Chapter 3: Launching the Defense Program, 1940-41
Appropriations for preparedness in the early months of 1940 indicated a growing awareness of the dangers threatening the nation, but they fell far short of financing a long-range military program for the United States. Because of the cumbersome machinery used in making military appropriations, and the uncertainty among advocates of preparedness as to how far and how fast the nation should go in the directions of rearmament, the money to finance the munitions program did not come all at once but in varying amounts at irregular intervals. After the startling German successes in May and June, Congress acted quickly to make more funds available. Following the $436,000,000 approved for Ordnance in June 1940, there came a supplemental grant of $1,442,000,000 in September. Six months later $913,000,000 was appropriated for Ordnance expenditures under lend-lease, followed by $1,339,000,000 for general purposes in June, and nearly $3,000,000,000 in August 1941.1 These funds strengthened the rearmament effort, but each appropriation also called for a revision of plans and objectives, thus making it difficult for the General Staff to provide Ordnance with a firm long-range statement of procurement goals.2
Procurement Objectives
As a first step toward providing detailed procurement objectives for the supply services, the General Staff issued an Expenditure Program in August 1940. Designed as a master shopping list for Army procurement, this document showed requirements for the Protective Mobilization Plan (PMP) force of 1,200,000 men and for the augmented force of 2,000,000 men, the
Table 1: Selected items from Time Objective, August 1940
| Item | On Hand July 1940 | Initial Equipment for PMP | Initial Equipment for 2,000,000 men | ||
| Light tanks | 46 | 1400 | (30 Jun 41) | 2548 | (31 Dec 41) |
| Medium tanks | 18 | 675 | (31 Dec 41) | 1763 | (Jul 42) |
| Heavy tanks | 0 | 0 | 324 | (Apr 42) | |
| 37-mm. antitank guns | 228 | 2116 | (30 Sep 41) | 3748 | (31 Dec 41) |
| 75-mm. howitzers (field) | 59 | 384 | (31 Dec 41) | 696 | (30 Jun 42) |
| 3-inch or 90-mm. AA guns | 400 | 849 | (31 Dec 41) | 1629 | (30 Jun 42) |
| AA Directors | 162 | 279 | (31 Dec 41) | 474 | (30 Jun 42) |
| 105-mm. howitzers (hi-speed) | 14 | 1404 | (31 Dec 41) | 2100 | (30 Jun 42) |
| 155-mm. howitzers (hi-speed) | 683 | 1013 | (31 Dec 41) | 1541 | (30 Jun 42) |
| Submachine guns .45-cal. | 260 | 6029 | (30 Jun 41) | 7635 | (31 Dec 41) |
| 155-mm. guns (hi-speed) | 144 | 519 | (31 Dec 41) | 519 | (31 Dec 41) |
| Rifles .30-cal. M1 | 46,078 | 215,045 | (30 Jun 41) | 341,199 | (31 Dec 41) |
| Steel helmets | 952,683 | 1,289,739 | (30 Jun 41) | 2,108,056 | (31 Dec 41) |
unit cost of each item, the stocks on hand, the resultant shortages, and the approved expenditures. The Expenditure Program showed how much money was to be spent for each type of equipment, but it did not establish any delivery schedules or even broad time objectives for procurement. To fill this gap, G-4 issued separately in August a statement of time objectives that served as a target for production planners.3 The “all-important present objective” was to provide at the earliest possible date initial equipment for the PMP force and sufficient monthly production to maintain this force in combat. (Table .1) For small arms, combat vehicles, tractors, and miscellaneous fire control equipment, the target date for equipping the PMP force was 30 June 1941, and for the 2,000,000-man force it was 31 December 1941. For antiaircraft and field artillery, the corresponding deadlines were six months later—31 December 1941 for the PMP and 30 June 1942 for the larger force. Production of ammunition was to reach by 30 September 1941 the estimated expenditure rate of the 2,000,000-man force.
