Chapter 13: Spare Parts for Vehicles
The term “spare parts” has an unfortunate connotation. It suggests something unimportant, dull, and uninteresting. It also brings to mind the thought of a fifth wheel on a cart, something not wholly necessary that under normal conditions can be done without or “spared.”
But all these connotations are completely misleading when we examine closely the role of spare parts in World War II. As far as Ordnance history is concerned, it is no exaggeration to say that spare parts, particularly for trucks and tanks, posed one of the most important and persistent problems of the whole war. In Africa, General Rommel’s success in recovering from defeats was often ascribed to the fact that he was well supplied with parts and had a competent maintenance organization while the British were less well off. “When I die,” a high-ranking British Ordnance officer once remarked, “‘spare parts’ will be written across my heart.”1
The basic reason for the spare parts problem lies in the fact that an Army tank or truck does not last for one hundred years, as did the Deacon’s wonderful one-hoss shay. Nor does it all fall apart at once—“like a bubble when it bursts”—unless blasted by an enemy mine or shell. It usually breaks down one part at a time. And the whole vehicle may be immobilized for lack of that one part, whether it be a simple item like a cracked spark plug or something more intricate like a burned-out bearing. “This is not a war of ammunition, tanks, guns, and trucks alone,” wrote Ernie Pyle, the famed correspondent.
It is as much a war of replenishing spare parts to keep them in combat as it is a war of major equipment. ... The gasket that leaks, the fan belt that breaks, the nut that is lost ... will delay GI Joe on the road to Berlin just as much as if he didn’t have a vehicle in which to start.2
In World War II the role of the proverbial horseshoe nail in battles of the distant past was assumed by a host of mechanical items—spark plugs, distributor points, condensers, generators, carburetors, gaskets, fuel pumps, tires, tank tracks, and so on and on. Their types were numbered in the hundreds of thousands, and the quantities of some, like spark plugs and tires, ran into the millions. They formed several different categories, including small individual pieces such as spark plugs
and points; larger subassemblies such as carburetors or generators; and big assemblies such as complete engines or rear axles. They ranged in size from delicate springs weighing a fraction of an ounce to tank engines weighing more than half a ton. They had to be produced in huge quantities and also had to be named, numbered, packed, and shipped to all corners of the globe. “Almost anywhere in the world you can get spare parts for the family car when it breaks down,” Colonel Van Deusen once observed. “Not so with an Army truck; it has to take its mechanic civilization with it. If it travels light it may not travel far.”3 In the middle of the war the rate of Ordnance shipment of spare parts to the using arms and lend-lease countries amounted to more than one hundred million pieces per month.4
Categories of Parts
When cars and trucks were placed beside tanks and heavy guns, the contrast between commercial design and military design made itself clear. Except for a few components, tanks and big guns were designed entirely by Ordnance, or under its direct supervision. The drawings and specifications for every part were kept on file in Ordnance and could not be changed without its consent. Further, tanks and guns were produced only for military use, not for ordinary commercial sale, and the same was true of their spare parts. Trucks, on the other hand, were designed by industry primarily for commercial sale, and, before the war, only incidentally for sale to the government. As wholesale and retail outlets all over the country carried supplies of spare parts for cars and trucks, Army repair shops were able to purchase locally whatever parts they needed to keep their motor fleets in operation.
