Munitions industry

“ During the last offensive the total expenditure amounted to twelve million projectiles of all calibers.
This incomparable war industry has permitted us not only to fight, to defend ourselves and to [Pg 101] attack the enemy, but also to supply our friends, our Allies, with the munitions necessary to fight. Up to January, 1918, these are the amounts of munitions France was able to hand over to the nations fighting at her side in Europe:
And to France has come the honor of making the light artillery for the American Army—amounting to several hundred guns per month. ”

“ Prior to 1914 there were but six Government arsenals and two large private ordnance works which knew anything about the production of heavy weapons. After 1914, war industry sprang up in the United States, yet in 1917 there were only a score or so of firms engaged in the manufacture of artillery ammunition, big guns, rifles, machine guns, and other important ordnance supplies for the allies. When the armistice was signed nearly 8,000 manufacturing plants in the United States were working on ordnance contracts. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We all know—the whole world knows—why the military power of England has not yet reached its full majesty. We all know that in the War of to-day a superabundance of munitions is demanded which none could have expected from the history of the past. Every form of military stores—guns, rifles, shell, ammunition—all must be provided on a scale of colossal magnitude. ”

“ No reserves may be formed, and all existing armaments, guns, and stores above the limit fixed must be handed over to the Allies for disposal. No poisonous gas or liquid fire shall be manufactured or imported, nor any tanks nor armoured cars. The Germans are obliged to notify to the Allies for approval the names and situation of all factories manufacturing munitions, together with particulars of their output. The German Government arsenals are to be suppressed and their personnel dismissed. Munitions for use in fortified works will be limited to 1500 rounds apiece for guns of 10·5 cm. ”

“ One of the very first Acts to provide for placing educational production of munitions of war stipulated that initial orders placed with any person, firm, or corporation for supplying such munitions, accessories, or parts, could include a complete set of such gages, dies, jigs, tools, fixtures, and other special aids and appliances, including drawings as needed for the production of munitions in quantity in the event of emergency. ”

“ These years will forever stand as the monument to the American genius of workshop and factory, which in this period insured the victory by insuring the timely arrival of the overwhelming force of America's resources in the form of America's munitions. ”

“ I find that the passenger train services have been chopped to pieces, that mails take any old time to do their journey, that goods by rail get there this week, or next, or a month hence—because munition transport blocks the rails; that whole24 industries have been blotted from existence because their hands or their plant were wanted—for munitions; that Polytechnic classes are being busily taught—to make munitions; that, in fact, the whole country is one seething munition factory, and no man or lathe or tool that can be turned to munition-making is possibly doing anything else. ”

“ It is not merely that over 4,500 firms, not one of which before the war even dreamed of making munitions, are now engaged on nothing else, or that we have erected over 100 colossal government factories for turning out shells, guns, powder, and the implements of trench warfare ”

“ But in November, one month later, the requirements for 1945 had to be increased another 10 percent, sending the production goal well above anything we have yet attained. Our armed forces in combat have steadily increased their expenditure of medium and heavy artillery ammunition. As we continue the decisive phases of this war, the munitions that we expend will mount day by day. ”

“ I can only say that the supply of war material at the present moment and for the next two or three months is causing me very serious anxiety, and I wish all those engaged in the manufacture and supply of these stores to realize that it is absolutely essential not only that the arrears in the deliveries of our munitions of war should be wiped off, but that the output of every round of ammunition is of the utmost importance and has a large influence on our operations in the field. ”

“ Notwithstanding the tremendous calls upon the man power of the country for the ever-increasing needs of the army, the supply of munitions has steadily increased. In addition to large consignments to other fronts of the war, there has been an increase of 30 per cent. in all kinds of guns and howitzers, and of over 100 per cent. in heavy guns and howitzers in the recent offensive in France, as compared with those of last year. ”

“ The ammunition wagons are installed and opened; the belts are ready; the gun layer, the loader, and the crew are at their stations.
The lieutenant makes the rounds of each section, inspecting the guns, testing the mechanism, trying the weight of the munitions, taking account of everything and looking each man in the face.
“We are the last company organized,” he says. “You know that the machine gunners should be the flower of the army; don’t forget it. It is our first engagement. Try to show that we’re there a little.” ”

“ It is munitions that, thrown from our howitzers, make level roads through the tangles of wire on which, in the old days, the corpses of whole platoons of our men were hung up to rot and look, from far off, like washing put out to dry on thorned hedges. It is munitions that, when we attack, hold back the hostile supports behind a wall of falling bullets as hard to pass as Adam found the flaming sword at the gate. It is, then, not without reason that in this sheaf of drawings of the war on the Western front are included some drawings of guns and shells in the making. ”

“ One special requirement of the aircraft machine gun is that it must be reliable in the extreme. It is bad enough to have a gun jam on the ground, but in the air it may be fatal, for little can be done there to repair the weapon. A jam leaves the gunner to the mercy of his adversary, so in the production of aircraft armament there must be not only special care in the manufacture of the guns, but the ammunition, too, must be as perfect as human accuracy can make it. ”

