CHAPTER IVCREATING A MUNITIONS INDUSTRY
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. And it had not even the facilities with which to make most of them. The few existing plants had to be enlarged, new ones erected, and even the tools for the making of some of the munitions had to be manufactured before work could begin upon the arms themselves. For many years the whole nation had set its face against increase in the army or in the providing of supplies for it in excess of peace time needs. The commercial manufacture of munitions was repugnant to the spirit of American industry, which had never engaged in it to more than a very slight extent. The making of ordnance is a highly specialized form of manufacturing industry and when we entered the war there were in the United States only two large private concerns and six Governmentarsenals which were versed in its special processes. In the Ordnance Division of the War Department there were only 97 commissioned officers whose training had given them the knowledge necessary to supervise and direct ordnance manufacture.
Conference with our co-belligerents resulted in a scheme of coöperation in the making of munitions which pooled the resources of all the associated nations in raw materials, manufacturing facilities, labor and finished products in order to make more rapid the production by each and all of them of all death-dealing weapons.
America laid out at once a great and thorough-going munitions program and the War Department plunged into it and speeded it at a furious pace. New designs were made and tested, new plants constructed and a big organization for the carrying on of the work was built up so rapidly that office forces doubled and trebled in a few weeks and sometimes even within a few days. In the Ordnance Division the officers’ personnel increased within a year from 225 to 4,600 and the enlisted from a little more than 800 to 47,500. Scores of technical, scientific, professional and business men left their private affairs and joined the working forces of the War Department to aid in rushing its munitions program. Upward of 16,000 contracts were quickly placed that required the working up into missiles of death of thousands of tons of raw material by hundreds of thousands of workmen. When the armistice was signed there were in the United States nearly 8,000 manufacturing plants employing 4,000,000 persons engaged in the making of ordnance. Manufacturing concerns of every imaginable sort converted their plants to the production ofthe direct materials of warfare for the use of our fighting men.
A corset factory was using its plant for the making of grenade belts. A manufacturer of machinery for popping corn was turning out hand grenades instead. A fireworks establishment was making bombs. A typewriter company was furnishing signal pistols. A big radiator works was an important producer of shells. Artillery carriages were being made by a boiler company, a steam shovel company, and an elevator company. These carriages are very complex, each one consisting of from three to six thousand pieces, exclusive of rivets. So many were needed that, notwithstanding all the help from private industry, in order to insure the necessary quantity production the government built for their manufacture twenty-six plants, all of which were in operation in August, 1918. The intricate and delicate recoil mechanism which sewing machine and other companies began early to furnish was also made in these immense factories. In one industrial district alone, that of Pittsburg, not less than 2,000 industrial concerns were busy in September, 1918, on munitions work. They were employing nearly 200,000 men, with a pay roll of $2,000,000 a day, and their war contracts exceeded in value $2,500,000,000. In that month this district mobilized for coöperation to fill an order for prompt delivery of 33,000,000 semi-steel shells. Shell steel was then being produced at the rate of 500,000 tons per month.
Sixteen new plants for the forging and machining of cannon were built by the Government at a cost of $35,000,000. Two siege gun plants and twenty-six plants for the making of gun carriages and recoilmechanism were completed at a cost, altogether, of $65,000,000. One of the plants for the making of cannon, of which the construction is typical of all, was wholly brought into being after our entrance into the war. Ground for the factory was broken in July, 1917, and in nine months from that date the first completed gun was ready for shipment. The decision early in our participation in the war that our artillery equipment should conform in general to the standard calibers of our war associates made it necessary to alter our existing facilities and create new ones, but the coöperation it made possible resulted, in the end, in a more rapid equipment of our Expeditionary Forces although it delayed somewhat the beginning of our production.
