Like many of the other war implements produced by the Ordnance Department for use in France, the weapons employed in fighting from the trenches were entirely novel to American industry; and in the production of them we find the same story of the difficulties in the adoption of foreign designs, of the development of our own designs, of the delays encountered and mistakes made in equipping a new industry from the ground up, but, finally, of the triumphant arrival at quantity production in a marvelously brief time, considering the obstacles which had to be overcome.
When the movements of armies in the great war ceased and they were held in deadlock in the trenches, the fighters at once began devising weapons with which they could kill each other from below ground. For this purpose they borrowed from the experience of man running back to time immemorial. They took a leaf from the book of the Roman fire-ball throwers and developed the hand grenade beyond the point to which it had been brought in the European warfare of the last century. They called upon an industry which had once existed solely for the amusement of the people, the fireworks industry, for its golden rain and rainbow-hued stars for signals with which to talk to each other by night. Other geniuses of the trenches took empty cannon cartridges and, setting them up as ground mortars, succeeded in throwing bombs from them across No Man's Land into the enemy ranks. They even for a time resurrected the catapult of Trojan days, although this device attained no great success. But from all such activities new weapons of warfare sprang, crude at first, but later refined as only modern science and manufacture could perfect them.
America entered the war when this development of ordnance novelties had reached an advanced state. It became necessary for us, then, to make a rapid study of what had been done and then go ahead with our own production either from foreign designs or with inventions of our own.
To this end in April, 1917, a few days after we declared war with Germany, the Trench Warfare Section was organized within the Ordnance Department and given charge of the production of these novelties. The section did not entirely confine itself to trench-warfarematerials, since one of its chief production activities was concerned with the manufacture of the various sorts of bombs to be dropped from airplanes. Also, at the start of its existence it had charge of the production of implements for fighting with poison gas and flame. Although in large part this phase of its work was taken away from it in the summer of 1917 and was later placed under the jurisdiction of the newly organized Chemical Warfare Service, the Trench Warfare Section continued to conduct certain branches of gas-warfare manufacture, in particular the production of the famous Livens projectors of gas and also the manufacture of the portable toxic-gas sets for producing gas clouds from cylinders.
All in all, the Trench Warfare Section was charged with the responsibility of producing some 47 devices, every one of them new to American manufacture and some extremely difficult to make. The backbone of the program consisted of the production of grenades, both of the hand-thrown and the rifle-fired variety, trench mortars, trench-mortar ammunition, pyrotechnics of various sorts, and bombs for the airplanes, with their sighting and release mechanisms.
In the production of these new devices there arose a new form of cooperation between Government and private manufacturers under the tutelage of the Trench Warfare Section. The manufacturers engaged in the production of various classes of these munition novelties joined in formal associations. There was a Hand Grenade Manufacturers' Association, under the capable leadership of William Sparks, president of the Sparks-Withington Co., of Jackson, Mich.; the Drop Bomb Manufacturers' Association, headed by J. L. Sinyard, president of A. O. Smith Corporation, Milwaukee; the Six-inch Trench-mortar Shell Manufacturers' Association, R. W. Millard, president of Foster-Merriam Co., Meriden, Conn.; the Rifle Grenade Manufacturers' Association, under the leadership of F. S. Briggs, president of the Briggs & Stratton Co., Milwaukee, Wis.; and the Livens Projector Manufacturers' Association. A similar association of manufacturers engaged in army contracts existed in the production of small-arms ammunition; but in no other branch of the Ordnance Department was the development of such cooperation carried on to the extent of that fathered by the Trench Warfare Section.
The existence of these associations was of inestimable benefit in securing the rapid development, standardization for quantity manufacture, and production of these strange devices. Each association had its president, its other officers, and its regular meetings. These meetings were attended by the interested officers of the Trench Warfare Section. In the meetings the experiments of the manufacturers and the short-cut methods developed in their shops were freely discussed; and, if modifications of design were suggested, suchquestions were thrashed out in these meetings of practical technicians, and all of the contractors simultaneously received the benefits.
The Trench Warfare Section produced its results under the handicap of being low in the priority ratings, many other items of ordnance being considered in Washington of more importance than the trench-fighting materials and therefore entitled to first call upon raw materials and transportation. In the priority lists the leader of 47 trench-warfare articles, the 240-millimeter mortars, stood twenty-second, and the others trailed after.
The first of the trench-warfare weapons with which the rookie soldier became acquainted was the hand grenade, since this, at least in its practice or dummy form, was supplied to the training camps in this country. To all intents and purposes the hand grenade was a product of the war against Germany, although grenades had been more or less used since explosives existed. All earlier grenades had been crude devices with only limited employment in warfare, but in the three years preceding America's participation in the war the grenade had become a carefully built weapon.
