Bibliographical Note
In the preparation of this volume the authors have relied primarily upon four collections—the studies, copies of supporting documents and personal records of individual Ordnance officers, which together comprise the Ordnance Historical Files; the papers assembled in the Departmental Records Branch of the Adjutant General’s Office in Alexandria, Virginia; the materials housed in the War Department section of the National Archives; and reports and correspondence still in possession of the subdivisions of the Office, Chief of Ordnance, in the Pentagon. In addition, several manuscripts prepared by the Office of the Chief of Military History have proved useful, as have several published works, notably the volumes of the series Science in World War IL Scientific Research and Development. Army Ordnance, the bimonthly publication of the American Ordnance Association, has been of far more use than any other periodical.
The Ordnance Historical Files were collected during the war by the staff of the Ordnance Historical Branch. The backbone of this material is the series of typescript historical reports submitted by the divisions and staff branches of the Office, Chief of Ordnance, and by all the major field installations, including the arsenals, districts, depots, proving grounds, training centers, OCO-Detroit, the Field Director of Ammunition Plants, and others. In this collection is a group of project papers, that is, studies of particular Ordnance problems, and of project supporting papers, prepared during or immediately after the war either by members of the Historical Branch or by specialists in other branches of the Department. The quality and coverage of the project papers varies greatly, but many of them contain photographs, charts, and statistical tables of interest, and the copies of pertinent documents assembled in the project supporting papers are both intrinsically valuable to the historian and indirectly useful because of the leads they give to the whereabouts of further data. Of the collections of individuals’ papers in the Ordnance Historical Files, the Barnes file, a partial transcript of General Barnes’ conferences and some of his semiofficial correspondence, and General Barnes’ diary are particularly helpful on questions involving research and development. For over-all problems and organizational matters, a useful source is the record of General Wesson’s regular 11 o’clock conferences at which he discussed with his staff most of the problems facing the Department during the defense period.
For the history of the Department in the years before 1940, the records in the National Archives are essential, though material such as the bound volumes of Ordnance Department Orders are still available in the Executive Office of the Office, Chief of Ordnance. For the war period, a major source is the collection of Ordnance papers, both classified and unclassified, in the custody of the Departmental Records Branch of the Adjutant General’s Office in Alexandria. Information on certain controversial subjects, moreover, was found in the central files of
the Adjutant General’s Office, and in the files of the Army Service Forces, Army Ground Forces, the Under Secretary of War, and the G-4 Division of the General Staff. For data on German equipment, the authors made extensive use of the files in the Foreign Studies Branch of the Office, Chief of Military History, and in the German Documents Section of the Departmental Records Branch, AGO.
The most important single source for the history of research and development from 1919 through World War II is the series of Ordnance Committee Minutes. These are still housed in the Pentagon in the keeping of the Ordnance Technical Committee Secretariat. The Minutes list the action taken and frequently some of the discussion about each Ordnance item on which the Department undertook research and development from the end of World War I to the present. Other materials in files of the subdivisions of the Research and Development Division of the Office, Chief of Ordnance, in the Pentagon are only less useful. Among these the Summary Technical Reports prepared on particular problems by units of the National Defense Research Committee should be singled out for mention. Unclassified information in the Executive Office is contained in such volumes as the Ordnance Reports published in 1889 and in the typescript volumes “Ordnance Developmental and Experimental Projects 1920–1925.” Officially published statistics of the Army, the Official Munitions Production of the United States, by month, July 1, 1940–August 31, 1945, popularly known as OMPUS, is cited for World War II; Leonard P. Ayres and Benedict Crowell for World War I.
Supplementary to these written records is the information the authors have obtained in a host of interviews and from correspondence with men intimately concerned with the work discussed in this book.