Department set up
stripping plants in the gas works of thirteen American cities. Nine of
the gas companies bought this equipment after the armistice. The other
four plants were sold on the market, the machinery eventually finding
its way into the new industry which is taking gasoline from natural
gas. The Government sold out completely its two T. N. T. plants, which
were located respectively at Racine, Wisconsin, and Giant, California.
[Illustration:
_Photo by Signal Corps_
DESTROYING CAPTURED GERMAN AMMUNITION]
[Illustration:
_Photo by Signal Corps_
A CAPTURED AMMUNITION DUMP]
One of the most notable enterprises in all the liquidation of war
industry was that of closing up the war project for the fixation
of atmospheric nitrogen and the placing of that undertaking upon
a permanent peace footing. In order to conduct this enterprise
intelligently the Secretary of War selected certain scientists and
men of business experience to study every phase of the subject of the
military and commercial fixation of nitrogen and to recommend to the
War Department what disposition to make of the war fixation plants.
This board was known as the Fixed Nitrogen Administration.
In 1916 the United States, almost entirely dependent upon foreign
sources for its supply of commercial nitrogen, took the first step
toward independence by appropriating $20,000,000 for the work of
developing a domestic fixation industry. With this money the Corps of
Engineers began, about the time we declared war against Germany, the
construction of a great dam to arrest the power of the Tennessee River
at Muscle Shoals, Alabama. This project, including a hydroelectric
power house, was set for completion in 1923. The head of water at
Muscle Shoals is expected to provide from 100,000 to 200,000 horsepower
continuously, and during nine months of the year high water will
produce a secondary power almost as great.
Aware that this development would in all probability not come
through in time to serve the war explosives program, soon after the
declaration of war the Government entered upon an enormous project to
fix atmospheric nitrogen with power developed from coal. Five fixation
plants of this sort were from first to last authorized. Three of these
were completely built, and the other two were partially constructed
before their projects were canceled.
In the fall of 1917 the War Department began the construction of a
nitrogen plant at Sheffield, Alabama, and in 1918 completed it, at a
cost of about $13,000,000. This plant produced usable nitrogen in
the form of ammonium nitrate, a product used with trinitrotoluol in
the production of the important shell-explosive amatol. It used the
modified German Haber process, combining hydrogen and nitrogen to
form ammonia, which is oxidized into nitric acid, which in turn is
combined with ammonia to form ammonium nitrate. This plant produced
its first ammonia in September, 1918, and its first ammonium nitrate
on the second day of the armistice. The process, however, was never
satisfactorily developed in this plant.
The second fixation-plant project was inaugurated in the autumn of
1917 about the time the Interallied Ordnance Agreement put upon the
United States the burden of producing most of the powder and explosives
used by the Allies, thus tremendously increasing our need of nitrogen.
It was no time to be experimenting with processes. The one fixation
process of proved success known in the United States was the cyanamid
process, used by the American Cyanamid Company at its plant at Niagara
Falls. The Government therefore engaged this concern to build an
enormous fixation plant at Muscle Shoals, a plant which was to use
steam power until the hydroelectric power from the river should become
available. On the day of the armistice this plant, known as the No. 2
Nitrate Plant, was nearly complete: it turned out its first ammonium
nitrate within two weeks thereafter. It cost $70,000,000 and had a
capacity of 110,000 tons of ammonium nitrate a year. The test runs
indicated that the plant could fix nitrogen at a cost commercially
practicable.
Two other plants, both to use the cyanamid process, were projected
in 1918, and the Government began the construction of both of them.
One was at Toledo, Ohio, and the other at Cincinnati. Their combined
capacity was to equal the capacity of the Muscle Shoals plant. At the
armistice the construction of these plants was well under way, but the
Government terminated both projects, at a net cost of $12,000,000.