The extent of our production of hand grenades may be seen in the fact that when the effort was at its height 10,000 workers were engaged exclusively in its manufacture. The firing mechanism of the explosive grenades which we built was known as the Bouchon assembly. In the production of this item 19 of every 20 workers were women. In fact no other item in the entire ordnance field was produced so exclusively by women. Incidentally, at no time during the war was there a strike in any grenade factory.
For a long time in the trenches of France only one type of hand grenade was used. This was the so-called defensive grenade, built of stout metal which would fly into fragments when the interior charge exploded. As might be expected, such a weapon was used only by men actually within the trenches, the walls of which protected the throwers from the flying fragments. But, as the war continued, six other distinct kinds of grenades were developed, America herself contributing one of the most important of them; and during our war activities we were engaged in manufacturing all seven.
The defensive, or fragmentation, type grenade was the commonest, most numerous, and perhaps, the most useful of all of them. Another important one, however, was that known as the offensive grenade, and it was America's own contribution to trench warfare. The body of the offensive grenade was made of paper, so that the deadly effect of it was produced by the flame and concussion of the explosion itself. It was quite sure to kill any man within 3 yards of it when it went off, but it was safe to use in the open offensivemovements, since there were no pieces of metal to fly back and hit the thrower.
A third development was known as the gas grenade. It was built of sheet metal, and its toxic contents were effective in making enemy trenches and dugouts uninhabitable. A fourth, a grenade of similar construction, was filled with phosphorus, instead of gas, and was known as the phosphorus grenade. This grenade scattered burning phosphorus over an area 3 to 5 yards in diameter and released a dense cloud of white smoke. In open attacks upon machine-gun nests phosphorus grenades were thrown in barrages to build smoke screens for the attacking forces.
As a fifth class there was a combination hand and rifle grenade, a British device adopted in our program. The sixth class of grenades was known as the incendiary type. These were paper bombs filled with burning material and designed for use against structures intended to be destroyed by fire. Finally, in the seventh class were the thermit grenades, built of terneplate and filled with a compound containing thermit, which develops an intense heat while melting. Thermit grenades were used principally to destroy captured guns. One of them touched off in the breech of a cannon would fuse the breech-block mechanism and destroy the usefulness of the weapon.
All of these grenades except the incendiary grenades used the same firing mechanism, and the incendiary grenade firing mechanism was the standard one modified in a single particular.
The earliest American requirement in this production was for defensive grenades, of the fragmentation type. Our first estimate was that we would need 21,000,000 of these for actual warfare and 2,000,000 of the unloaded type for practice and training work. But, as the war continued and the American plans developed in scale, we saw we would require a much greater quantity than this; and orders were finally placed for a total of 68,000,000 live grenades and over 3,000,000 of the practice variety.
By August 20, 1917, the Trench Warfare Section had developed the design and the drawings for the defensive grenade. The first contract—for 5,000 grenades—was let to the Caskey-Dupree Co. of Marietta, Ohio. This concern was fairly entitled to such preference, because the experimentation leading up to the design for this bomb was conducted almost entirely at its plant in Marietta.
Next came an interesting industrial development by a well-known American concern which had previously devoted its exclusive energy to the production of high-grade silverware, but which now, as a patriotic duty, undertook to build the deadly defensive grenades. This was the Gorham Manufacturing Co. of Providence, R. I. This firm contracted to furnish complete, loaded grenades, ready for shipment overseas, and was the only one to build and operate amanufacturing and loading plant. Elsewhere contracts were let for parts only, these parts to converge at the assembling plants later; and such orders were rapidly placed until by the middle of December, 1917, various industrial concerns were tooling up for a total production of 21,000,000 of these missiles.
The grenade which these contractors undertook to produce was an American product in its design, although modeled after grenades already in use at the front. Its chief difference was in the firing mechanism, where improvements, or what were then thought to be improvements, had been installed to make it safer in the hands of the soldier than the grenades then in use at the front. This firing mechanism with its pivoted lever was, in fact, a radical departure from European practice. The body of this grenade was of malleable iron, and the grenade exploded with a force greater than that of any in use in France.
The remodeling of factories, the building of machines, and the manufacture of tools for this undertaking, pushed forward with determined speed, was completed in from 90 to 120 days, and by April almost all of the companies had reached the stage of quantity production.
And then, on May 9, 1918, came a cablegram from the American Expeditionary Forces that brought the entire effort to an abrupt halt. The officers of the American Expeditionary Forces in no uncertain terms condemned the American defensive grenade. The trouble was that in our anxiety to protect the American soldier we had designed a grenade that was too safe. The firing mechanism was too complicated. In the operation required to touch off the fuse five movements were necessary on the part of the soldier, and in this the psychology of a man in battle had not been taken sufficiently into consideration. The well-known story of the negro soldier who, in practice, threw his grenade too soon because he could feel it "swelling" in his hand, applies to most soldiers in battle. In using the new grenade the American soldier would not go through the operations required to fire its fuse. Cases came to light, too, showing that in the excitement of battle the American soldier forgot to release the safety device, thus giving the German an opportunity to hurl back the unexploded grenade.
