Chapter 10: Peacetime Preparation for Supply
After the CWS developed such items as gas masks, incendiaries, flame throwers, and smokes for the armed forces, it turned to the difficult job of trying to procure them. During World War II the relationship between development and procurement was very obvious, for then the manufacturer was constantly presented with changes in drawings and specifications by those responsible for developing and engineering the item. But even before the war the relationship, though not so clearly apparent, was nevertheless maintained.
The unfortunate experience of World War I when the nation was called on to produce a number of munitions for which there were no detailed specifications led Congress, in the National Defense Act of 1920, to provide against another such contingency. A provision of the act was that the Assistant Secretary of War would be responsible not only for current procurement for the Army but also for peacetime industrial mobilization planning.1 In the fall of 1921 the Assistant Secretary set up in his office a Procurement Division, made up of a current procurement branch and a planning branch. This division supervised the purchase, storage, distribution, and procurement planning activities of the eight supply arms and services, of which the Chemical Warfare Service was one.2 In an effort to further strengthen the industrial mobilization program an
Army and Navy Munitions Board was established in 1922 and an Army Industrial College in 1924.3
Among the duties of the Assistant Secretary of War was the approval of “shopping lists” for the various supply arms and services. On 9 December 1921 the Assistant Secretary approved such a list for the CWS. Included were toxic agents, smoke materials, cloud gas materials, and chemical engineering equipment.4 Several reviews of the “List of Supplies to be Procured by the Chemical Warfare Service” were made in the various categories in the 1920s and 1930s, but no substantial changes were effected.5 The Army supply list served a double purpose—it was a partial list of materials required by CWS for manufacture of its requirements and it was also the authorized procurement list of CWS for procurement planning purposes.6
The surplus items of World War I served as the basis of a reserve for an emergency in the postwar years. In the fall of 1921 the chiefs of the technical services were directed to draw up plans for retaining supplies and equipment to meet (1) war needs, (2) the requirements of the defense projects of the insular possessions and the Panama Canal Zone, and (3) the peacetime requirements of the Regular Army, the National Guard, and the Organized Reserves.7 The CWS already had items of equipment like masks, Livens projectors, and Stokes mortars at the Edgewood Depot and at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii. By 1924 the term, “War Reserves,” came to be applied to the stock of supplies maintained to meet war requirements and in that year the Congress authorized such stocks for an army of 1,000,000 men. The concept behind War Reserves was to stockpile enough supplies to equip an armed force from the time war started until that industry could start producing war materiel.8
A chief objective of the CWS procurement and supply program was to maintain at optimum level those items of the Army supply list for
which the CWS had procurement responsibility. The service never attained this objective because of the low appropriations for CWS procurement. In 1926 the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-4, reported deficits in all items stored and issued by the CWS in the War Reserves.9 These items included the following: gas masks, canisters, charcoal, phosphorus, Stokes mortars, Livens projectors, portable cylinders, smoke candles, lachrymatory candles, Livens projector smoke shells, Livens projector incendiary shells, 4-inch Stokes mortar chemical shells, and 4-inch Stokes mortar smoke shells. Planners then estimated that it would require $3,737,741 to bring the War Reserves up to the million-man requirement.10 They figured that for critical chemical warfare items it would take twenty-two and one-half million dollars to build up War Reserves for a million men. Critical chemical warfare items were those indispensable munitions which could not be procured in time to meet the initial requirement of mobilization. They were listed in 1937 according to three priorities. Included under the first priority were the various chemical agents, 4.2-inch mortars and ammunition, impregnite, masks, collective protectors, and airplane spray tanks. The second priority consisted of gas alarms, irritant candles, Livens projector shells (less chemical filling), portable chemical cylinders, field laboratories, Livens projector accessory sets, and wrenches for portable chemical cylinders. Under the third priority came CN (tear gas) capsules, 8-inch combination pliers, colored drawing sets for chemical warfare material, gas identification sets, and CWS insignia stencils.11 The experience of the CWS was similar in this respect to that of the War Department as a whole. Col. James H. Burns, of the Office of the Assistant Secretary of War, estimated in 1938 that there was a shortage in the War Reserves of $507,000,000 just in critical items using standard equipment.12
Another objective of the procurement and supply program in the CWS was to fill the peacetime requirements of the Regular Army, the National Guard, the Organized Reserves, and, upon request, the Navy. The gas mask was the principal item of issue, although some munitions such as grenades and nontoxic drop bombs were manufactured and issued chiefly for training purposes.13
The Supply Division (later the Manufacturing and Supply Division) in the chief’s office had general supervision over all CWS procurement and supply. Actual manufacture and procurement as well as storage and issue was carried out almost exclusively at Edgewood Arsenal. There the gas mask factory turned out masks for the Army and the Navy and there some of the filling plans occasionally came out of hibernation to grind out the few munitions required for training. The depot at Edgewood stocked War Reserves and items of current issue and filled requisitions coming in from the continental United States and the overseas departments. At the Edgewood Depot were also stored the surplus toxics from World War I, over which constant surveillance was mandatory.
