SERVICE RIFLES.
Although in the 19 months of American belligerency in the great war
we had sent to France upward of two million soldiers, each rifleman
among them as he stepped aboard his transport carried his own gun. This
weapon, which was to be his comrade and best friend in the perilous
months to come, was an American rifle, a rifle at least the equal of
any in use by soldiers of other nations, a rifle manufactured in an
American plant. It may have been one of the dependable Springfield
rifles. More likely, it was a modified 1917 Enfield, built from a
design British in fundamental character, but modified for greater
efficiency by American ordnance officers after the actual entry of the
United States in the great struggle. When it is considered that even
a nation of such military genius as France, especially skilled as she
was in the construction of military weapons, was three years developing
her full ordnance program, even though working at top speed, the rifle
production of the United States stands out as one of the feats of the
war.
The story of the modified 1917 Enfield, which was the rifle on which
the American Expeditionary Forces based their chief dependence, is
an inspiring chapter in our munitions history. To get this weapon we
temporarily forsook the most accurate Army rifle the world had ever
seen and straightway produced in great quantities another one, a new
model, that proved itself to be almost, if not quite, as serviceable
for the kind of warfare in which we were to engage. It is the story of
triumph over difficulties, of American productive genius at its best.
America, since the days of Daniel Boone a nation of crack shots, was
naturally the home of good rifles. Hence, perhaps, it is not surprising
that the United States should be the nation to produce the closest
shooting military rifle known in its day. This was the United States
rifle, model of 1903, popularly called the "Springfield."
The Springfield rifle had superseded in our Army the Krag, which we
had used in the Spanish-American War. In that conflict the Spanish
Army used a rifle of German design, the Mauser. Our ordnance officers
at that time considered the Krag to be a more accurate weapon than the
Mauser. Still we were not satisfied with the Krag, and, after several
years of development, in 1903 we brought out the Springfield, the most
accurate and quickest firing rifle that had ever come from an arsenal.
There was no questioning the superiority of the Springfield in point
of accuracy. Time after time we pitted our Army shooting teams against
those of the other nations of the earth and won the international
competitions with the Springfield. We won the Olympic shoot of 1908
over England, Canada, France, Sweden, Norway, Greece, and Denmark.
Again, in 1912, we won the Olympic shoot against England, Sweden, South
Africa, France, Norway, Greece, Denmark, Russia, and Austria-Hungary.
In 1912 the Springfield rifle, in the hands of Yankee marksmen, won the
Pan American match at Buenos Aires, and in 1913 it defeated Argentina,
Canada, Sweden, and Peru. In all of these matches the Mauser rifle was
fired by various teams; but the Springfield never failed to defeat this
German weapon, which it was to meet later in the fighting of the great
war.
Altogether the Springfield rifle defeated the military rifles of 15
nations in shooting competitions prior to the war, and in 1912, at
Ottawa, an American team firing Springfields set marksmanship records
for 800 yards, 900 yards, and 1,000 yards that have never been broken.
Much is to be said for the men behind these guns, but due credit must
be given to the rifles that put the bullets where the marksmen aimed.
Such was the history of this splendid arm when the United States neared
the brink of the great conflict. But as war became inevitable for
us and we began to have a realization of the scale on which we must
prosecute it, our ordnance officers studying the rifle problem became
persuaded that our Army could not hope to carry this magnificent weapon
to Europe as its chief small-arms reliance. A brief examination of the
industrial problem presented by the rifle situation in 1917 should make
it clear even to a man unacquainted with machinery and manufacturing
why it would be humanly impossible to equip our troops with the rifle
in developing which our ordnance experts had spent so many years.
The Model 1903 rifle had been built in two factories and only two--the
Springfield Armory, Springfield, Mass., and the Rock Island Arsenal
at Rock Island, Ill. Our Government for several years prior to 1917
had cut down its expenditures for the manufacture of small arms and
ammunition. The result was that the Rock Island Arsenal had ceased its
production of Springfields altogether, while the output of rifles from
the Springfield Armory had been greatly reduced.