Many of the items listed in the Time Objective were approaching obsolescence. All during the 1920s and 1930s Ordnance had been hampered in its development of new and improved matériel by lack of money. Ordnance did not have a free hand either to develop or to procure the matériel it considered most desirable. It worked within the framework of Army command as a service agency bound to meet, as best it could, the wishes of the using troops. With the approach of war, coordination between Ordnance and the using arms became closer. It was expressed in the approval of new items by the Ordnance Technical Committee on which the using arms were represented. But it was never without its rough spots.4
Placing the First Orders
Even before the Expenditure Program and the Time Objective were issued,
requirements for Ordnance items financed by the $436 million that became available in July 1940 were sufficiently clear to permit placing some orders with the arsenals and private industry. Placing these and later orders was a large and complicated task, not only because Ordnance was responsible for about 1,200 principal articles, involving some 250,000 components, but also because each order had to be drawn up for specific quantities of munitions to be delivered according to a definite time schedule. Manufacturers could not accurately estimate unit production costs unless they knew the quantities to be produced, for unit costs normally declined as volume rose. Prospective bidders also required blueprints and specifications before they could calculate probable costs on items they had never before produced. The entire program required careful balancing so that adequate supplies of each component would arrive in proper time at the assembly points. Pervading the whole atmosphere was the demand for speed in signing contracts and starting production, for the dramatic German victories of May and June had shocked the American people and pointed up the urgent need for a stronger national defense.5
Because of its extensive advance planning, the Ordnance Department was ready to act quickly when funds became available on 1 July 1940. Unlike 1917, when the lack of designs and specifications held up production for many months, 1940 found the Ordnance Department with production drawings of most items ready for immediate issue to manufacturers. The only delay was with items still undergoing test and development and not yet standardized, such as the new medium tank.6 On the administrative level there were delays caused by legal restrictions and red tape. Procurement officers frequently spoke of the need to “take the law into their own hands” to get quick action. Only gradually were the time-consuming procedures of the years of peace replaced by more expeditious means of conducting business.7
In dividing orders between the arsenals and private industry, the policy was to give industry as much work as possible, and thus share with it the knowledge of production methods gained by the arsenals, and at the same time to avoid overloading the arsenals with straight production orders at the cost of curtailing their development activities. To private industry went orders for articles previously produced in quantity at the arsenals, items for which production methods had been worked out; the arsenals were given orders for items not yet produced in quantity.8 The assignment
of specific items to the arsenals for manufacture or for procurement from industry posed no special problems, for each arsenal had specialized for many years in one or two broad classes of matériel. Springfield Armory, the center of small arms development, was assigned production of the M1 Rifle, and Rock Island, the recuperator for the new 105-mm. howitzer. To Watertown went orders for gun tubes and carriages; to Watervliet, machining of cannon; to Picatinny, powder, explosives, and components of artillery ammunition; and to Frankford, ammunition and fire control instruments.9 Over half the $50,000,000 awarded in arsenal orders during early July 1940 went for ammunition, and the remainder was distributed among such items as the M1 rifle, 37-mm. and 90-mm. antiaircraft guns and carriages, fire control instruments, and “high-speeding” old 75-mm. gun carriages by equipping them with pneumatic tires and improved springs.
Most of the awards to industry in July 1940 were for metal components of artillery ammunition, including such items as 577,000 75-mm. cartridge cases with the Bridgeport Brass Company, 285,000 3-inch shells with the Budd Wheel Company, 500,000 pieces of brass tubing with the Revere Brass and Copper Company, and over 3,000,000 artillery shells with the United States Steel Corporation. Under the heading of automotive equipment, an order for 500 heavy tractors went to the International Harvester Company, 1,057 scout cars to the White Motor Company, and an armor plate contract for over $5,000,000 to the United States Steel Corporation. Orders for small arms and small arms ammunition went mostly to such well known firms as General Motors, Colt, Remington, DuPont, and U.S. Steel, and one contract for construction of a smokeless powder plant costing $26,000,000 was placed with the DuPont Company.10
Activating the District Offices, August 1940
While the first orders under the July 1940 appropriations were being placed by the divisions of the Industrial Service in Washington, and by the arsenals, plans were on foot to give the districts an important share in the procurement process when the second supplemental appropriation, carrying $1,442,000,000 for Ordnance, should pass. At the end of July district chiefs and arsenal commanders met in Washington to review and discuss procurement plans. Two weeks later, on 16 August, the first General Directive on Contract Negotiation went out to all district offices.11 This directive is generally regarded as marking the “activation” of the Ordnance districts in World War II. It did not give the districts authority to make final awards to industry but made them responsible for soliciting bids and discussing the terms of contracts.12
The ground rules to govern the negotiation of contracts were set forth in some detail by the Chief of Ordnance in the directive of 16 August. The importance of these rules is hard to exaggerate, for they helped to shape some of the most controversial features of the Ordnance program in 1940 and 1941. Because of the critical lack of machine tools, and the prevailing emphasis in the War Department on economy and speed of delivery, the districts were instructed to give first preference to plants already holding production orders if those plants could fill additional orders with existing capacity. Companies allocated to Ordnance and companies with educational orders, production studies, or accepted schedules of production were also to be given priority in bidding. No limit was set to the size of any contract or to the size of any producer, but the districts were warned that letting many small contracts would be uneconomical and would place an added strain on the already overloaded machine-tool and gage industries.
Along with the directive of 16 August went a list of items on which each district was to seek bids. The list had been drawn up by the Industrial Service in accordance with existing procurement plans of the districts, although in some cases the quantities were larger than the planning figures. In most cases the districts had in their files the technical data for each item, including drawings, specifications, and descriptions of manufacture as practiced at the arsenals. The list issued on 16 August was mainly for forging and machining artillery
shells, for manufacture of cartridge cases, bomb bodies and fins, booster cases, pyrotechnics, and a wide variety of fuses for shells and bombs. A few examples will illustrate. The Cleveland District was assigned solicitation of bids for over two million 37-mm. shells, with small quantities of the same shell going to San Francisco, New York, and Cincinnati. The machining of nearly four million 60-mm. mortar shells was divided among the Cleveland, St. Louis, Philadelphia, and Detroit districts. In most cases the production load was divided among at least six districts. Deliveries were to start during January or February 1941 and were to be completed within twelve months.