As the result of this discovery all production was stopped in the United States and the ordnance engineers began redesigning the weapon. The incident meant that 15,000,000 rough castings of grenade bodies, 3,500,000 assembled but empty grenades and 1,000,000 loaded grenades had to be salvaged, and that on July 1, 1918, the production of live fragmentation grenades in this country was represented by the figure zero. Some of the machinery used in the production of the faulty grenades was useless and had to be replaced bynew, while the trained forces which had reached quantity production in April had to be disbanded or transferred to other work while the design was being changed.
By August 1 the new design had been developed on paper and much of the new machinery required had been produced and installed in the plants, which were ready to go ahead immediately with the production. It is a tribute to the patriotism of the manufacturers who lost time and money by this change that little complaint was heard from them by the Government.
In the production of hand grenades the most difficult element of manufacture and the item that might have held up the delivery of completed mechanisms was the Bouchon assembly. There was an abundant foundry capacity in the United States for the production of gray-iron castings for grenade bodies, and so this part of the program gave no anxiety. The Bouchon assembly threatened to be the choke point. In order to assure the success of defensive-grenade production, the Precision Castings Co. of Syracuse, N. Y., and the Doehler Die Castings Co. of Toledo, Ohio, and Brooklyn, N. Y., worked their plants 24 hours a day until they had built up a reserve of Bouchons and screw plugs and removed all anxiety from that source. The total production of Bouchons eventually reached the figure 64,600,000.
The first thought of the Ordnance Department was to produce grenades by the assembling and quantitative method; that is, by the production of parts in various plants and the assembling of those parts in other plants. But, due to delay in railway shipments and difficulties due to priorities, it was discovered that this method of manufacture, however adaptable it might be to other items in the ordnance program, was not a good thing in grenade production; and when the war ended the tendency was all in the direction of having the assembly contractors produce their own parts either by purchase from subcontractors or by manufacture in their own plants.
The orders for the redesigned grenades called for the construction of 44,000,000 of them. So rapidly had the manufacturers been able to reach quantity production this time that a daily rate of 250,000 to 300,000 was attained by November 11, 1918, and by December 6, less than a month after the fighting stopped, the factories had turned out 21,054,339 defensive grenades.
It should be remembered that the great effort in ordnance production in this country was directed toward the American offensive expected on a tremendous scale in the spring of 1919. Had the war continued the fragmentation grenade program, in spite of the delays encountered in its development, would have produced a sufficient quantity of these weapons.
Special consideration is due the following-named firms for their efforts in developing the production of defensive grenades:
The American offensive grenade was largely the production of the Single Service Package Corporation of New York, both in the development of its design and in its manufacture. The body of this grenade was built of laminated paper spirally wound and waterproofed by being dipped in paraffine. The top of this body was a die casting, into which the firing mechanism was screwed. Practically no changes were made in the design of this weapon from the time it was first produced, and the production record is an excellent one.
Our earliest thought was that we would need some 7,000,000 of these grenades and orders for that quantity of bodies were placed in January and March, 1918, with the Single Service Package Corporation. Then it became necessary to discover factories which could produce the metal caps. The orders for these were first placed with the Acme Die Castings Co. and the National Lead Casting Co. for 3,375,000 castings from each concern. But these companies failed to make satisfactory deliveries, and in May, 1918, a contract for 5,000,000 caps was let to the Doehler Die Castings Co. which reached quantity production in August. After that the Single Service Package Corporation, the chief contractor, forged ahead in its work and on November 11 was producing the bodies for offensive grenades at the rate of 55,000 to 60,000 daily. By December 6, 1918, the Government had accepted 6,179,321 completed bodies. The signing of the armistice brought to an end a project to build 17,599,000 additional grenades of this type.
The production of gas grenades offered some peculiar difficulties. We set out at first to produce 3,684,530 of them. By January, 1918, the engineers of the Ordnance Department had completed the plans and specifications for the American gas grenade, and on February 12, an order for 1,000,000 of them was placed with the Maxim Silencer Co., of Hartford, Conn.
The gas grenades were to be delivered at the filling plants complete except for the detonator thimbles, which seal both gas and phosphorus grenades and act as sockets for the firing mechanism. It was seen that the construction of these thimbles might be a choke point in the construction of grenades of both types, and orders were early placedfor them—1,500,000 to be delivered by the Maxim Silencer Co. and an equal quantity by the Bassic Co., of Bridgeport, Conn. On December 6, 1918, these concerns had produced 1,982,731 detonator thimbles.
The body of the gas grenade is built of two sheet-metal cups welded together to be gas-tight. Since, when we started out on this production, we did not know what kind of gas would be used or at what pressure it would be held within the grenade, we set the specifications to make grenade bodies to hold an air pressure of 200 pounds. The welding of the cups frequently failed to hold such pressure, so that the rejections of gas-grenade bodies under this test ran as high as 50 per cent. But in June, 1918, the gas for the grenades had been developed, and we were thereupon able to reduce the pressure of the standard test to 50 pounds. Under such a test the bodies readily passed inspection.
