Chapter 9: Competition and Collaboration with Foreign Designers
Most wars are won by outwitting the enemy or by overpowering him with sheer mass of matériel and men. Only rarely in history has an army been so imbued with confidence in itself or with faith in the righteousness of its cause that it triumphed over heavy odds. Germany in 1939 and 1940 had established itself as the greatest military power in the world, a power whose tactics were brilliant and whose weapons appeared to be the most effective men had ever seen. Though the American public even in 1940 was still hoping that the United States might keep out of the European war, the US Army was hurriedly building up its strength in men and equipment to be in a position to defy this power. That challenge meant for the Ordnance Department two primary tasks putting into the hands of American and Allied troops the greatest possible quantity of matériel, and having available weapons equal to or better than those of the enemy.
The story of quantity production will be told in another volume of this series. Quality was first and foremost a problem of research and development. The succeeding chapters of this volume will discuss the equipment that the Ordnance Department developed for the US Army in comparison with the major items the enemy employed. To explain how differences and similarities came about, it is necessary at this point to look briefly at the circumstances that enabled the Third Reich to equip its army as it did; to review the limitations imposed upon the US Ordnance Department; to trace the steps by which the Ordnance Department after 1940 learned the essential features of enemy designs; and to note how the United States and its allies pooled scientific and technical data in the ceaseless search for weapons superior to any the enemy could command.
Ordnance Research and Development in the German Army
For the Ordnance Department, competition with foreign designers meant primarily competition with Germany. Italy never loomed as a serious contender in the struggle for superiority of weapons, while Japanese equipment, largely imitative of American and European design, was admittedly inferior to both in quality. Not Japanese engineering genius but nature posed the most serious challenge in the Pacific where topography, jungle growth, mildew, and corrosion, rather than enemy fire power or armor, were likely to neutralize the effectiveness of American matériel. A quite different contest unfolded with the
senior partner of the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Axis. Traditionally well versed in the art of ordnance design and able to draw on a vast pool of capable scientists, technicians, and skilled labor, Germany was a competitor who time and again threatened to outstrip the United States in the race for putting deadlier and more efficient weapons in the hands of the fighting forces.
In little over twenty years Germany had risen from crushing defeat to be the mightiest military power in the world. The limitations that the victorious Allies of World War I had imposed in the hope of forever preventing Germany’s resurgence as a threat to world peace had had precisely the opposite effect. To quote a statement attributed to Generaloberst Franz Halder, the German Army Chief of Staff from 1938 to 1942, “Germany, as a result of the provisions of the Versailles Treaty, had to disarm and thus denude itself of everything reminiscent of the first World War. Germany consequently started from the most elementary beginnings, unencumbered, and thereby had a distinct advantage over the Allies who clung to many things that no longer were in tune with the changed times.”1 To forestall misunderstandings, it is well to point out that the divorce from the past was in the realm of tactical doctrine rather than of technology. Advanced tactical thinking, not super-weapons and mountains of matériel, made the German Army.
To understand how Germany in 1939, a bare four years after formally renouncing its obligations under the Treaty of Versailles, was able to put into the field an army so well trained and equipped that it held virtually the entire world at bay necessitates at least cursory examination of the secret rearmament activities during the interwar period. To begin with, large quantities of weapons that should have been scrapped or delivered up to the Allies were carefully cached by the Army, the Navy, and an armaments industry, all eager to save what they could. In May 1919 the Army issued orders to spirit all fully usable matériel as well as certain semi-manufactured parts out of zones likely to come under Allied occupation. At least one of the participants in that operation, the Friedrich Krupp Aktiengesellschaft of cannon fame, reported that by August, little over a month after Versailles, its shipments to the interior ceased because “the demand had been met,” Among the more noteworthy items for this particular producer were—shades of things to come—parts for two types of 88-mm. flak guns.2 As an interesting sidelight, the guiding genius behind the Army’s effort to amass a hoard of weapons against the day of Germany’s return to power reputedly was Capt. Ernst Röhm, later the notorious chief of Adolf Hitler’s storm troopers, who was to meet his end in the blood purge of June 1934. The success of his undertaking can be gauged by the statement that one third of the matériel that the Army needed and procured after the Führer’s accession consisted of Röhm’s trophies from World War I.3
Hand in hand with the salvage of this important, though relatively small, store of
forbidden ordnance went the more vital task of developing new items. If Germany failed to keep step with developments of foreign powers, it could never hope to regain what it considered its rightful place in the sun, Within Germany such work was severely handicapped by the necessity for stringent secrecy. Nevertheless, a great deal was accomplished through dummy business firms that ostensibly engaged in peaceful commercial or technical pursuits while in reality devoting themselves exclusively to weapons research and development. A Krupp branch office in Berlin was only one of several enterprises functioning as a blind of this sort. Disguised as part of a legitimate engineering company, the Krupp branch designed artillery carriages, among them modern mobile carriages for the very guns that another concern was then in the process of modifying for stationary coastal employment as prescribed by treaty terms.4 While such illicit activities inside Germany were largely restricted to theory, no similar hurdles stood in the way of practical research and development abroad. Krupp’s cooperation with Bofors in Sweden was a case in point. In return for license rights to certain steel and artillery patents, employees of the German firm were given unlimited access to plant facilities and technical information on current developments. From 1921 to 1935 a delegation of Krupp experts attached to the Swedish munitions firm kept a steady stream of information flowing back to their employer, who in turn promptly advised the Reichswehr. Under the sponsorship of Krupp German officers went on inspection tours to Bofors to witness test firings of the latest in artillery and ammunition.5
Most important of all, and in a sense most extraordinary, were the war preparations of the Reichswehr itself. At the same time that the fatherland publicly bemoaned its reduction to military impotence, the hard core of German soldiery’s elite, the officers of the 100,000-man army, ceaselessly worked toward building an even better war machine than the one that had come so close in 1918 to worsting a global host of opponents. These were the men who evolved the special brand of mechanized and mobile warfare that the world, in a later vocabulary, was to know as the blitzkrieg. Economic and industrial mobilization as well as military training for a future war of liberation were studied, planned, and partially put into practice with meticulous detail. As early as 1924 the Army Weapons Office set up an economic mobilization staff for the ambitious, albeit later substantially scaled-down, project of marshaling the resources for an armed force comprising 63 Infantry, 5 Cavalry, and 30 Frontier Guard divisions. Since the need for secrecy prevented direct contact with industry, which would have to produce the arms and equipment for that army, a nationwide underground organization served to procure the required data for integrating essential
manufacturing facilities into the over-all plan.6
But all the staff planning, research, development, and industrial preparation could be of no avail in the absence of highly trained combat forces capable of translating the newly evolved tactics and techniques into practice. Here the Reichswehr encountered its most serious difficulties. Its forces were severely limited in number, and the primary weapons for the new type of warfare—the tank and the military airplane—were prohibited by treaty. Within Germany, armored training was restricted to tin-and-pasteboard dummy tanks, and flight training to occasional highly secretive excursions with flimsy sport aircraft. If the future army was to be built on more solid foundations than these, the Army had to find more favorable ground than blighted Germany. And so began a long and fruitful period of collaboration with a power similarly intent on rebuilding its military establishment: the Soviet Union.
