Part 18

But, unfortunately, the matter of supplying weapons for our fighting forces was very far from being as simple as the ambassador seemed to think, for the modern high-power service rifle is a delicately adjusted and highly finished piece of mechanism, to manufacture which requires the finest quality of materials and the highest grade of expert workmanship. So, though we did not realize the dream of the ambassador by producing arms for a million men overnight, American Ordnance performed a feat almost as amazing by producing _enough rifles to equip an army of seven million men in less than fifteen months_.

Some years before our entry into the war a parsimonious Congress reduced the appropriations for the manufacture of small arms and small-arms ammunition to such an extent that it was found necessary to shut down the rifle-plant at the Rock Island Arsenal and to greatly reduce the output of rifles at the Springfield Armory and of cartridges at the Frankford Arsenal. This resulted, as might have been foreseen, in the dispersion of the large force of highly skilled workmen who had been in government employ, most of them seeking occupation with private concerns or turning to other vocations. When, therefore, our entry into the Great War made it necessary to take up the manufacture of small arms and ammunition on an unprecedented scale, the War Department was dismayed to find that it did not have nearly enough workmen, and that, owing to the enormous wages which were then being paid in other industries, it could not get them. Thus it became necessary, in order to obtain an immediate and adequate supply of weapons for the great new armies which we were raising, to enlist the co-operation of private manufacturers.

The three leading manufacturers of small arms in this country—the Winchester Repeating Fire Arms Company of New Haven, Conn., the Remington Arms-Union Metallic Cartridge Company of Ilion, N. Y., and the Remington Arms Company of Eddystone, Pa.—were devoting themselves at this time to the manufacture of the British .303 rifle, the production of which, however, due to the decrease in the requirements of the British Government, was gradually slowing down. But, though these plants had every facility for turning out in large quantities the British .303 Enfield, it would have required many months for them to alter their tools and machinery for the manufacture of the .30-calibre Springfield, which was the standard arm of the American service. The Ordnance Department found itself confronted, therefore, by three alternatives. It could change the equipment of these plants so as to permit of the manufacture of Springfield rifles—a proceeding which would have involved a delay of several months; it could adopt the British Enfield, which would also have necessitated the adoption of another calibre of ammunition—an unthinkable thing in time of war; or it could utilize the facilities of these three great plants by modifying the British rifle so that it would take American ammunition. The latter course was decided on.

The modification consisted in changing the magazine, chamber, and bore of the Enfield rifle so that it would take the U. S. service .30-calibre rimless cartridge instead of the British .303 rim cartridge. So rapidly were the plans worked out, the drawings and specifications produced, and sample rifles submitted and tested, that within less than eight weeks after the declaration of war orders were given to Winchester and the two Remington concerns for a million “modified Enfields,” as the new weapons were called. Putting aside the keen trade rivalry which had formerly existed, the three plants virtually operated as one mammoth rifle factory, so that when one shop found itself short of parts it was promptly supplied from another where there was a surplus. The combined factories had so fully gotten into their stride by the fall of 1918 that, when the Armistice was signed, they were turning out approximately 10,000 rifles a day, this being in addition, remember, to the spare parts which were being manufactured at all three plants as well as in the government establishments at Rock Island and Springfield. The records show that more than 2,500,000 rifles had been accepted by November 9, 1918. Add to this the 600,000 Springfields and the 160,000 Krag-Jorgensens which we had on hand at the beginning of the war, the 280,000 rifles which had been manufactured for Russia but which were taken over by the United States, and the 20,000 Ross rifles purchased from Canada, and it will be seen that we had a total of more than 3,500,000 rifles. As only about one-half of the troops in an American division carry rifles, we had, therefore, enough weapons to equip an army of 7,000,000 men.

In spite of the endless complications due to the use by our forces during the early days of the war of French machine-guns and automatic rifles of a calibre different from our own, and to the insistent demands of the Air Service for special types of cartridges—tracer, armor-piercing, and incendiary—there was never a time when we did not have enough small-arms ammunition to supply our forces in the field. I might mention in this connection that one of the most perplexing problems which had to be solved by Ordnance was the manufacture of ammunition which would function equally well in two rifles—the Springfield and the Enfield—and in seven different types of machine-gun—the Benet-Mercie, the Lewis, the Vickers, the Colt, the Marlin, and the light and heavy Brownings. In these machine-guns the firing-pin points, or strikers, are different in shape and size and function differently, each giving a different weight of blow on the primers of the cartridge, yet, notwithstanding this handicap, the success of the American ammunition in this respect was remarkable. The daily average of small-arms ammunition manufactured in the United States reached the enormous total of 14,900,000 completed rounds—a production equal to that of England and France put together. The total number of cartridges of all classes produced up to the end of the war was 3,500,000,000; enough, if placed tip to primer, to put a girdle of brass and steel around the globe.