In September, 1918, we let additional contracts for gas grenades—500,000 to the Evinrude Motor Co., of Milwaukee; 500,000 to the John W. Brown Manufacturing Co., of Columbus, Ohio; and 400,000 to the Zenite Metal Co., of Indianapolis.
On November 11 gas grenade bodies were being produced at the rate of 22,000 per day, and the total production up to December 6 was 936,394.
The phosphorus grenade was similar to the gas grenade in construction. The plans and specifications for this weapon were ready in January, 1918. In February the following contracts were let: Metropolitan Engineering Co., Brooklyn, N. Y., 750,000; Evinrude Motor Co., Milwaukee, 750,000; Zenite Metal Co., Indianapolis, 500,000. On December 6, 1918, these concerns had delivered a total of 521,948 phosphorus grenade bodies.
The difficulties which had been experienced in the production of gas grenades were repeated in this project. The Evinrude Co. was especially quick in getting over the obstacles to quantity production. The Metropolitan Engineering Co. was already engaged with large orders for adapters and boosters in the heavy-gun ammunition manufacture for the Ordnance Department and found that the order for phosphorus grenades conflicted to a considerable extent with its previous war work. The matter was thrashed out in the Ordnance Department, which gave the priority in this plant to the adapters and boosters, with the result that this firm was able to make only a small contribution to the total production of phosphorus grenade bodies.
The development of thermit grenades was still in the experimental stage when the armistice was signed. There was no actual production in this country of grenades of this character. In October, however, the development of the grenade in design had reached a stagewhere we felt justified in letting a contract for 655,450 die-casting parts to the Doehler Die Castings Co., at its Toledo plant, and for an equal number of bodies with firing-mechanism assemblies to the Stewart-Warner Speedometer Corporation at Chicago.
The incendiary grenade not only did not get out of the development stage, but even a perfected model was regarded as of doubtful value by the officers of the American Expeditionary Forces. Nevertheless, the Chemical Warfare Service was of the opinion that such a grenade should be worked out, and an order for 81,000 had been given to the Celluloid Co., of Newark, N. J. Experimental work was progressing satisfactorily when the armistice was signed.
When the war ended, we were adapting to American manufacture a combination hand and rifle phosphorus grenade, borrowed from the English. The body of this grenade was built of terneplate and it had a removable stem, so that it could be thrown by hand or fired from the end of a service rifle. The American Can Co. built 1,000 of these to try out the design and strengthen the weak features.
In the construction of our rifle grenades there was another unfortunate experience due to a faulty design. The rifle grenade fits in a holder at the muzzle of an ordinary service rifle. When the rifle is fired the bullet passes through a hole in the middle of the grenade, and the gases of the discharge following the bullet throw the grenade approximately 200 yards. Any man within 75 yards of an exploding rifle grenade is likely to be wounded or killed. The rifle grenade is used both as a defensive and offensive weapon, since the firer is well out of range of the exploding missile.
In developing a rifle grenade for American manufacture our engineers adopted the French Viven-Bessiere type. The French service ammunition is larger than ours, and it was therefore necessary to design our grenade with a smaller hole. But in the anxiety to produce this weapon in the shortest time possible the models were not sufficiently tested, and no consideration was taken of the difference in design between a French bullet and an American bullet. The result was that the French grenade did not function well with our ammunition, due to the splitting of the Springfield bullet as it passed through the grenade. The result was that in May, 1918, several months after the manufacture of this grenade had been in progress, the entire undertaking was canceled pending the development of new designs; and 3,500,000 completed grenades had to be salvaged.
LEFT TO RIGHT—DEFENSIVE HAND GRENADE, OFFENSIVE HAND GRENADE, GAS HAND GRENADE, PHOSPHORUS HAND GRENADE.
LEFT TO RIGHT—DEFENSIVE HAND GRENADE, OFFENSIVE HAND GRENADE, GAS HAND GRENADE, PHOSPHORUS HAND GRENADE.
LEFT TO RIGHT—DEFENSIVE HAND GRENADE, OFFENSIVE HAND GRENADE, GAS HAND GRENADE, PHOSPHORUS HAND GRENADE.
THROWING A HAND GRENADE. FIRST OPERATION: WITHDRAWING THE COTTER PIN.
THROWING A HAND GRENADE. FIRST OPERATION: WITHDRAWING THE COTTER PIN.
THROWING A HAND GRENADE. FIRST OPERATION: WITHDRAWING THE COTTER PIN.
THROWING A HAND GRENADE. SECOND OPERATION: RELEASING THE GRENADE AND FIRING LEVER.
THROWING A HAND GRENADE. SECOND OPERATION: RELEASING THE GRENADE AND FIRING LEVER.