The chief item of manufacture, as just mentioned, was the gas mask. The production program of 1920-2114 was followed by a drastic reduction in the years 1922 to 1926, when only 900 masks were manufactured for the Army.15 During the same period, however, a good many masks were made for the Navy, the Marine Corps, and the United States Public Health Service. Production in modest volume for all users continued from 1927 to 1938. (Table 3)
Table 3: Gas mask production at Edgewood Arsenal, 1927–1938
| Year | Number of Masks |
| 1927 | 23, 560 |
| 1928 | 24, 667 |
| 1929 | 27, 000 |
| 1930 | 42, 180 |
| 1931 | 23, 208 |
| 1932 | 20, 904 |
| 1933 | 16, 235 |
| 1934 | 31, 564 |
| 1935 | 25, 785 |
| 1936 | 41, 700 |
| 1937 | 51, 167 |
| 1938 | 18, 734 |
Source: Ltr, Arsenal Operations, Edgewood Arsenal, Cml Warfare Center, Md., to Hist Br OC CWS, 4 Sep 45, sub: Edgewood Production. CWS 314.7 Edgewood Arsenal File.
The continued manufacture of masks at the Edgewood factory enabled the CWS to keep alive a highly technical art until such time as private industry could get into production. Not only did factory managers and supervisors gain valuable experience, but the skilled and semiskilled workers of the Edgewood gas mask plant were able to train workers in private plants in the period of emergency preceding World War IL This situation was in marked contrast to the lack of experienced supervisors and
workers in such operations as the manufacture of toxics, smokes, and incendiaries. The emergency forced the service to call to active duty a number of reserve officers with experience in private industry to supervise the technical operations of its arsenals and plants which produced these munitions.
Planning for Mobilization
The CWS, like the other technical services of the Army, was consulted in the formulation of the general Industrial Mobilization Plan and was also assigned planning responsibility for specific items designated by the Assistant Secretary of War. These were the items included on the “List of Supplies to be Procured by the CWS,” as already indicated. To carry out the procurement planning activities, an Industrial Relations Division was set up in OC CWS in 1920. This division was renamed the Industrial War Plans Division in 1925 and in 1926 the Procurement Planning Division, a designation retained until 1940.16 In January 1924 five procurement district offices were opened in the following cities to carry out procurement planning activities: New York, Boston, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and San Francisco.17 Edgewood Arsenal, in addition to its actual peacetime procurement and manufacture, also engaged in industrial mobilization planning.
From 1937 onward all industrial mobilization planning was based on the manpower requirements of the Protective Mobilization Plan (PMP). The PMP called for an army of 400,000, within 30 days after mobilization, known as the Initial Protective Force and made up of the Regular Army and the National Guard. Within 4 months, the number would be raised to 1,000,000 men and within 14 months to a peak wartime figure of 4,000,000. The CWS planned for both units and facilities under the PMP and estimated the time it would require to furnish the mobilized forces with critical and essential items, such as gas masks, toxic agents, smoke, munitions, impregnite, airplane spray tanks, and shells for 4.2-inch chemical mortars.18
Procurement Planning
Planning for the procurement of materiel was but one phase of the industrial mobilization process.19 Because it was relatively inexpensive the CWS concentrated on this activity more than on other aspects of industrial mobilization.