With issuance of the August directive, the usefulness of the district procurement plans was put to the test. The results varied, but in general were good. Virtually all orders went to allocated facilities, and many went to firms that had completed educational orders, production studies, or schedules of production.13 The procurement program got off to a fast start, and by early November orders had been placed for all ammunition components at a total cost of $190,000,000.14
All of this work called for intensive effort by the small staff of officers and civilians in the Office of the Chief of Ordnance (usually abbreviated OCO) and necessitated speedy enlargement of the staff. General Wesson’s staff at the end of May 1940
numbered only 400—56 Regular Army officers, 3 Reserve officers, and 341 civilians.15 During the next two years this staff grew by leaps and bounds, reaching a total of 5,000 in June 1942. It included a small but valuable contingent of Reserve officers who had trained with Ordnance during the years of peace and were thus prepared to step into important administrative positions. The Ordnance office outgrew its peacetime quarters in the Munitions Building, moved temporarily to the Social Security Building on Independence Avenue, and then to the newly built Pentagon, still under construction in the spring of 1942 when Ordnance moved in. Meanwhile, at Ordnance installations throughout the country—such as the district offices, arsenals, and depots—nearly 100,000 civilian workers were added to the rolls, not counting hundreds of thousands of other workers employed by Ordnance contractors. All the districts drew upon their pools of Reserve officers to find qualified administrators for key positions. In 1939 and 1940 the districts were able to recruit competent civilian engineers and procurement specialists, but during 1941 the recruitment task became more difficult, and many able employees were lost to industry or to the draft. The level of competence of district production engineers tended to decline as the demand for war production mounted.16
Successes and Failures
As was to be expected, not everything went according to plan during the hectic eighteen months leading up to Pearl Harbor. As a general rule, firms that had made production studies of ordnance items were able to submit more accurate bids than firms with less knowledge of the particular items. But the firms with most technical knowledge were sometimes underbid by competitors more eager to get the award or less conscious of production difficulties to be overcome. The lowest bid was more often a guess than an accurate estimate.17 Further, the planned procurement pattern was upset by the fact that many businessmen frankly disliked War Department contracts because they entailed a great deal of red tape, demanded tolerances much closer than those commonly applied in commercial production, and required manufacturers to assume abnormal risks.18 Some companies with which the districts had made procurement plans over the years either refused to bid or, it was suspected, deliberately entered high bids to avoid getting an award. As a result, contracts occasionally went to less desirable firms that experienced difficulty in meeting production schedules while the more dependable companies later took orders from the Navy or Air Corps on more favorable terms.19
Plant Allocations
The usefulness of plant allocations during the defense period caused sharp
disagreement among observers, both then and later. Critics of the allocation plan contended that, like so many other military plans, it was better designed for avoiding the known mistakes of the last war than for meeting the unforeseen needs of the next conflict.20 Others, particularly Ordnance officers assigned to procurement duties during the emergency period, insisted that the allocation system worked remarkably well, even though it was not enforced by War Department authority.21 They pointed out that, unlike the Quartermaster Corps, which, after due deliberation, abandoned its allocation plans during the emergency period, the Ordnance Department followed its plans quite closely, placing go percent or more of its orders with allocated plants.22 Although the computations on which these statements were based have not been found, they are generally substantiated by a study made at the Industrial College in 1945 of military contracts let in four representative industrial areas in 1940–41.23
All generalizations as to the use made of the allocation plans must be taken with a grain of salt. Standing by themselves, the figures do not show whether the orders went to allocated companies because they were allocated or because they were well established firms ready to take production contracts. It must be borne in mind that, had there been no allocation plans at all, a large proportion of the orders would inevitably have gone to these firms, for allocated plants were generally the most important in their field. The plans were an important element in the picture, but not the only element. Lt. Col. Ray M. Hare, who was in the Office of the Under Secretary and in a good position to observe their operation in 1941, commented that many of the allocated plants got the contracts because they were “the best prepared and had the courage to bid the lowest and furnish the fastest deliveries on the tricky items of munitions that [Ordnance] has had to supply.”24
More important than strict adherence to plans for use of allocated facilities, in the opinion of many Ordnance officers, was the very existence of the system in the summer of 194-0 with all that it implied in terms of surveys and contacts with industry through district offices. The knowledge of available facilities gained by Ordnance officers in making surveys of allocated plants was never adequate but it was of immeasurable value in getting procurement under way, particularly during the latter half of 1940.25 It is of some interest to note that the benefits of procurement planning were appreciated by industry as well as
government. “The studies made in connection with the accepted schedules of production,” the General Electric Company reported in July 1940, “are proving beneficial in connection with current problems as they provide capacity data useful in developing current schedules.”26
District-Arsenal-OCO Relations