This meant that the skilled artisans once employed in the manufacture
of Springfield rifles had been scattered to the four winds. When in
early 1917 it became necessary to speed up the production of rifles
to the limit in these two establishments those in charge of the
undertaking found that they could recover only a few of the old,
trained employees. Yet even when we had restaffed these two factories
with skilled men their combined production at top speed could not begin
to supply the quantity of rifles which our impending Army would need.
Therefore, it was obviously necessary that we procure rifles from
private factories.
Why, then, was not the manufacture of Springfields extended to the
private plants? Some ante bellum effort, indeed, had been made looking
to the production of Springfields in commercial plants, but lack of
funds had prevented more than the outlining of the scheme.
Any high-powered rifle is an intricate production. The 1917 Enfield
is relatively simple in construction, yet the soldier can dismount
his Enfield into 86 parts, and some of these parts are made up of
several component pieces. Many of these parts must be made with great
precision, gauged with microscopic nicety, and finished with unusual
accuracy. To produce Springfields on a grand scale in private plants
would imply the use of thousands of gauges, jigs, dies, and other
small tools necessary for such a manufacture, as well as that of great
quantities of special machines. None of this equipment for Springfield
rifle manufacture had been provided, yet all of it must be supplied to
the commercial plants before they could turn out rifles.
We should have had to spend preliminary months or even years in
building up an adequate manufacturing equipment for Springfields,
the while our boys in France were using what odds and ends of rifle
equipment the Government might be able to purchase for them, except for
a condition in our small-arms industry in early 1917 that now seems to
have been well-nigh providential.
Among others, both the British and the Russian Governments in the
emergency of 1914 and 1915 had turned to the United States to
supplement their sources of rifle supply while they, particularly the
British, were building up their home manufacturing capacity. There
were five American concerns engaged in the production of rifles on
these large foreign orders when we entered the war. Three of them were
the Winchester Repeating Arms Co., of New Haven, Conn.; the Remington
Arms-Union Metallic Cartridge Co., of Ilion, N. Y.; and the Remington
Arms Co. of Delaware at its enormous war-contract factory at Eddystone,
Pa., later a part of the Midvale Steel & Ordnance Co. These concerns
had developed their manufacturing facilities on a huge scale to turn
out rifles for the British Government. By the spring of 1917 England
had built up her own manufacturing facilities at home, and the last of
her American contracts were nearing completion.
Here, then, was at hand a huge capacity which, added to our Government
arsenals, could turn out every rifle the American Army would require,
regardless of how many troops we were to put in the field.
But what of the gun that these plants were making--the British Enfield
rifle? As soon as war became a certainty for us the Ordnance Department
sent its best rifle experts to these private plants to study the
British Enfield in detail. They returned to headquarters without
enthusiasm for it; in fact, regarding it as a weapon not good enough
for an American soldier.
A glance at the history of the British Enfield will make clear some of
our objections to it. Until the advent of the 1903 Springfield, the
German Mauser had occupied the summit of military-rifle supremacy. From
1903 until the advent of the great war these two rifles, the Mauser
and the Springfield, were easily the two leaders. The British Army
had been equipped with the Lee-Enfield for some years prior to the
outbreak of the great war, but the British ordnance authorities had
been making vigorous efforts to improve this weapon. The Enfield was at
a disadvantage principally in its ammunition. It fired a .303-caliber
cartridge with a rimmed head. From a ballistic standpoint this
cartridge was virtually obsolete.
In 1914 a new, improved Enfield, known as the Pattern '14, was brought
out in England, and the British Government was on the point of
adopting it when the great war broke out. This was to be a gun of .276
caliber and was to shoot rimless, or cannelured, cartridges similar
to the standard United States ammunition. The war threw the whole
British improved Enfield project on the scrap heap. England was no
more equipped to build the improved Enfields than we were to produce
Springfields in our private plants. The British arsenals and industrial
plants and her ammunition factories were equipped to turn out in the
quantities demanded by the war only the old "short Enfield" and its
antiquated .303 rimmed cartridges.