Procurement planning involved the following steps by CWS:
1. The computation of the quantities and time of delivery as required under the War Department Mobilization Plans.
2. The preparation of specifications for each item to be bought or manufactured.
3. The decision as to what materiel should be manufactured by government plants and what should be obtained from industry.
4. The preparation for the procurement of such materiel. Although the CWS was responsible for the spade work involved, all proposals had to meet with the approval of the General Staff and of the Assistant Secretary of War.20
Computation of Requirements
The computation of requirements through most of the period was a relatively simple process because the basis of calculation was the number of individuals or units that were to be supplied with defensive items of equipment. Offensive munitions were not taken into consideration until the late thirties; the color plans21 made no provision whatever for the use of toxics, although the YELLOW plan called for dispatching four companies of CWS troops and a large quantity of tear gas with the expeditionary forces.22 The Procurement Planning Division of the chiefs office
prepared tables of equipment and tables of basic allowances as well as distribution and maintenance factors. These it defended before the Planning Branch of the Office of the Assistant Secretary of War. The Procurement Planning Division also computed the quantities of chemical warfare items and components which would be required by the Army and Navy during the 14-month period of mobilization.
Until the mid-thirties there was little correlation between the manpower requirements of the War Department general mobilization plans and the industrial mobilization plans. The general mobilization plans of the early twenties had called for six and one-half million men, a figure which was reduced to less than four million men in the 1933 plan.23 For a number of years planners gave little concern to equipping this huge force, because of the existence of surplus items remaining from World War I. By the early thirties this World War I equipment had become obsolete and the War Department had to give more serious consideration both to procuring sufficient War Reserve materiel and to drawing up more realistic plans for procurement in an emergency.
The 1930s saw a marked revision in mobilization planning. The Assistant Secretary of War, who later became the Secretary of War, Harry H. Wood-ring, and the Chiefs of Staff, Generals Douglas MacArthur and Malin Craig, worked together to make the plans more realistic. The result was the Protective Mobilization Plan of the late 1930s which called for the gradual mobilization of an army of four million men over a 14-month period and the gearing of procurement planning to the new concept.24
Preparation of Specifications
A second step in procurement planning was the preparation of specifications for the item to be procured. The specification described the item in detail, listed the materials and other information required for its manufacture, and outlined the methods to be employed in its inspection and
testing. The CWS, unlike the older technical services, had to start almost from scratch in developing a complete set of specifications, because its experience was limited to World War I. The items for which the CWS drew up specifications were generally those included on the supply list.25
The actual writing of the specifications was done by the Technical Division at Edgewood Arsenal. All specifications were reviewed by a board made up of representatives of the Technical, Production, and Inspection Divisions of the arsenal. After the board had made a preliminary review of the specifications, the chief’s office sent them through the procurement district office to industrial firms experienced in the manufacture of the item. Final approval had to come from the Standards Division, Office of the Assistant Secretary of War.26
In spite of the fact that the CWS wrote specifications for a great many items, a considerable part of its labor, unfortunately, went for naught, because many specifications were found not suitable once the items were put into production during the emergency or early war period. One feature of the specification of the gas mask, for example, was a requirement for brass. While there were definite advantages in the use of this metal, brass was simply not to be obtained when war came and substitutes had to be found. A more serious defect was that the specifications for some items were written on the basis of experience with models fabricated by hand at the lone machine shop at Edgewood Arsenal, a method which gave little indication of the mass producibility of the items. Surprisingly, the industrial concerns which reviewed the specifications did not point out this fact. It must be borne in mind, however, that the manufacturers were requested to do this work gratis and as a result their reviews were often not as thorough as they might have been. Only when the period of the emergency brought the prospect of actual contracts did the review of specifications by industry prove truly valuable. The ideal procedure, in the opinion of several CWS officers who had experience with the handling of specifications, would have been to award contracts to engineering firms specializing in such work. But since no funds were allowed for thus purpose such a procedure was not possible.27
Government Plants or Private Industry?