The directive giving the districts authority to negotiate contracts did not by any means indicate that the arsenals and the Office of the Chief of Ordnance (OCO) were out of the procurement picture. Not only did OCO retain full authority to make the awards on bids forwarded to Washington from the districts but, for major items such as tanks, it also conducted negotiations directly with industry without going through the district offices. The arsenals did the same for certain complex items, for development projects, and for supplies for their own use.27 During 1941, for example, a single arsenal, Picatinny, sent out 200,000 invitations to bid, enclosing a total of more than 2,000,000 drawings. In mid-December 1940 the arsenals were told to turn over administration of all contracts to the districts, but not until May 1941 were the districts given independent authority to make awards. Although the districts steadily gained ground during the defense period, the arsenals and OCO carried a major share of the procurement load largely because the division chiefs in Washington were reluctant to turn over to the newly activated districts the power to place contracts.28
Under these circumstances there was not only friction between OCO and the districts but also confusion among manufacturers as to who was who in the Ordnance Department. When a businessman who had signed an accepted schedule of production with the district office for a certain item saw one of the arsenals or OCO place an order for that item with another company he questioned the authority of the district and the value of its procurement planning activities. In some cases, after a contract was signed, the contractor did not know whether he should deal with the district, with the arsenal that normally produced the item, or with the Industrial Service in Washington. The arsenal that produced a given item was regarded as the repository of production know-how, and the district was the authority on contractual terms, but the two sometimes overlapped, and there was always the feeling that the final authority was in Washington.29 Even as late as August 1941 the district offices complained that they were being bypassed by businessmen who preferred to deal directly with the Washington office.30 and in December the chief of the District Administration Branch declared at a staff conference that there was
still “too much negotiating going on in Washington.”31
Creating New Facilities
A large proportion of the Ordnance funds obligated during the latter half of 1940 went for new government-owned facilities, mostly plants for making powder and explosives and for loading ammunition. The contracts for these plants were negotiated not by the arsenals or districts but through an office created for the purpose in the Industrial Service by General Harris. It should be recalled that in July 1940 the capacity of the United States to produce specialized types of munitions was limited. Available facilities could turn out fewer than too light tanks and about 500 machine guns per month, and only 30 tons of smokeless powder and 1 2 tons of TNT per day. Against the requirements of the Munitions Program of 30 June these quantities were altogether inadequate.32
Ordnance signed its first contract for a new GOCO (government-owned, contractor-operated) plant in July 1940 with the DuPont Company for construction of a smokeless powder works (later named the Indiana Ordnance Works), followed in August by another with the Chrysler Corporation for construction of a tank arsenal (later named Detroit Ordnance Plant).33 A contract with the Hercules Powder Company for another smokeless powder works was approved in August, as was a contract for an ammunition loading plant with the Atlas Powder Company. By December 1940, a full year before Pearl Harbor, the task of constructing and equipping twenty-two major new facilities was under way by private corporations for shell-loading and for production of chemicals, explosives, tanks, guns, and armor plate.34 By the end of June 1941 the contracts for new facilities reached a total of $576,000,000, roughly equivalent to the sum planned the year before as necessary to supply the 2,000,000-man force.35
One of the major criticisms of the defense program made by the Truman Committee of the Senate and the Tolan Committee of the House of Representatives in 1941 was that the War Department had built new plants needlessly and had failed to make full use of existing plant capacity. The committees described Army procurement officers as comparatively helpless in dealing with large corporations which refused to convert their plants to war production and demanded that the government build new plants, with all new equipment, for producing munitions. The Army’s acceptance of such industry proposals, the committee charged, wasted strategic building materials, contributed to
the machine-tool shortage, and delayed production of essential equipment.36
Insofar as existing facilities that could economically be converted to defense production were not so converted, the criticisms of the Congressional committees were justified. But with Ordnance production the great bulk of the new facilities did not fall into that category. For producing smokeless powder and TNT, or for loading bombs and artillery shells, there simply were no existing facilities suitable for conversion. In December 1941, when the Under Secretary of War summed up the War Department answer to the Tolan Committee’s criticisms, he vigorously defended the construction of new Ordnance facilities, and assured the committee that the Army had not proceeded with erection of new plants except where necessary.37 Much of the criticism of undue facilities expansion during the defense period lost its meaning after the outbreak of war. What had appeared to be overexpansion in the fall of 1941 took on the appearance of underexpansion after Pearl Harbor. The mounting demand for munitions of all types early in 1942 put a severe strain on all existing Ordnance facilities and brought into war production an ever larger proportion of civilian industry, including both small businesses and the big automobile companies.38
Criticisms, Delays, and Difficulties
There was much impatience with the slowness of the rearmament program during the latter half of 1940, and throughout 1941. Observers found many opportunities to criticize as they watched the vast and cumbersome mechanism for Army procurement swing slowly into action with much creaking in the joints. After appropriation of funds by Congress, the supply services speedily placed their orders with industry, but delivery of hard-to-manufacture items was a mere trickle throughout the defense period. To experienced Ordnance officers the small quantities produced during 1940—41 came as no surprise. For a full generation they had been saying that mass-production of munitions could not even begin in less than eighteen months.39 They pointed out that Germany had started to rearm in 1933 and seven years later had not yet reached full production. They cited reports of British experience showing that it took about two years, on the average, for a new munitions plant to reach full production. “In no case,” reported Col. James H. Burns in June 1940, “was an ordnance plant [in England] constructed and placed in operation in less than 12 months from date of decision and in some instances the time factor exceeded three