The exact time of the commencement of Russo-German military collaboration cannot be determined, though subsequent events lend credence to the belief that secret clauses in the Treaty of Rapallo in 1922 represented the cornerstone of the subsequent rapprochement between the Red Army and the Reichswehr.7 Each country had something valuable to offer the other. The Germans had their highly skilled cadre of military leaders, steeped in an intellectual tradition, who could teach the new class of Soviet officers the doctrines of tactical and strategic command. Men like Tukhachevski and Ogorevitch participated in inspection tours and war games and studied German manuals to the point where they finally were more familiar with the contents than their German colleagues. With a view to securing for its armament factories such unimpeded progress as would some day benefit not only the Soviet Union but also the fatherland, the Germans similarly contributed to the rejuvenation of Russian industry.8 German technicians, engineers, and skilled mechanics went east to teach and supervise. The Reichswehr set up in the Soviet Union entire munitions plants that were managed and largely or wholly staffed with Germans.9 Lack of money, the stumbling block in American ordnance research and development during the 1920s and 1930s, was hardly a consideration. Only secrecy was of the essence, and, assured of the discreet handling of rearmament matters, the German Government did its best to pad budgets and hide appropriations for military expenditures.10
In return for contributions toward strengthening Soviet power, the Russians furnished Germany with the very facilities for practical troop training that could not be maintained within the Reich. Between 1924 and 1930 three German military installations were set up on Soviet territory: a fighter pilot and air observer school at Lipetsk, a gas warfare school at Saratov, and an armored school at Kazan. The secrecy surrounding the entire setup, and the security measures for insuring that
secrecy, bordered on the fantastic. Men and machines had to be bootlegged across the frontiers. Ammunition and weapons impossible to disguise were carried in small sailboats all the way from German Baltic ports to Leningrad. German soldiers killed in accidents while training on Soviet soil were smuggled back in coffins packed in boxes ostensibly containing machine parts. Particularly knotty problems were solved in even more unusual ways. The fighter planes used at the Lipetsk air base, for example, had been purchased abroad and were powered by British engines that could not be overhauled locally. With their sailboat sea transport organization, the Germans managed to send a certain number of engines each year to English factories where they were overhauled and subsequently returned to Lipetsk.11
The number of trainees at the several schools varied, as did local conditions of independence from Soviet interference. At Lipetsk the German fliers had practically unlimited freedom of movement, while the tank students at Kazan apparently were subject to a more rigid regime restricting them to a fenced-in cantonment and even requiring them to wear Red Army uniforms. Nevertheless, professional relations with the Russian hosts were generally satisfactory and the Germans, despite numerous complaints that they gave more than they received, accomplished what they had come for. German officers participated in Red Army maneuvers; German Air observers conducted joint exercises with the Red Air Force; German tankers learned the refinements of armored warfare and tested equipment such as the latest experimental models of Krupp tanks. A small but select body of military leaders, including, among others, Heinz Guderian of later panzer fame, gathered a wealth of practical experience in the warfare of tomorrow.12 When, upon the accession of Hitler in 1933. German activities in the Soviet Union gradually ceased because of the steadily mounting open re-militarization in Germany itself, a highly trained cadre stood ready to take over the reins of a brand new army.
German rearmament between 1935 and 1939 marked the culmination of the painstaking efforts to preserve the military traditions of bygone years of glory and recreate a war machine that once more would command the respect, if not dread, of the world. After 1933 the production of up-to-date weapons had begun in earnest, with the accent on the mobility and striking power of a well-integrated ground-air team. German tanks underwent a radical transformation. Their formerly wooden cannon suddenly spouted fire and their erstwhile make-believe armor gave way to steel plate.13 By 1935 even the niceties of a pro forma adherence to treaty obligations were ready to be discarded and, along with the reintroduction of compulsory military service, the wraps taken off a well-equipped and even better organized army. It is worth remembering that at a time when America had not a single armored division and still considered the tank a mere adjunct and supporting weapon for the infantry, Germany started with the premise that the tank is a weapon in its own right—the primary offensive ground weapon, in fact, of mobile warfare. Slowing the tank to the rate of advance of foot troops or roadbound artillery would
slow an entire offensive, hostile forces would have time to regroup, and operations might once again degenerate into position warfare in which the objective—forcing a quick decision by destroying the enemy army—could never be achieved. The logical procedure lay not in slowing down the tank but in motorizing supporting infantry and artillery elements and welding all three into one unit capable of delivering a decisive blow in the very opening stage of hostilities. How correct these deliberations and conclusions had been was demonstrated in the well-nigh ridiculous ease with which the panzer divisions, rolling over the level terrain of northern Europe, subjugated Poland and France.
In the United States, Germany’s spectacular successes left an impression no less profound than in the rest of the world. For one thing, they provided the impetus toward the creation of the Armored Force for which a number of officers had been clamoring in vain for more than a decade. For another, they set the pace for a revision of combat techniques and corresponding basic reorganization of United States Army forces. But above all, the swiftness and thoroughness of German victories set up a clamor for more and better weapons. The Ordnance Department, only recently come from rags to riches, was expected to stamp new matériel out of the ground. “The enemy was at the gates and was about to land in New York City in the imagination of the hysterical people of that time ... ,” wrote the wartime Chief of Ordnance in speaking of those trying days.14 A full-fledged myth was in the making about amounts and capabilities of German matériel in general and German tanks in particular. While Germany on the eve of the Battle of France had a grand total of 3,379 tanks, only 2,574 of which actually rolled westward on May 10,15 French estimates, for example, pegged their number at anywhere from a staggering 8,000 to a conservative 3,700.16 In reality, French tank strength alone almost certainly equaled, and, combined with British tanks on the Western Front, beyond a doubt surpassed the German total.17
Fully as fanciful were reports about the tanks themselves. An article stated:
One weapon used by the Germans, the heavy break-through tank, came as a surprise to many—military men as well as civilians. … Then on May 10, 1940, German breakthrough tanks, estimated to weigh seventy tons, armed with 77-mm or 155-mm cannon and flame throwers, opened up a hole in the Little Maginot Line. Through this gap poured … massed armored divisions closely backed by infantry in trucks. The age of mechanization had come into its own. ...18
Other accounts perpetuated the legend of “cannon-proof “ panzers.19 But Germany neither had cannon-proof nor superheavy monsters. German machines held little, if any, edge over their adversaries in over-all combat capability. The majority of German tanks were of the Panzer I and Panzer II types that the Wehrmacht itself admitted
to be useless against all but a weak and demoralized enemy and unsuited for employment against hostile armor.20 The six-ton Panzer I, for example, had been proved obsolete during the Civil War in Spain—obsolete not only as much as any production-type weapon is in terms of those in the drafting stage, but obsolete in terms of equipment currently in use by the opposition. With “onionskin” armor and the fire power of only two turret-mounted machine guns, it was easy prey for Soviet 45-mm. tank and antitank guns on the Loyalist side. The contemporary characterization of the light tank as a “mechanical toy, a mere tactical runabout” fitted the Panzer I to the proverbial T.21 The 10-ton Panzer II, first issued to German armored forces in 1936 but never sent to Spain, fell into the same category.22 The only material improvements over its predecessor lay in slightly greater fire power, a 20-mm. cannon turret-mounted coaxially with one machine gun.
The first-line tanks of the blitz days in France, the Panzer III and the Panzer IV, similarly were far from being super-weapons. Lightly armored, both were highly vulnerable to antitank and direct artillery fire.23 As to armament, the Panzer III carried a 37-mm, gun, an adaptation of the same antitank gun that as far back as 1937 had proved to be outmatched by foreign matériel.24 The Panzer IV, armed with the 75-mm. Kw. K. (L/24), a gun-howitzer with a maximum muzzle velocity of 1,500 feet per second, was more an armored field piece than a tank designed for toe-to-toe combat with enemy tanks.25
All told, German successes in the early stages of World War II resulted from method of employment of weapons—panzer divisions versus single tanks, the heavy mobile punch versus a continuous front—and a highly proficient body of troops. From the days of the Reichswehr, attention had focused on training the individual German soldier; mechanization did not obscure the fact that even the best matériel becomes useless in the hands of men unable to use it properly. Once the peace-trained, battle-hardened core of the Wehrmacht languished in Allied prisoner-of-war enclosures, or lay buried beneath the Russian snows and North African desert sands, no effort of German weapons designers could stave off defeat.