At the outbreak of the war the Colt automatic pistol, of .45 calibre, was the standard arm of the American Army. This pistol was manufactured by Colt’s at Hartford, Conn., and by the government at the Springfield Armory. The Ordnance Department quickly realized, however, that even the combined capacity of these two plants would prove wholly inadequate to meet the demands of the new armies, whereupon it obtained permission from the War Department to supplement the supply of automatics with arms of other types, particularly Colt and Smith & Wesson .45-calibre revolvers—the famous “six shooters” of the plains. These revolvers did not take the rimless, or cannelured-head, cartridge used in the pistols, but this difficulty was overcome by means of a loading-clip, which had the additional advantage of enabling them to be loaded almost as quickly as an automatic. The revolver, which is somewhat less accurate and less powerful than the pistol, and which is considerably more tiring for the user, was adopted as an emergency measure only, due to the imperative necessity of supplying the troops. The demands of the A. E. F. increased so rapidly, however, that in the summer of 1918 contracts were let to eight other firms possessing equipment which could be converted to the manufacture of pistols and revolvers. It is interesting to note that among the concerns which turned from the manufacture of essentially peace-time devices to the production of implements for killing the Hun were the Burroughs Adding Machine Company and the National Cash Register Company. At the signing of the Armistice, there had been produced a grand total of 375,000 pistols and 268,000 revolvers, and the rate of production was rapidly increasing, thereby bringing us within sight of the day when, in accordance with the plans of the General Staff, it would be possible to arm every American soldier with that characteristically American weapon, the “shooting-

Transcriber’s Note: The end of this paragraph will remain a mystery, as it was omitted from the original printing (multiple copies were checked to ascertain this).

Another innovation introduced by the Great War was the steel helmet, which, barring a few European heavy cavalry regiments, had not been used by any civilized army since Cromwell’s time. The British helmet was originally adopted by our forces as a temporary expedient, in order to gain time until experiments would show whether it was possible to produce a better one. After a lengthy series of tests, however, it was decided to retain the British model, manufactured from steel with a considerable manganese alloy, rolled by an American process. Any possibility of the position of our troops being betrayed by the reflection of light from the surfaces of their “tin hats,” as was occasionally the case with the Germans’ steel head-gear, was eliminated by dipping the helmet in olive-drab paint, scattering sawdust over the surface with a blast of air, and then repainting after the first coat had hardened, thus producing an extremely coarse sanded appearance. The netting used in the lining of the American helmet was, however, a distinct improvement on the British design, as it lessened the inconvenience caused by the very considerable weight—slightly over two pounds—and the small pieces of rubber around the edge of the lining served to keep the metal away from the head, so that even relatively large dents caused by bullets or shell splinters did not reach the wearer’s skull. The task of designing our helmets and body armor was intrusted, fittingly enough, to Major Bashford Dean, who was admirably fitted for the duty by reason of the fact that he has been for many years curator of the armor collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is a curious fact, and indicative of the extent to which Army Ordnance converted to war purposes countless peace industries, that the steel for our helmets was furnished by the American Tin Plate Company—no wonder that the soldiers called them “tin hats”!—the linings were produced by various shoe manufacturers, and the helmets were assembled and painted by the Ford Motor Car Company!

I tried to make it clear at the very outset of this chapter that the story of Ordnance is so stupendous that the best I could hope to do in such a narrative as this would be to dwell briefly on its most salient points. This necessitates my passing by with a few words discoveries and developments of the greatest interest and importance, and of dismissing amazing achievements with a paragraph. Take the Nitrate Division of the Ordnance Department, for example. Were it to receive its due, an entire chapter should be devoted merely to outlining its problems, while a whole book could be written on how it solved them.

Nitric acid is the basis of all modern explosives. A country possessing no nitric acid would be virtually unable to fire a single shot. Before our entry into the war we depended for our supply of this essential ingredient upon the sodium-nitrate beds of Chile—the only country in the world where nitrates have been found. Germany had done the same, having had the foresight, moreover, to accumulate a reserve supply estimated at 375,000 tons. Had she not taken steps, however, to replenish this enormous stock by producing nitrates from the air by the so-called “fixation method,” she would inevitably have been compelled to capitulate when her supply became exhausted. It quickly became apparent that if we continued to rely upon Chile for our supply of nitrates we would be courting disaster, for Chile, though neutral, had decided German leanings, and there was always the danger, therefore, that German diplomacy or threats might cause her to place an embargo on nitrate exports. Even had this danger not existed, our available tonnage was extremely limited and a few torpedoings of nitrate ships would have stopped our supply, thereby automatically paralyzing our manufacture of explosives. It was determined, therefore, to make the United States wholly independent of any outside source by the erection of four enormous plants for the manufacture of nitrates by the synthetic ammonia and cyanamide processes.