“ Yet it is necessary to provide for a single machine gun on the field in such a war as the recent one 288,875 rounds of ammunition during its first year of operation, this figure including the initial stock and the reserve supply as well as the actual number of rounds fired. Thus the machine gun of war increases its appetite, so to speak, for ammunition 4,700 per cent in the first year of fighting. ”

“ Thus there can be no limitation to the amount of artillery and the quantities of explosives serviceable in this kind of warfare. No one of the armies has ever had anything like enough shells. None ever can. Five hundred guns of all ranges set back of one another from 3,000 to 20,000 yards' range to a mile could be placed, or 225,000 for the western front, and they could readily use five million shells a day in this contest of munitions and manufacturing resources. ”

“ The German threw up the sponge before then. If he had waited he would have been literally blown out of his trenches and his chief cities.
In one sense, of course, we never had enough, but if I were asked to name a date on which a serious shortage of munitions ceased I should say September 19th, 1915, on the eve of the battle of Loos. On that date, a year after Trench War began, word was passed around to the batteries of the British line in a phrase copied from the provision shops of London: "Ammunition is cheap to-day." ”

“ The allies could deliver the artillery, artillery ammunition, and airplanes if America could deliver the raw and semifinished materials. America answered that she could and would produce and transport to Europe raw materials and semifinished products in amounts equivalent to the amounts consumed by allied factories in manufacturing the completed guns, shell, and airplanes. ”

“ The thing that really bothers, though, is the danger of death or injury from their own weapons or ammunition. You see, many times there is such a thing as a faulty shell, although careful inspection in the munitions plants has reduced this danger to a percentage of about one in ten thousand.
"At the beginning of the war when every little tin shop all over the world was converted into a munitions factory to supply the great need of shells, much faulty ammunition reached the front lines. Some of the shells would explode almost as soon as they left the gun. ”

“ American munitions production, which for some time has been in your charge, played an important part in the early decision of the war, yet the very immensity and complexity of the problem has made it difficult for this accomplishment to be adequately understood by the public or in fact by any except those who have had occasion to give the matter special study. ”

“ Article 168 demands the limitation of munitions production to factories or works approved by the Allied and Associated Governments. "All other establishments for the manufacture of any war material whatever shall be closed down." ”

“ Our demands on the industries concerned with the manufacture of munitions of war in this country have naturally been very great, and have necessitated that they and other ancillary trades should work at the highest possible pressure. ”

“ This development of modern warfare means that a million modern soldiers need four million modern rifles.
This indicates the enormous necessities which would devolve upon this country in case we were forced into a war. During the past week I have received a cable from an old friend in England who has been selling war munitions to the Allies. He asked me how quickly I could get a million rifles made in the United States. The best bids I have been able to obtain have guaranteed a first delivery at the end of one year and final deliveries at the end of three years. ”

“ The reports from the Ordnance and Mining Bureaus are very gratifying, and the extension of our means of supply of arms and munitions of war from our home resources has been such as to insure our ability soon to become mainly, if not entirely, independent of supplies from foreign countries. The establishments for the casting of guns and projectiles, for the manufacture of small arms and of gunpowder, for the supply of niter from artificial niter beds, and mining operations generally, have been so distributed through the country as to place our resources beyond the reach of partial disasters. ”

“ As the whole people have been called upon to make sacrifices for the war, all the people should be given an opportunity to know what has been done in their behalf in munitions production, and I therefore ask that you have prepared a historical statement of munitions production, so brief that all may have time to read it, so nontechnical that all may be able readily to understand it, and so authoritative that all may rely upon its accuracy. ”

“ The delay was still with the guns and the munitions. A heavy gun is not the product of a week or of a month, and before a great increase can be made in the output of shells the machinery for producing them has itself to be produced. ”

“ The output of high explosives has been sufficient to meet the increased demands of our armies, to build up stocks, and to supply part of the needs of the Allies. There has been a steady improvement in the detonating value of gun ammunition and a continuous reduction in the number of premature explosions. In addition to guns, shells, and rifles, the demands of the military and naval forces during the year for aircraft, tanks, mechanical transport, railway material, and equipment of every sort and kind have been endless. ”

“ Mr. Lloyd George could not plead ignorance of the facts. He had been installed for a month or so. He must have known that it had been totally impossible to produce, within ten months of the outbreak of the war, the munitions that were required for an army in the field three or four times greater than had ever been thought of prior to mobilization. [7] He had actually given some pertinent information with regard to manufacturing difficulties when he was introducing the bill, which clearly demonstrated that he had grasped the general principles governing the problem of munitions output. ”

“ Suddenly we wanted 50,000 big guns, and 500,000 machine guns and 10,000,000 rifles with unlimited ammunition, more ammunition than men could dream of, with all sorts of new kinds of ammunition, bombs, handgrenades, aerial torpedoes, or flying pigs, flying pineapples, egg-bombs, hairbrush-bombs, Mills bombs, trench mortar bombs, such as men had never used. ”

“ 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. ”