Design and development of Army ordnance were in the hands of the Army Weapons Office. Though roughly analogous to the US Army Ordnance
Department in these functions, its scope of responsibilities extended to somewhat different fields from those of its American counterpart. In addition to small arms, artillery, and ammunition, for example, the Army Weapons Office had charge of all types of engineer and signal equipment. Design and development of antiaircraft artillery, on the other hand, were duties of the Air Force.26
Within the over-all organization of the German Army, the Army Weapons Office came under the Chief of Army Equipment and Commander in Chief of the Replacement Army, who had charge of arms development as well as procurement. Control over the commencement of new projects rested with the using arms, and, through them, the General Staff and ultimately Hitler. The impetus for a project might come from a number of quarters: the Army Weapons Office itself, the Führer, private industry, soldiers in the field. Particularly the latter have been credited with submitting many useful ideas and constructive criticisms.27 Once a requirement was set up, the Army Weapons Office prepared the technical specifications and farmed out the development project to private industrial firms. As a rule, an identical contract was let to two competitors in order to add incentive for the design of the best product possible. Pilot models were returned to the Weapons Office for proof tests, upon completion of which the item was demonstrated to the using arms for their approval or rejection. Then usually followed a limited, or, if necessary, a large-scale battle test. Standardization and further modifications thereafter were up to the using arms, subject, in the case of major questions, to the decision of the Commander in Chief of the Army or the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces.
During peacetime and the early blitz years that system worked well enough. But once the war spread to new and larger areas and the mounting fury of combat gave rise to an ever-increasing demand for more powerful weapons, the process of development grew more and more haphazard. The Führer’s promises of the miracle weapon to turn the tide became more eloquent as one abortive offensive followed the other, with the result that wholly unseasoned projects were rushed virtually from the drafting board to the front. Time and again the good features of such weapons were so heavily outweighed by a lack of reliability that repercussions on troop morale overshadowed the short-range propaganda effect. A comment from the Russian front after the first major battle test of the Panther tank illustrates the point:–
In closing, I can’t get around adding a few words on a very sad story, despite the fact that it was exactly the way I had thought it would be: Panther. There were a great many who expected the decision to come from the new, untried weapon. The initially complete failure therefore had a somewhat depressing effect, particularly since, on the basis of the Führer Order, special expectations had been aroused. ... So long as one builds such a valuable weapon, one must not build in an unusable gasoline pump or deficient gaskets. There is no shadow of a doubt that the majority of technical deficiencies resulted from
Panzer II, the “Lynx,” mounting a 2-cm. gun
8 Rad Panzerspahwagen, mounting the 7.5-cm. short-barreled gun
The “Panther,” mounting a 7.5-cm. gun
Panzer VI, the “tiger,” mounting an 8.8-cm. gun
substitute materials which simply did not measure up to standard. ... The effectiveness of the Panther weapon is noteworthy. At a range of 7,900 yards a [Soviet] T-34 [tank] was knocked out with the first round.28
Even if it wanted to, the Army Weapons Office could do little to remedy the situation. From early prewar days the large majority of ground-force research and development had been conducted by private firms, with the Army’s technical agency merely playing a testing and acceptance role. Its own research and development not only was extremely limited in scope but poor to boot.29 The unbroken string of swift victories between September 1939 and autumn 1941 provided little stimulus for improving on time-honored customs and procedures. Came the denouement of the catastrophic first winter in Russia and a lack of the new and better weapons with which to re-equip almost the entire Army, the Weapons Office was an easy target for those eager to obtain control over ground ordnance design and production. From the time that Hitler finally decreed the conversion of industry to an all-out war effort until the collapse of Germany in May 1945, influence over Army research and development passed more and more into the hands of essentially nonmilitary authorities such as Albert Speer, the Minister for Armaments and War Production, Heinrich Himmler, whose SS was bent on building an industrial empire all its own, and, above all, the Führer himself.
Just as he personally participated in the conduct of operations, to the point where he ultimately made troop dispositions down to battalion level and lower,30 so Hitler increasingly concerned himself with the details of armament design. Every modification, every new project was brought to the personal attention of the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces for notice and approval. The soundness of basic principles and the ratio of economic expenditure to probable long-range returns from a new weapon mattered less and less as the military situation continued to deteriorate. So long as an idea held even faint promise of a weapon with which to equalize the growing disproportion between German and Allied resources of manpower and matériel, that idea was tried. Though it stands to reason that not all of the thousand and one projects resulting from this, the Führer’s policy, were worthless, the net gains little justified the reckless prodigality that achieved them.
Limitations Upon American Ordnance Research and Development
In contrast to the political control exercised over the German Army, the Chief of Staff of the US Army had the final voice in decreeing American doctrine of tactical use of weapons. Though each of the using arms worked out its concepts of the best means of accomplishing its own mission, the Chief of Staff had to approve them or resolve conflicts of doctrine arising between one arm and another. The Ordnance Department was then responsible for designing the fighting equipment with which to execute the maneuvers planned. If evolution of doctrine were tardy, then design would also be delayed, for design of
weapons for any army is necessarily shaped by the purpose for which the weapons are to be used. To revert, as an illustration, to the problem of tank employment over which controversy had been vigorous in the 1930s, if the tank were to be regarded as primarily a means of supporting the infantry, tank design would stress cross-country maneuverability and fire power enough to combat infantry heavy weapons but not enough to fight a battle with enemy tanks. If, on the other hand, a tank were to be used as a part of an armored force, design would be focused on fire power sufficient to engage enemy tanks directly and on protection for the tank’s crew. Ordnance automotive experts had complained in the 1920s of being handicapped by failure of the General Staff to define tank doctrine, and revision of doctrine of the 1930s, culminating in the creation of the Armored Force in 1940, had required further extensive changes in tank design. A less well-known but perhaps still more serious situation occurred in development of mines. Partly because the War Department only belatedly recognized the tactical importance of powerful antitank mines and mine exploders, and partly because the Corps of Engineers requested only small mines, design of adequate land mines was delayed at least two years. Ordnance ammunition specialists, to be sure, might have argued vigorously the case for mines comparable to the German Teller mines, but combat inexperience together with Engineer insistence would still have militated against early success in persuading the using arm to approve big mines. The mine clearance problem was not satisfactorily solved at all. Whether it could have been met before the end of the war, had the Ordnance Department been requested five years sooner to study it, may be a question, but certainly tardy demand for sound devices made the task of development more difficult.31
As the Chief of Staff determined how a weapon was to be used, so after 1919 the combat arms were empowered to list the characteristics it should possess.32 Thus two limitations were imposed upon ordnance designers: they must devise matériel for predetermined purposes and they must accept the decisions of the combat arms as to what military characteristics would best serve in each weapon to accomplish these purposes. The customer was to be regarded, if not as always right, at least as right until combat proved him wrong. That would be late in the game. In World War II special Ordnance missions, sent to active theatres to observe performance of American weapons or to prepare recommendations for new equipment for, say, jungle warfare, provided Research and Development Service with useful information and some understanding of combat troops’ opinion. But redesign or major change had still to be approved by boards of the using arms. The fact that the personnel of those boards changed rather frequently forced Ordnance designers at intervals to refight their case for any given proposal. Moreover, service boards were by no means always well informed on combat problems. While the Ordnance Department could attempt to dissuade the user from establishing requirements that Ordnance experts considered inappropriate or impossible to achieve, neither the Chief of Ordnance nor the chief of Research and Development Service had authority to reject a development project or to modify it materially once it had been ordered.