The fifth plant was built by the Bureau of Mines for the Chemical
Warfare Service at Saltville, Virginia. It used the Bucher process,
producing fixed atmospheric nitrogen in the form of sodium cyanide,
a chemical used in the manufacture of toxic war gases. It was about
complete at the time of the armistice, having cost the Government
$2,500,000. A test run indicated that the Bucher process was too costly
to be practicable in normal times.
The Fixed Nitrogen Administration, in its report, recommended that
the Saltville plant be abandoned, but that the plant at Sheffield and
the one at Muscle Shoals be retained permanently, the modified Haber
process at the No. 1 Plant to be developed by further research. No.
2 Plant at Muscle Shoals was designated as the principal peace-time
source of nitrates within the United States, and the report advised
the United States to remain in the nitrates business as a commercial
producer of fertilizer material, the Government to operate through a
corporation similar to that which operates the Panama Railroad and its
related steamship line. This report was based upon research which sent
a commission of experts to Europe to study fixation processes there,
and which even cultivated experimental farms in the United States to
determine by practical tests upon growing crops the fertilizing value
of various forms of fixed atmospheric nitrogen.
The armistice found dozens upon dozens of American factories and
machine shops, both large and small, engaged exclusively in producing
the metallic shell used by the field artillery. This in itself was
an industry of great size. The industry had not yet attained its
production peak, but it was rapidly nearing that point; so nearly so
that, during the tapering-off process, the factories working only
eight hours of each twenty-four (as compared with the pre-armistice
three-shift, twenty-four-hour day), the output was enormous. Take, as
an example, the 75-millimeter size alone. In sixteen months before the
armistice the mills, working continuously twenty-four hours a day,
produced about 10,000,000 forgings for 75-millimeter shell. The same
mills after the armistice, working now only eight hours each day and
tapering off their work as rapidly as possible, in the two months
before the wheels stopped, produced 5,000,000 additional forgings.
The total production of the metallic elements of artillery shell, both
before and after the armistice, recorded some totals of fantastic
size. It should be remembered that for the most part our war shell
were of the European nose-fuse type and therefore unlike any shell
which the War Department had ever produced before. An apparently simple
manufacturing proposition turned out to be a most difficult one,
particularly in the production of two small but important elements
of the nose-fuse shell, the booster, which accelerates the rate of
explosion, and the adapter, which holds the booster in place. It was
months before our manufacturers could produce boosters and adapters
successfully, but then the effort came along with a rush. When
production ceased the Ordnance Department had 26,000,000 boosters and
adapters to dispose of. Other surpluses for salvage were 60,000,000
shell forgings, 60,000,000 shell machinings, 60,000,000 cannon
cartridge cases, nearly 70,000,000 metal parts for grenades, and over
6,000,000 metal parts for trench mortar shell.
The demobilization policy was to store reserves of shell sufficient to
meet the consumption of an army of 1,000,000 men during six months of
active field service. In the 75-millimeter size, for instance, such
a reserve meant 2,500,000 shell. Since we had produced 15,000,000
75-millimeter shell, it is evident that the Ordnance Department found
on its hands 12,500,000 such shell to be disposed of in some way.
Surpluses in other sizes were also large. The steel strike of the
autumn of 1919 occurred opportunely for those disposing of the excess
shell, for it enabled the surplus metal to be sold at good prices
as melting scrap. A brisk demand for shell and cartridge cases as
souvenirs also absorbed a surprisingly large quantity of the excess
materials.
As in the demobilization of the artillery industry, here in the
shell-making industry we see at work the same preparedness policy of
designating established arsenals and retained stand-by plants to be a
manufacturing reserve against some future war emergency. Frankford and
Picatinny arsenals were selected to inherit the shell-making facilities
created in private plants during the war. At Frankford Arsenal was
concentrated an equipment able to manufacture daily 6,000 shell,
ranging from 75 millimeters to 240 millimeters. The Frankford shell
plant was made a complete unit, capable of taking billet steel, forging
out the shell blanks, machining them, and turning out shell ready for
loading. At Picatinny Arsenal was created an experimental shell plant
with a daily capacity of 300 shell of all sizes.