Another distinction of importance was that between the old and the new. Ordnance experience with rifles and artillery weapons ran back for over one hundred years, and with machine guns for about half that time. Decades of development work, combined with long experience in field maintenance, had built up a solid backlog of maintenance data, including fairly exact knowledge of what replacement parts would be needed. Throughout World War II there were, as a consequence, few complaints of parts shortages for shooting ordnance; “It is the rarest thing I ever hear that there is a shortage of machine gun parts or artillery parts,” General Campbell commented early in 1944. “On the other hand, there is hardly a day, hardly an hour, that I don’t hear about a shortage of automotive parts.”5 Because tanks and trucks were comparatively new items of military supply they had not been through a century of development, test, and field maintenance. Further, they were complex mechanisms whose proper functioning depended upon precise integration of countless moving parts. In addition to all this, trucks were called upon to perform
their ‘strenuous missions day after day, often working around the clock, over rough terrain, and in all kinds of weather. While rifles, guns, and howitzers were fired only for short periods in training or in combat, motor vehicles were always in demand and were in actual use a great deal of the time.6
These distinctions gave rise in Ordnance and the Quartermaster Corps to sharply differing spare parts policies. With supplies available from commercial outlets, the QMC did not carry warehouse stocks of parts for peacetime maintenance of the Army’s cars and trucks. As a result, it had no real spare parts problem in peacetime, except insofar as the great variety of vehicles made it a problem. For tanks and other combat vehicles, on the other hand, there were no local garages carrying periscopes, tank tracks, or spare gun tubes. Ordnance had to maintain its own supply of such parts. It is true that the burden was not very heavy, for the few tanks in service saw little if any use during the average peace year and big guns were seldom fired. But the principle of keeping on hand a full stock of maintenance parts for weapons and combat vehicles was firmly rooted in Ordnance long before 1940.
Spare Parts in Ordnance, 1939–42
The Ordnance contract for 329 light tanks placed with American Car and Foundry in November 1939 is historically important as the first U.S. Army tank order awarded industry since World War I. It is also significant in the World War II history of vehicular spare parts because, following standard Ordnance policy, it included a provision for replacement parts as well as for complete vehicles.7 Before the order was placed engineers of the Industrial Service, with the concurrence of Field Service maintenance specialists, had compiled a list of “essential extra parts” needed to keep the tanks in repair for one year of war. Lacking data from combat experience, the engineers could make only estimates, taking into account the number of miles the tanks would probably run, estimated hours of operation, results of proving ground tests, and other factors. The parts on this list were known as “first year parts” or, because they were delivered concurrently with the vehicles, “concurrent parts.” Standard shop supplies such as solder, welding rod, cotton waste, gaskets, and nuts and bolts were procured in bulk by Field Service along with such standard commercial items as spark plugs, batteries, oil seals, radiator hose, and tires.8 Also procured concurrently with the vehicles, these items were described as Field Service supplies to distinguish them from first year spares procured by the Industrial Service.
When Ordnance depots occasionally ran short of parts to repair deadlined vehicles they bought directly from automotive dealers or requested procurement through Rock Island or the district offices. The parts thus obtained went under the name of “deficiency parts” as they were used to make up unexpected deficiencies in
depot stocks. This practice served well during peacetime, but after Pearl Harbor the mounting flow of requests for small quantities of many deficiency parts led to confusion and had to be discontinued.9 A new system was then introduced to procure second-year parts for all equipment. The quantities on the second-year lists amounted to 60 percent of the first year lists and were to be delivered within six months of delivery of the original item.10
In 1940, when defense production rapidly gained momentum, estimates of Ordnance parts requirements reached what then appeared to be staggering totals. During fiscal year 1940 the Department had spent on spare parts over $15 million—more than the entire Ordnance appropriation in earlier years—and plans called for spending ten times as much in fiscal 1941. A survey in the fall of 1940 by an industrial consultant, Lawrence S. Barroll, showed that roughly 20 percent of all funds apportioned for new matériel went into spare parts.11 In view of the magnitude and complexity of parts procurement after Pearl Harbor, Ordnance decided to give its parts policies and practices a careful re-examination. Barroll was again called in late in 1942 to study the situation. Many conferences were held to discuss proposed new procedures.12
One of the underlying difficulties at the start was the need for closer coordination between Field Service and Industrial Service. Because of the nature of their functions these two services did not always see eye to eye on spare parts.13 Alert to its duty to keep depots and field units always well supplied, and mindful of its long experience with the knotty problems of maintenance, Field Service gave high priority to spare parts. The Industrial Service recognized the needs for parts but was more directly influenced by pressure to procure complete items. Production of a carload of extra carburetors or spare tires did not make news; nor did it satisfy the demands of the Assistant Secretary of War half as well as did production of an additional tank or carload of complete machine guns. The essence of the difficulty was the calculation of requirements. When General Harris questioned the need for the huge quantities of parts that Field Service wanted for spares, and asked to see the records of parts consumption on which they were based, General Crain replied that the records were fragmentary or nonexistent. He contended that troops in the field should not be burdened with demands for consumption data but should
be supplied automatically, at least in the early stages of war. “I did not believe in blind automatic supply of spare parts,” wrote General Harris years later. “I believed rather in selective supply based on consumption experience.”14 Lacking experience data, Field Service tended to set requirements high to be sure of having enough, and Industrial Service tended to set them low to allow more production of complete items.