The procurement experience of the CWS in World War I had a definite influence on procurement planning in the postwar years. During that war chemical warfare items were obtained through manufacture in both government plants and private industry. The chemical industry never waxed enthusiastic about manufacturing toxic agents. After the war it became an accepted Army policy that the production of these agents was “attended with so many hazards” that their manufacture should be restricted to government arsenals and plants.28 These same government installations would also manufacture smokes, incendiaries, and nontoxic gases, and would fill the required shells, bombs, and grenades. The raw materials and chemicals as well as the chemical engineering equipment needed for this manufacture would be purchased through the procurement districts. Gas masks would be procured both from private industry and from government factories.29
In the 1920s the CWS believed that the facilities at Edgewood Arsenal could fill the requirements for smoke, incendiaries, and toxic and nontoxic agents during the first eight months of an emergency, by which time a second arsenal in the vicinity of Memphis, Tenn., could be erected to help carry the production load.30 These plans were made in the years when the manufacturing and filling plants at Edgewood were not yet beyond hope of rehabilitation. The Edgewood facilities were not restored, as already noted, and by the close of the 1920s most of them were ready for the scrap heap.
With the appointment in 1933 of Mr. Woodring as Assistant Secretary of War and Maj. Gen. Claude E. Brigham as Chief, CWS, more stress was placed on planning for the procurement of items of chemical ammunition, their components, intermediate and raw chemicals, and on arsenal planning.31 The first tangible result of the emphasis on arsenal planning was the creation of a War Plans Division at Edgewood Arsenal in the fall of 1934. This division was staffed by an officer or two and a few civilian engineers and draftsmen. Its function was to draw up plans
Lt. Col. Claude E. Brigham (photograph taken before 1932 when Brigham became a general officer).
for rehabilitating old arsenal plants or building new ones, “capable of meeting average monthly requirements of Section 11-A, P.M.P.”32 For a time the division was under the general supervision of the technical director at Edgewood, but in July 1936 it was placed directly under the jurisdiction of the commanding officer at Edgewood Arsenal.33 While the War Plans Division assumed chief responsibility for arsenal planning, it was not the only agency in the CWS carrying out such activity. The Engineering Division at Edgewood drew up certain plans for which its members had special qualifications, such as those for a phosgene filling plant and an impregnite (CC-2) plant. These plans were to prove valuable when construction of new facilities was undertaken in the emergency period.34
While the planners were studiously drawing up their blueprints, the Chief, CWS, was losing no opportunity of calling the attention of the Chief of Staff to shortages that would exist on M-day, unless some actual rehabilitation or new construction were undertaken. In the summer of 1934 General Brigham notified the Chief of Staff that it would take from four to nine months to put the manufacturing and filling plants into operation and he urged that they be partially rehabilitated as soon as possible.35 General Brigham’s estimate of the situation was generally confirmed by a study made in the fall of 1936 by the Planning Branch of the Office of the Assistant Secretary of War on procurement possibilities under the 1933 Mobilization Plan. That study included two chemical warfare items, the
gas mask and mustard gas. It concluded that for neither of these would the supply requirement be met until ten months after M-day.36
In order to improve the preparedness status of the service the Chief, CWS, in the spring of 1936 suggested to the Chief of Staff that a 5-year program be undertaken in the CWS.37 This program would cover all phases of the CWS mission, including research and development, training, procurement, and supply. The procurement phase of the program included the erection of new facilities for the manufacture of important reserve material, which the Chief, CWS, listed in the following order of urgency: impregnite, gas masks, persistent gas, nonpersistent gas, ammunition for chemical weapons, and collective protectors. General Brigham estimated the cost of the projected CWS program for the years 1938-42 as follows:
| 1938 | $4,331,879 |
| 1939 | 4,294,307 |
| 1940 | 5,791,819 |
| 1941 | 5,737,669 |
| 1942 | 5,122,669 |
General Brigham’s recommendations were no doubt prompted in part by the action of the Joint Board in the summer of 1935 in confirming CWS responsibility for research and procurement of chemical warfare materiel for the Army, the Navy, and the Marine Corps.38
