Part 17
The advice, wishes, and requirements of our allies were given full consideration, often at a sacrifice of natural national pride. On their advice or at their formally expressed desire, we in many cases undertook the manufacture of components instead of complete assembled units: powder for propelling charges and high explosives for bursting charges of ammunition, instead of assembled shell complete in smaller quantity; black or rough-machined forgings for cannon, projectiles or recuperators in place of the corresponding finished articles; motors and structural steel work for standardized tanks for joint use in lieu of a smaller number of complete units for the use of our armies alone. We yielded priority on raw material sorely needed to make our own programme a success, but even more desperately needed by our allies to stave off defeat until we should arrive in force.
Every 15 pounds of finished smokeless powder requires 14 pounds of cotton and 700 pounds of mixed acid for its nitration, so we made the gun-cotton to the extent of more than 500,000,000 pounds on this side of the water, thus saving the excess tonnage that would have been required for the shipment of the raw materials. A similar condition obtained with regard to high explosives. Guided by the same sound principle, we shipped in bulk enough pierced shell blanks to keep the French and British factories going to the limit of their capacity, and so on through the endless list of articles or components required for our common use. For, be it remembered, it was not our war alone.
[Illustration: AN AMERICAN 75-MM. IN ACTION.
The French admitted that the 75-mm. field gun as built in the United States in several respects excelled their own famous Soixante-Quinze.
_Photograph by Signal Corps, U. S. A._]
[Illustration: THE 37-MM. GUN IN ACTION.
This vicious, hard-hitting, and extremely mobile little weapon proved of enormous value in wiping out machine-gun nests.]
The quality of our product is attested by the almost pathetic eagerness of the _poilu_ to acquire an American rifle with its beautifully adjusted sights, its admirable breech mechanism, and its rimless, non-jamming ammunition; by the universally acknowledged excellence of the American automatic pistol; by the purchase by the French Government of 550 155-mm. howitzers built in America from French designs; by the cabled request of the French Government for a continuous supply of 3,000 Browning machine-guns _every month_ and 50,000,000 cartridges for them, after witnessing their performance under battle conditions; by the general order from British General Headquarters directing that on account of its greater uniformity, and consequent less danger to the troops advancing under its protection, _only American-made powder_ be used for artillery barrages—all these are tributes to American science, American engineering, and American industry, as exemplified in American ordnance, by qualified judges who were backing their opinions with their lives.
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American artillery may be roughly divided into four classes: light, medium, heavy, and railway. The light artillery consists of two types: the little, hard-hitting 37-mm. infantry-accompanying cannon, operated by two men, primarily designed for knocking out “pill-boxes” and machine-gun nests and, with a shortened barrel, for use in tanks, and the 75-mm. field-gun, an American adaptation of the famous French _soixante-quinze_, which, according to the admission of the French themselves, it in several respects excelled. Three types of weapons are included in the medium-calibre class: the 4.7-inch field-gun, which we had adopted and had manufactured in small quantities prior to our entrance into the war; the 155-mm. G. P. F. (_Grand Puissance Filloux_), really a big brother of the “seventy-five,” with correspondingly increased power and range, designed for interdicting crossroads and harassing the enemy’s middle areas, and the 155-mm. howitzer, which with its plunging fire is admirably adapted for trench and dugout demolition. In mobile heavy artillery we have the 8-inch and 9.2-inch howitzers, likewise designed primarily for demolition purposes. And, finally, the great 8, 10, 12, 14, and 16 inch pieces—guns, howitzers, and mortars—mounted on and fired from specially designed railway-trucks suited to the French road-beds—for incessant pounding of the depots, dumps, headquarters, and railways far behind the enemy’s lines. In addition to the above there are, of course, the various types of antiaircraft artillery, mainly of 75-mm. calibre, and the trench-mortars, ranging in size from the 3-inch Stokes, light enough to go over the top with the first wave of an attack and simple enough to be fired when supported only by the knees of a squatting soldier, up to the 240-mm. trench-mortar of position, whose great shell can blow the stoutest concrete fortification to smithereens. We also had in use at various times small numbers of miscellaneous calibres and types, but, as the result of the policy of reducing the number of types in order to simplify the problem of ammunition supply, our artillery had become fairly well standardized by the closing months of the war.