Another difficulty cited by Barroll in his 1940 report was that the division of spare parts responsibility between the two services was too vague. He recommended that Field Service be given full responsibility for determining parts requirements and that the Industrial Service be responsible only for placing the orders with industry or the arsenals.15 Meanwhile a conference of Field Service and Industrial Service representatives came to the opposite conclusion—that the Industrial Service should be responsible for preparing parts lists.16 General Wesson, apparently not agreeing fully with either proposal, in early November 1940 appointed a permanent Spare Parts Board, headed by the chief of Field Service, to review and approve all parts lists before the Industrial Service placed orders with industry.17
Appointment of this board was a step in the right direction but it did not solve the whole problem by any means. In mid-January 1941 when General Wesson inquired at an 11 o’clock conference how spare parts were coming along, the answer of General Crain, chief of Field Service, was, “Not so well.” For one thing, he reported, Rock Island Arsenal, because of the pressure to meet production goals, was giving priority to complete items and was neglecting parts. He complained that some parts orders placed with the arsenal in 1939 were still unfilled. This was contrary to standing instructions, replied the Industrial Service representatives. But that was of little help to General Crain.18 A year later the problem apparently still existed. General Harris found it necessary at that time to call the policy on spare parts orders to the attention of his division chiefs and direct them in forceful language to give top priority to Field Service requisitions for parts and to expedite their production “in every way possible.19
Another troublesome problem was the delay in compiling parts lists for new items and getting them into the hands of contractors. With the ACF light tank order in 1939, parts lists had been provided promptly. But with the medium tank, which went into production in 1940 while design work was still in progress, the story was different. By the end of February 1941 the medium tank contracts with American Locomotive, Baldwin Locomotive, and
Chrysler still did not provide for production of spare parts lists because the parts lists had not yet been completed.20 As late as December 1942, Barroll declared that preparation of parts lists was still “in bad shape.”21 Compilation of parts lists was no easy chore, for a single list might include thousands of items, and every item posed its own peculiar problems.
When reports reached Ordnance from Fort Benning early in the spring of 1941 that large numbers of tanks were deadlined for lack of parts, General Wesson sent a teletype to Rock Island authorizing immediate procurement of parts without advertising.22 “It is absolutely essential,” he added, “that every spare parts order be given the highest priority.”23 But the backlog of unfilled parts orders remained for months, particularly hard-to-manufacture items like engines and transmissions. Meanwhile both General Harris, chief of Industrial Service and General Crain, chief of Field Service, opposed cutting parts production to boost output of complete items. Although not always achieved, their objective was to keep parts production synchronized with complete item production even at the cost of reduced totals for complete items.24 The wisdom of this policy was confirmed by British combat experience. “Striking figures of tanks produced per day look very well in the papers,” a British report stated, “but we cannot fight this war with statistics ... Tanks without spares are very little more use than no tanks at all.”25
After Pearl Harbor, and particularly after announcement of the Presidential Objectives early in January 1942, the pressure for procurement of complete items became intense and the task of bringing parts production abreast of vehicle production became even more difficult. In the early weeks of 1942 the Under Secretary of War and other high-ranking officials kept almost daily tab on the output of tanks, guns, and ammunition, and constantly exhorted Ordnance to speed production. “The demand for completed pieces of equipment ... was so great,” wrote General Campbell, “that the fundamental urge of all concerned, both in Industry and Ordnance, was to produce as many finished articles as possible.”26 With many industrialists asserting that Ordnance parts requirements were excessive, and complaining of delays in receipt of approved parts lists, the District offices had constantly to combat a tendency in industry to neglect parts production. The Chief of Ordnance in April 1942 specifically directed the District offices to include in every contract a list of spare parts, with time of delivery clearly stated and synchronized with delivery of major items.27