As an addition to the two arsenals, but as a subsidiary to the
Frankford Arsenal, the Ordnance Department retained the 155-millimeter
shell factory of the Symington-Anderson Company at Chicago and equipped
it as an enormous stand-by shell factory with facilities for producing
simultaneously 155-millimeter and 240-millimeter shell. This plant has
been named the Chicago Storage Depot. Here was concentrated most of
the special-purpose shell-making machinery acquired by the Ordnance
Department during the war. It consists to-day of two departments. The
active manufacturing department exists in ordinary, all machinery
ready for immediate operation. In the storage department exists
special machinery with a capacity for producing nearly 70,000 shell
daily. This machinery is catalogued and assembled in factory layouts,
virtually complete except for the ordinary commercial machinery used
in the manufacturing processes, so that on short notice the Ordnance
Department can ship from the depot shell-making units up to whatever
capacity any future war contractor may wish to undertake. The installed
equipment of the active manufacturing department has a daily capacity
of 12,000 shell. In 1917 the shell-making capacity of the United
States was small, and it was a year before facilities could be created
and production started on a quantity basis. The reserve industrial
equipment to-day gives us a daily manufacturing capacity of nearly
90,000 shell, a sufficient supply for a field army of 1,000,000 men
until a new shell-making industry can come into existence.
Powder and shell after manufacture went to the various sorts of loading
plants, the propellant powder to be loaded into cartridge cases (for
field guns of smaller calibers) or bags (for the bigger guns) and
the high explosive to be poured or packed into the shell, boosters,
or fuses. In carrying on this enterprise the Government either built
or fostered the creation of seventeen great loading plants, eight
of them--employing 35,000 persons, most of whom were women--being
owned entirely by the Government. These had cost from $5,000,000
to $12,000,000 apiece. A few of these government institutions were
retained by the War Department after the armistice. The shell-loading
plant at Amatol, New Jersey, was added to the arsenal system under
the name of the Amatol Arsenal, but the machinery was condemned for
salvage. The Amatol Arsenal is being used principally as a depot for
the storage of reserve shell-loading machinery acquired during the war.
A fire in October, 1918, destroyed the government shell-loading plant
at Morgan, New Jersey, and a temporary storage depot was erected on the
site. The two bag-loading plants at Woodbury, New Jersey, and Seven
Pines, Virginia, were disposed of after the armistice; but the third,
at Tullytown, Pennsylvania, as the Tullytown Arsenal, was retained
as an ammunition storage depot. Four other shell-loading plants were
retained as storage depots, and at these several points exist the great
reserves of loaded ammunition and of ammunition components left by the
war.
Nearly all the loading machinery was concentrated at Amatol and
Picatinny arsenals. At Picatinny also was set up an experimental plant
for the development of processes in loading powder and explosives. This
plant also contains machinery for loaded pyrotechnics in rockets, star
shell, and signal-pistol cartridges. One piece of equipment is a dark
tunnel in which the candle power of field illuminants can be tested.
The plant includes facilities for loading grenades, fuses, and boosters.
The American Expeditionary Forces after the armistice had on their
hands some 65,000 tons of field ammunition, mostly of French
manufacture, besides several thousand tons of German ammunition taken
in the advance to the Rhine under the terms of the armistice agreement.
At first it was thought that the French ammunition, shipped to the
United States, would be a military asset for several years to come;
but as the months went on it became evident that, instead of being
an asset, this ammunition was an embarrassment and a liability, and
finally the War Department was glad enough to pay various foreign
governments to take it off its hands.