THROWING A HAND GRENADE. SECOND OPERATION: RELEASING THE GRENADE AND FIRING LEVER.
V. B. RIFLE GRENADE, LIVE, MARK 1.
V. B. RIFLE GRENADE, LIVE, MARK 1.
V. B. RIFLE GRENADE, LIVE, MARK 1.
V. B. RIFLE GRENADE, MARK 1, AND DISCHARGER.
V. B. RIFLE GRENADE, MARK 1, AND DISCHARGER.
V. B. RIFLE GRENADE, MARK 1, AND DISCHARGER.
6-INCH TRENCH MORTAR SHELL.
6-INCH TRENCH MORTAR SHELL.
6-INCH TRENCH MORTAR SHELL.
The original contract for rifle grenades had been let to the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Co. of Pittsburgh. This called for the production of all parts by the Westinghouse Co. and the assembling of them in the Westinghouse plant to the number of 5,000,000 grenades. But there was such a diversity of material employed in the manufacture of rifle grenades that succeeding contracts were let for parts and for assembling separately.
After the rifle grenade had been redesigned new contracts were let for a total of 30,115,409 of them. In August, a few weeks later, the daily production of these grenades in the various plants had reached a total of 130,000 and by the end of October the daily production was 250,000. The goal toward which this production was aiming was the expected spring offensive of the American Expeditionary Forces in 1919. We should have met this event adequately because, while only 685,200 American rifle grenades had actually been shipped overseas when the fighting ceased, we had 20,000,000 of them ready for loading at that time and the production was already heavy and constantly increasing.
Special consideration is due the following-named firms for their efforts in developing the production of rifle grenades:
America entered the war nearly two years after the Germans had made their first gas attack. In those intervening months gas warfare had grown to be a science in itself, requiring special organizations with each army to handle it.
The employment of toxic gas had developed along several lines. The original attack by the Germans upon the mask-less Canadians at Ypres had been in the form of a gas cloud from projectors, these latter being pressure tanks with nozzle outlets. For some time the Germans continued the use of gas solely by this method. Retaliation on the part of the allies quickly followed. However, the employment of gas cloud attacks involved great labor of preparation and wasabsolutely dependent upon certain combinations of weather conditions. In consequence, the launching of a gas attack in this form could not be timed with regard to other tactical operations. Therefore the allies were put to the necessity of developing other means of throwing toxic gases, and this they did by inclosing the gas in shell shot from the big guns of the artillery, in grenades thrown by hand from the trenches, and—most effectively of all—by the agency of an ingenious invention of the British known as the Livens projector.
The Livens projector was deadly in its effect, since it could throw suddenly and in great quantity gas bombs, or drums, into the enemy's ranks. It is notable that although the British used this device with great success throughout much of the latter period of the war, and though the French and Americans also adopted it and used it freely, the Germans were never able to discover what the device was that threw such havoc into their ranks, nor were they ever able to produce anything that was similar to it. The Livens projector remained a deep secret until the close of hostilities, and the Government offices in Washington, where the design was adapted to American manufacture, and the American plants producing the parts, were always closely guarded against enemy espionage.
Without going into details of the construction of the Livens projector it may be said that it was usually fired by electricity in sets of 25 or multiples thereof. The drums, which were cylindrical shell about 24 inches long and 8 inches in diameter, were ejected from long steel tubes, or barrels, buried in the ground resting against pressed-steel base plates. At the throwing of an electric switch a veritable rain of these big shell, as many as 2,500 of them sometimes, with their lethal contents, would come hurtling down upon the enemy. The Livens projectors could throw their gas drums nearly a mile.
The projector was entirely a new type of munition for our manufacturers to handle. The Trench Warfare Section of the Ordnance Department took up the matter late in 1917 and by May, 1918, had designed the weapon for home manufacture. Early in June the contracts were allotted for barrels and gas drums, or shell. The production of barrels was exclusively in the hands of the National Tube Co., of Pittsburgh, Pa., and the Harrisburg Pipe & Pipe-Bending Co., of Harrisburg, Pa. These companies reached the production stage in August, 1918, and completed about 63,000 barrels before the armistice was signed. Their respective plants reached a daily production rate of approximately 600 barrels per day.
Somewhat later in the spring of 1918 the contracts for base plates, on which the barrels rest when ready for firing, muzzle covers, and for various other accessories were closed. Over 100,000 base plates were produced by the Gier Pressed Steel Co., of Lansing, Mich., and the American Pulley Co., of Philadelphia, Pa. The Perkins-Campbell Co., of Philadelphia, built the muzzle covers, 66,180 of them. Cartridge cases were manufactured by Art Metal (Inc.), of Newark, N. J., and the Russakov Can Co., of Chicago, the former producing 288,838 and the latter 47,511.
EIGHT-INCH LIVENS PROJECTOR, MARK II, WITH POWDER CHARGE AND SHELL.Vertical cross section as laid in the ground ready for firing at 45° elevation.