years.”40 But to many people unfamiliar with the problem of producing tools of war the Ordnance Department appeared to be slow and inefficient. In 1940-41, after two decades of neglect, and in an economy that had learned to eschew arms manufacture as something immoral, Ordnance was asked to perform an industrial miracle.41
Patterson’s Criticisms
As early as 23 August 1940 the newly appointed Assistant Secretary of War, Robert P. Patterson, opened the season of criticism by writing to all the supply services that reports reaching him indicated that the procurement program was being retarded in some instances by four factors: (1) lack of clear requirements to be met by the suppliers; (2) unusual military specifications which could not be met under normal commercial procedures; (3) unnecessarily close tolerances and too severe inspection requirements; and (4) frequent changes in specifications and designs affecting work in progress.42 Patterson directed all the supply services to take prompt action to eliminate these sources of delay, and three days later wrote a confidential memorandum to the Chief of Ordnance to emphasize particularly the need for freezing designs. He quoted an observer who said the desperate position of the British armed forces was due to their failure to freeze designs. “The best,” he commented, “is the enemy of the good ... Germany has demonstrated that thousands of imperfect tanks on the battlefield are better than scores of perfect tanks on the proving ground ...”43
Patterson’s advice was not as easy to practice as it was to preach. Ordnance could not freeze designs and resist all pressure to change, and at the same time meet demands for the most advanced weapons, particularly when the war in Europe was daily revealing a need for new or improved equipment. Everyone agreed that a thousand “imperfect” tanks on the battlefield were better than scores of “perfect” tanks on the proving ground, but whether they were better than 500 “more-nearly-perfect” tanks on the field of battle was a moot question. General Burns tells the story that on the day after issuing instructions to freeze designs Patterson was asked to approve a contract for helmets. “Are these the same old hats we had in 1918?” he asked. When told that they were, he refused to sign until a new helmet design was adopted.44 In July 1940, Patterson’s predecessor had written concerning the Munitions Program of 30 June: “The program obviously cannot be frozen either as to quantities or types. ... A happy compromise must be effected between the two opposites of production
and perfection in order to obtain most effective results.”45
There can be little doubt that manufacturers’ complaints of unusual production requirements and unnecessarily close tolerances in Ordnance drawings and specifications were sometimes justified. The small-scale operations during the peace years had left their mark on Ordnance designs and designers. The arsenals had produced small quantities of munitions with the men and machines available; they never had full opportunity to apply the most modern production-engineering ideas or use the newest machine tools. “If our designs, as some people have said,” wrote Lt. Gen. Levin H. Campbell, “were ‘wrapped around a milling machine,’ it was because we simply could not afford production-engineering studies of our various models or pilots.”46 The educational orders had provided that the contractors recommend improved production methods and design changes to facilitate mass production, but such orders had covered only a small fraction of Ordnance items.
From this it should not be inferred that the Ordnance Industrial Service was unaware of the problem or was not production-minded. As far back as the days of Maj. Gen. Clarence C. Williams, Chief of Ordnance from 1918 to 1930, the philosophy of using standard industrial designs, and avoiding unusual manufacturing procedures, had become an established principle in the arsenals. It was forcefully restated by General Harris in the fall of 1940. Writing in Army Ordnance, he described in detail the painstaking efforts made at Springfield Armory ,to assure efficient mass production of the Garand rifle, and the installation of a modem high-speed production line at Frankford Arsenal for the manufacture of ammunition. “The Department is making certain,” wrote General Harris, “that the trends of modern engineering and industry in the field of mass production shall be woven into the very fiber of its organization and practice.”47 Ordnance tried, to be sure, and made notable progress, but, as later events revealed, it fell short of full success in preparing for mass production.
There was also another side to this matter that should not be overlooked. When manufacturers accustomed to the production of civilian goods found themselves faced with the task of producing munitions with novel and exacting specifications, they sometimes tended to be unduly impatient and critical of Army methods. They did not always understand the essential complexity of guns and ammunition. The rapid-firing machine gun, for example, is an intricate and finely balanced mechanism whose design has been worked out over many years by specialists and tested under all sorts of atmospheric conditions. A slight change made to speed manufacture might appear perfectly innocent, even trivial, to the production engineer, but it might also throw the whole mechanism out of kilter. As with the matter of freezing designs, there was no easy solution to the problem of simplifying Ordnance specifications. Each component had
to be studied separately and in relation to the other parts of its assembly, and before production-speeding modifications could safely be made it was necessary to consult the research and development specialists as well as the production engineers of industry. This was accomplished in large measure through engineering committees, such as the Tank Committee, formed in October 1940, that brought together representatives of industry and Ordnance to clarify drawings and specifications and to discuss changes to speed production.48 But committee action was too often taken only after trouble developed.