Now England was obliged to turn to outside sources for an additional
rifle supply, and in the United States she found the three firms named
above willing to undertake large rifle contracts. Having to build up
factory equipment anew in the United States for this work, England
found that she might as well have the American plants manufacture
the improved Enfield as the older type. To produce the 1914 Enfield
without change in America and the older-type Enfield in England would
complicate the British rifle-ammunition manufacture, since these
rifles used cartridges of different sizes and types. Accordingly, the
British selected the improved Enfield for the American manufacture, but
modified it to receive the .303 rimmed cartridges.
This was the gun, then, that we found being produced at New Haven,
Ilion, and Eddystone in the spring of 1917. The rifle had many of the
characteristics of the 1903 Springfield, but it was not so good as
the Springfield in its proportions, and its sights lacked some of the
refinements to which Americans were accustomed. Yet even so it was
a weapon obviously superior to either the French or Russian rifle.
The ammunition which it fired was out of the question for us. Not
only was it inferior, but, since we expected to continue to build the
Springfields at the Government arsenals, we should, if we adopted the
Enfield as it was, be forced to produce two sizes of rifle ammunition,
a condition leading to delay and unsatisfactory output. The rifle had
been designed originally for rimless ammunition and later modified;
so it could be modified readily back again to shoot our
standard .30-caliber Springfield cartridges.
It may be seen that the Ordnance Department had before it three courses
open, any one of which it might take. It could spend the time to
equip private plants to manufacture Springfields, in which case the
American rifle program would be hopelessly delayed. It could get guns
immediately by contracting for the production of British .303 Enfields,
in which case the American troops would carry inferior rifles with
them to France. Or, it could take a relatively brief time, accept the
criticism bound to come from any delay, however brief such delay might
be and however justified by the practical conditions, and modify the
Enfield to take our ammunition, in which case the American troops would
be adequately equipped with a good weapon.
The decision to modify the Enfield was one of the great decisions of
the executive prosecution of the war--all honor to the men who made it.
The three concerns which had been manufacturing the British weapons
conceded that it should be changed to take the American ammunition.
Each company sent to the Springfield Armory on May 10, 1917, a model
modified rifle to be tested. The test showed the weapons still to be
unsatisfactory, principally because they had not been standardized.
Standardization was regarded as an essential for two reasons, one of
them a matter of practical tactics in the field and the other relating
to production speed.
To begin with, the soldier on the battle field is his own rifle
repairman. His unit usually has on hand a supply of weapons damaged
or out of commission for one reason or another. If, therefore, any
part of the soldier's rifle is broken or damaged, he can go to the
stock of unused guns on hand and take from another rifle the part
which he requires; and it will fit his gun, provided there has been
standardization in the rifle manufacture at home. But if the guns have
not been standardized and each weapon is a filing and tinkering job
in the assembly room of the factory, then the soldier in the field is
not likely to be able to find a part that will fit on his gun; and his
rifle, if damaged, goes out of commission. Or, if he finds a part which
fits but does not fit perfectly, his gun may break as he fires it, and
he himself may suffer serious injury.
In the second place, standardization is essential to great speed in
production. If one plant producing rifles encounters a shortage in
any of the parts of the gun, it can send to another plant and secure
a supply of these parts, a favorable condition in manufacture that
is impossible if the weapon has not been standardized. The value of
standardization in speeding up manufacture, however, is best shown in
the actual records of rifle production during the war. The fastest
mechanic in any of the three Enfield factories before 1917 had set an
assembly record of 50 rifles in one working day for the British gun.
After we had standardized the Enfield the high assembly record was 280
rifles a day, while the assemblers in the plants averaged 250 rifles a
day per man when the work was well started.
The Enfields sent to the Springfield Armory test were not standardized
at all, but were largely hand fitted. Little or no attempt had been
made to obtain interchangeability of parts among the rifles turned out
by the three plants. Even the bolt taken from one company's rifle would
not enter the receiver of another company's.