At the risk of belaboring the obvious, the fact must be repeated that the Ordnance Department was a service, quite literally a servant, of the using arms. This fact is frequently misunderstood even within the Ordnance Department itself. Thus one Ordnance writer summarizing the war work of Ordnance Research and Development Service declared:–
It is a common belief that the evolution of new tactics dictates the use of new weapons when, in fact, the reverse is true. For the effective employment of new weapons, new methods of use (tactics) must inevitably be devised. The Research and Development Service, conscious of its responsibility to the using arms and of the necessity for increasingly decisive weapons, took the initiative in the development of much matériel without waiting for the need to be felt on the battlefield.33
There is, of course, an element of truth in the statement regarding the relation of weapons to their use. Tactics of modern warfare were revolutionized by the introduction of bombers, fighter planes, and tanks in World War I. At the end of World War II the atomic bomb promised to bring about many changes in strategic and tactical planning. The Ordnance Department, apart from three or four officers advising on fuze problems, had no share in the MANHATTAN Project. Future development of accurate guided missiles might necessitate further revisions of doctrine. But between 1940 and 1945 the Ordnance Department neither devised any weapon that forced fundamental changes in tactical doctrine, nor, save in a few instances, did it anticipate a tactical need by designing an innovation before the fighting forces had requested it. If Ordnance engineers did submit an innovation without having had a specific request, they were obliged to conduct a difficult sales campaign to pre vent flat rejection on the grounds that no requirement for it existed.
The Chief of Staff in 1945 emphasized the injustice of criticisms aimed at the Ordnance Department:–
In some of the public discussions of such matters [the quality of American ordnance] criticism was leveled at the Ordnance Department for not producing better weapons. This Department produced with rare efficiency what it was told to produce, and these instructions came from the General Staff of which I am the responsible head, transmitting the resolved views of the officers with the combat troops or air forces, of the commanders in the field.34
General Campbell also realized clearly the restrictions upon his Department. In discussing with officers of the line the advisability of developing a trackless tank, Campbell announced:–
As long as I am in the Chair, the Ordnance Department is going to act as a servant of the line of the Army—its public. If the line wants an 18 wheeled car that will run sidewise, we will do our best to give it to the line. If we don’t think it can be made, we will advise you to that effect. If you still want it, we will try our best to get it. That is our stand in this car right now. … It is up to the line to determine, with our advice, what they would like to have done in this car. As far as the Ordnance Department is concerned, it is your decision.35
Experienced Ordnance officers recognized that more persuasiveness on the part of the Ordnance Department might occasionally have saved effort expended on weapons that, when completed, proved
unable to accomplish their purpose. The inability of Ordnance officers to induce the Infantry to abandon its demand for a 37-mm. tank gun is one example.36 Ordnance engineers used engineering language that manifestly often carried little conviction to the combat arms. The layman must nevertheless be astonished at the Ordnance Department’s acceptance of responsibility for designing weapons it had deemed unsuitable for the purpose intended and had demurred at developing. Instead of reminding the using arm that any particular development had to follow the specifications laid down by the user and that weaknesses in the resulting weapon were often due to the combination of characteristics demanded, the Ordnance Department was prone to insist that the weapon under criticism was the best of its kind. For the sake of the morale of the general public in wartime, there was reason to announce emphatically and repeatedly that American fighting equipment was the finest in the world. But within the War Department the Ordnance Department exposed itself to unwarranted criticism from other branches of the Army by not explaining the nature of the limitations imposed upon Ordnance Research and Development Service.
Ordnance technicians and engineers, on the other hand, were not invariably in the van. Conservatism marked some phases of their thinking. An example may be found in their unwillingness in 1940 to push development of incendiary bombs, in spite of urgent communications from a military observer in London and later from an officer of the Army Air Forces who had witnessed the blitz. Several incendiary bombs had been under development during the 1930s, but Ordnance ammunition experts by 1940 had come to the conclusion that a demolition bomb could do everything an incendiary could, and more. They turned deaf ears to descriptions of the effectiveness of the magnesium-filled incendiaries that the Germans had rained upon London. The upshot of this indifference was the transfer of the project to the Chemical Warfare Service, which had long had responsibility for chemical fillers. Consequently it was the Chemical Warfare Service, not the Ordnance Department, that developed the so-called napalm bomb that proved peculiarly effective toward the end of the war and later in Korea.37
A few blind spots notwithstanding, by and large the Ordnance Department met its assigned responsibilities with distinction. In most cases, as General Marshall stated, shortcomings in American fighting equipment in World War II were attributable not to Ordnance Department slow-witted-ness, but to War Department and Ground Forces instructions. That public opinion and Congress all through the 1930s so stressed defense as opposed to aggressive warfare that Army planning was willy-nilly influenced by what amounted to a definite national policy, doubtless largely accounts for delays in evolving tactical doctrine for offense.38 Those delays in turn retarded Ordnance research and development work. Comprehension of the limits of Ordnance responsibilities is essential to an understanding of the story that follows.
Technical Intelligence
In peacetime, development of American ordnance might be regarded as a search for absolutes rather than relatives. Since
the enemy to be overmatched was unknown, the problem became one of finding the best possible means of defeating any hostile force without considering where a future battle would take place or exactly what equipment the future enemy would employ. Yet there were clear advantages to thinking in terms of besting a particular army and its matériel. The designer inevitably could most readily focus his energies on countermeasures when faced with knowledge of what he must compete with. Americans had long realized that information about the types of equipment in use or under development by foreign armies was an aid, if not actually a starting point, for ordnance research and development work for the US Army. But during the 1930s technical intelligence, that is, data on details of foreign design and manufacturing methods, was so intertwined with military intelligence that what filtered through to the Department was casual and tended to leave research to proceed in a near vacuum. The US Army’s disregard of developments in foreign munitions before 1940 is a perpetual source of astonishment to the European.
When the disasters on the Continent occurred in the spring and summer of 1940, American military intelligence still derived only from military observer and liaison reports sent through American embassies. Realization of the need of more and exacter knowledge of foreign weapons had led the Chief of Ordnance in March to request the appointment of two additional Ordnance officers as assistant military observers. Accordingly, in May, Colonel Zornig went to Berlin and Capt. Gervais W. Trichel to Paris. Captain Trichel’s mission terminated in June, and Colonel Zornig’s in July at his own request, when he discovered that sources of exact information were closed to him.39 Meanwhile, the extent of what the Ordnance Department did not know about German, French, and British ordnance is plainly revealed in a list of questions prepared by the Office, Chief of Ordnance, in June 1940. A week before the fall of France the Chief of Ordnance asked that military observers in Europe find the answers, and, if possible, send samples of foreign equipment for study in the United States. When the replies came back in the late fall, the papers were circulated narrowly. It is hard to believe that the information had not been long available in Ordnance files. For example, the first question on artillery asked whether the French 75-mm, and 155-mm. gun (GPF) recoil mechanisms were secret; the answer was that neither had been secret since 1918. Moreover, many of the answers to questions on German matériel are known today to have been inaccurate, for captured German documents giving official data on characteristics and performance show how much misinformation the reports contained.40 But long before the General Staff discovered that, it was obvious that means were inadequate for obtaining knowledge of what ordnance resources the future enemy possessed.