The Chief of Staff referred General Brigham’s suggestion to G-4 for study and comment. The Chemical Warfare program was, of course, only one of a number which the General Staff was called on to evaluate, and the amount of funds which the Bureau of the Budget would approve for military purposes at that time was strictly limited.39 The War Department General Staff, therefore, had to closely scrutinize all programs entailing an expenditure of funds. To complicate matters still more, both G-4 and the Office of the Assistant Secretary of War had definite misgivings about spending too much money on chemical plants which they felt might become obsolete in a few years. Their attitude was reflected in the words of the director of the Planning Branch of the Office of the Assistant
Secretary of War, commenting approvingly on a G-4 study of 1936: “I believe,” he said, “Edgewood Arsenal should be rehabilitated only to the extent previously recommended by this office, i.e., the smallest most up-to-date commercially reproducible unit, but that each type of equipment should be properly housed and made shipshape.”40 Assistant Secretary Woodring expressed himself in the same vein when after a visit to Edgewood Arsenal in May 1936 he sent the following note to the Chief of Staff, General Malin Craig:
As a result of our recent visit to Edgewood Arsenal, I am not favorably impressed with the idea of rehabilitating the Chemical Warfare manufacturing plant. It would seem advisable to have more manufacturing work done by commercial plants and utilize funds to become available for the Edgewood Arsenal for experimental and developmental projects. The question of secrecy in manufacturing processes may have some effect on outside manufacture but should not prevent it.41
It is understandable, then, why G-4 did not give favorable consideration to General Brigham’s suggestions.42 Instead of the annual expenditure of about 5 million dollars which the Chief, CWS, had proposed, G-4 recommended a total expenditure of a little over 6 million dollars for the entire five-year period.43 This G-4 estimate was to be drastically revised after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939. With the funds actually allotted in the late 1930s the CWS built and operated small production units for toxic agents, impregnite, and white phosphorous at Edge-wood Arsenal.
Planning for the Gas Mask
On no other item was there more planning than on the gas mask. Although masks were manufactured in peacetime at Edgewood Arsenal, plans called for procuring masks at various points throughout the country in the event of an emergency. The plans of the twenties and early thirties specified that the Edgewood plant would run at full capacity during the first few months of a war until government assembly plants in various cities throughout the country, such as Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Memphis, and Los Angeles, would be in operation. The gas mask factory at Edgewood would then be discontinued. While the government plants
would do the actual assembling of the masks, private contractors would supply the components.
The plans for the purchase of these components were worked out in considerable detail in the various procurement district offices before being submitted to the Procurement Planning Division, OC CWS. The district office plans were not confined to the components of the mask, but they were of primary concern while chemicals were secondary. Each procurement district was headed by a civilian chief, who was chairman of an advisory board of five to ten members drawn from among the leaders of the community in the fields of science, commerce, and industry. Each district also had a military executive officer, usually of company grade, with a civilian assistant. The planning activities of the district office were facilitated by the assignment of selected CWS Reserve officers to appropriate mobilization duties. From the ranks of these Reserve officers were to come competent officer material for World War II.44
In accomplishing their procurement planning mission, the district offices conducted surveys to determine appropriate facilities for manufacturing the items, such as the gas mask and others, apportioned to them by the Assistant Secretary of War. The results of these surveys were reported to the Office of the Assistant Secretary, who thereupon allocated specific facilities to the districts. Representatives from the district offices then approached the management of these allocated facilities with the request that they sign a schedule of production, which was a mutual statement of intention of the contractor to produce the item or items specified in certain quantities and of the government to purchase such material if needed. These schedules of production were in no sense binding contractual obligations. The understanding was, however, that the allocated facilities would devote all, or a specified portion, of their wartime production capacity to the particular supply branch to which they were allocated.