Ordnance also gave close attention to
Maj. Gen. Levin H. Campbell, Jr., Chief of Ordnance, May 1942
the organizational side of the problem in the spring of 1942. When the newly formed ASF Control Division looked into the matter it observed that Ordnance’s parts troubles stemmed from the fact that “ten separate offices deal with various aspects of Spare Parts, and no one person is effectively coordinating the entire operation.”28 The Spare Parts Board was the final authority on parts lists, but its authority did not extend to procurement and distribution. A survey of Ordnance in May 1942 by a team from General Motors also came to the conclusion that responsibility was too widely scattered. The General Motors people went on to recommend creation of a Spare Parts Service, to be on the same level as Industrial Service and Field Service.29
The General Motors report came at an opportune time for action. When General Wesson retired at the end of May 1942 his successor, General Campbell, was prepared to take drastic measures to deal with the parts problem. Early in June, in line with the General Motors report, he created a Parts Control Division headed by Brig. Gen. Rolland W. Case and staffed in part by General Motors men who had made the survey.30 Its mission was to formulate spare parts policies for Ordnance and see that they were carried out by Field Service and the Industrial Service. But it never achieved its objectives. After spending some time in discussing plans and procedures, General Case became convinced that the new division was administratively unsound because it overlapped existing organizations and did not have sharply defined lines of control. Another factor that entered the picture was the coming merger of the Motor Transport Service with Ordnance, and the absence of a Parts Control Division in the MTS. In view of these facts, General Case recommended that the new division be abolished. General Campbell reluctantly agreed and on 28 July 1942 issued orders abolishing the division and assigning its duties to
Field Service.31 This marked the end of more than two years of persistently unsuccessful efforts to “solve” the parts problem and ushered in a new phase with absorption into Ordnance of transport vehicles.32
Spare Parts in the QMC, 1939-42
All during the years before World War II the QMC made no provision for purchasing spare parts along with vehicles. Not only were its financial resources too slender to purchase stock of about half a million different parts, but there was no real need to keep large supplies of parts on hand, for Army cars and trucks were of the same design as commercial vehicles. When they broke down, the QMC purchased repair parts from local distributors on an “off the shelf” basis.33 For Army transport vehicles there were no lists of first year spares, nor any concurrent procurement of parts as there was for combat vehicles.
In the summer of 1940, as the Army’s truck fleet expanded, the motor depots were authorized to build up small reserve stocks of parts by direct purchase from vehicle manufacturers. Drawing upon the experience of industry and the Motor Transport Division staff, depot commanders endeavored to build up stocks that would give “a good general coverage.”34 This step marked the first departure from the policy of relying solely on local purchase, but local purchase continued as a major source of parts supply for the next two years.35
The depot stocks of parts procured in this manner were not strictly analogous to Ordnance first year or concurrent spares. They were not geared in directly with scheduled vehicle procurement but were more closely akin to Ordnance replenishment parts purchased to fill deficiencies in depot stocks. The QMC did not undertake systematic procurement of first year spares concurrently with procurement of vehicles until the Lend-Lease Act came into the picture in 1941 and did not get the new system into good working order until after Pearl Harbor.36 To keep lend-lease vehicles supplied with repair parts after they were shipped overseas the QMC decided to compile voluminous parts lists to be incorporated in lend-lease contracts. The same lists were later made a part of all domestic contracts as well. Based at the outset on
commercial experience,37 they had to be revised as time went on to bring them into line with combat experience of the Allied nations. They were known variously as first-year lists, concurrent lists, and United Nations lists. For export shipment, and also for a time for domestic use, they were put up in too-unit packs, that is, packs with enough parts in each to maintain one hundred vehicles for a year of wartime service.38