Gas shell, for instance, it was thought, could not be stored, because
the contained chemicals would soon destroy the metal, and the shell
would begin to leak their lethal contents. Later experience, however,
showed that there was no sound basis for such an apprehension. In the
advance through Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine, Luxemburg, and the German
Rhine country, the American forces collected about 7,000 tons of
German ammunition, none of which would fit our own guns and much of
which consisted of gas shell. The gas shell could not be destroyed
in dumps because of the danger to civilians in the neighborhood. The
only safe method of destruction was to transport it to sea and sink it
in deep water; but the A. E. F. had no labor to spare for this work,
and, besides, the French Government refused to allow the gas shell to
be shipped on the French railroads. Finally, for a price, the French
themselves undertook to dispose of this German gas ammunition.
In Belgium we had 6,000 tons of captured German ammunition. The
Belgians could not use it, forbade its destruction in dumps because
these dumps were in territory which had not been devastated by the
war, and would not permit it to be moved by rail to the devastated
districts, because of the supposed danger from the gas shell. The
A. E. F. therefore had 6,000 tons of ammunition which it could not use,
give away, destroy, or move. Finally, by agreeing to give the Belgians
a large quantity of German engineering and construction material found
in this area, the American authorities induced the Belgian Government
to accept responsibility for this ammunition.
The German ammunition found in Germany was sold to German contractors,
and, under the eyes of American inspectors, changed into useful
commercial products.
As to the A. E. F.’s own 65,000 tons of loaded shell, it was decided
to destroy all gas shell and all explosive shell and cartridges loaded
with explosives of doubtful stability and to return the rest to the
United States. The work of shipping the serviceable ammunition home
actually started, but it went on slowly because of the lack both of
labor and of ammunition ships. A fire destroyed one of the three
collection dumps in the Château-Thierry area. As the ships repatriated
the A. E. F. at a faster and faster rate, the various army areas were
evacuated one by one, but it was necessary to leave guards behind at
the various ammunition dumps. Then the War Department began studying
the problem with a practical eye. Nearly all this ammunition was
“war quality”: good enough for rapid consumption on the field, but
made hurriedly by inexperienced labor under conditions that made its
permanent stability questionable. It was found to be impossible to
separate the better ammunition from that of doubtful stability. It was
conceded that under ideal conditions this ammunition might be stored
safely for five years. Some of it had already been stored for eighteen
months; it would take at least a year to transport it all to the United
States; and therefore in this country it would be good for only a
brief time. Accordingly the A. E. F. authorities negotiated with the
French to assume liability for the ammunition, and it all went into
the general settlement of 1919 with the French, but as an American
liability reducing the financial liability of the French under the
agreement.
The chief permanent benefits accruing to the United States from its
extensive war industry engaged in the manufacture of instruments for
sighting and controlling the fire of field guns were (1) a reserve
of optical instruments of the most advanced types, some of which had
previously been produced only by the French, (2) a large collection of
machinery for making these and similar instruments, and (3) an optical
glass industry more than sufficient to the normal needs of the country.
Before 1914 little, if any, optical glass had been produced in the
United States. In demobilizing this industry, the Ordnance Department
took care that all these military assets were properly fitted into the
preparedness plan.
Again we see at work the policy of centering future production in
an arsenal. Frankford Arsenal was designated as the military center
for fire-control instruments, and here were brought the reserves of
materials and tools acquired by the Government in the course of the
enterprise.
The production of some of the artillery sights proved to be almost
beyond the mechanical ability of American workmen. It took three
skilled organizations to produce the panoramic sights. Warner &
Swasey, of Cleveland, built these sights, but had to turn to the
J. A. Brashear Company, of Pittsburg, for the optical-glass prisms
to go into them. That company, in turn, did not have a skilled force
large enough to correct the roof angles of all the prisms required.
The Ordnance Department found a man who understood the correction of
optical plane surfaces in the person of Dr. G. W. Ritchey of the Mt.
Wilson Observatory, Pasadena, California. He trained a number of men
in this recondite craft, and they staffed an important department of
the extensive optical shop which the Carnegie Institution built at
government expense at Pasadena.