Ordinarily it takes a considerable time to manufacture artillery, big guns requiring two years and lighter ones from six to ten months. We had to create new plants, new tools, new processes. But at the end of the war we had done all this and had produced 5,000 trench guns, 4,900 light and medium guns, 695 heavy guns and 19 railway guns and mounts—more than 10,000 complete artillery units, and a total of 30,880 units had been contracted for. Many gun forgings and completed guns had been sent to England and France and many spare parts had been supplied to our own Expeditionary Forces. At the signing of the armistice an output of about 500 guns a month had been reached. Among them were 155 mm. howitzers, of which we had reached a sufficient production to exceed our own needs and 600 had been sold to France. There were also 7-inch, 14-inch and 16-inch guns, mortars and howitzers mounted on railway carriages that could be moved quickly from placeto place. A 75 mm. field gun and an 8-inch howitzer, each self-propelling and mounted on a caterpillar tractor that could climb hills and knock down trees, were ready to be sent overseas and were the advance couriers of a quantity production in these types that was already beginning. Several kinds of caterpillar tractors of from two to ten tons were designed, produced and put to the service of the artillery.
Machine guns became of more and more importance as the war progressed and by the time of the entrance of the United States the demand for them was urgent and prodigious. Their manufacture in the United States was delayed somewhat for the completing and testing of the Browning machine gun, in order to secure a standard gun superior to the older types which could be produced in quantity, and the working out of plans for its manufacture. It soon proved its superiority in the speed and surety with which it works so triumphantly that both the French and British governments asked for whatever surplus over its own needs the United States could give them. The tools for the making of the guns had first to be produced and work that would ordinarily have taken a year was rushed through in half the time. But within a year quantity production of guns had been reached. Of machine guns and automatic rifles we produced during nineteen months a total of 181,662, and during the months immediately preceding the armistice we had reached a monthly production rate more than twice that of France and nearly three times that of England. The production of heavy Brownings began in March, 1918, and by the end of the following October there had been made of these 39,500 and of light Brownings 47,000.
When we entered the war we had only two plants capable of making our own rifles, which were of a different caliber from those of any other nation. One of those factories had been shut down and dismantled and the other, which had been making rifles continuously for the United States for over a hundred years, was producing only twelve hundred rifles per month. The appropriation by Congress for the preceding fiscal year had been for rifles and pistols combined only $250,000. The work was immediately begun of adapting the British Enfield rifle, which was rechambered for our cartridges because they are more powerful than the British and do not jam. But manufacture of this Modified Enfield, Model 1917, was started during the summer of 1917 and over 2,000,000 of them had been produced by the end of October, 1918. During the same time Springfields, which are still used for certain purposes, to the number of 844,000, had also been manufactured, and the Springfield Armory was then producing more rifles in a day than it had formerly made in a month.
To the making of the Modified Enfield rifle go 84 parts and a total of 164 pieces. These parts were all standardized so that any of those made in either of the three large plants that manufactured this rifle could be used in any other. This made possible the rapid rate at which they were turned out. Rigorous tests for each part and close inspection of every process, together with the enthusiastic interest of the employees, made the number of rejected rifles negligible. The employees of one concern, of their own inspiration and desire, adopted the slogan of “one million rifles for 1918” after they had subscribed $1,000,000 to the third Liberty Loan. This plant,which had under roof more than thirty-three acres, was built in 1915 to manufacture rifles for the British Government, but soon after our entrance into the war signed a contract with the United States. It speeded production so rapidly that by mid-summer of 1918 it was two months in advance of its expected production.
Automatic pistols proved of so much value at the front that General Pershing, as soon as the American troops had got well into the fighting, asked for the supply to be quadrupled and at once numerous private plants began to manufacture them. One firm that had been steadily turning out automatics at the rate of 1,500 per day prepared to double its capacity when the front line needs were made known. Of these and revolvers there had been sent to the front 600,000 up to the end of September, 1918. Of small arms ammunition, including that for machine guns, rifles, pistols and revolvers, American factories produced a total of about three billion rounds. Monthly production had reached a rate of 289,000,000 rounds. The armor piercing, tracer and incendiary bullets used in the Aircraft Service and in anti-aircraft defense were developments of the war and had to be designed for our own guns and to have special facilities for their production.