At the end of August 1940 the General Staff inaugurated an Army-wide intelligence system. Every service was to have a unit. The Ordnance Military Intelligence Section was established in September. Its duties were to collate, digest, and disseminate the information that came from G-2 reports and to prepare statements of what
further information the Ordnance Department needed in order to solve its current problems. But the section had no immediate part in collecting data abroad and, in the months that followed, much of what the G-2 reports contained dealt with countries that were soon to be allies.41 Nevertheless, the machinery was now in existence for making use of intelligence reports, and the scope and effectiveness of the intelligence network was to increase greatly as time went on. Circulating Military Intelligence Division special bulletins was the first step in keeping the services informed on foreign developments. By December 1940 G-2 had evolved its procedures about as follows: when an incoming report noted that German tanks were carrying 2-inch armor plate and recommended corresponding increases on American tanks, G-2 sent the information to G-4, the Infantry, the Engineers, the Armored Force, and Ordnance. If the arms and services concurred, G-4 would initiate action to put the change into effect.42 The chief difference between this system and earlier procedures lay in the speed with which action could be hurried through because every branch of the Army was informed simultaneously. Indeed General Marshall, in discussing Army Intelligence, observed that right up to the time of Pearl Harbor the United States had little more than what its military observers “could learn at a dinner, more or less over the coffee cups.”43
Within its first year the Ordnance Military Intelligence Section found its task growing in volume and complexity. From the data supplied by the special bulletins of G-2, the small staff of the Ordnance section periodically prepared detailed analyses of information bearing on ordnance. The Ordnance Intelligence Bulletins, averaging monthly nearly fifty pages, circulated among interested agencies outside and units within the Department, so that a considerable body of facts—or guesses—on foreign matériel became available to people needing the data. After May 1941 the reports of the Ordnance section of a new War Department Special Observer Group sent to the United Kingdom that month supplemented routine communiqués.44 Meanwhile the Ordnance Department was not wholly dependent upon G-2 sources for information. Even before the Lend-Lease Act passed, Ordnance technicians could profit by the exchange of scientific findings among British, Canadian, and American scientists of NDRC.45 And, as it became clear that the United States was actually, even if not yet formally, committed to supporting Great Britain in the war against Germany, the British put at the disposal of the US Army data both on British weapons and on what British intelligence had uncovered on German weapons. British technical intelligence bridged the gap for the United States until such time as the US Army had trained technical intelligence to act for itself, and, in fact, throughout the war the Ordnance Department used British, Canadian, and Australian reports on enemy equipment.46
After Pearl Harbor Ordnance officers
assigned to theatre headquarters prepared regular monthly reports which sometimes contained explicit information upon enemy ordnance. As early as March 1942 the communications of the Ordnance officer in the Middle East described features of German weapons encountered by the British in the recent battles for North Africa, and a series of photographs of captured equipment arrived at Aberdeen Proving Ground soon after. Some actual specimens of German matériel also were shipped to the States, although in 1942 they formed a thin trickle compared to the flood that was to reach Aberdeen in the summer of 1943,47 Study of the weapons themselves naturally gave research men in the zone of the interior more useful knowledge than they could derive from reports written overseas, even when they were accompanied by sketches. The chief value of theatre reports to the Research and Development Service lay in the detailed comments on performance of American ordnance. Later in the war special missions sent to active theatres undertook to assemble information upon the functioning of particular types of Allied equipment, to see what other types were needed, or to introduce new experimental models. But on enemy weapons neither these special missions nor the theatre Ordnance officer could ordinarily supply all wanted technical data.
Early in 1942 General Barnes was convinced that research and development would benefit by a more direct flow of technical information than the theatres could readily transmit under the existing system. That summer, as soon as he became head of the separate division for research and development, he launched his proposal. He persuaded G-2 and the rest of the War Department that, because trained Ordnance observers could collect essential detailed data on enemy equipment more competently than could officers trained only in general military intelligence, specially briefed Ordnance teams should be sent to the active theatres. The first Ordnance intelligence mission accordingly went to North Africa soon afterward, in fact some months before American combat troops landed there. A series of units for more permanent overseas assignment could not be provided so quickly. Working out a systematic scheme of indoctrinating Enemy Equipment Intelligence units, as they came to be called, took several months. The first of these new teams left the States in December 1942.48 Others followed, until by V-E Day units for every theatre had been organized and dispatched. Though originally their mission was to collect samples of enemy equipment and all possible data on it to send to Research and Development Service in the States, in time the units served combat troops more directly by issuing bulletins in the theatres containing information on how to use against the enemy his own weapons captured in an advance. So useful was the work of the Ordnance teams that early in 1944 the commanding general of the Army Service Forces ordered every technical service to organize similar units. Enemy Equipment Intelligence Service teams thus became accepted parts
of American armies overseas.49
These teams were drawn from groups who had trained as tank maintenance men and as small arms, artillery, and ammunition specialists. Familiarity with the features of American equipment qualified them more readily to recognize distinctive and noteworthy characteristics of enemy matériel, a consideration peculiarly important when captured items could not be returned intact to the zone of interior for analysis. In the last year of the war, theatre intelligence staffs recruited additional men for Enemy Equipment Intelligence units by taking volunteers with special experience. At no time did the Ordnance Department make any pretense of giving thorough training in intelligence work. A week of intensive preparation at Aberdeen Proving Ground followed by a week’s briefing by the Military Intelligence Division of the General Staff and by the branch chiefs of Ordnance Research and Development was all that was possible. Experience in the field proved to be the best schooling.50 The officers who had the task of making this new service fulfill its mission in the theatres had a pioneering assignment as difficult as it was important.
In Europe, where Allied invasion of the Continent would give direct access to German factories, laboratories, and experimental stations, the theatre Ordnance officer, Brig. Gen. Henry B. Sayler, realized some months before D Day that an opportunity would exist to go beyond capture and study of particular pieces of enemy equipment; captured German correspondence, laboratory equipment, and records, as well as interviews with prisoners of war who had been engaged in German ordnance research, would enormously enlarge knowledge of enemy development plans and methods. Acting upon General Sayler’s suggestion, the Chief of Ordnance arranged to have technical specialists assigned to this task, and in October 1944 the first group, designated the Research and Development Branch of the Technical Division of the Office of the Chief Ordnance Officer, ETOUSA, began its work. The resulting information was assembled and disseminated by a joint British and American agency, the Combined Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee, usually called CIOS, with headquarters in London. The data thus accumulated in the last six months of the war in Europe, though collected too late to be applied to weapons in World War II, were of utmost long-term value to the Ordnance Department. The work of the CIOS represents an important phase of Allied cooperation on research problems.51 In the Pacific no comparable investigation was possible until American troops occupied Japan after the war.
The form that technical intelligence activities took in the battle zones and behind the combat lines is part of the story of Ordnance service overseas. Research and Development Service in the zone of interior was affected only by the arrival of captured items at Aberdeen or of photographs sent to the Office, Chief of Ordnance, along with such analyses of enemy
equipment as could be made in the theatres. The Ordnance intelligence unit in Washington was responsible for the ultimate disposition both of actual specimens and of information about them, but a Foreign Matériel Section established at the Aberdeen Proving Ground was the first consignee of enemy weapons and vehicles. From Aberdeen the intelligence unit in the Office, Chief of Ordnance, might shortly decide to send an item to an arsenal or to a commercial laboratory for study—a German machine gun to Springfield Armory, a sample of foreign alloy steel to Watertown, a fire control instrument to Frankford Arsenal. The resulting reports upon the enemy equipment, whether studied by the Aberdeen Foreign Matériel Section and the Ballistic Research Laboratory, by an Ordnance contractor, or by an arsenal, were assembled by the intelligence staff of Research and Development Service who then prepared and distributed summaries of the findings. The summaries might be incorporated in the technical information letters sent to the theatres of operations monthly after April 1943 or might be circulated only among agencies within the United States. Throughout the war the bulk of the significant work on enemy weapons took place at Aberdeen where the firing range, laboratory, and proving facilities made possible comparative tests of American and foreign ordnance.52
The Foreign Matériel Section of the proving center at Aberdeen was formally established in September 1942, though it had antecedents in the museum where foreign equipment of World War I and after, all carefully catalogued, had stood on display. Before the end of the year Lt. Col. George B. Jarrett, newly returned from the Middle East, was appointed chief of the section. Jarrett, an arms collector in private life and the curator of the original museum at Aberdeen, was eminently qualified to make the new unit effective. While he was still in the Middle East he had anticipated the need of studying enemy equipment thoroughly and had arranged to ship a few lots back to the Proving Ground. This was the only wholehearted attempt made up to that time to assemble enemy ordnance for technical analysis. The matériel was put to immediate use in schooling the first Enemy Equipment Intelligence units preparing for overseas duty. As the number of items arriving at Aberdeen multiplied, the work of the section increased enormously and the section became a branch with sections under it. One section took charge of the museum exhibits, which were continued for the benefit of a host of visitors—guests at Proving Ground demonstrations, newspaper men, and especially officers detailed to examine the specimens. Another section maintained the Foreign Matériel Branch Library and made analyses of foreign designs and engineering features. A third section acted as liaison with the Office, Chief of Ordnance, and arranged for shipments of items or components to designated laboratories and agencies.53
By the fall of 1943 shipments of as much as twenty-six carloads of captured enemy equipment were rolling into Aberdeen at one time. It was not an indiscriminate
collection, as Enemy Equipment Intelligence teams dispatched only new or newly modified matériel. Furthermore, the first sample of each new item captured in the European and Mediterranean theatres went to the United Kingdom, so that only a second specimen could go to the United States. Still the accumulating mass of foreign matériel was tremendous. Deducing from it all possible useful information required careful organization. A description of the successive steps in handling a captured German tank may serve to illustrate the process of studying foreign equipment at the Proving Ground. The Office, Chief of Ordnance, coordinated the test program in order to guarantee its proceeding with maximum efficiency and to prevent needless damage to a specimen or unauthorized destruction.