EIGHT-INCH LIVENS PROJECTOR, MARK II, WITH POWDER CHARGE AND SHELL.Vertical cross section as laid in the ground ready for firing at 45° elevation.
EIGHT-INCH LIVENS PROJECTOR, MARK II, WITH POWDER CHARGE AND SHELL.
Vertical cross section as laid in the ground ready for firing at 45° elevation.
EFFECTS OF LIVENS PROJECTOR SHELL.
EFFECTS OF LIVENS PROJECTOR SHELL.
EFFECTS OF LIVENS PROJECTOR SHELL.
The Ensign-Bickford Co., of Simsbury, Conn., produced 334,300 fuses for Livens shell; the Artillery Fuse Co., of Wilmington, Del., assembled 26,000 firing mechanisms; the E. I. du Pont Co., at its Pompton Lakes (N. J.) plant, manufactured 20,000 detonators, and 487,350 detonators were produced by the Aetna Explosives Co., at Port Ewan, N. Y.; while the American Can Co., at Lowell, Mass., assembled 256,231 firing mechanisms.
Shear wire pistols were used in the operation of the Livens projector. The Edison Phonograph Co., of Orange, N. J., produced 181,900 of these, and the Artillery Fuse Co., of Wilmington, Del., 11,747. The adapters and boosters of the shell were all built by the John Thompson Press, of New York. The Waterbury Brass Goods Co., of Waterbury, Conn., made the fuse casing. Adapters and boosters to the number of 334,500 were turned out by the former, and 299,900 fuse casings by the latter.
The manufacture of gas drums for the projectors was delayed for some time because of difficulties in welding certain parts of the drums. Acetylene and arc welding processes were tried out, and a good many shell were made by such welding; but the lack of expert welders for these processes, and the rejections of shell due to leakage in the welded joints, caused the manufacturer to turn to fire welding, the process for which had been developed by the Air-tight Steel Tank Co., of Pittsburgh, Pa. At the time the armistice was signed the welding problem had been overcome and the production was going forward at a rate to meet the requirements of the expected fighting in the spring of 1919. The shell delivered were produced as follows:
By the Federal Pressed Steel Co., of Milwaukee, Wis., 5,609; by the Pressed Steel Tank Co., also of Milwaukee, 20,536; by the Air-tight Steel Tank Co., of Pittsburgh, Pa., 600; by the National Tube Co., of Pittsburgh, 27,098; by the Truscon Steel Co., of Youngstown, Ohio, 19,880. The entire Livens shell program, as it existed in November, 1918, called for the production of 334,000 shell.
The production of trench mortars was not only an important part of our ordnance program but it was an undertaking absolutely new to American experience. Not only did we have to produce mortars, but we had to supply them with shell in great quantities, this latter in itself an enterprise of no mean proportions.
Some seven different types of mortars were in use when we came into the war. Our ordnance program contemplated the manufacture of all seven of them, but we actually succeeded in bringing only four types into production. These four were the British Newton-Stokes mortars of the 3-inch, 4-inch, and 6-inch calibers, and the French 240-millimeter mortar, which had also been adopted by the British. As usual in the adoption of foreign devices, we had to redesign these weapons to make them adaptable to American shop methods. We encountered much difficulty throughout the whole job, largely because of insufficient information furnished from abroad, and because in spite of this handicap we had to produce mortars and ammunition that would be interchangeable with French and British munitions stocks.
The first one of these weapons which we took up for production here was the 3-inch Newton-Stokes. The first contract for the manufacture of mortars of this size was placed with the Crane Co., of Chicago, on November 8, 1917, for 1,830 mortars. This concern at once arranged with the Ohio Seamless Tube Co., of Shelby, Ohio, for the drawing of steel tubes for the mortar barrels. This latter concern, however, was already handling large contracts for the Navy and for the aircraft program, and these operations took priority over the mortar contracts. But the Crane Co. took advantage of the interim to build the accessories for the weapons—the tripods, clinometers, base plates, and tool boxes. In the spring of 1918 the company received the first barrel tubes and began producing completed weapons. But when these mortars were sent to the proving ground the test-firing deformed the barrels and broke the metal bases. Finally it was decided that the propelling explosive used was not a suitable one for the purpose. Another was substituted. The new propellant permitted as great a range of fire without damage to the mortar in firing.
The Crane Co. was eventually able to reach a production of 33 of the 3-inch mortars a day, and up to December 5, 1918, it had built 1,803 completed weapons, together with the necessary tools and spare parts. In the early fall of 1918 an additional contract for 677 of these mortars was placed with the Crane Co. and another for 2,000 mortars of this size with the International Harvester Co., of Chicago. Neither of these two latter contracts ever came to the production stage.
A few days after the original contract for 3-inch mortars was let the Trench Warfare Section took up the matter of producing ammunition for these weapons. Two sorts of shell were to be required—live shell filled with high explosive and practice shell made of malleable iron. The original program adopted in November, 1917, called for the production of 5,342,000 live shell for the 3-inch mortars and 1,500,000 practice shell.