For the loading of shells four huge government plants were constructed with a combined loading capacity of more than 5,000,000 shells per month. They were larger than any similar plants in the world. One of them covered nearly 3,000 acres and was built and put into operation, from the breaking of the ground, in a little more than six months. For the housing of its employees a town was brought intoexistence, within that time, with heating, lighting and power plants, police and fire departments, cottages for families, dormitories with hot and cold shower baths for single men, club-houses, a theater, restaurants, a baseball field and tennis courts. Of high explosive shells of all sizes there had been made, at the end of September, 1918, 2,500,000; of low explosive shells, 3,100,000; of shrapnel, 5,800,000; and of grenades of all types 11,870,000. One grenade factory had established a pace of a million per month.
The tank, which was the answer to the machine gun, was one of the important new weapons evolved by the war, its basic idea having been suggested by the American farm caterpillar tractor, from which a British engineer worked out the formidable engine of battle which it became. Early in our participation the American Government began arrangements for a considerable tank production and experiments and investigations were started to better the design of those in use in the Allied armies. A Tank Corps was formed to have charge of the recruiting and training of the personnel, which numbered thousands of well trained men, but design and production remained in the hands of the Ordnance Department. The United States adopted two types, one the smaller form used by the French Army, of which 4,000 were being made, and the other a modification and improvement of the large tank used by the British, with whom a joint program of tank construction was being carried out when the armistice was signed. Liberty motors furnished motive power, which gave a speed of eleven miles per hour, and each carried a crew of eleven men, two six-inch guns and several machine guns. Some were equipped with wireless.
This huge tank, finished examples of which had been tested and approved, was forty feet long and could climb steep hills, cross trenches and smash down large trees. It would have been taken across the ocean by hundreds during the winter and great companies of them would have plunged into the enemy’s lines with the resumption of fighting in the spring of 1919. The component parts of a goodly number had already been made in the United States and sent to England for assembly.
A considerable part of the needs of our co-belligerents for propellants and explosives was being met in the United States when we entered the war and it was necessary that we provide our own supplies without interfering with this production for them. In all, four nitrate plants were constructed or started, and work upon them was rushed as fast as the supply of labor and materials made possible, while extensions and additions were made to existing facilities. Many scientists and technologists constantly carried on experimental and research work upon processes for the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen and other problems connected with the supply of nitrates, and always with the aim in view of developing methods that would have economic as well as military value. The results were such as to make the nation for the first time in its history independent of any foreign country for the charge in the guns of its soldiers and also to bring much nearer the day when the United States would be independent of the nitrate deposits in foreign lands for its commercial and agricultural needs. The toluol for the manufacture of nearly all of the TNT used in loading high explosive shells was recovered as a by-product in the manufacture ofilluminating gas. At the works of twenty-eight gas companies in different parts of the country plants were constructed, placed in the charge of experts and skilled workers and kept under the closest and most vigilant guard for the recovery of this important product, of which hundreds of thousands of gallons were necessary. As a result of the measures taken and rushed through, the supply of propellant and explosive material needed by our war associates was not interfered with and the loading of American ammunition was not delayed.
The hideousness of war was immeasurably increased during the world conflict by the new uses that were made of chemical science. When these new applications of the death-dealing possibilities of chemistry were first made by the German army the civilized world drew back, horrified and appalled. But when a barbarous foe makes savage use of science those who are fighting him must, in sheer self-defense, meet him with similar weapons. Therefore, when America became a belligerent, averse as all her people were to the use of such weapons, regard for the safety of her troops at the front made it necessary to prepare for this peculiarly hideous and detestable form of war. As with other munitions, the industry to produce the implements of chemical warfare had first to be created. The Government built great plants and the immediate need stimulated scientific investigation, with results that were like a tale of magic, so rapidly did these and contributory chemical industries grow.