When a tank was captured and shipping space found, the Enemy Equipment Intelligence unit sent word to the intelligence section of Ordnance Research and Development Service in Washington that the tank was en route to the United States. Upon its arrival, port authorities notified the commanding general at Aberdeen, and, after it reached the Proving Ground, the Foreign Matériel Branch photographed it inside and out and reported upon its condition to the intelligence section in the Office, Chief of Ordnance. The intelligence section then communicated with other units of Research and Development Service—the tank division, the artillery division, the ballistics division, the matériel branch—and with agencies outside the Ordnance Department, such as the Signal Corps, if the tank’s communication system appeared to have unusual features, or the Chemical Warfare Service, which was interested in the power plant oxygen supply and its susceptibility to gas contamination. Even a branch of the State Department might be concerned, if markings on parts of the tank promised to disclose where parts had been manufactured and thus indicate economic conditions in Germany. On the basis of the requests submitted by all these groups, the Intelligence Section prepared a directive to govern the order and character of the tests to be conducted. Occasionally, some other division of Research and Development Service drew up the test directive, to which the Intelligence Section then gave concurrence. Not until the order from the Office, Chief of Ordnance, appeared could tests begin at Aberdeen.
After the staff at Aberdeen had its instructions in hand, it frequently had to make considerable repairs before the tank could be subjected to road or firing tests. It often demanded sound engineering and great care to ensure accurate reconstruction of the original model. The first trial then might very well be a road and cross-country test to compare the speed and maneuverability of the enemy vehicle with an American counterpart. A check of the time required to traverse the German turret and scrutiny of all electrical controls within turret and body might be the next procedure. Anything novel about the headlights or searchlights had to be noted. Specialists studied the characteristics of the suspension system, the tracks, and the treads, if not already revealed by photographs. The Society of Automotive Engineers War Engineering Board, which gave the Ordnance Department invaluable assistance throughout the war, might undertake careful examination of the design, methods of fabrication, and materials used. Chemical and performance analyses of the oils and lubricants employed might be called for. The fire
control and sighting devices might be stripped off and sent to the laboratory at Frankford Arsenal for study, or optical experts brought to Aberdeen might witness performance of the sights in firing tests on the range. If the ammunition for the tank guns had new features of design or used unfamiliar types of fuze or power, the tests might include laboratory examination of a few shells. The projectile might require extensive metallurgical analysis at Watertown Arsenal. In firing the guns, crews and officers had to keep records of their range, accuracy, and penetrating power. Ballisticians of the Research Laboratory might have to prepare comparative tabulations of the German and American ballistic performance.
Upon completion of these tests, American guns would ordinarily fire at the tank in order to find the spots of greatest weakness, test the resistance of the German armor plate, and establish the effective range of American guns and shells designed to combat this type of enemy tank. For example, firing new experimental high-velocity armor-piercing 90-mm. shell at a German Panther tank supplied to Ordnance ammunition experts important information needed to perfect this HVAP ammunition. Metallurgical study of a piece of the tanks’ armor might follow if its resistance to penetration or method of fabrication deviated from what past experience had led the Ordnance Department to expect. The final report upon a German tank might thus consist of a good many separate studies. Having assembled these and checked for consistency in the findings and terminology, the foreign matériel staff dispatched copies of the full report to the technical intelligence unit of the Office, Chief of Ordnance, to the chief of Research and Development Service, to G-2 of the General Staff, and to any other units known to have legitimate interest in the data.
Usually men at Aberdeen put the first captured specimen of a new piece of enemy ordnance through careful performance tests, including firing of German ammunition against American tanks. Later samples of enemy equipment were used either for verification of the first set of findings, for target tests of improved American ammunition, or for a check on the quality of materials and minor changes in design employed in later enemy models. Technical intelligence officers overseas endeavored to send a specimen of each weapon to Aberdeen every six months in order to enable the staff to observe any changes in design and materials. Continuous laboratory study of critical parts, components, and fabricating methods was of some strategic value because it provided clues to the current status of enemy manpower, raw material supplies, and production facilities. Sometimes American experts directly copied features of an enemy design and sometimes, by applying an engineering principle used in the captured weapon, were able to improve upon the original.
Technicians and military experts in the zone of interior could thus scrutinize every detail of any piece of captured equipment. In actuality, exhaustive analyses were rare. An NDRC contract with the Battelle Memorial Institute, negotiated in April 1943, aimed specifically at obtaining full information from a series of such studies. But NDRC’s summary report at the end of the war declared: “Very little benefit was derived from these studies due largely to the fact that this office [OCO] provided inadequate guidance and direction to the NDRC contractor.”54 The Ordnance Department unfortunately could not spare
men to give Battelle the necessary indoctrination. Because time was short and attempt to ape a foreign competitor might delay vital production, most studies of enemy ordnance concentrated primarily upon comparisons of performance with American.
By the summer of 1944 the Ordnance Department had collected enough data on foreign weapons to issue the Catalogue of Enemy Ordnance Matériel, one volume on German and one volume on Japanese. The form was like that of the Catalogue of Standard Ordnance Items. A considerable list of errata appended to later issues of the Enemy Ordnance Catalogue testified to need for constant revision. Both Ordnance Department and officers of the Ground Forces received copies of these loose-leaf volumes. The catalogues did not, of course, contain estimates of performance of enemy equipment. These appraisals went to the Chief of Staff in a lengthy secret report of May 1945, entitled Comparison of American, German and Japanese Ordnance.55 Before the war was over, many men of Ordnance Research and Development Service knew a great deal about their competitors’ products.
Collaboration with Allied Nations
As soon as Britain’s doubts about American cooperation in the fight against the Nazi regime were dispelled, the War Office released a mass of technical and scientific data to be used in developments in the United States. The Tizard Mission of September 1940, a precursor of the series of special missions to America, to London, and to Ottawa, included representatives of the British Army, Navy, and Air Force, the Canadian defense services and the National Research Council of Canada. In the early days the United States got more help on basic research than it gave, though later this condition was reversed, and the American scientific contributions to the joint war effort came to be of vast importance.56 Following the enactment of the Lend-Lease Act in March 1941, systematic interchange of information and development planning began. NDRC set up a branch in London, and in April the British Central Scientific Office was opened in Washington under the direction of a distinguished British physicist. From the latter office a long list of special technical reports was regularly submitted to the Ordnance Department, with the understanding that copies of any report would be made available upon request.57 The full collaboration of scientists, accustomed to pooling scientific data through journals and conferences that recognized no international boundaries, was less astonishing than the cooperation quickly established between American, British, and Canadian military representatives.