3-INCH STOKES TRENCH MORTAR.
3-INCH STOKES TRENCH MORTAR.
3-INCH STOKES TRENCH MORTAR.
4-INCH STOKES TRENCH MORTAR AND AMMUNITION.
4-INCH STOKES TRENCH MORTAR AND AMMUNITION.
4-INCH STOKES TRENCH MORTAR AND AMMUNITION.
6-INCH SUTTON TRENCH MORTAR.
6-INCH SUTTON TRENCH MORTAR.
6-INCH SUTTON TRENCH MORTAR.
11-INCH SUTTON TRENCH MORTAR.
11-INCH SUTTON TRENCH MORTAR.
11-INCH SUTTON TRENCH MORTAR.
The plan was adopted of building these shell of lap-welded, 3-inch steel tubing, cut into proper lengths. The contracts for the finished machined and assembled shell were placed with the General Motors Corporation at its Saginaw (Mich.) plant, with H. C. Dodge (Inc.), at South Boston, Mass., and with the Metropolitan Engineering Co., of Brooklyn, N. Y. In order to facilitate production, the Government agreed to furnish the steel tubing. For this purpose it ordered from the National Tube Co., of Pittsburgh, Pa., 1,618,929 pieces of steel tubing, each 11 inches in length, and from the Allegheny Steel Co., at Brakenridge, Pa., 2,332,319 running feet of tubing. These tube contracts were filled by the early spring of 1918.
The railroad congestion of February and March, 1918, held up the delivery of tubing, but the assembly plants utilized the time in tooling up for the future production. All the plants thereafter soon reached a quantity production, the General Motors Corporation in particular tuning up its shop system until it was able to reach a maximum daily production in a 10-hour shift of 35,618 completed shell.
The casting of malleable iron bodies for the practice shell of this caliber was turned over to the Erie Malleable Iron Co., of Erie, Pa., and to the National Malleable Castings Co., with plants at Cleveland, Chicago, Indianapolis, and Toledo. The former concern cast 196,673 bodies and the latter 1,015,005. The Gorham Manufacturing Co., of Providence, R. I.; the Standard Parts Co., of Cleveland, Ohio; and the New Process Gear Corporation, of Syracuse, N. Y., machined and assembled the practice shell. When the armistice was declared, these three contracts were approximately seven-tenths complete.
We were dissatisfied with our 3-inch shell, for the reason that they tumbled in air and were visible to the eye. The French had developed a mortar shell on the streamline principle which was invisible in flight and had twice the range of ours. Had the war continued the Trench Warfare Section would have produced streamline shell for mortars.
The second mortar project undertaken was the manufacture of the 240-millimeter weapon. This was the largest mortar which we produced, its barrel having a diameter of approximately 10 inches. It proved to be one of the toughest nuts to crack in the whole mortar undertaking. The British designs of this French weapon we found to be quite unsuited to our factory methods, and for the sake of expediency we frequently modified them in the course of the development. The total contracts called for the production of 938 mortars.
It was obvious that the manufacture of this and of other larger mortars would fall into three phases. The forging of barrels, breechblocks, and breech slides was a separate type of work, and we allotted the contracts for this work to the Standard Forging Co., of Indiana Harbor, Ind. The machining of these parts to the finedimensions required by the design was an entirely separate phase of manufacturing, and we placed this work with the American Laundry Machine Co., of Cincinnati. Still a third class of work was that of assembling the completed mortars, and this contract went to the David Lupton Sons Co., of Philadelphia, who also engaged to manufacture the metal and timber bases and firing mechanisms. These big mortars had to have mobile mountings, and the contract for the mortar carts we placed with the International Harvester Co., of Chicago. These contracts were signed in December, 1917.
The Lupton plant had difficulty in securing the heavy machinery it needed for this and for other mortar contracts, its machinery being held up by the freight congestion. Early in 1918 the American Expeditionary Forces advised us to redesign the 240-millimeter mortar to give it a stronger barrel. Consequently all work was stopped until this could be done. The first mortars of the new design to be tested were still unsatisfactory with respect to the strength of the barrels; and as a consequence the Standard Forging Co. urged that nickel steel be substituted for basic open-hearth steel as the material for the barrels. This change proved to be justified.
There was also trouble at the shops of the American Laundry Machine Co., its equipment not having the precision to do machining of the type required in these weapons. Accordingly a new machining contract was made with the Symington-Anderson Co., of Rochester, N. Y., which concern was eventually able to reach a production of 20 machined barrels per week.
In all we produced 24 of the 240-millimeter mortars in this country. Certain of the parts were manufactured up to the total requirements of the contracts, but others were not built in such numbers. The International Harvester Co. built all 999 carts ordered.