Early in 1941 Ordnance prepared for signature by the Secretary of War a letter to all Ordnance districts, arsenals, plants, and works emphasizing the necessity for “the most searching analysis” of all factors affecting production and calling for prompt, decisive, energetic action.49 Throughout the defense period, Patterson exhorted the supply services to speed up the procurement of munitions. Twice during one week in April 1941, when German submarines were taking heavy toll of Atlantic shipping, he asked the Chief of Ordnance to expedite deliveries, describing the need for increased production as “a matter of extreme urgency,” and as “vital to our national existence.”50 He urged ‘round-the-clock operation of critical machinery and unceasing effort to break production bottlenecks. In June 1941, when he requested all supply services to obligate the funds on hand before the end of the fiscal year, Ordnance negotiators worked night and day to place contracts with industry, and were rewarded with a commendation from Patterson for having placed under contract “the largest peacetime program of national defense procurement in the history of this country.”51
Some Time-Consuming Factors
Production on some Ordnance items was disappointingly slow during the defense period. By July 1941, for example, only an estimated 3 percent of the matériel covered by the appropriations for the 1941 fiscal year, which had begun in July 1940, had been delivered to troops.52 It is sometimes argued that one reason for the slow progress was that manufacturers who took defense orders in 1940 and 1941 were not spurred on by the urgency of actual war. But a comparison between 1941 and 1942 does not indicate that manufacturers were dilatory before Pearl Harbor. After the outbreak of war it took just as long as before to get into production on a new item. The experience of the 1940-42 era suggests that a delay of a year or more in getting into large-scale production on a new item of ordnance is practically inevitable, war or no war.53
A brief recital of time-consuming factors that delayed production in 1940-41 will illustrate. The time required to solicit bids, make awards, and draw up formal contracts—usually two or three months—was only the beginning. After receiving his government order the contractor had to make a detailed engineering study of his shop and perhaps rearrange his equipment for more efficient operation. In most cases he had to procure additional equipment, and the delay in delivery of a single item, such as a lathe or a heat-treating furnace, might hold up the entire production process for months. For most items of ordnance, manufacturers found it impossible to use existing production lines; they had to start nearly from scratch to create new production setups. When, for example, a large locomotive company in the New York District was awarded a contract for 155-mm. gun carriages in August 1940, it did not convert its existing production lines but removed all the old equipment from a long unused foundry building, put in new concrete floors, replaced the electric wiring, and literally built a new production line from the ground up. All this took time, but the company felt that it was sound manufacturing practice.54
After receiving his government order, every contractor had also to obtain a supply of materials—not always an easy job in 1940 when shortages were becoming increasingly common, particularly among the grades of steel, copper, and aluminum needed for ordnance manufacture. Each contract for the machining of shell had to be geared to the availability of forgings. To operate on a 3-shift, 24-hour day, contractors had to hire additional workers and train them for the specialized jobs they were to fill. In recruiting new workers, contractors found that the years of depression had taken a heavy toll of skilled labor throughout American industry. These years had also taken their toll of management if the occasional reports of production inefficiency are any criterion.55
During early 1941 Ordnance began to complain that new and expanding high-level agencies created in Washington to manage the defense program were hindering procurement. Accustomed to the comparatively simple administrative structure which prevailed before 1940, when the final authority on nearly all procurement matters for the Army was the Assistant Secretary of War, Ordnance officers frequently objected to the growing administrative overhead. At the end of May 1941, for example, General Harris went so far as to state that the whole production program might soon come to a standstill because “there are too many people in other echelons who desire to consider and approve each project.”56 He declared that it took six times as long in the spring of 1941 to place orders as it had taken in the fall of 1940, and cited as one example of unreasonable delay a project for tank parts which had been held in the Office of Production Management (OPM) for nearly a month. But General Harris’ complaint did not stem the growth of the coordinating hierarchy, and Ordnance officers continued to complain of excessive administrative
machinery throughout the defense period and well into the war period.57
Because a large share of Ordnance production required the machining of metals to fine tolerances, the munitions program of 1940 brought a demand for thousands of complicated and costly tools such as grinding, boring, broaching, and drilling machines, and lathes of various types. In their prewar planning, Ordnance officers had attempted to catalog the tools possessed by various manufacturing concerns and select for wartime production the companies that would need least retooling. But in many instances manufacturers found that for most efficient mass-production of munitions they needed to add new machines or replace some of their standard machine tools with new, special-purpose equipment. Great Britain and France placed large orders in this country for machine tools early in 1940, as did companies holding Navy and Air Corps contracts, and the nation’s small machine-tool industry was swamped with orders.58
In spite of the measures taken to alleviate it, the machine-tool shortage among Ordnance contractors continued to grow worse during the winter of 1940-41 and in mid-March became so critical that General Wesson presented the matter to the Under Secretary in a memorandum with the ominous title, Probable Failure of Ordnance Program. Citing the policy of the Army and Navy Munitions Board (ANMB) that gave first priority to Navy and Air Corps orders,59 General Wesson declared that Ordnance contractors, with low priorities, could not acquire the tools they needed to get into production and meet their delivery schedules. With large new production programs in the offing, he recommended that remedial measures be taken before demands for new production brought further delays in machine-tool deliveries. “Otherwise,” the general concluded, “the situation which is now critical may become calamitous.”60
This was strong language, but the Under Secretary was not moved by it. Rather than propose a sweeping increase in Ordnance priorities, which would adversely affect other major programs, Patterson requested more specific details on machine tools most urgently needed by Ordnance contractors. To provide this detailed information the Ordnance office directed each district to get in touch with .all its con-
tractors and compile a list of undelivered machine tools that were holding up production. It was a long and tedious process that went on for many weeks.61