The first move of the US Army in joining efforts with the British on both procurement and research and development programs was the creation of the Special Observer Group sent to London in May 1941. To the Ordnance section of this group Col. John Coffey was assigned. The mission of the Ordnance section included study of “British establishments” and preparation of reports upon them for the Chief of Ordnance in the States. “British establishments” was in time interpreted to
mean manufacturing plants as well as military installations, so that information upon British manufacturing techniques was available to the Ordnance section. By joint agreement in August, copies of proceedings of the British Ordnance Board were thereafter sent regularly to the Office, Chief of Ordnance, in the States and minutes of the Ordnance Technical Committee to London.58 Other than the British board proceedings, the information dispatched to Washington during 1941 and early 1942 dealt largely with gaps in equipment or with recommendations for changes in type. For example, a report of late February 1942 urged a number of changes: use of 20-mm, antiaircraft guns in place of 50-caliber machine guns that were ineffective against dive bombers; discard of 37-mm. or 3-pounder tank guns because of their inability “to enter a slugging match with equivalent German guns” and because of the tanks’ “insufficient mobility to outrun the [German Panzer IV] tanks”; adoption of 40-mm. Bofors antiaircraft guns as integral parts of equipment for each armored, motorized, or foot division; increase in the range of 105-mm. howitzers and improvement in their antitank fighting characteristics. Furthermore, to speed the receipt of information, this report recommended that technical data go direct to the office that had requested them, instead of through G-2 channels, a recommendation that shortly was put into effect.59
After the formation of Headquarters, European Theater of Operations, United States Army, ETOUSA, in the summer of 1942, the Ordnance section of the Special Observer Group became the Ordnance Section of the new headquarters. For Research and Development Service in the zone of the interior the value of this Ordnance unit grew when in April 1943 its function was broadened to include:
a. … investigate, follow up, and report to the War Dept, on foreign research and development of all Ordnance and related matters.
…
d. Report on proving ground apparatus and equipment and any manufacturing processes of interest to the Chief of Ordnance.
…
g. Furnish representation for ETO on the British Ordnance Board, various committees, sub-committees, panels, etc., dealing with research and development of Ordnance when such representation is requested by the British.60
Thereafter, the volume of explicit information rolling into the Office, Chief of Ordnance, bearing on research and development in the United Kingdom increased rapidly. The stream of reports and memoranda included discussion of tests and experiments under way on American matériel in Britain, descriptions of British experimental work, and sometimes data on German ordnance collected by the British.61 Only when D Day transferred most activity to the Continent did information from London shrink in importance.
On no other type of matériel was collaboration with the British so extensive and carefully organized as on tanks, tank
guns, and tank accessories. In September 1941 a mission headed by General Wesson, Chief of Ordnance, went to London to confer with the British War Office and Ministry of Supply on production and design problems. British officials at the conferences made some specific requests of the US Army, but offered at the same time a reasoned exposition of what two years of fighting had taught the British about tank and artillery design. British proposals for some heavier tanks with wider tracks and more powerful guns reinforced the views of the automotive experts of the Ordnance Department and doubtless helped eventually to convince the ground forces that bigger tanks were necessary. Description of the guns and armor that the Germans had been using against the British in Africa made a telling argument.62 In March 1942 a British mission came to Washington to carry the discussions further, though its primary objective was to straighten out questions of procurement. The British Tank Mission and the United States Tank Committee reached agreement on a wide range of questions concerning armored fighting vehicles, but equally important were the proposals for future collaboration. A joint agreement laid down a general policy of maintaining “the fullest of mutual exchange of information and of coordination of plans.”63 Accordingly, members of the British Army staff in Washington, the British Air Commission, and War Supplies Ltd. began to attend meetings of the Ordnance Technical Committee and shortly thereafter Canadian representatives also were admitted.64
In August an American Technical Mission went to London. The discussions that occurred that August covered far more than combat vehicles. Indeed, the initial request for the mission listed several items upon which British developments had gone so far that the US Army could only save duplicating effort by examining British findings and techniques in the United Kingdom—notably, a shoulder-type antitank projector with half-round bombs, Probert rifling for guns using forward banded shell, the “Little John two-pounder squeeze attachment,” the Burney recoilless gun, and rocket projectiles.65 Consequently, the mission included experts in seven different fields. General Barnes represented the United States on problems of artillery, self-propelled mounts, and fighting vehicles; Colonel Zornig on metallurgy and gun ammunition; Col. Robert G. Butler on aircraft bombs; Col. Horace A. Quinn on aircraft armament; Col. Gervais W. Trichel on fire control; Mr. Samuel Feltman on ballistics; and 2nd Lt. Edward G. Uhl on rockets. Tours of British installations gave the American mission firsthand knowledge of what lines the United Kingdom was following, and conferences held group by group permitted careful exploration of details on each type of matériel. The general conclusions stressed the wisdom of creating routines for fuller, regular exchange of information between Britain and the United States, for officials of both nations recognized that liaison was still far from
complete. They proposed that further exchange of visits be scheduled and that officers assigned to such missions be required to submit written reports on their findings; the reports should be widely and promptly circulated. A final statement read:–
The question of urgency in production [and] conservation of critical materials emphasise the necessity for a true appreciation of simplification in design, with a greater degree of standardisation on common items between the two countries, together with the maintenance of a high quality in manufacture sufficient to perform the duty for which the weapon is required.66
In keeping with the spirit of these recommendations, arrangements were made on both sides of the water for close liaison. From London, Col. Frank F. Reed of the Ordnance Section at ETO headquarters regularly sent to Research and Development Service minutes of the North African Armored Fighting Vehicles meetings where every detail was threshed out periodically.67 Transmitting records of tests and reports on experimentation sometimes ran into a long series of communications covering a period of many months. For example, correspondence and military observer reports describing work on the so-called Sherman DD device began in June 1942 and continued into December 1943.68 American Ordnance officers assigned to British experimental stations or proving grounds had access to all information, and nothing Research and Development Service in the States wanted to know about British research and development was denied it.69 Still, it was clear that written reports were no substitute for technical missions. “The best means of close cooperation and exchange of technical information,” wrote theatre headquarters in 1943, “is believed to be through the missions sent to this theatre.” The report went on to state that the missions should be sent approximately every three months, and from time to time officers assigned to the theatre should be returned for temporary duty in the States.70 In January 1944 Colonel Reed began regularly to attend meetings of the British Ordnance Board.
Despite a statement of the August mission implying awareness of shortages of materials in both Britain and America, cooperation in conserving raw materials and finding ways of using substitutes was slower than collaboration in other realms. General Barnes upon his return from London had observed that the British up to that time had undertaken no experimentation on use of substitute materials, “Due to the liberal supply of strategic materials from the United States,” he wrote, “the British have not felt the same urge to make substitutions as has been the case in the Ordnance Department where pressures exist.71 Six months later an Anglo-American Conservation Committee with headquarters in London was established with the stated purpose of promoting interchange of information on “all subjects
relating to economy in use and manufacture, including substitution, simplification, standardization, elimination and salvage, and also … [of making] recommendations for the adoption of improved practice … in order that the critical materials available to the United Kingdom and the United States shall be used to the greatest advantage.” Studies were to cover eighteen raw materials, including aluminum, asbestos, copper, rubber, and zinc, and several processed items such as carbon electrodes and tempered roller bearings.72 Thus another significant effort was joined on research and development problems.
