Military equipment

“ The war demanded the production in America of quantities of precision instruments. These were required not only by the Ordnance Department for the equipment of artillery with sights and indirect fire-control apparatus but also by the Engineer Corps, the Signal Corps, the Bureau of Aircraft Production, and the Medical Department. These instruments were such things as aneroid barometers, pocket compasses, measuring tapes, surveyors' equipment generally, map-drawing outfits, draftsmen's supplies, and so on. ”

“ Supply: defense industry potential is large, with capability of producing the most sophisticated equipment; manufactured equipment includes small arms artillery, armored vehicles, and other types of ground forces materiel, aircraft (jet and prop) , naval vessels (submarines, guided missile and other destroyers, patrol craft, mine warfare ships, and other minor craft including amphibious, auxiliaries, service craft, and small support ships) , small amounts of all types of army materiel ”

“ Extended campaigns and long marches necessitated lighter equipment, and we find in contemporary records instances, not only of the men-at-arms discarding their armour owing to its inconvenience, but also of commanders ordering them to lighten their equipment for greater rapidity of movement. ”

“ Equipments in Use.—Practically all nations have abandoned the simple wheeled carriage for machine-guns, or rather have adopted the tripod or table mounting, reserving the wheeled vehicle for the mere transport of the equipment. ”

“ Each railway artillery project called for the manufacture of a great equipment of ammunition cars, fire-control cars, spare-parts cars, supply cars, and the like, a complete unit being a heavy train in itself. Such armament-train cars, together with numerous other accessories and necessary equipment, were designed by the Ordnance Department and produced for each mount. ”

“ The advanced training, however, presented infinitely more difficulties. It was not nearly so simple to teach the more complex stunts, formation flying, aerial machine gunnery, bombing, and night flying, while at the same time the highly specialized equipment necessary required considerable time for manufacture. ”

“ Our entry into the war found us with few of the auxiliaries necessary for its conduct in the modern sense. Among our most important deficiencies in material were artillery, aviation, and tanks. In order to meet our requirements as rapidly as possible, we accepted the offer of the French Government to provide us with the necessary artillery equipment of seventy-fives, one fifty-five millimeter howitzers, and one-fifty-five GPF guns from their own factories for thirty divisions. ”

“ As their service will be chiefly in batteries, or in fortified posts—or if in the open field, only in greatly superior numbers, and within confined limits, to oppose desultory landings—they will not need the field equipment, nor that refined knowledge and practice so necessary in every part of an army in a campaign. ”

“ The experts in all branches of war flying which the principal allied nations had sent to the United States, warned us against the temptation to adopt many types of material in order to secure a quick early production. If the training equipment were not closely standardized in types, it would result in confusion and delay, both in training the aviator to fly and in preparing him for actual combat. ”

“ There must be mobile ordnance repair shops for each division, consisting of miniature machine shops completely fitted out with power and its transmission equipment and mounted directly on motor trucks. Then there must be semi-heavy repair shops on 5-ton tractors, these to be for the corps what the truck machine shop was to the division. Each army headquarters called for its semipermanent repair shop for artillery and still larger repair shops for its railway artillery. ”

“ One armored division alone, to be fully equipped, required 3,243 vehicles, of which 1,140 were of the combat type. To speed manufacture of new vehicles of all types, current designs were placed in mass production, but it was not until 1943 that the equipment shortage began to ease. As Chief of the Armored Force, General Chaffee, initially functioning directly under the War Department, was given control over all existing tank units in both infantry and cavalry, as well as certain field artillery and service units. ”

“ The nations associated with us in the war, however, had produced their training equipment prior to our participation as a belligerent, and at the time we entered the war the French, British, and Italians were producing only enough training planes to maintain their training equipment and were going in heavily with the rest of their airplane industries for the production of service planes. ”

“ Engineer, signal and medical equipment still continued to have a value, but if the race for militarism is maintained it is hard to see how the quantities of war munitions can fail to escape the scrap heap in a few years' time. ”

“ Increasing input in weaponry and equipment development, phasing out the outdated, upgrading the old, and developing and procuring the new, such as aircraft carriers, fighters, missiles and main battle tanks, to steadily modernize weaponry and equipment ”

“ We are undertaking a major modernization program for the Army's weapons and equipment, adding armor, firepower, and tactical mobility.
We are prepositioning more heavy equipment in Europe to help us cope with attacks with little warning, and greatly strengthening our airlift and sealift capabilities.
We are also improving our tactical air forces, buying about 1700 new fighter and attack aircraft over the next five years, and increasing the number of Air Force fighter wings by over 10 percent. ”

“ Method of keeping equipment. Wherever storage buildings were available the war equipment of units was kept on their charge. In other cases it was apportioned to units but held in store for them by the Ordnance department. When mobilisation was ordered, there was war equipment practically complete to enable two army corps, a cavalry division, and lines of communication troops to take the field. ”

“ A total of 557 individual weapons, 207 crew-served weapons, and 2 antiaircraft pieces were either captured or destroyed. In addition, 17 vehicles, ranging from PT-76 tanks to motor scooters, and tons of ammunition, food, radios, and individual equipment were discovered. ”

“ Before proceeding to examine the suit of Full Plate, with all its interesting details and differences as exemplified in the various armouries of England and Europe, it will be well to make clear the main principles which governed the manufacture of such armour. We should remember that the whole history of our subject is one long struggle of defensive equipment against offensive weapons. ”

“ In modern warfare, the cost in treasure and machinery is of far greater concern than the loss in blood. Therefore, the efficiency and great cost of all kinds of modern fighting equipment have [88] served to give the great nations pause, and to make them consider well the awful risk before precipitating war. The progress in fighting machinery of every sort has been so rapid, and the number of wars so few, that until now there has been no adequate opportunity to test fighting machinery in actual warfare. ”

