The Ordnance Department: Procurement and Supply
Chapter 1: Introduction
“Nobody can see through this curtain of battle smoke that enshrouds the earth today,” cried a member of the U.S. House of Representatives on 10 May 1940, the morning Hitler invaded the Low Countries. As the early news bulletins came over the radio, the first reaction in America was shock. On succeeding days, as news reports described the full weight of the offensive—the great thunder and roar of tanks, artillery, and dive bombers crushing Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands, and rolling toward France and the English Channel—shock became alarm. Another Representative expressed the general feeling when he shouted, “Hell is out of bounds!”1
Speculations that would have seemed fantastic a few months before suddenly became horrifying possibilities: that Hitler would quickly defeat Britain and France; that Japan would move to seize the Netherlands East Indies and Malaya; and that the United States would soon stand alone, virtually isolated in a world of hostile dictatorships, “the last great Democracy on earth.”2 How well would the United States be able to defend itself if attacked? What weapons did it have?
Congress had the answer as of 1 May 1940, submitted by the War Department at hearings on the military appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 1941. When the figures came out in late May, on the floor of Congress and in the published hearings, they caused an uproar. There were not enough effective antiaircraft guns to defend a single large American city. There were coast-defense guns for most large coastal cities but some of them had not been fired for twenty years, and all could be bombed out of existence by carrier-based airplanes. As for field artillery, there were about 5,000 French 75s left over from World War I, but nearly all of them were mounted on big wooden wheels with steel tires made to be drawn by mules or horses. Such guns would be shaken to pieces if towed by a truck or tractor at high speed over rough ground; furthermore, they did not have sufficient traverse or elevation to be fully effective. Only 141 had been modernized with improved carriages and pneumatic tires. The 105-mm. howitzer, a companion piece to the 75-mm. gun as primary divisional artillery, was just going into production. There were none on hand, and it would take fourteen to sixteen months to produce the 48 for which funds had been provided. There were only four modernized
155-mm. guns, and no modern 8-inch howitzers.3
And what of the ability of the U.S. Army to wage tank warfare, so brilliantly employed by the Germans? Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, just returned from maneuvers in Louisiana, reported to the Senate: “I have recently seen all the tanks in the United States, about 400 in number, or about one finger of the fanlike German advance about which we have read, or about the number destroyed in two days of fighting in the current European War. The Germans have a rough total of 3,000.” Furthermore, almost all American tanks were of the light type, weighing only 10 or 12 tons. Little was authoritatively known about German tanks; some were said to be 80-ton monsters. The Army believed that 37-mm. antitank guns would be effective against them. But the United States had only 218 guns of this type.4
The brightest spot in the dark picture was the small arms situation. There were enough machine guns; and there were some two and a half million rifles. About 35,000 of the rifles were new Garand semiautomatics, and the number was increasing steadily; 4,000 a month were being turned out at Springfield Armory. The new rapid-firing rifle had received high praise from no less a personage than Vice President John N. Garner, who had used it in deer hunting.5
All types of weapons needed ammunition in unprecedented quantities to wage blitzkrieg warfare. The figures for ammunition on hand were as discouraging as those for artillery. Congress was told that there were only 46,000 rounds for 37-mm. antiaircraft guns, 75,000 for 37-mm. tank and antitank guns, about 17 million of .30-caliber armor-piercing ammunition, and about 25 million of .50-caliber ball ammunition. The sudden, crucial importance of the bomber threw a glaring light on the pitifully small stock of bombs. There were only 11,928 bombs of the 500-lb. size and only 4,336 of the 1,000-lb. type.6
Alarmed and angry, Congress, the press, and the public demanded to know the reason for the low state of the nation’s defenses. Since 1933 there had been mounting appropriations for defense, the largest peacetime appropriations for military purposes in the history of the United States. Where had the money gone? When President Roosevelt stood before a joint session of Congress on 16 May 1940 to ask for over a billion dollars more, his program was almost unanimously approved by the lawmakers and the press. But some members of Congress were demanding to know whether new appropriations would “go down the same rat hole into which we have poured $7,000,000,000 ... during the last 6 years.”7
The Army’s answer was that about three-fourths of the $3,400,000,000 appropriated for the Army had gone for such things as pay, subsistence, and travel expenses,—”merely a case of the American standard of living applied to the
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge aboard medium tank M2 of the 67th Armored Regiment. Officer in left foreground is Lt. Col. Omar N. Bradley, (Photograph taken May 1940.)