Years ago—though not nearly so long ago as it seems—when artillery was still hauled into position by sweating gun-teams, a veteran ordnance officer, addressing a scientific society, told his hearers that the weight of artillery was governed by the limited power of the horse. As a horse has a sustained pulling power of only 650 pounds, he explained, it was obvious that a 6-horse gun-team could not pull a gun and limber weighing more than 3,900 pounds. “If Divine Providence had given the horse the speed of the deer and the power of an elephant,” he added, “we might have had a far wider and more effective range for our mobile artillery.” Could that officer have looked a few years into the future he would have been astonished to see that, thanks largely to the genius of a Californian named Holt, there would be substituted for the horse a curious contrivance known as the caterpillar tractor, which possesses many times the power of an elephant. Though the tractor cannot be claimed, by any stretch of the imagination, to have the speed of a deer, it nevertheless has sufficient speed to keep pace with the infantry, or, indeed, should it become necessary, with cavalry. Few people appear to realize how enormous were the savings in men, animals, feed, railway facilities, and ocean tonnage effected by the motorization of our artillery. The motorization of one 155-mm. howitzer regiment saved 1,440 horses. One tractor for this howitzer is the equivalent of sixteen heavy draft-horses and three riding-horses, yet it is so compact that it occupies in packing a space of but 360 cubic feet, and can be operated by two men. Tractors are not only easier to conceal from enemy observation than horses, but a shell-burst which would kill every horse in a battery, would leave an armored tractor uninjured. Not long ago, at the Aberdeen Proving-Ground, one of these tractors, on which was mounted an 8-inch howitzer, sent through a dense wood, ran squarely into a live locust-tree which was seventeen inches thick at the base. Before the onslaught of the tractor the tree went down as though it were made of cardboard, whereupon the amazing machine crawled over the fallen trunk, slid into and clambered out of a ravine, emerged from the wood and took up its firing position—all in scarcely more time than it takes to tell of it. Before the war ended virtually every piece of American medium and heavy artillery was either tractor-mounted or tractor-drawn, and we were on the road toward motorizing the field-artillery—the “seventy-fives”—as well.
[Illustration: AN AMERICAN 75-MM. FIELD GUN. TRACTOR MOUNTED.
Thanks largely to the genius of a Californian named Holt, there has been substituted for the horse a curious contrivance known us the caterpillar tractor which possesses many times the power of an elephant.]
[Illustration: A 12-INCH RAILWAY GUN IN OPERATION.
Note the shell in flight.]
But, though the General Staff of the A. E. F. demanded mobility for the artillery, it also demanded increased weight and range. To meet this requirement there were devised various types of railway-artillery, ranging in size from 7 to 16 inch, thereby making available for use on the battle-front numerous guns from our seacoast fortifications which could not have been used otherwise. Early in the war the Army borrowed from the Navy a number of 7-inch naval rifles on pedestal mounts, for which the Ordnance Department provided specially designed gun-cars, thus affording a powerful and yet mobile form of defense for our coasts in the event of submarine attack. The next performance worthy of note was the mounting on railway-cars of ninety-six 8-inch guns taken from various seacoast fortifications. Both of the above types of gun, as well as the 12-inch mortars, were mounted on the so-called Barbette carriage, which permits of all-round fire at any desired elevation. The 10-inch seacoast rifle and all sizes above it were mounted on the Batignolles type of carriage, which depends primarily on the track arrangement for its direction of fire. Both the Barbette and Batignolles mounts had, after the initial setting, all the characteristics of fixed emplacements, but with the added advantage of being able to advance or retire with a minimum loss of time. A third type of railway-mount, which was used very successfully by the French and which was being adapted for certain of our 10, 12, and 14 inch guns when the war ended, was the Schneider, or sliding type of mount. Though this mount also depends upon the track arrangement for its direction of fire, it has none of the features of a fixed emplacement, the force of the recoil being taken up by permitting the entire mount to slide back on the track during the recoil of the gun. The “Chilean project,” as it was known, consisted in mounting six 12-inch guns, which had been manufactured in