An extensive production of military optical instruments was permitted
after the armistice and before the contracts were terminated. The
work of producing some of these instruments was long and difficult,
the instruments themselves would not deteriorate in storage, and the
evolution and improvement of such instruments is slow. Moreover, the
labor cost is by far the greatest cost in making optical instruments.
The value of the unfinished components as scrap, even from an industry
as large as that created in 1917–1918, with its eighty-three factories
at work on contracts of a value of $50,000,000, was almost negligible.
As a result of this permission to proceed, the industry reached its
peak of production late in January, 1919. The only contracts terminated
were those under which no production had begun before the armistice,
those the holders of which asked for termination, and those which had
already produced undue excesses of easily made articles.
The largest producer of army optical instruments, the Bausch & Lomb
Optical Company, of Rochester, held contracts amounting to more than
$6,000,000 in value and produced before the armistice materials worth
over $3,000,000. The War Department obtained no machinery from this
plant when the contracts were terminated, but it received and shipped
to Frankford Arsenal large quantities of finished parts of instruments.
The present optical shop at Frankford was largely equipped with
machinery originally procured by the Recording & Computing Machines
Company of Dayton. This company, which had never built optical
instruments before the war, took contracts worth $4,000,000, built
and equipped a complete optical plant, and became a producer, among
other things developing a mechanical method of milling glass for
prisms. Similar methods of demobilization were followed at all the
war factories making sights and fire-control instruments: desirable
machinery and unfinished components were collected at Frankford
Arsenal, and the excess materials were sold. This plan put thousands
of instruments into the war reserves, enough of some sorts to maintain
the military establishment for years to come. Of certain important
classes of instruments the quantities obtained from the war industry
are deficient.
Between the year 1914, when war broke out, shutting off the export
of optical glass from Germany, and 1917, when the United States went
into the war, five American organizations--the Bureau of Standards,
the Pittsburg Plate Glass Company, Keuffel & Esser, the Spencer Lens
Company, and Bausch & Lomb--developed the manufacture of optical glass
on a small scale, but in quality the glass was not up to the European
standard. In the spring of 1917, scientists of the Carnegie Institution
of Washington stepped in to help the manufacturers with their glass
problems, and complete coöperation all along the line resulted in a
successful industry before many months had gone by. The four commercial
producers eventually turned out optical glass more rapidly than both
the Army and Navy could use it. Some of this glass was the equal of
any ever made in Germany, and much of it, though of “war quality,”
was still good enough for many uses. The army ordnance contracts were
entirely with Bausch & Lomb and the Pittsburg Plate Glass Company
at its Charleroi (Pennsylvania) plant. The production of glass on
the war contracts was terminated immediately after the armistice. A
large quantity of glass not yet formed into sets of optics was stored
at Frankford. The Pittsburg Plate Glass Company did not resume any
production, but Bausch & Lomb continued to make optical glass for their
own uses.
Those who assume that, because we created an ample optical glass
industry during the war, the United States is to be forever free of
dependence upon foreign sources of this commodity, probably are too
optimistic. There are numerous reasons why an optical glass industry
is not likely to survive in the United States, at least on any
large scale. The total normal American consumption of optical glass
amounts to less than $1,000,000 a year--not enough to support many
glass-making establishments. Secondly, nearly all the Allies developed
war glass industries of their own, and the result is that the world
has a large surplus of optical glass, which, if of good quality,
does not deteriorate in storage. Thirdly, the war expansion of the
world industry has created facilities above the present normal world
requirements. In the fourth place, the industry is a precarious one,
subject to heavy losses from carelessness or ineptitude in the mill.
In the fifth, there is no tariff protection for American glass, the
law permitting the free importation of precision optics for scientific
purposes. Finally, there is a long-standing prejudice in favor of
European-made scientific instruments, a prejudice against which an
American industry would have to fight. Three American producers,
however, are said to be making optical glass for their trade.