Meanwhile the Office of Production Management tackled the problem from other angles. It stimulated the production of new tools, promoted the use of subcontractors possessing adequate equipment, took direct action to solve individual bottleneck cases, and endeavored to ferret out and put to work second-hand tools which were not being used. Late in August 1941 the ANMB issued a new priorities directive which slightly improved the Ordnance position,62 but the lack of machine tools continued to hamper Ordnance production throughout 1941 and beyond. General Harris reported two days before Pearl Harbor that delivery dates on machine tools were “most unsatisfactory,”63
As with the problem of freezing designs or simplifying Ordnance equipment, there was no easy solution to the machine-tool problem. Each case had to be considered on its merits, and in relation to all other cases. It was impossible for Patterson, the ANMB, or OPM to accede to General Wesson’s request for a higher priority on Ordnance items without at the same time giving lower priorities to some Navy and Air Corps orders, a policy which would have amounted to little more than robbing Peter to pay Paul.64 Whether, in the broad national view, considering the relative urgency of ships, airplanes, guns, tanks, and all the other paraphernalia of war, it was wise to give Ordnance production such a low priority is beyond the scope of this study to determine. But there can be no doubt that it was a physical impossibility for the Ordnance Department fully to overcome the handicap of that low priority during 1941. It was, in the words of General Campbell, “the most heartbreaking bottleneck of the early armament period.”65
Engineering Advisory Committees
At the start of the munitions program, Ordnance officers realized that countless questions and problems would arise as civilian manufacturers undertook to make complex military items on the basis of Ordnance drawings and specifications. From experience in World War I, they knew that interpretation of drawings and specifications would require close supervision if widespread failure to pass inspection were to be avoided. Ordnance was also aware of the fact that its drawings and specifications, running into tens of thousands, were not perfect and would need careful checking. To meet this situation Ordnance created, in the spring of 1941, twenty-five groups known as Engineering Advisory Committees. All manufacturers of tanks were represented on one committee, all manufacturers of mobile artillery
carriages on another, and so on dowry the list through rifles, shells, machine guns, bomb fuses, etc. A representative of industry headed each committee while an Ordnance officer served as permanent secretary. An opinion of the Attorney General in April 1941 provided some assurance that as long as the committees kept within prescribed bounds they would not stand in violation of the antitrust laws.66
At meetings of the committees the members, usually engineers, exchanged information about sources of scarce materials, use of substitute materials, or new production techniques. They frequently recommended to the Ordnance Department that certain design changes be made or that specifications be revised to speed production. All this activity was beneficial to Ordnance, for it brought to bear on each problem topflight engineering talent from industry. But in the opinion of Brig. Gen. Gladeon M. Barnes, who was in charge of all Ordnance engineering, the greatest benefit was the healthy psychological reaction from the association of Ordnance officers and civilian engineers. “The meetings have done much to overcome the industrial conception of the massive immobility of Government agencies,” wrote General Barnes, “and have increased the desirability [of] Government contracts.”67 These engineering committees were the forerunners of scores of industry integration committees formed the following year under the leadership of General Campbell.68
Big Business vs Small Business
During 1940-41 a steady drumfire of criticism was directed at the defense agencies—Navy as well as Army—for placing orders with big business to the neglect of many small concerns scattered throughout the country. The criticism appeared in newspaper and magazine articles and in official reports of the Truman and Tolan Committees which investigated the defense program during 1941 and later. These Congressional committees observed that, in spite of procurement plans, all the services in 1940 entered into a “mad scramble” to procure the munitions they needed, and each desired to place its contracts with the biggest and most reliable concerns. The investigators charged that procurement officers favored big business because it was less trouble, and took less time, to award a single large contract to a big corporation than to divide up the order among many small companies, or provide for extensive subcontracting. They denounced the disproportionate emphasis put on big business by the military services, asserting that it led to unnecessary plant expansion, delays in production, heavy migration of workers to congested areas, and other problems.69
In answering criticism of this nature, War Department spokesmen declared that it should have caused no great surprise when large concerns which normally got the lion’s share of civilian business also got
the lion’s share of defense contracts. They pointed out that military procurement officers, and their associations in OPM, were not social reformers bent upon changing the nation’s industrial pattern, but practical realists charged with the sobering responsibility for procuring munitions as quickly and surely as possible. Although it dealt with some small concerns, Ordnance awarded the great majority of its early contracts to big corporations because these corporations had the facilities, the experience, and the engineering skill to turn out the required armament in the shortest possible time. Most Ordnance contracts went to allocated plants that had been surveyed and selected beforehand as the most promising producers of war matériel. “To have done otherwise,” wrote General Campbell, “would have been national suicide. The small plants of the country could not have turned out one day’s requirements of ammunition. ... Heavy manufacturing automatically demanded large concerns.”70
It was largely through subcontracting that small businesses were brought into the Ordnance program in the defense period.71 Although Ordnance had no authority to direct its prime contractors to use specific subcontractors, or otherwise attempt to tell them how to manage their affairs, it did encourage voluntary subcontracting wherever possible. To assist small businesses—usually defined as those employing fewer than five hundred workers—General Wesson in February 1941 directed each district to establish a display room to exhibit samples and photographs of Ordnance items, assemblies, and components.72 By visiting these rooms, examining in detail the items on display, and discussing manufacturing requirements with district officials, a small businessman could decide which items or components he was qualified to produce, either as prime contractor or subcontractor. When the Defense Contract Service was created in OPM early in 1941 each Ordnance district appointed an officer to maintain liaison with that service. In September 1941, to promote wider distribution of defense orders, the requirement that the districts negotiate only with allocated facilities was rescinded,73 and in November and December Ordnance participated in the Defense Special Trains that toured the country to show small manufacturers. what the supply services wished to buy.