The Ordnance Department was confronted with the dilemma of approving
and issuing a weapon pronounced unsuitable by its own experts and thus
obtaining speedy production, or of delaying until interchangeability
was established. It chose the latter course.
On July 12 a second set of rifles had been tested. These came more
nearly up to our ideas of standardization, but were still not entirely
satisfactory. Nevertheless we decided to go ahead with production and
improve the standardization as we went along. The Winchester and Ilion
plants elected to start work on that understanding, but Eddystone
preferred to wait for the final requirements. Ilion afterwards decided
to postpone production until the final specifications were adopted.
It would have been well if the same course had been followed at the
Winchester plant, for word came later from Europe not to send over
rifles of Winchester manufacture of that period. The final drawings
of the standardized and modified Enfield did not come from the plants
until August 18. Six days later the thousands of dimensions had been
carefully checked and finally approved by the ordnance officers, and
after that production started off in earnest.
The wisdom of adopting the Enfield rifle and modifying it to meet our
requirements instead of extending the manufacture of Springfields
was almost immediately apparent, for in August, almost as soon as
the final drawings were approved, the first rifles were delivered to
the Government. This was possible because the modifications which we
adopted did not require any fundamental changing of machinery.
The principal equipment of these plants was in place and ready to begin
manufacturing Enfields at once; and while the changes in the rifle were
under discussion, the manufacturers were producing their gauges and
small tools as each modification was decided upon.
While we did not succeed in attaining, nor did we attempt to attain,
in fact, complete standardization and interchangeability of the parts
of the Enfields, we did all that was practicable in this direction,
several tests showing that the average of interchangeability was about
95 per cent of the total parts.
Meanwhile we were building up the working staffs of the Rock Island
Arsenal and Springfield Armory and speeding the production of
Springfields. Before the war ended the Rock Island Arsenal, which was
making spare parts for Springfields, reached an output equaling 1,000
completed rifles a day, while the Springfield Armory attained a high
average of 1,500 assembled rifles a day in addition to spare parts
equaling 100 completed rifles daily.
The Eddystone plant finished its British contracts on June 1,
Winchester produced its last British rifle on June 28, and Ilion on
July 21, 1917. Winchester delivered the first modified Enfields to us
on August 18, Eddystone on September 10, and Ilion about October 28.
The progress in the manufacture was thereafter steadily upward.
During the week ending February 2, 1918, the daily production of
military rifles in the United States was 9,247, of which 7,805 were
modified Enfields produced in the three private plants, and 1,442 were
Springfields built in the two arsenals. The total production for that
week was 50,873 guns of both types, or nearly enough for three Army
divisions. In spite of the time that went into the standardization of
the Enfield rifle, all troops leaving the United States were armed with
American weapons at the ports of embarkation.
Ten months after we declared war against Germany we were producing in
a week four times as many rifles as Great Britain had turned out in
a similar period after 10 months of war, and our production was then
twice as large in volume as Great Britain had attained in the war up
to that time. By the middle of June, 1918, we had passed the million
and one-half mark in the production of rifles of all sorts, this figure
including over 250,000 rifles which had been built upon original
contracts placed by the former Russian government.
The production of Enfields and Springfields during the war up to
November 9, 1918, amounted to a total of 2,506,307 guns. Of these
312,878 were Springfield rifles produced by the two Government
arsenals. We had started the war with a reserve of 600,000 Springfield
rifles on hand, and in addition stored in our armories and arsenals
were 160,000 Krags. These latter had to be cleaned and repaired in
large part before they could be used. From the Canadian Government we
purchased 20,000 Ross rifles. The deliveries of Russian rifles totaled
280,049. This gave us a total equipment of 3,575,356 rifles. Since
approximately one-half of the soldiers of an army as actually organised
carry rifles, the number of rifles procured in all by the Ordnance
Department was sufficient to arm both for fighting and for training an
army of 7,000,000 men, disregarding reserve and maintenance rifles.
