Never had machinery been built in the United States to work on so large
a scale with such a degree of accuracy. The Ordnance Department had to
persuade manufacturers to undertake this difficult work, to assist them
financially to build a thirteen-acre plant, to purchase and manufacture
$6,000,000 worth of special tools, and develop an organization to do
this. The contract was signed on Nov. 1, 1917, and today the plant is
completed and is turning out the recoil mechanisms.
The Nitrate Division has under construction two plants for the
manufacture of powder, costing $45,000,000 each.
The Ordnance Department itself has provided for the army 1,400,000
rifles, has brought the production of them up to 45,000 a week, or
enough to equip three army divisions; has secured deliveries on 17,000
machine guns and brought the rate of production of them from 20,000 to
225,000 a year. It has increased the rate of production of field guns,
heavy and light, from 1,500 to 15,000 a year, and is manufacturing
35,000 motor trucks and tractors to haul them and their ammunition. It
has remodeled the British Enfield rifle so that it can be produced in
quantities to take American ammunition and adopted two new types of
machine guns, the Browning, heavy and light.
The United States entered the war resolved to win supremacy in the air.
Congress adopted an appropriation of $640,000,000, in addition to
$15,000,000 already granted, to provide the best airplane service
possible. The best motor engineers in the country combined their talents
to provide a motor, and the result of their efforts was the Liberty
motor, asserted to be superior to anything used by any army air corps.
Delivery of the new motors in quantity has been delayed by various
causes. But the initial difficulties have been solved and quantity
production of battle planes, as well as of training planes, is expected
during the Summer of 1918. While there are more than seventy different
types of airplane motors on the western allied front, the United States
is relying on a single standardized type, greatly reducing the ratio of
forty-seven men required on the ground by foreign service for every man
in the air.
Colossal work has been done by the Quartermaster Corps, which supplies
almost everything that a soldier needs, except ammunition; which
transports those supplies as well as the soldier, feeds him, clothes
him, and provides him with shelter. The war found the Quartermaster
General's office without funds, Congress having adjourned without voting
the Army Appropriation bill. But it tided over the interval until money
was forthcoming. It has since spent $2,789,684,778, has clothed the
draft armies and fed them, supplied the oversea forces with the million
things they need, and there are at present few complaints of its work.
The details are seen in columns of figures all running into millions.
In this first year the Quartermaster Corps has spent $60,000,000 for
horse-drawn vehicles and harness, more than $50,000,000 for horses,
mules, and harness, and now estimates it will need for fuel and forage
alone more than half a billion dollars.