“ Considered as a mechanism the148 whole gun-equipment was a rude and primitive affair; the clumsy carriage run out to battery by laborious tackles, the cast-iron gun laid by a simple wedge, the whole equipment traversed by prising round with handspikes—by exactly the same process, it has been remarked, as that by which the savage moved a log in the beginning of the world. ”

“ It is to the war which broke out with the United States of America in 1812 that we must turn to see the truck equipment working at its highest point of efficiency. By this time the advantage of gun-sights98 for giving accuracy of aim has been seized by a few individual officers, and sights of various patterns have been fitted by enthusiasts. No official encouragement is given, however, to experiments with sights and scales and disparting devices, and once again it is left to private initiative and expense to make a further advance toward efficiency. ”

“ With increased firepower and protection, these mechanized forces would, only some twenty years later, become the armor of World War II. When the armored artillery, the armored personnel carrier, the wheeled cargo vehicle, and supporting aviation- all with adequate communications- were added to constitute the combined arms team of the modern armored division, commanders regained the capability of maneuver in most of the land areas of the world. ”

“ There are also several machine shops, factories and warehouses which contain vast stores of war material of every sort sufficient to equip an army at a fortnight's notice. About twelve hundred men are constantly employed in the arsenal and shops making and repairing military arms and equipments. ”

“ The railway mounts, designed for this particular purpose, were built and covered with armor plate by the Navy according to plans and designs prepared by its Ordnance Bureau, while the locomotives and the twelve cars for the operating forces of each gun, including berth and kitchen cars, armored ammunition cars, machine shop cars containing everything from a forge and anvil to a handsaw, crane and wireless cars, were all built and equipped especially for the purposes of these land batteries of naval guns. ”

“ Infantrymen with automobile transport, plentiful machine guns, Tanks and such-like accessories; that is the first Arm in modern war. The factory hand and all the material of the shell route from the factory to the gun constitute the second Arm. Thirdly comes the artillery, the guns and the photographic aeroplanes working with the guns. Next I suppose we must count sappers and miners as a fourth Arm of greatly increased importance. The fifth and last combatant Arm is the modern substitute for cavalry; and that also is essentially a force of aeroplanes supported by automobiles. ”

“ Since America invented the machine-gun and also barbed wire, and since America furnished the inspiration for the tank with which to trample down the wire entanglements and stamp out the machine-guns, naturally people expected our army to come out with something better than anything produced by our allies. ”

“ This war has given us no new principles; but different mechanical appliances—and in particular the rapid improvement and multiplication of aeroplanes, the use of immense numbers of machine guns and Lewis guns, the employment of vast quantities of barbed wire as effective obstacles, the enormous expansion of artillery, and the provision of great masses of motor transport—have introduced new problems of considerable complexity concerning the effective co-operation of the different arms and services. ”

“ Equipment Principally for the Machines
1 boat, 1 sledge, 1 tent, 1 medicine case, 1 Primus, petroleum, reserve belts, 1 Meta cooking stove with30 plates, 2 sextants, 1 level, navigating equipment, six small and 4 large smoke bombs, 1 cooking pot, motor spare parts, tools, 2 snow shovels, 1 ice anchor, 1 log, 1 sun compass, 1 pair of glasses, ten plugs, meteorological instruments, 1 shot gun, 1 rifle, 400 cartridges, Colt revolver, 25 shots, senna grass, benzine pump, hose and bucket, camera, films and plates, soldering lamp. ”

“ While machine guns are usually designed to be carried or packed, they are easily adapted to various methods of transportation. In the European war we find them mounted on sleds during the winter campaign ”

“ It would be difficult, if not impossible, to enumerate the ten thousand inventions and devices of all kinds which have been presented for the purpose of increasing the efficiency of weapons and of all the appliances of war, as well as for adding to the comfort and securing the health of the soldier. Every imaginable instrument of usefulness in any of the operations of the camp, or the march, or the field of battle, has been the subject of tentative ingenuity, such as none but Yankees could display. ”

“ Not only should battleships, battle cruisers, submarines, ample coast and field artillery be provided and a greater ammunition supply system, but there should be a utilization of those engaged in such professions as the ownership and management of motor cars, in aviation, and in the profession of engineering. ”

“ Simultaneously with the work of making the new, huge army, of housing and training it, meeting its immediate and preparing to meet its future needs of clothing and equipment, the War Department had to provide, against the time in a very few months when these troops would be at the front, the munitions with which it would fight—heavy and light artillery, machine guns, rifles, automatic pistols, grenades, bombs, gas shells, cartridges, every death-dealing instrument made necessary by modern scientific warfare. ”

“ Rockets, percussion-caps, metal fusees, and stores of round shot and shell are accumulated to a vast extent, the two latter being piled up in pyramids to upwards of ten millions. There are store-rooms for saddlery and arms of every description, both ancient and modern; and a park of artillery numbering upwards of 30,000 pieces, which comprise the reserve from which the army, navy, garrisons, batteries, etc, are recruited. Sentries are stationed here and there to keep people in order, as there are great numbers of all classes constantly going through the arsenal. ”

“ Periodic inspection could reasonably be regarded as a check against very big scale production beyond the normal scope of industry, for such weapons as rifles, machine-guns, field and heavy guns. If we consider the most important new mechanical war appliance, the tank, we find it no exception to the above remarks. Without projectors, that is, machine-guns, rifles, etc., it merely becomes a means of conveying troops and material from one place to another. ”