In anticipation of a possible collapse of the industry, the Bureau of
Standards has brought to Washington the glass-making facilities which
it set up in a special war plant at Pittsburg. This plant can make two
tons of optical glass a month. It is to be operated by the Government
with the view both of improving processes and of creating within the
Government an expert knowledge of this vital war industry.
The United States carried further than any other nation in the war the
substitution of mechanical power for the power of draft animals in the
movement of field artillery. Nothing in our army equipment in France
did the French, themselves the premier artillerists of the world,
admire more than our motorization of artillery. The total contracts
for ordnance vehicles represented an expenditure of $400,000,000. The
program actually delivered 13,000 vehicles to the A. E. F., produced
before the armistice an equal number ready for shipment abroad, and
had 60,000 other vehicles under construction when the halt came. The
Maxwell-Chalmers plant at Detroit and the Reo plant at Lansing, working
in coöperation, were producing 1,100 5-ton tractors a month, and this
production represented the military power of 12,000 draft animals and
4,000 men.
The demobilization of this industry was accomplished rapidly. Orders
were cut to the bone, merely enough post-armistice production being
allowed to enable the plants to dovetail their war business into the
resumption of their commercial businesses. Since little special-purpose
machinery was required in producing war tractors, the Ordnance
Department created no manufacturing center after the armistice as a
source of future supply. The war left the Army, however, with a number
of engineers who had gained experience in adapting mechanical power to
military uses in the field, and these men are continuing a development
which, doubtless, will in time eliminate the horse from our artillery
regiments.
One of the innovations of the war was the motor-driven mobile repair
shop for repairing artillery in the field. Each shop consisted of
two sections, with fifteen trucks and fourteen trailers in each
section--nearly sixty vehicles to the entire shop. On the trailers were
installed the heavy machine tools, and one trailer of each section was
equipped with an electric generator for light and power. When the shop
was set up for business it presented the spectacle of two rings of
vehicles ranged around the two power plants and hooked up with electric
cables. The manufacturing program, both before and after the armistice,
produced sixteen such shops, consisting of 600 vehicles. Six of these
shops have been stored; ten are in use by the permanent establishments.
In addition, in terminating the contracts the Ordnance Department came
into possession of the unassembled but finished components of eight
additional shops. Thousands of jigs, fixtures, and small tools used in
this manufacturing project have been stored away and catalogued.
Tank production was drastically curtailed immediately after the
armistice. The tank contracts involved the expenditure of $175,000,000.
The total production of 6-ton Renault tanks was limited to 950, of
which sixty-four were produced before the armistice. The contracts with
the Ford Motor Company to build 15,000 3-ton tanks were terminated at
once after the armistice, production being limited to the fifteen trial
machines produced before November 11, 1918. Of the great 36-ton tanks,
Anglo-American design, the Ordnance Department built 100 at Rock Island
Arsenal after the armistice, procuring from the British for the purpose
the hulls and guns. The tank assembly plant at Châteauroux, France,
went to the French Government in the general settlement of 1919 and is
now being used as a car repair shop.
No considerations of future reserves of finished materials affected the
demobilization of the extensive war industry which was manufacturing
our rifles, machine guns, pistols, and the ammunition for them. The
production of these articles had been so successful that the moment
the war ended the supplies on hand were sufficient for the permanent
Army for years to come, with reserve supplies heavy enough to arm
a large field force. The interests of the Army, considered alone,
therefore, demanded the immediate cessation after the armistice of
all this manufacture; but economic considerations and the dictates of
good business practice made it expedient to taper off this production
gradually, even at the cost of producing more materials than the War
Department could possibly use.
Special problems arose in the liquidation of this great industry. In
the first place, the factories which made rifles and machine guns were
sharply specialized for just this work, making it difficult for them
to turn to any commercial production with the same equipment. Several
of these plants were specially created for the war work, and therefore
had no prewar occupation to which they could turn. It was necessary
for them either to close out entirely (as the Eddystone rifle plant of
the Midvale Steel & Ordnance Company near Philadelphia actually did
do) or to develop some new product. Two of the small-arms plants after
the armistice added departments for the manufacture of ball bearings,
one went into the production of automobile accessories and sporting
arms, and a fourth (which had made bayonets) took up the manufacture of
cutlery. It was necessary to give these concerns time to work out these
conversions, if an acute problem in unemployment were to be avoided.