The production of shell for these big mortars was another difficult undertaking. After consultation with manufacturers we designed shell of two different types. One of these was a shell of pressed plates welded together longitudinally; and a contract for the production of 283,096 of these was placed with the Metropolitan Engineering Co. The other form was that of two steel hemispheres welded together. The Michigan Stamping Co., of Detroit, undertook to build 50,000 of these.
These shell contracts were placed in December, 1917. The Michigan Stamping Co. had to wait five months before it could secure and install its complete equipment of machinery. It was September before all of the difficulties in the Detroit plant's project could be overcome and quantity production could be started. The concern eventually, before and after the signing of the armistice, built 9,185 shell of this type at a maximum rate of 56 per day.
Greater promise seemed to be held forth by the Metropolitan Engineering Co.'s project to build shell of pressed-out plates, electrically welded. The Government undertook to furnish the steel plates for this work and secured from the American Rolling Mills Co., of Middletown, Ohio, a total production of 6,757 tons of them. The Metropolitan Engineering Co. had great difficulty in perfecting a proper welding process; and the concern lost a great deal of money on the contract, yet cheerfully continued its development without prospect of recompense in order that we might have in this country the knowledge of how to build such shell. In all, including production after the armistice was signed, the Metropolitan Engineering Co. built 136,189 shell bodies of this size at a maximum rate of 987 per day.
During the summer of 1918 a single-piece shell body of the 240-millimeter size, produced by a deep-drawing process, was worked out. A contract for 125,000 of them was given to the Ireland & Matthews Manufacturing Co., of Detroit, Mich. The armistice brought this contract to an end before it had produced any shell of this new and most promising type.
Early in 1918 we received the first samples of the 6-inch trench mortar. By April all the plans were ready for American production. Again this work was divided by types. The National Tube Co., of Pittsburgh, contracted to build 510 rough forgings of mortar barrels at its Christy Park plant. The Symington-Anderson Co. undertook to machine these barrels. The David Lupton Sons Co. agreed to assemble the mortars, as well as to produce the metal and timber bases for them.
The first machined barrels reached the Lupton plant in June and found bases ready for them. But, as the assembling was in progress, the American Expeditionary Forces cabled that the British producers of mortars had changed their designs, and that we must suspend our manufacture until we also could adopt the changes. The altered plans reached us some weeks later; yet, nevertheless, we were able to make good our original promise to deliver 48 of the 6-inch Newton-Stokes mortars at the port of embarkation in October, 1918.
Meanwhile we had increased the contracts by an additional requirement of 1,577 mortars of this size. The National Tube Co. eventually reached a maximum daily production of 60 barrel forgings. The Symington-Anderson Co. machined the barrels finally at a 33-per-day clip. As many as 11 proof-fired guns per day came from the David Lupton Sons Co.
An interesting fact in connection with the production of shell for the 6-inch mortars is that they were built principally by American makers of stoves. The 6-inch mortar-shell bodies were of cast iron instead of steel, and thus were adaptable to manufacture in stove works. Each shell weighed 40 pounds without its explosive charge. Such shell were used at the front for heavy demolition purposes.
The contracts for these shell were placed in March, 1918. The Trench Warfare Section was immediately called upon to secure favorable priority for the pig iron required for this purpose. The various stove works did not have the necessary machinery for building these shell, and so a special equipment in each case had to be built. At the tests the first castings which came through the foundry were found to leak, and this required further experiments in the design, holding up production until July, 1918.
Because of the many troubles encountered in this work the various stove makers in the summer of 1918 formed an association which they called the Six-inch Trench-mortar Shell Manufacturers' Association. This association held monthly meetings and its members visited the various plants where shell castings were being made. The United States Radiator Corporation, the Foster-Merriam Co., and the Michigan Stove Co., were especially active in improving methods for making these shell.
The various concerns producing 6-inch mortar shell and the amounts turned out were as follows:
The following concerns shortly before the armistice was signed received contracts for the production of 6-inch mortar shell, orders ranging in quantity from 50,000 to 150,000, but none of these concerns started production:
It was not until July, 1918, that the plans were ready for the 4-inch Newton-Stokes trench mortars. The American Expeditionary Forces estimated that they would require 480 of these weapons. A total of 500 drawn barrel tubes was ordered from the Ohio Seamless Tube Co., of Shelby, Ohio. This concern was able to ship one-fifth of its order within 10 days after receiving it. The barrels were sent to the Rock Island Arsenal for machining. The Crane Co., of Chicago, held the contract for building the bases, tripods, spare parts, and tools, and also for the assembling of the completed mortars. This factory was already equipped with tools for this work, since it had been building similar parts for 3-inch mortars. Consequently, the Crane Co., in August, almost within a month of receiving its contract, was producing completed 4-inch mortars and sending them to the Rock Island Arsenal for proof firing. The Ohio Seamless Tube Co. reached a high daily production of 83 barrel forgings per day; the Rock Island Arsenal, 10 machined barrels per day; and the Crane Co., 19 assembled mortars per day.