maintenance of a volunteer army scattered over a tremendous number of small posts.”8 Some of the money, a small proportion, had gone into munitions, but weapons were not yet coming off the production lines, for they could not readily be obtained from commercial sources, as could food and uniforms, and were hard to manufacture. A year earlier General Malin Craig, then Chief of Staff, had stressed the inexorable demands of time in weapons manufacture: “the sums appropriated this last year will not be fully transformed into military power for two years.”9 Besides, as one Senator pointed out in defense of the War Department, America had not been “under the same strain, nor in the same sphere as the warring nations of Europe. We prepared ourselves for national defense and not to invade Belgium and Holland.”10
Yet nothing could quiet the outcries over “popgun defense,” not even the President’s steady, reassuring voice telling the country over the radio in a fireside chat that the United States had “on hand or on order” 792 tanks, 744 antitank guns, 741 modernized 75s, and 2,000 antiaircraft guns. The press was quick to point out that most of the tanks were light rather than medium or heavy, that more than half the antiaircraft guns were .50-caliber machine guns, good only against low-flying aircraft, and,
most important of all, that only a small percentage of all weapons were actually on hand. Complete delivery of the weapons “on order” could not be expected before June 1941.
At the current rate of delivery, the $348,228,998 just appropriated for ordnance could not be translated into antiaircraft guns, tanks, field artillery, powder, and shells until June 1942. Recalled to Senate hearings, General Marshall gave a more optimistic (and prophetic) date; he thought the nation could be ready for war by December 1941.11 “I am terribly disappointed in the attitude of the Army,” said one Senator. “Their ambition is to get ready in a period of 18 or 24 months, when we are living in a period of wars being settled in 30 days.”12
The agency responsible for developing, procuring, and distributing the Army’s weapons and ammunition was the Ordnance Department. One of the supply services of the War Department, Ordnance consisted of a headquarters staff in Washington and numerous field installations, including manufacturing arsenals, storage depots, and procurement district offices in major cities.13 It was headed by a major general who reported on procurement matters to the civilian Assistant Secretary of War (later Under Secretary) and on military matters to the Chief of Staff through G-4. The line between military and procurement matters was not always distinct. But as a general rule decisions as to types and quantities of weapons needed for each unit of the Army were looked upon as military matters, while decisions as to contracts, financing, and production schedules were regarded as procurement matters. As a supply service (later technical service) the Ordnance Department had little authority for independent action except in the execution of directives from the Assistant Secretary or the Chief of Staff. Ordnance might advise and suggest on the development of new weapons, but the final decision was made by the Chief of Staff on the basis of recommendations of the using arms—the Infantry, the Coast and Field Artillery, the Air Corps, and the Cavalry or Armored Force.14
How good a job would it do in this crisis? Some commentators had doubts. The Chicago Tribune denounced “Army and Navy bureaucrats.” Time, contending that most generals were still thinking in terms of horse warfare, made the point that money was not the only cure for unpreparedness and that brains were needed as well as weapons. Others argued that if the nation was unprepared the fault lay rather in the apathy of the public than in the attitude of the Army or the caliber of the professional officer. Even so severe a critic as Senator Lodge had been impressed by the officers who had testified at committee hearings on the appropriations bill.15
One of these was Maj. Gen. Charles M. Wesson, Chief of Ordnance. Another was Brig. Gen. Charles T. Harris, Jr., who, as the Chief of the Ordnance Department’s Industrial Service, was the man in charge of procuring the weapons and ammunition. A stocky, plain-spoken, hard-driving officer, he was, in the opinion of one high-ranking Army official, “the dynamo of Ordnance.” His years of experience in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of War—the Army’s agency for industrial planning—had given him an excellent grasp of the first and most important rearmament task, which was to put industry to work. Just as nobody expected to fight a war with the small Regular Army, nobody expected the six Ordnance arsenals to turn out more than a small portion of the munitions that would be needed, perhaps 5 percent. After years of neglect, they were at last being renovated. But to one Senator, who had recently, inspected Ordnance installations, the arsenals “looked like ... a plant that had been abandoned for 20 years, and then a bunch of men were feverishly trying to get them back into shape to start production.”16 They were valuable mainly as centers of technical knowledge where the art of design was kept alive and production was maintained on a laboratory basis.
For the past eighteen years the Office of the Assistant Secretary of War had been planning a training program for industry that was comparable to the peacetime training of the Reserves, and Ordnance had the lion’s share. The most fruitful part of the early program for Ordnance wartime expansion consisted of small orders given to qualified manufacturers to educate them in the intricacies of munitions manufacture. Under the Fiscal Year 1939 program, educational orders had been placed for semiautomatic rifles, recoil mechanisms for the 3-inch antiaircraft gun, and 75-mm. shells;17 and by the spring of 1940 the results were beginning to come in. In March General Harris was able to bring a shell made by the S. A. Woods Company to the daily Ordnance conference in General Wesson’s office, where it was passed around and examined with much interest.18 Advance planning enabled Ordnance’ production to get off to a fast start before tool and materials shortages and low priorities put a brake on the program.