The sharp centralization of the small-arms industry in the East was
another factor which influenced the Government to permit an unwelcome
production after the armistice. Most of the rifles, for instance, were
manufactured within a small area in the state of Connecticut. The
Winchester plant at New Haven employed 20,000 operatives, the Remington
plant at Bridgeport 12,000, and there were several others of this size.
To close them all up forthwith would have created a bad industrial
situation in this busy and prosperous section of New England.
The policy adopted, therefore, was to taper off the production of such
materials. Upon the signing of the armistice ten American plants were
engaged exclusively in the production of automatic arms. They employed
20,000 persons. They had reached a daily output of more than 1,100
machine guns and automatic rifles on contracts calling for the delivery
of 650,000 such weapons, at a projected cost of $193,000,000, of which
465,000 guns were as yet undelivered. The final cancellations stopped
the production of 382,000 guns, making the total war production 268,000
guns. In the various plants the Government had invested $11,000,000 in
machinery.
By January 15, 1919, the rate of producing machine guns had been cut
in two. By June 28, all production of machine guns had stopped. The
Springfield and Rock Island arsenals, always the Army’s development
and manufacturing centers for small arms, were selected to receive the
reserve manufacturing equipment acquired by the Ordnance Department
in the prosecution of the machine-gun project. One unit of machinery
sufficient for the daily manufacture of 100 Browning heavy machine
guns, and another unit for the daily manufacture of 200 Browning
automatic rifles were stored at Rock Island Arsenal. This reserve
machinery was worth about $4,275,000.
Similar measures were taken in the demobilization of the war rifle
industry. Production was curtailed gradually, ceasing entirely in
March, 1919. Three great private plants and two government factories
(Springfield Armory and Rock Island Arsenal) built our war rifles.
The War Department invested over $22,000,000 in machinery. With this
machinery the rifle-making departments of the Springfield Armory and
the Rock Island Arsenal were practically reëquipped to produce the
Model of 1903 (Springfield) rifle. The Springfield Armory (the chief
future manufacturing center for this arm) was equipped to make 1,000
of these rifles in an 8-hour day, and Rock Island, 600. Working at
full speed, both centers can produce 3,500 Springfield rifles every
twenty-four hours. In addition special small tools, jigs, and fixtures
sufficient for the production of 1,000 Model of 1917 (Enfield)
rifles daily were stored at the Springfield Armory, and a unit of
manufacturing equipment for producing 500 automatic pistols daily was
also stored at Springfield.
Four-fifths of the outstanding orders for 5,250,000,000 rounds of
rifle and pistol cartridges were terminated after the armistice. The
policy adopted was to permit the small-arms ammunition factories
to operate until September 1, 1919, if they so elected; but their
production in that time could not exceed a quantity equal to what they
might have produced if they had operated twenty-four hours a day from
the armistice to February 1, 1919. This policy enabled the factories
to dispense with their war labor slowly. About 1,600,000,000 rounds
of small-arms ammunition were stored as a future reserve. The War
Department had purchased machinery with a total producing capacity
of about 3,000,000 rounds of ammunition in an 8-hour day. All the
single-purpose special machinery and all special tools, jigs, and
fixtures were retained, and with them the Frankford Arsenal was built
up as a great center for the manufacture of small-arms ammunition.
Before 1917 the annual productive capacity of the arsenal was not
more than 100,000,000 rounds of rifle and pistol ammunition. The
Ordnance Department has increased this capacity to 750,000 rounds in
an 8-hour day. Immense quantities of bandoleers, cartridge clips,
cartridge cases, metal, and other ammunition components acquired in the
liquidation have been stored for future use.