Bringing small business into the defense program was an endless task that continued throughout the defense period and
the years of war.74 As production increased there was some spreading of prime contracts to smaller firms such as those that made up the New England %qzall Arms Corporation.75 Even more important, small business firms got into defense production as subcontractors or sub-subcontractors. For this reason the extent to which Ordnance used small business during the defense period is not easy to measure, but one investigation of the problem made in the Cincinnati area for ASF a few months after Pearl Harbor sheds some light on the matter. “We hunted for the ‘small business’ which could take on prime war contracts with its existing equipment and which is not already at work or well known to the supply arms and services,” the survey team reported. “We found none. ... The ‘small business’ which needs only money or a contract to get going on critical material is, in this area, a myth.”76
Status of Rearmament, December 1941
To what extent did the United States succeed in rearming during the eighteen months before December 1941? Critics of the armed services have charged that the rearmament effort was bungled, while military spokesmen have stoutly denied the charge. In December 1941, for example, the Tolan Committee pulled no punches in asserting that defense production to date had been a failure, and a few days later the Under Secretary of War vehemently denied that it had been a failure. The arguments on both sides have continued to command widespread interest among military planners because the accomplishments and shortcomings of the procurement effort during the defense period afford a tangible means of evaluating the methods employed to mobilize the nation for war.77
By considering only the more important types of guns, ammunition, and combat vehicles actually produced during the defense period, the Ordnance record may be quickly summarized. (Table 2) In most cases the quantities procured far exceeded the quantities for initial equipment of the PMP force of 1,200,000 men. When compared with, the Time Objective issued in August 1940 the record reveals that, in small arms, light artillery, and tanks, production went far beyond the original requirements. But with medium and heavy artillery,, notably the 105-mm. howitzer and the 155-mm. gun, the quantities procured fell considerably short of requirements. Among smaller items, the steel helmet also lagged far behind the 1940 schedule, primarily because a satisfactory helmet design had not been developed and standardized before 1940. With small arms ammunition, the goals set by the Time Objective were not reached by the fall of 1941, for Frankford Arsenal remained the
Table 2: Selected Ordnance items procured, July 1940–December 1941
| Item | Total |
| Rifle, .30 cal. M1 | 375,000 |
| Submachine gun, .45 cal. | 217,000 |
| Machine gun, .30 cal. | 31,000 |
| Machine gun, .50 cal. | 54,000 |
| Mortar, 60-mm. and 81-mm. | 9,518 |
| Gun, 37-mm. (tank, AT, AA, aircraft) | 9,057 |
| Gun and howitzer, 75-mm. | 2,592 |
| Gun, 90-mm., antiaircraft | 171 |
| Gun, 3”, field and antitank | 140 |
| Howitzer, 105-mm. | 597 |
| Gun, 155-mm. | 65 |
| Light tanks | 2,916 |
| Medium tanks | 1,467 |
| Scout cars and carriers | 8,124 |
| Small arms ammunition (rds) | 1,225,000,000 |
| Artillery ammunition (rds) | 13,000,000 |
| Bombs | 397,000 |
Source: Theodore E. Whiting et al., Statistics, in the series UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II.
only source of production until new plants were completed. In the over-all picture of the Army’s equipment on hand there was little room for complacency on the eve of Pearl Harbor.
More important, in the eyes of Ordnance procurement officers, than matériel on hand, was the promise of vastly increased future production that lay in the new facilities built and equipped during 1940-41. It is not too much to say that within a period of less than eighteen months something resembling a new industry had been created, with seventeen government-owned, contractor-operated (GOCO) plants actually in production and thirty-two additional plants under construction or in the negotiation stage.78 Several large ammunition plants and works—Lake City, Denver, Baytown, Gadsden, Iowa, Kankakee, Weldon Springs, and others—came into production in September and October 1941 , and by the end of the year there was at least one of every essential type of government-owned ammunition plant in operation, including TNT, DNT, tetryl, toluene, anhydrous ammonia, smokeless powder, bag loading, and shell loading.79 A dozen new privately owned plants were also in production, including 6 for machine guns, 4 for artillery,
for armor plate, and 1 for tanks. Only 3 of these plants had required new construction (the tank, armor-plate, and 37-mm. gun plants) but all had required
completely new equipment.80 Although the matériel turned out by these new plants during the defense period does not loom large in the total production figures—about 5 percent of total 1940-45 Ordnance procurement—the existence of these producing units in December 1941 was of inestimable value to the United States and its allies during the war years that lay ahead.81
Neither Ordnance nor the War Department itself was given full freedom during the defense period to procure all the munitions it felt the Army needed. Both were limited by Congressional appropriations and bound by long-established regulations and policies that set the framework within which procurement took place. Hurried production is usually high-cost production, and the defense period was not a time of all-out production at any cost. It was more nearly a time for “business as usual.” Ordnance was also handicapped by having to take a third-rate priority behind the Navy and Air Corps, and by having to meet constantly shifting requirements for items that took a long time to produce. In the mushrooming defense economy Ordnance found great difficulty in recruiting capable production engineers and procurement experts to staff its arsenals, districts, and Washington offices. As a result of these and other factors Ordnance encountered many delays and difficulties which under different circumstances might have been avoided. Nevertheless, it must be recorded that the really essential things were accomplished with remarkable speed—con-tracts were let, district procurement offices were activated, new plants were built, the arsenals began to hum with activity, and production of war matériel started at countless private industrial plants. By the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, just eighteen months from June 1940, the Ordnance program in most lines was shifting into high gear and needed only further acceleration and expansion along the established course to meet the requirements of a world-wide shooting war.82