the United States for Chile and were on the point of delivery when they were commandeered by our government, on special sliding mounts designed by the Ordnance Department. Still another venture was the mounting for railway use of a number of 14-inch guns loaned by the Navy to the War Department. But the most ambitious project undertaken by Ordnance in connection with railway-artillery was the production of the huge 16-inch howitzer, to manufacture sixty-two of which an entirely new shop had to be erected by the Midvale Steel Company. This, the heaviest railway-mount of American design, weighs, with its gun, nearly a million pounds. The design and production of a device which would absorb its recoil of _seven million pounds_ was in itself no inconsiderable engineering problem. Each of these monster railway-cannon has its own train, consisting of standard and narrow-gauge ammunition-cars, as well as cars for tools, for spare parts, for repair work, and for the crews. Huge as they are, rivalling in range and power anything which the Germans had at Metz or the British at Gibraltar, they are extremely mobile, any one of them being able to drop its load of high explosive far behind the enemy’s lines, “pull stakes,” and be miles away before the enemy could get its range.
[Illustration: A 12-INCH SEACOAST MORTAR ON A RAILWAY MOUNT.]
[Illustration: 6-INCH SEACOAST RIFLES TAKEN FROM COAST FORTIFICATIONS AND MOUNTED FOR FIELD USE IN FRANCE.]
Speaking of the range of artillery, some truly amazing results in this field were achieved by Major Forest Ray Moulton, one of America’s foremost mathematicians, who was professor of astronomy in the University of Chicago before he was given a commission in the Engineering Division of Ordnance and turned his knowledge of ballistics to military account. One usually thinks of a professor of astronomy as a highly impractical person whose mind is absorbed in comets, meteors, and stars, yet no individual in the armies of the United States did as much as Doctor Moulton toward perfecting devices for killing Germans at long range. Here is a sample of his achievements. As the result of a series of abstruse calculations he made a change in the shape of the copper driving-band on the 6-inch shell, whereby, _without adding to the powder charge and with no modification whatever in the gun, he increased its range two and a half miles_. What is even more remarkable and important, he so reduced the variation between successive shots that a given number of shell will fall into one-eighth the area formerly covered by their dispersion. Had the war continued a year or so longer, there is no saying where Doctor Moulton’s ballistic discoveries would have led. It was evidently of one of the shell designed by him that the negro soldier remarked:
“Ah could staht runnin’ at brekfus’-time an’ that theah shell ’ud git me jes’ when Ah got home foah suppah.”
Whereupon his companion exclaimed scornfully:
“All one of dem shells wants is jes’ yo’ address, niggah—jes’ yo’ address.”
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No phase of the Ordnance Department’s work during the war came in for such severe criticism as the adoption and production of machine-guns. Now it so happens that I am thoroughly familiar with the details of the long and bitter controversy which began with the original rejection by the Ordnance Department of the Lewis gun and which ended with the eventual adoption of the Browning. Many of the attacks made on the War Department by the supporters of Colonel Lewis, as well as in the editorial columns of the newspapers, were not justified by the facts and showed an incomplete knowledge of the circumstances, yet, as an impartial observer with some inside knowledge of the situation, I freely admit that for certain of the criticisms there was ample justification. Let me remind you, moreover, that the Lewis being considerably heavier than the Browning machine-rifle and much lighter than the Browning machine-gun, could not satisfactorily have taken the place of either. With which passing comment we will let the machine-gun controversy rest.
Machine-guns of the so-called heavy type had been developed to a serviceable stage at the time of the Spanish-American War, but neither then nor in subsequent conflicts did they receive anything like the attention which they attracted immediately after the outbreak of the war in Europe. The Germans had apparently realized better than any one else the value of machine-guns in the kind of fighting which they expected to be engaged in, having had, it is reported, 50,000 machine-guns when hostilities opened. American appreciation of the rôle destined to be played in warfare by machine-guns is best evidenced by the fact that, when we entered the war, our tables of organization gave to each regiment four machine-guns!