The Enfield thus became the dominant rifle of our military effort. With
its modified firing mechanism it could use the superior Springfield
cartridges with their great accuracy. The Enfield sights, by having the
peep sight close to the eye of the firer, gave even greater quickness
of aim than the Springfield sights afforded. In this respect the
weapon was far superior to the Mauser, which was the main dependence
of the German Army. All in all to a weapon that made scant appeal
to our ordnance officers in a few weeks we added improvements and
modifications that made the 1917 Enfield a gun that for the short-range
fighting in Europe compared favorably with the Springfield and was to
the allied cause a distinct contribution which America substantially
could claim to be her own.
Standardization not only made possible the ultimate speed with which
our rifles were produced but, together with the care of the Government
in purchasing raw materials and in drawing contracts, it saved a great
deal of money in the cost of these weapons. The British had been paying
approximately $42 apiece for Enfields produced in the United States.
The modified Enfields cost the Government approximately $26 each.
Thus in the total production of 2,202,429 modified Enfields, we saved
$37,441,293 compared with what this weapon had cost in the past.
Both the Springfield and the 1917 Enfield rifle possessed advantages
of accuracy and speed of fire over the German Mauser. It is true that
the Mauser fired a heavier bullet than that of our standard ammunition
and sent it with somewhat greater velocity; but at the longer
fighting ranges the Mauser bullet is not so accurate as the United
States bullet. Due to its peculiar shape, the Mauser bullet is apt to
tumble end over end at long ranges--"key-holing," the marksmen call
it--particularly when the wind blows across the range. Such tumbling
causes a bullet to curve as a baseball thrown by a good pitcher,
destroying its accuracy.
Early in our fighting with Germany we captured Mauser rifles and
hastened to compare them with the Springfields and modified Enfields.
We found in the American rifles a marked superiority in the rapidity
of fire, the quickness and ease of sighting, and in the accuracy of
shots fired. The accuracy was due not only to our standard Springfield
ammunition, but also to the greater mechanical accuracy in the finish
of the chamber and bore of the American rifles. The rapidity of fire
of the American guns was due to the position and shape of the bolt
handle, which is the movable mechanism on the rifle with which the
soldier ejects a spent shell and throws in a fresh one.
How we developed this bolt handle is an interesting story in itself. In
1903, when we brought out the first Springfield rifle, we decided to
abandon the old carbine which had been carried by our Cavalry regiments
and, by making a rifle with a comparatively short barrel, furnish a
gun which could be used by both Infantry and Cavalry. The original
bolt handle of the Springfield, like the one on the present Mauser,
had projected horizontally from the side of the chamber. It was found
that this protuberance did not fit well in the saddle holster of the
cavalryman, but jammed the side of the rifle against the leather of
the holster, with frequent injury to the rifle sight. For this primary
reason the rifle designers bent the bolt handle down and back. This
modification incidentally brought the bolt handle much nearer to the
soldier's hand as he fingered the trigger than it had been before. The
Enfield design had carried this development even farther, so that the
bolt handle was practically right at the trigger, and the rifleman's
hand was ready to pull the trigger the instant after it had thrown in a
new cartridge.
Let us see what effect this design of the bolt handle had in the recent
war. The Mauser still clung to the old horizontal bolt handle well away
from the trigger grip. Some of our best riflemen practiced with the
captured Mausers and, firing at top speed with them, could not bring
the rate of shooting anywhere near up to the marks set by the Enfields
and Springfields. One enthusiast has even maintained that the speed
of the Mauser is not over 50 per cent of that of the 1917 American
rifle, but this may be an underestimate. On such a basis the result was
that under battle conditions with equal numbers of men on a side the
Americans had in effect two rifles to the Germans one.
To put it another way, by bending back the bolt handle we had placed
two men on the firing line where there was only one before; but the
added man required no shelter, nor any clothing, nor rations, nor
water, nor pay. Although he sometimes needed repairing, he did not get
sick, nor did he ever become an economic burden nor draw a pension.
His only added cost to the Government was an increased consumption of
cartridges.