Two of these projects—U. S. Nitrate Plant No. 1, at Sheffield, Alabama, and U. S. Nitrate Plant No. 2, on the Tennessee River at Muscle Shoals, Alabama—were both completed before the signing of the Armistice. Plant No. 1, which has a capacity of about 22,000 tons of ammonium nitrate a year, cost approximately $13,000,000. Plant No. 2 makes five times that amount of ammonium nitrate and cost five times that sum. Plant No. 3, at East Toledo, Ohio, and Plant No. 4, at Ancor, near Cincinnati, were about one-quarter completed when the Armistice was signed, but, because of the changed conditions governing the supply of Chilean nitrates as well as the facilities which we now possess in Alabama for manufacturing them ourselves, they have been discontinued. In addition to these enormous projects, a chemical plant was erected at Saltville, Virginia, at a cost of $2,750,000, for the manufacture of sodium cyanide to be used in the production of poison-gas. Though no operations are now (May, 1919) being carried on at any of these plants, it is believed that their products will be in wide demand for farm fertilizers, a project being under consideration whereby nitrates can be produced at these plants and sold to farmers at about three-quarters of the price paid for the Chilean product.

This chapter already so bristles with statistics that a few more can do no harm. They may open your eyes, moreover, to the magnitude of our preparations for producing nitrates—a project which has cost the American people more than $120,000,000, but of which not 1 in 10,000 of them has so much as heard. Take Plant No. 2, at Muscle Shoals, for example. I would be willing to wager almost anything you please that you have never heard of Muscle Shoals before. For your information it is on the Tennessee River, in northern Alabama, about midway between Nashville and Chattanooga. The power-house of this plant, with its capacity of 135,000 horse-power, has the largest annual output of any steam-power plant in the world, developing two-thirds as much power as all the hydroelectric plants at Niagara Falls put together. It contains a 90,000 horse-power steam-turbine—the largest ever built. The ammonia-gas plant is the largest in the world. The liquid-air plant is five times larger than any other installation of its kind in existence. At its peak the camp at Muscle Shoals had a total population of 21,000. One of its score or more of mess-halls seats 4,000 persons at one time; in it 750 gallons of soup have been prepared and 2 tons of meat have been roasted for a single meal. More than a thousand hogs were raised on the waste from this mess-hall alone. (Attention of Mr. Hoover!) The camp laundry washed 6,000 blankets in a single day. That may give you some idea of the labor and money involved in preparing to make our own nitrates.

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When it is considered that the personnel of the Ordnance Department, at home and overseas, consisted of 6,000 officers and nearly 100,000 enlisted men—almost as many as we had in the entire Regular Army before the war—and that these officers and men were called upon to perform work of a highly technical and specialized nature, it will be seen how important was the work of the Training Division. Among the innumerable activities of this division was the Ordnance Engineering School, where in three months a technically trained engineer was given an insight into the design and manufacture of ordnance materials; the Powder School at Carney’s Point; the Ordnance Supply School at Fort Hancock, and the Machine-Gun School at Springfield. In addition to these there was a school for tractor operators, a school for instruction in the repair and maintenance of ordnance trucks, another for the repair and maintenance of railway-artillery, and still another for training men in the repair of optical and precision instruments. It is sufficient for an infantryman to know how to use a pistol, a rifle, and a machine-gun, but the men who wear on their collars the insignia of the Ordnance Department have to know not only how to operate those weapons, and how to give instruction in their operation to others, but they have to be familiar with every detail of their manufacture and repair.