When war was declared there were on hand in this country approximately 670 Benet-Mercie machine-rifles, 285 Maxim machine-guns, and 350 Lewis guns chambered for British ammunition. The machine-gun manufacturing facilities in the United States were also more limited than were the facilities for rifle manufacture, by reason of the fact that England and France had depended on their domestic resources to supply the bulk of their machine-guns. As a result there were only two plants in the United States which were actually producing machine-guns in quantity when hostilities began. Six days after our entry into the war the War Department ordered 1,300 Lewis guns (which order was subsequently increased) and, in June, 2,500 Colt guns, which were to be used for training purposes. The first division to be sent abroad was necessarily armed with the all-but-obsolete Benet-Mercie machine-rifle, but upon its arrival in France the French Government offered to equip the division with Hotchkiss machine-guns and Chauchat machine-rifles—the same automatic arms which the French had been using for three years. The offer was thankfully accepted, not only for the first division but for a number of succeeding divisions, thus insuring a supply of automatic weapons for our troops until we were in a position to supply them ourselves.
The result of a series of machine-gun tests held by a board appointed by the Secretary of War in May, 1917, proved conclusively that the gun invented by John M. Browning, a Utah gunsmith who already possessed a wide reputation as an inventor of automatic weapons, was the best type of heavy machine-gun known to the board, and that the light automatic rifle, also an invention of Browning, was likewise the most efficient weapon of its type. The Lewis and the Vickers, both of which had been extensively used by the British since the opening days of the war, were also favorably reported upon and it was recommended that their manufacture be continued. Acting on the recommendation of the board, the Ordnance Department immediately increased its orders for Lewis guns, placed orders with the Colt’s Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company for Browning machine-rifles and machine-guns, and began the development of large manufacturing facilities for the last-named types in order that the quantities required could be produced within the time specified. Although the Colt Company was the owner of an exclusive right to build machine-guns and automatic rifles under the Browning patents, the Ordnance Department early recognized that no single plant could hope to produce a sufficient number of these weapons to meet the constantly increasing requirements of our armies. Arrangements were therefore made with the Colt Company and with the inventor, Mr. Browning, for the surrender of their exclusive rights, the United States being granted authority to manufacture these weapons wherever it saw fit during the period of the war. As a result of this energetic, action, by the early part of 1918 the Savage Arms Company at Utica, New York, was producing Lewis guns of the flexible type for use on aircraft (the large orders for Lewis ground guns having been diverted to aircraft use upon the cabled recommendation of General Pershing); the Marlin-Rockwell Corporation at New Haven was manufacturing large quantities of Marlin Aircraft machine-guns of the synchronized type; the Colt’s Company was building Vickers machine-guns of the heavy mobile type, while various factories selected by the Ordnance Department because of their facilities were energetically tooling up for the immense production of Browning machine-guns and automatic rifles which later followed. Early in March, 1918, the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, to whom, as the result of the arrangement already referred to, the Browning plans and specifications had been turned over, produced the first Browning rifles, and two months later the New England Westinghouse Company turned out the first Browning machine-guns. When the Armistice was signed, the American Expeditionary Forces had been equipped with 41,348 Browning heavy machine-guns and 48,082 Browning rifles.
As the Marlin Aircraft machine-gun was available and was giving a considerable degree of satisfaction, no particular effort was made to push the development of the Browning Aircraft machine-gun, as it was feared that to do so might interfere with the production of the Browning machine-gun for ground use. Only a few hundred Browning Aircraft guns had, therefore, been produced up to the time of the Armistice. These had, however, been satisfactorily synchronized so as to fire through the airplane propellers, and had been speeded up to the amazing rate of fire of _1,300 shots per minute_.