Preparation of United Nations lists took months of painstaking work and was not completed until the end of 1941. Meanwhile the Motor Transport Service had procured some three hundred thousand ye-hicks without spares, except for small depot stocks, and friendly nations had procured for their own use another three hundred thousand—also without first-year spares.39 After Pearl Harbor it became obvious that further reliance on local purchase to supply a wartime truck fleet was out of the question, for commercial production of parts had been stopped and distributors’ shelves were nearly bare. In the spring of 1942 the Director of the Motor Transport Service therefore took the bull by the horns and authorized purchase of $20 million worth of parts for the cars and trucks already in service.40 The Munitions Assignment Board approved similar procurement of parts for cars and trucks in the hands of the British and other friendly nations.41 To avoid disrupting production schedules of vehicle manufacturers, and in the hope of saving both time and money, these parts were purchased whenever possible directly from parts manufacturers. This was a departure from existing practice and was apparently initiated by Jack Creamer, formerly with a New York firm known as Wheels, Inc., who had been placed in authority over MTS purchase policy.42 As established parts suppliers were immediately flooded with orders, the Motor Transport Service departed from its stated policy of buying only from concerns that supplied original equipment and turned to the so-called “independents” who did not normally supply parts to vehicle manufacturers but sold to the public cut-rate parts that were claimed to be just as good as original parts.43
While orders were being placed against this huge backlog, General Somervell urged General Frink to stop buying parts “in driblets of from 5 to 6 percent of the gross value of the vehicles” and adopt the British practice of ordering parts worth 35 percent of the vehicle cost. General Frink
was happy to be released from the existing ceiling of 10 percent on parts. He soon established for motor transport the same basic procedure for parts procurement that Ordnance had for combat vehicles—to contract for a two-year supply of parts at the time vehicles were ordered, first-year parts to be delivered with the vehicles and second-year parts six months later.44 In addition, so-called deficiency spares were ordered as needed to make up for incorrect calculations in the first-year list, and replenishment spares were ordered as needed to keep depot stocks up to par. The weakest link in this chain of supply was the second-year list. Calculated as a percentage —usually 60—of the first-year list, it tended to perpetuate whatever deficiencies appeared in the first-year list and placed an added burden on deficiency procurement. It was abolished in July 1943, after the merger with Ordnance, in favor of a system of quarterly replenishment whereby actual records of consumption and stocks on hand during a given quarter set the pace for procurement during the next quarter.45
It should be noted that neither the Quartermaster Corps nor Ordnance attempted to supply spares for all parts of a given vehicle. In fact, the percentage of truck parts supplied as spares was rather low in most cases. In one vehicle, the ¾-ton weapons carrier made by Dodge, less than one thousand out of some eight thousand separate parts were supplied as spares. The many bits and pieces that went into small assemblies such as generators or carburetors were not issued separately. Nonfunctional parts such as fenders and hub caps were seldom issued at all, for vehicles would still run even if these parts were missing, and replacements could usually be obtained from other ye- hides shot up or otherwise damaged beyond repair. Nevertheless, the number of different spare parts was great—some 260,000 for automotive equipment—and posed baffling problems of identification, storage, and distribution.46
After the Merger, 1942-45
After the merger of Motor Transport Service with Ordnance in September 1942, the spare parts problem went through several different phases. At the outset, from late 1942 to the end of 1943, the
main problem was to meet the insistent demand for production. How the parts were procured was a secondary consideration: the main thing was to get them as soon as possible. After that job was taken care of, attention was turned to the methods used. The Mead Committee in 1944 focused its spotlight on Ordnance spare parts procurement policies and asked a number of searching questions. At about the same time more and more effort was devoted to improving overseas parts supply while ASF attempted to regulate with great care the flow of production and distribution.