From the mid-thirties on, there was a changed conception in procurement planning for the mask. Both the Assistant Secretary and G-4 believed that more emphasis should be placed on contracting with private industry in the event of an emergency and this attitude was reflected in the plans of the CWS. A CWS arsenal procurement plan of March 1935, for example, called for the Edgewood gas mask plant to work at full capacity until six months after mobilization, whereupon some nine private contractors would assume entire production of the mask. No mention whatever was
made of the government assembly plants in various cities, referred to in previous plans.45
The increased attention by the Assistant Secretary’s Office to meeting the requirements of the 1933 Mobilization Plan led to a greater emphasis on possible shortages in the supply of gas masks. In June 1935 the Chief, CWS, notified G-4 that the existing plant at Edgewood Arsenal, operating twenty-four hours a day, could not meet the requirements of the 1933 plan, and recommended corrective action. “The choke point in meeting requirements, by the use of additional manufacturing plants,” the Chief said, “is the lack of special gauges, dies and jigs, and other apparatus not commercially available. The National Defense Act authorizes the procurement of these items in times of peace, but no funds have been appropriated for this purpose.”46 General Brigham urged that provision be made in the budget estimates for the fiscal year 1937 for buying the necessary gauges, dies, and jigs. The request was honored and $25,000 was appropriated for this purpose in the fiscal year 1937 and a similar sum for the following fiscal year.47 These sums were not large, but they did enable the CWS to be in a fair position, so far as tooling went, when the time came for actually producing more masks.
General Brigham, as early as January 1936, believed that the time had come for manufacturing masks in greater numbers. He suggested to the Chief of Staff that a 5-year program aimed at procuring 100,000 masks each year be initiated.48 This suggestion, though approved in principle by the General Staff, was never implemented because of inadequate appropriations. Procurement of masks on a considerable scale was to wait until the enactment of educational order legislation by Congress on 16 June 1938.49 Immediately upon the enactment of this legislation the Secretary of War appointed a board of officers from the technical services, the War Department General Staff, and the Office of the Assistant Secretary of War
to select items for the first orders under the program. The CWS was represented on this board by Maj. George F. Unmacht. The board selected six items, one of which was the gas mask.50
Viewed in retrospect and with all the advantages of hindsight it is possible to point out several miscalculations in the prewar mobilization planning of the CWS. The first was the assumption that there would be an orderly transition from peace to war. A second was the failure to realize the global extent of the coming war. These two concepts generally characterized the thinking of the planners throughout the War Department. In addition there were two other basic miscalculations in chemical warfare planning. One was the conviction that gas warfare was all but inevitable and the other was the failure to draw up procurement plans for what turned out to be the most important chemical warfare items to be used in World War II—incendiary bombs, high explosive mortar shells, flame throwers, and smoke generators. The oversight, so far as incendiary bombs and high explosives were concerned, resulted from uncertainty over the CWS mission.51 With regard to flame throwers and smoke generators, the CWS planners failed to draw up procurement plans because development of those munitions was not emphasized in the period of peace.
The procurement and supply activities of the two decades following World War I reflected the diplomatic and economic developments of the period. The efforts of the United States Government to disarm, and to eliminate war as an instrument of national policy, together with the advent of the greatest depression in the nation’s history, militated against a strong military preparedness posture, particularly in the field of chemical warfare. Until the late 1930s little money was expended for CWS procurement or construction, although a great deal of time and effort went into the planning of these activities.
Hopes for world peace, so buoyant in the 1920s, were dashed against the realities of international lawlessness in the 1930s when Japan invaded Manchuria and China and when the armies of Mussolini invaded Ethiopia. These act were followed in September 1939 by the march of Hitler’s forces into Poland. With these developments came a gradual change in the attitude of the government on military preparedness. The closing years of the decade were to see not only a greater emphasis on planning, but the initiation of programs to implement the plans.