[Illustration: JOHN M. BROWNING, THE INVENTOR OF THE PISTOL, RIFLE, AND MACHINE GUN WHICH BEARS HIS NAME.
Mr. Browning is holding the automatic rifle which he invented.
_Photograph by Signal Corps, U. S. A._]
[Illustration: THE BROWNING HEAVY MACHINE GUN.
This, the deadliest weapon of the war, can fire at the rate of 1,000 shots a minute.
_Photograph by Signal Corps, U. S. A._]
[Illustration: A RIFLE GRENADIER.
His rifle is fitted with a “tromblon” for firing rifle-grenades.]
Upon their arrival in Europe the two Browning weapons created a marked sensation both in the armies of the Allies and in our own forces. Not only were they exquisite examples of the gunsmith’s art but they could pour lead into the enemy at an unheard-of rate, they were to all intents and purposes fool-proof, and they proved themselves capable of standing up under the most trying conditions. The Browning automatic rifle in particular, as beautifully finished and balanced as a trap-shooter’s double-barrel, formed a striking contrast to the clumsy French Chauchat, which looked as though it had been made by a village blacksmith. During the summer of 1918 our government was approached by representatives of England, France, and Belgium with inquiries as to the possibility of sufficient Brownings being produced to supply their armies as well as our own.
The 79th was the first division to enter the line equipped with Browning automatic rifles and machine-guns. In view of the various criticisms of these weapons which have appeared from time to time in the American press, it seems worth while to quote from the report of the Ordnance Machine-Gun Officer of that division:
“The guns went into the front line for the first time in the night of September 13th. The sector was quiet and the guns were practically not used at all until the advance, starting September 26th. In the action which followed, the guns were used on several occasions for overhead fire, one company firing 10,000 rounds per gun into a wood in which there were enemy machine-gun nests, at a range of 2,000 metres. Although the conditions were extremely unfavorable for machine-guns on account of rain and mud, the guns performed well. Machine-gun officers reported that during the engagement the guns came up to the fullest expectations, and even though covered with rust and using muddy ammunition, they functioned whenever called upon to do so.”
The design and adoption of the Browning gun not only gave our armies the most efficient and dependable weapon of its kind in the world, but it saved the American taxpayer $75,000,000. This figure is based on the difference in cost to the government of the Browning and its nearest equivalent, the Vickers—the latter at a price representing its cost after having been in war production for three years. The design and adoption of the Browning automatic rifle gave us far and away the best weapon of that type possessed by any army, and it saved the government nearly $13,000,000—not a very large figure, it is true, compared with war expenditures, but nevertheless worth saving.
When the war ended we had on hand 52,000 Browning automatic rifles and 29,000 Chauchats—a total sufficient to arm an army of approximately 3,500,000 men. On the same date there were completed 3,340 Hotchkiss, 9,337 Vickers, and 42,050 Browning guns, thus giving us enough heavy machine-guns to equip over 200 divisions, or an army of approximately 7,000,000 men. Thus it will be seen that, no matter what the future has in store for us, it will be a long time before we will have occasion to worry about a shortage in machine-guns.
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Though less novel and, therefore, less interesting than certain other products of Ordnance, there were six items, all produced in stupendous quantities, which rendered greater service than all the big guns, tanks, and airplanes put together in nailing down the coffin-lid on Germany’s dream of world domination. I refer to rifles, pistols, revolvers, bayonets, helmets, and small-arms ammunition. They, with the gas-respirator, the water-bottle, the cartridge-belt, and the pack, constituted the equipment of the fighting Yank. They were the infantryman’s tools of trade.
When the news of the sinking of the _Lusitania_ reached Paris, I heard the then American Ambassador to France assert, in the words of Mr. William Jennings Bryan, whose appointee he was, that were the United States to enter the war, a million men would spring to arms overnight.
“I’ll admit, Mr. Ambassador,” said a sceptical listener, “that we might get the million men. But where would we get the arms?”
“We’d stamp ’em out, sir,” replied the diplomat. “We’d stamp ’em out the way we stamp out tin plates.”