Getting Out Production
In spite of everything that was done to speed production, spare parts for both tanks and trucks lagged behind schedule throughout 1942. One reason was that spare parts carried a lower priority rating—in the minds of industrial leaders as well as in government decrees—than did parts for vehicle assembly. Another reason was that requirements for complete vehicles had shot upward in 1942 leaving spare parts to catch up later. Near the end of July, on the day before the Ordnance Parts Division was abolished, General Campbell had written to all District chiefs that shortages of parts had become “so acute that drastic and immediate action is necessary.”47 After setting up four priority ratings for parts orders and directing that assembly of complete vehicles be halted when necessary to make spare parts available, he added that after 1 October 1942 Ordnance would not accept any more major items unless delivery of the corresponding spare parts was up to date. At the same time he wrote directly to K. T. Keller, president of Chrysler, to request his help in dealing with this “nationally serious matter.”48
But when October rolled around parts deliveries were still behind schedule. General Campbell then sent a teletype to all Districts advising them that henceforth, unless a waiver were granted for a specific contractor, no major item would be accepted or paid for if the corresponding parts were not on schedule.49 Many contractors protested that this policy was unfair because the fault lay as much with Ordnance as with industry. In cases where parts lists were not available at the time of contract signing the manufacturer had to hold off placing his orders for materials and then later on found himself unable to get prompt delivery. Frequent engineering changes also upset original production schedules and made it extremely difficult to match spare parts with the proper vehicles.50 Changes in priority ratings added further complications. As a result, rigid enforcement of the October directive proved impossible. After lagging behind throughout the winter of 1942-43, parts
production gradually improved as requirements for complete items were scaled down, parts lists were revised downward, and steady pressure for parts production was maintained. But, in the words of one Ordnance officer, “the results [were] none too good.”51 All during 1943 and into 1944 shortages of spare parts continued.52
A major change occurred in the summer of 1944. when the War Department eliminated procurement of first-year or concurrent spare parts, except for new types of equipment. With the Army well supplied, the War Department reasoned that future procurement would be needed chiefly to replace initial issue matériel for which stocks of spare parts had already been created.53 All the technical services were enjoined to keep a close watch on parts procurement schedules to avoid either over-procurement or short supply. The practice of ordering parts in sets was abandoned in favor of ordering by individual items. Each service was permitted to order specific replenishment parts only as the need for them was shown by stock records and issue experience.54 As procurement of second-year spares had been stopped in 1943, elimination of first-year spares in 1944 put an end to the complicated pattern of parts procurement in force early in the war period.
Senate Committee Investigation
In the summer of 1943 the Truman Committee turned its attention to the Ordnance Department’s handling of spare parts and devoted a good deal of time to exploring all the complexities of the problem. Hearings were held, reports were submitted, and numerous exhibits were introduced into the record. It is probably safe to say that on no other phase of Ordnance wartime procurement was so much effort spent in collecting documentary material.
Intent upon ferreting out examples of waste or mismanagement in the national defense program, the Truman Committee found Ordnance parts procurement an inviting field for investigation on several counts. With roughly half a billion dollars being spent annually for motor vehicle parts, the opportunities for either waste or economy were obviously substantial. Furthermore, in an industry as highly competitive as the automotive, the government had to be constantly on the alert to safeguard its own interests and to avoid charges of favoritism toward any manufacturer or industrial group. Complaints had in fact been made that Ordnance was favoring the Big Three of the automotive industry by purchasing parts for Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors vehicles directly from those concerns instead of from parts
manufacturers who were willing to quote lower prices on identical items. Ordnance was charged with refusing to buy directly from the concerns that manufactured certain parts while willingly purchasing the same parts from vehicle manufacturers who bought the parts from the original producers—adding their handling charges to the price paid by the government.55 It was also alleged that Ordnance was wasting millions of dollars by procuring too many parts of one kind and not enough of another. In particular, critics charged that the supply of small, fast-moving parts like spark plugs and distributor points was below actual requirements while the stock on hand of heavy, bulky replacements like axles and transmissions was too great. All told, the Truman investigation touched upon nearly every facet of the complex problem of spare parts procurement and distribution.