In the old Munitions Building on Washington’s Constitution Avenue, a World War I temporary structure where all the supply services were housed, General Harris and Brig. Gen. Earl McFarland, chief of Ordnance’s Military Service, met with General Wesson every morning to hear reports of staff officers and discuss Ordnance policy. Just as the Industrial Service was the point of contact with industry, under the Office of the Assistant Secretary of War, the Military Service was the point of contact with the Chief of Staff and the using arms and services. This contact was of great importance, for Ordnance received its guidance and approval on matters of weapons development from the using arms.
At the time the Germans invaded the Low Countries, the storage, distribution, and maintenance duties of Ordnance were delegated to an office under General McFarland that was designated Field Service and was headed by Col. James K. Crain. The following year Field Service was raised to the same level as Industrial Service, and
Maj. Gen. James K. Crain, Chief of Ordnance Department’s Field Service. (Photograph taken October 1944.)
Colonel Crain was soon to become a brigadier general.19 A slender, thoughtful man, a few years older than General Harris, Colonel Crain looked more like a college professor than an Army officer. He had had long service in the field, beginning with his assignment as Chief Ordnance Officer of the Rainbow Division in World War I,20 and had recently engineered an innovation in field maintenance organization by grouping Ordnance companies into an Ordnance battalion. The battalion was tried for the first time in the spring 1940 maneuvers, and Colonel Crain, on the scene as Corps Ordnance Officer, saw that it was successful.21
Though after the blitzkrieg the maneuvers that spring seemed to the press “more unreal than most such playing at soldiers,” and against the background of Europe’s total war “the U.S. Army looked like a few nice boys with BB guns,”22 yet there were presages of the World War II Army. Gone were the khaki breeches and wrapped puttees, replaced by loose trousers; almost entirely departed were the horse and mule. For the first time in history the Army was equipped with enough motor transportation to carry weapons and men, food, and ammunition; and the star of the Air Corps was rising.
The coming of age of air power had a definite impact on the Ordnance Department. Bomb cases and fuses formed a large part of the educational orders under the Fiscal Year 1940 program;23 and, since industry had cut down the time of making bomb bodies to six months, quick results could be expected from production orders.24 Prospects for new and more powerful bomb fillings were being explored. In mid-January 1940 Dr. Lyman J. Briggs of the Bureau of Standards had called on General Wesson about obtaining three thousand dollars “for the purpose of splitting the uranium atom.” It seemed to Ordnance that the development had “possibilities from an explosive viewpoint.”25
Maj. Gen. Charles T. Harris, Jr., Chief of the Ordnance Department’s Industrial Service, 1939-42
A few months later Mr. Lester P. Barlow, an employee of the Glenn L. Martin aircraft factory, submitted to the Senate Committee on Military Affairs a bomb filled with liquid oxygen. Called “glmite” in honor of Mr. Martin, the explosive was said to give off violent vibrations of the air waves that would kill every living thing within a radius of a thousand yards. Senator Gerald P. Nye was so impressed that he called in reporters to watch while minutes of the committee meeting were burned—“so great was the military secrecy of the subject! ... an explosive so deadly it might even outlaw war!!!”26
Tests of the Barlow bomb took up a good deal of the time of Ordnance planners in April and May, extending down into the most anxious weeks in May. When the newspapers announced that goats would be tethered at varying distances from the bomb to determine its lethal effects, Congress and the War Department were deluged with letters of protest from humane societies and private citizens.27 All the concern turned out to be wasted. At the first test, the bomb leaked and did not go off; at the second, held at Aberdeen Proving Ground in late May, the explosion occurred, but the goats, unharmed, continued to nibble the Maryland grass.28
In a few days’ time, such matters as cruelty to goats became trivial. On 3 June the British were driven off the Continent at Dunkerque. On 8 June the Ordnance Department received instructions to load twelve Thompson submachine guns on the Atlantic Clipper scheduled to leave for Europe the next day; the guns were for protection of the American Embassy in Paris. But it was already too late; the order was canceled by the President almost as soon as given.29 Paris surrendered on 14 June.
The fall of France marked the real beginning of America’s rearmament. Once the tremendous Munitions Program of 30 June 1940 became effective, dwarfing all previous programs, there was an unheard-of expansion in Ordnance operations. Factories had to be converted into armories; ammunition plants, magazines, and depots built; huge stocks of weapons and ammunition distributed. And there was never enough time. It took an inexorable number of months to build a powder plant, make a tank, or fill a requisition, in spite of the
most strenuous efforts of hard-pressed men to speed up the machinery of supply. At Ordnance conferences in the old Munitions Building and later in the new Pentagon, there was always present the haunting specter of Time.