Although the flow of information to Washington in the first eighteen months of the war was fuller than from Washington to headquarters in the United Kingdom, British officers stationed in the United States were in a position to send directly to British officials data on developments in America. Moreover, after midsummer of 1943 the Ordnance Department sent the British between 3,000 and 5,000 technical and industrial reports every month.73 In spite of an occasional complaint that some American officers were niggardly in giving out information on manufacturing processes to British representatives in the States, by and large exchange was free enough to benefit both countries.74
An example of the kind of data submitted from London to the Ordnance Research and Development staff in the zone of the interior may indicate how much time and money collaboration saved even when British innovations were not adopted by the United States, or when experiments produced negative results. In January 1944 Colonel Reed sent a report on British tests of a two-speed epicyclic tank generator drive. He included the cover sheet of the British Department of Tank Design and the Fighting Vehicle Establishments’ report on the generator fitted to the British Humber armored car Mark II. The two-speed epicyclic drive and a magnetic clutch were so set up that the generator would rotate at 3,17 times the engine speed; at 800 revolutions per minute the micro switch would automatically open and the generator would then drive at 1.1 times the engine speed. Tests had revealed weaknesses in the magnetic clutch that were in process of correction. Designs of similar equipment for other armored fighting vehicles, Colonel Reed wrote, were under development. The American automotive experts did not attempt to install this type of generator in American tanks, but having at hand the information on British experiments made it unnecessary for the Detroit Tank-Automotive Center
to undertake a similar investigation.75 More positive advantages were in timesaving through adoption of some British developments. An outstanding example was the Canal Defense Light, a powerful searchlight mounted in a specially designed General Grant tank turret, designed to aid in night river crossings. British research developed the CDL unaided. Delivery of complete drawings to the Office, Chief of Ordnance, enabled the Ordnance Department to build 500 of these special turrets in eighteen months, whereas at least two years of preliminary work would have been necessary otherwise.76 The fact that the CDL device was not widely used did not diminish the value of the collaboration.
Nor was exchange confined to the United States and the United Kingdom. In addition to British intelligence findings sometimes relayed to the Office, Chief of Ordnance, from the British Supply Mission in Washington, the Canadians and Australians supplied considerable useful data. From the latter came information on Japanese weapons that supplemented what American intelligence found. Frequently the Australian reports came by way of London, inasmuch as full liaison dictated having the information available to British as well as to American Ordnance.77 The United States reciprocated by giving to British Empire representatives complete copies of the monthly and semimonthly reports on all research and development projects and releasing detailed drawings and other specific data when requested.78 With other allies, exchange was limited by circumstance. The Combined Chiefs of Staff early in 1944 arrived at a statement of policy on release of information to the Chinese by making the criterion the immediate usefulness of data to the Chinese Army in resisting Japan.79 When political reasons made it desirable to give to Chinese military observers or military missions access to British and American military establishments, special instructions were to be drawn up in advance stipulating expressly what was not to be shown. As the Chinese had little technical data to trade other than information derived from study of captured Japanese weapons, that plan seemed reasonable.80
The problem with the USSR was less simple. The Russians were ready to transmit through the American ambassador in Moscow information on captured German ordnance and comments upon the performance of British and American equipment supplied under lend-lease, but showed no willingness to share with their
allies the fruits of Soviet military scientific research.81 When, in the spring of 1943, the Ordnance Department was requested by the Joint Intelligence Committee to make recommendations on what disclosures should be made to Russia, the Ordnance Department listed several that should be excluded. The shaped charge was one. “The entire effectiveness of shaped charges,” the Ordnance Department endorsement stated, “depends upon the detailed design of the round and this in turn upon the principles of operation. It is believed inexpedient to release this information.” Similarly, data on the proximity fuze were not to be released. For .30-caliber and .50-caliber incendiary ammunition, specifications and round drawings might be sent, but not details of the manufacturing processes. As the effectiveness of this type of incendiary ammunition against aircraft self-sealing tanks depended “entirely upon the dimensions of the bullet tip,” the manufacturing processes whereby those dimensions were obtained and the cold-working process that made the bullet nose sufficiently brittle were pronounced to be a military secret. Yet probably because the United States was supplying Russia with a large amount of equipment, the Ordnance Department felt justified in requesting from the USSR answers to a number of specific questions. For example, did Russian experience show single or dual tires to be better for mud operation and what was the type of tread design and construction? Were the Russians using rubber on shear-type bogie wheels and how good was it? Was crude or synthetic rubber used for tire repair? If synthetic, what kind? And if a combination, what composition? Still more searching and less likely to elicit answers were questions about Russian antitank mines, grenades, and self-destroying shell fuzes.82
The question of exchange dragged on into the fall, but at the Teheran Conference an agreement was reached calling for reciprocal exchange of data on rockets.83 Accordingly, when a military mission went to Moscow in April 1944, the Ordnance Technical Intelligence unit attached was instructed to be ready to give out information on American rocket developments and, in return, to learn essentials on Russian. The primary purpose of this Ordnance unit was to study and send back to the States items of German equipment that the Russians had captured but which had not yet appeared on the Western Front. Consequently, when the list of questions prepared by the Ordnance team concerning the detailed characteristics of Russian rockets went to the Soviet Foreign Office, the American officers were reminded that the Ordnance group had been admitted to Moscow to study German weapons, not Russian. There the matter ended.
The collection of German matériel on exhibit in Moscow was, however, so extensive as to be well worth careful examination. Many items were new to the American experts at that time. Most valuable perhaps were a German 88-mm, Pak 43 and a 75/55-mm. antitank gun, one of each of which the American unit was permitted to ship back to Aberdeen. There was also an array of other vehicles and weapons, a good many of Czechoslovakian,
French, Hungarian, Italian, or other national origin. A Russian major general was in charge of the exhibit and had a large, competent staff of specialists ready to discuss with the Americans the noteworthy features of the captured equipment. The Ordnance unit took careful photographs and notes, sent long reports back to the States, and shipped to Aberdeen specimens of a good many items as well. Furthermore, a series of meetings held at the Foreign Office produced some information from tank experts of the Red Army and automotive engineers, though the historian of the American mission observed: “Our operations were ... limited by the fact that all contacts had to clear through the foreign office resulting in a considerable delay and ... the additional barrier of the presence of an officer of the foreign office … at all conferences,”84
Some ordnance of Russian design was on hand at Aberdeen Proving Ground after 1942, for leaders of the USSR, concerned with getting a steady flow of matériel to the Russo-German battle front, saw that some give to balance the take was inescapable. Thus a Russian T34 tank mounting a 75.2-mm. cannon was presented to the Proving Ground in 1943. Nevertheless, when the foreign matériel staff there cut out a piece of the T34’s frontal armor to analyze metallurgically, the Soviet delegation, on discovering such mayhem, protested vigorously. The tank had been donated to the museum, not to the laboratory. A piece of American armor plate was hastily welded back into the hole; the Russian plate was subjected to thorough study.85
Free exchange of technical data between the Western Allies and the USSR was never obtained. Requests of the Ordnance Technical Intelligence unit in Moscow to visit the battle fronts or Soviet proving grounds were refused. By late fall of 1944, as the Allied advance through France and Luxembourg was making available ample information about German equipment of all types, the Ordnance mission to Moscow was dissolved. What the United States learned about Soviet ordnance during World War II largely came from matériel captured from the Germans who had taken it from the Red Army in battle, from interviews with prisoners who had served in campaigns in the USSR, and, toward the end of the war, from captured German documents.86 After V-E Day Ordnance Technical Intelligence units were able to study more carefully Soviet equipment picked up in Germany. These studies formed the backbone of knowledge the United States Army assembled on Soviet armament.