When American troops were in the heat of the fighting in the summer
of 1918, the German government sent a protest through a neutral
agency to our Government asserting that our men were using shotguns
against German troops in the trenches. The allegation was true; but
our State Department replied that the use of such weapons was not
forbidden by the Geneva Convention as the Germans had asserted.
Manufactured primarily for the purpose of arming guards placed over
German prisoners, these shotguns were undoubtedly in some instances
carried into the actual fighting. The Ordnance Department procured
some 30,000 to 40,000 shotguns of the short-barrel or sawed-off type,
ordering these from the regular commercial manufacturers. The shell
provided for these guns each contained a charge of nine heavy buckshot,
a combination likely to have murderous effect in close fighting.
Such was the rifle record of this Government in the war. The Americans
carried into battle the best rifles used in the war, and America's
industry produced these weapons in the emergency at a rate which armed
our soldiers as rapidly as they could be trained for fighting. Success
in such a task looked almost impossible at the start; but that it was
attained should forever be a source of gratification to the American
people.
_Rifle production to Nov. 9, 1918._
-------------------+----------+-----------+-------+-------+--------+---------
Months. |Eddystone.|Winchester.| Ilion.|Spring-| Rock | Total.
| | | | field | Island |
| | | |Armory.|Arsenal.|
-------------------+----------+-----------+-------+-------+--------+---------
Before August, 1917| | | | 14,986| 1,680| 16,666
Aug. 1, 1917 to | | | | | |
Dec. 31, 1917 | 174,160| 102,363| 26,364| 89,479| 22,330| 414,696
| | | | | |
1918 | | | | | |
January | 81,846| 39,200| 32,453| 23,890| 7,680| 185,069
February | 98,345| 32,660| 39,852| 6,910| 2,460| 180,227
March | 68,404| 42,200| 49,538| 120| 420| 160,682
April | 87,508| 43,600| 36,377| 2,631| | 170,116
May | 84,929| 41,628| 54,477| 3,420| 550| 185,004
June | 104,110| 34,249| 52,995| 6,140| 619| 198,113
July | 135,080| 35,700| 60,413| 14,841| 2,038| 248,072
August | 106,595| 20,030| 65,144| 27,020| 1,597| 220,386
September | 110,058| 31,550| 58,027| 29,770| 3,813| 233,218
October | 100,214| 33,700| 53,563| 35,920| 3,256| 226,653
Nov. 1-9, 1918 | 30,659| 9,100| 16,338| 10,500| 808| 67,405
-------------------+----------+-----------+-------+-------+--------+---------
Total | 1,181,908| 465,980|545,541|265,627| 47,251|2,506,307
-------------------+----------+-----------+-------+-------+--------+---------
NOTE.--Eddystone, Winchester, and Ilion plants turned out
the United States rifle, caliber .30, model 1917, popularly
known as the Enfield, while the Springfield Armory and the
Rock Island Arsenal produced the United States rifle, caliber
.30. model 1903, popularly known as the Springfield rifle. The
months marked by a drop in the production at Springfield and at
Rock Island were months in which the components manufactured
were not assembled but were used for spare parts.
[Illustration: REMINGTON REPEATING SHOTGUN, 12-GAUGE, WITH BAYONET,
MODEL 1917.]
[Illustration: WINCHESTER REPEATING SHOTGUN, 12-GAUGE, WITH BAYONET,
MODEL 1917.]
[Illustration: BROWNING AUTOMATIC RIFLE, MODEL 1918, CALIBER .30.]
[Illustration: U.S. MODIFIED ENFIELD RIFLE, CALIBER .30, MODEL 1917,
BAYONET, MODEL 1917.
U.S. MAGAZINE (SPRINGFIELD) RIFLE, CALIBER .30, MODEL 1903, BAYONET,
MODEL 1905.]
[Illustration: COLT DOUBLE ACTION REVOLVER, CALIBER .45, MODEL 1917.]
[Illustration: SMITH & WESSON DOUBLE ACTION REVOLVER, CALIBER .45,
MODEL 1917.]
[Illustration: AUTOMATIC PISTOL, CALIBER .45, MODEL 1911.]