By far the most fascinating feature of Ordnance activities in America is the great proving-ground at Aberdeen, Maryland, thirty miles from Baltimore, on the shores of Chesapeake Bay. On this remote and jealously guarded reservation is tested every weapon and device, with the exception of small arms, produced by the Ordnance Department. During the height of our war preparations, more shots were fired here in a single day than were fired at the old proving-grounds at Sandy Hook in a year. A far greater quantity of explosive was expended daily than was used in many of the important battles of the Civil War. Here can be seen in action every type of American artillery from the vicious, hard-hitting little 37-mm. infantry cannon to the camouflaged monsters on railway-mounts, streaked like zebras and spotted like giraffes, which can drop a ton of explosive on a given target thirty miles away. Giant tanks, looking for all the world like some strange species of prehistoric monster, smash their way through patches of woodland or take twelve-foot trenches in their stride; field-guns of all calibres, camouflaged and tractor-mounted, go rocking and reeling across the broken fields; airplanes, circling in the blue, drop their half-ton bombs upon the targets marked out on the fields below; showers of shrapnel from the antiaircraft guns burst about the target parachutes in suddenly unfolding blossoms of white and scarlet. In the recovery-fields hundreds of men are at work with pick and shovel retrieving the fragments from the shell-bursts in order that they may be studied by the experts in the laboratories. (In order to facilitate this extremely important work, there has recently been built a huge concrete reservoir, known as a “recovery-tank,” into which the shell are fired, the fragments being recovered by means of giant magnets.) In the powder-bag department one can see storerooms filled to the ceiling with rolls of the heavy silk used for making the bags in which the propelling charges are contained; in adjoining rooms—“sweat-shops” they are jokingly called—scores of enlisted men, trained in the clothing-shops of New York’s East Side, cut and stitch the silk into cylindrical sacks in sizes to fit the various calibres of guns, and some distance away, in small, isolated buildings, other men fill the sacks with greenish-yellow granules which look like mildewed macaroni, but which is really smokeless powder. Over _ten thousand miles_ of this silk was required for our war programme. And it had to be the finest quality of silk, for no other material could be depended upon not to leave smouldering fragments in the barrel after its discharge, which would mean a burst gun and death to the crew when the next charge was inserted. Everything considered, one can get more thrills and see more things of interest at Aberdeen than at any place I know.

When time has given it the justice of perspective, the war-effort of Army Ordnance will be recognized as the greatest industrial achievement in the history of mankind. The more one learns of it the more it staggers the imagination. In nineteen months the Ordnance Department effected the most complete mobilization of science and industry the world has ever seen; it produced munitions of certain classes in unprecedented quantities; it developed and supplied material of such superior design and workmanship as to win the praise of our allies and the grudging admiration of our enemies; it designed, manufactured, and sent overseas the best service rifle, the best automatic rifle, the best pistol, the best machine-gun, the best field-gun, the best railway-artillery, the best tractor, and the best motor-truck possessed by any army in the world, and it stood ready, when the Armistice was signed, to turn loose on Europe such an avalanche of munitions as the world had never dreamed of. The American people seem to have completely overlooked the fact that we had in full swing, after we had been at war less than forty weeks, a mightier munitions programme than Germany could attempt after preparations which took forty years. But, though the American people did not realize the stupendous magnitude of their own effort, the Germans did. It was the news of the programme adopted by Army Ordnance, and the realization _that it was going through_, which, more than any single factor, perhaps, convinced Germany of the utter futility of further resistance. The Ordnance Department, like the biblical prophet, was not without honor save in its own country.

VI

FIGHTERS OF THE SKY

At about the time that the German War Lord, resplendent in the eagle-crowned helmet and silver cuirass of the Guard Cuirassiers, was haranguing in sonorous phrases the punitive expedition which was about to depart for China, two young mechanics in greasy overalls were at work in an obscure machine-shop in an Ohio city on a strange invention which was destined to prove a far more potent weapon than the Kaiser’s boasted “shining sword.” Now it is certain that at this period the All Highest had never heard of these young mechanics, and though they, of course, had heard of him, I imagine that to the accounts of his spectacular doings which appeared almost daily in the newspapers they paid about as much attention as they did to the gaudy lithographs on the local bill-boards which heralded the annual visit of the circus. Yet, could William of Hohenzollern have looked a dozen years into the future, he would have seen that these two silent, earnest, unassuming brothers from the Middle Western town were destined to have a profounder effect on the future of the great empire which he ruled, and, indeed, on the history of the world, than he and all the princes, soldiers, and statesmen who surrounded him.

Notwithstanding the jibes and forebodings of the professional critics, the ponderous sarcasms of senators and congressmen, and the sensational stories of failure which have appeared in the press, there are few more brilliant chapters in our national history than the story of the airplane. Do you realize, I wonder, that the airplane is the development of barely a decade? Had a life-insurance company, ten years ago, learned that one of its policy-holders was planning to take a ride in a “flying-machine,” it would promptly have cancelled his policy. Yet to-day planes carrying the air-post between the cities of the Eastern seaboard go booming down the air-lanes as regularly as express-trains and without attracting much more attention.