The American Government did not overcome its reluctance to use toxic gases until we had gone forward several months in war preparations, when it wasfound, just as the English and the French had found, that it would have to be done. It was November, 1917, when ground was broken on a Maryland riverside farm for a huge plant that would produce overwhelming quantities of chlorine, phosgene and mustard gas. When the armistice was signed a year later the three hundred acres were covered with vats and kilns, refrigerators, boilers, steel towers, chimneys, pipe lines, railways, and all the other means for carrying on the most deadly manufacturing processes known to man. For much of the machinery needed there were no existing models and many important parts of the immense plant were designed while it was being built. Experts from the French and British gas factories who came to assist in this development saw it rapidly evolve beyond their own knowledge and stayed to learn rather than to teach. Subsidiary plants were built also, and, altogether, American poison gas factories had a total production, during the last weeks of the war, of an average of two hundred tons per day. The British production, speeded to its highest possible point, was never more than thirty tons per day, the French was much less and the German is supposed to have been between thirty and fifty tons per day. Airplanes had been made and successfully tested for the dropping upon German fortified places, such as Metz and Coblenz, of containers holding a ton each of mustard gas with time fuses fitted for explosion a few hundred feet above the forts. Heavier than air, the gas from each container, settling to earth, would not have left a living thing, human or animal, upon, above or under the ground, within or outside of buildings, on a space the size of a large city block.
A new poison gas was developed, far more deadly than any previously in use, and its manufacture carried on with the greatest secrecy. At the end of the war ten tons a day were being produced and it was estimated that a single ton dropped in bombs and containers upon a city of a million inhabitants would have killed them all. Three thousand tons of it were to be ready in the battle zone by March 1, 1919.
Knowledge of these preparations and surety of what would, therefore, happen in the early spring of 1919 are believed by military authorities to have been an important factor in the sudden collapse of the German military plans.
Gas was employed in offensive operations in many and varied ways and these and defensive measures were so important that the necessity for a new division of military activities resulted in the organization of the Chemical Warfare Service in the summer of 1918. Five months old at the end of hostilities, the Service then contained 1,600 commissioned officers and 18,000 men. Defensive measures also had been rushed steadily forward, investigation and experiment had produced a better and more comfortable gas mask than was in use and a big Government gas defense plant had been built, equipped and started upon production with skilled workers. The monthly production of gas masks in the autumn of 1918, of which this plant made the major part, had reached 925,000. The total production for the year and a half was over 5,000,000, with 3,000,000 extra canisters, 500,000 horse masks and large quantities of ointments, antidotes and suits for protection against enemy mustard gas. The American gas mask was recognizedby all the war associates as the best on the Western front.
In the Chemical Warfare Service at the end of hostilities were 1,700 chemists from civil life who had worked steadily to aid in its rapid and efficient development. Under the furious goad of war the Service succeeded in reducing the cost of phosgene gas from $1.50 to 15 cents per pound and therefore increasing very greatly its usefulness in various industries, especially that of dyestuffs. The record of development and production in chemistry is one of the fairly amazing war achievements of this country and is replete with possibilities for the peaceful uses of industry.
When America entered the war, problems and needs rose up at every hand, like dragons springing from the ground, and all of them, in all their number and complexity and variety, had to be met and conquered at the same time. None of them was more difficult than this problem of the creation of a munitions industry, for it demanded a highly specialized manufacturing equipment of enormous capacity and great variety which we did not have, concerning which we had in the past known but little and for which we had always had slight regard. We possessed for it neither the plants, the skilled labor nor the experience. New industrial organizations had to be created and financed, plants had to be built, all the complicated and varied weapons of modern scientific warfare had to be designed and manufactured, and so also did many of the great number and variety of the tools with which they would be made. Not only had mechanics to be trained for much of this skill exacting work, but the enormous expansion in the OrdnanceDepartment made necessary rapid development of knowledge and skill among the big proportion of its new members. There is nothing more interesting in the detailed story of the munitioning of our army than the frequency with which one comes upon the statement that “a school was established” for the training of personnel in this, or that, or another phase of ordnance duties.
The bare figures of the cost of all this enormous creation and expansion, made many times greater by the necessity of haste at whatever cost, give a vague sort of measuring stick of the energy and the grim purpose that went into the providing of munitions for our army. In a year and a half of war the amount of money expended or obligated for ordnance totaled $13,000,000,000—thirteen times what it cost to run the entire government for a year in the years just before the war.