The committee questioned most intensively whether Ordnance should buy parts from the vehicle manufacturer or the parts manufacturer. The chief complaint was that purchase of parts from vehicle manufacturers was not the most direct or most economical method of procurement. Ordnance had always bought most of its spare parts from vehicle manufacturers and stoutly defended that policy. There were exceptions, of course. With track-laying vehicles Ordnance had arranged for a number of facilities before the war to produce specially designed components such as armor plate, transmissions, and track rollers, and when war came Ordnance naturally purchased spare parts directly from these facilities rather than from the tank assemblers.56 With general purpose vehicles, whose components were of commercial design, the most natural method was to procure parts from the vehicle manufacturer, for he carried a complete line of parts and guaranteed their quality. That was the practice of the QMC until the summer of 1942 when the policy of procuring replenishment parts directly from parts makers was tried for a short time.57
Precise definition of certain terms is essential to an understanding of the controversy. Spare parts fell naturally into three classes. Parts peculiar were those that fitted only one make of vehicle and could not be used in any other. Parts interchangeable could be used successfully in two or more makes but would not necessarily fit other types. Parts common, sometimes called standard parts, were such items as batteries, tires, tubes, brake lining, or spark plugs that came in various sizes to fit a wide range of vehicles regardless of their make or model.58 On parts peculiar there was no argument: they could be purchased only from the vehicle manufacturer. Nor
was there much disagreement on parts common, for Ordnance usually purchased such parts from parts manufacturers. It was on parts interchangeable that the argument turned, with the Senate committee favoring purchase directly from parts makers and Ordnance defending its practice of buying from vehicle manufacturers.59 But the situation was never static for long and by the winter of 1943-44 Ordnance was moving toward procurement of replenishment spares from the parts makers, meanwhile continuing to buy first-year spares from the vehicle manufacturers.60
One of the most telling arguments used by Ordnance officers in defending the policy of buying from vehicle producers was that purchase from hundreds of parts manufacturers would demand a large staff to negotiate and administer contracts. Vehicle manufacturers such as General Motors had experienced specialists to handle the job of placing orders for parts with hundreds of subcontractors, scheduling and expediting production, and finally inspecting the finished product, but Ordnance did not.61 Had Ordnance attempted to bypass these firms and purchase directly from several thousand parts producers, it would have been faced with the virtually insuperable task of recruiting, in the midst of the wartime shortage of manpower, a staff of parts experts. “A government procurement colossus composed largely of inexperienced personnel,” one official dubbed it.62 In addition, the administrative cost of placing and following up thousands of parts contracts with many small concerns would have been great, as would the task of coordinating countless engineering changes between the vehicle makers and the parts makers. Employment of hundreds of additional inspectors would have been required at a time when Ordnance was barely able to recruit enough inspectors for its established needs. The result might well have been higher cost to the government, and perhaps slower procurement of critically needed items, or failure to keep up with engineering changes made by the vehicle manufacturer.63 This
was the conclusion of all Army representatives who studied the matter, and also of a leading industrialist, Arthur G. Drefs, president of McQuay-Norris Manufacturing Company, who reviewed the whole parts procurement process in Ordnance at General Campbell’s request. Although offering certain specific criticisms, and urging more direct purchase from parts manufacturers, Mr. Drefs’ report in July 1944 stated that the parts industry as a whole endorsed existing Ordnance procedures and concluded that, in the time available to it in 1942-43, Ordnance “could not have recruited an organization which could have handled the job with the same effectiveness and at the same cost.”64
But the picture was neither all black nor all white. On some parts interchangeable it was entirely feasible for Ordnance to purchase directly from the parts manufacturer. A leading example was the carburetor. Three companies dominated the field—Bendix, Carter, and Zenith—and the Senate committee counsel, Mr. Meader, successfully argued that Ordnance could purchase replenishment carburetors directly from these concerns with no more trouble, perhaps with less, that it could buy the same items from about twenty truck manufacturers. Direct purchase from the parts manufacturer whenever feasible became the established Ordnance policy during the last year of the war.65 But in many cases direct procurement was not feasible because the parts manufacturers lacked staffs for handling government business, had no facilities for overseas packaging, preferred to deal with vehicle
manufacturers, or positively refused to do business directly with the government.66
The Senate committee correctly maintained that, in principle, direct purchasing was better than indirect. It reduced handling and transportation costs, eliminated the middleman’s mark-up, and simplified the procurement process. Purchasing of an interchangeable part from the vehicle manufacturer instead of from the parts manufacturer constituted what the committee termed “a kink in the pipe line of supply.67 But it was a kink that could not be avoided at the start of the war and could be untangled only very slowly as time went on. The war ended long before the policy of purchasing directly from parts makers was put fully into effect.
Overseas Supply
As U.S. Army units moved into overseas bases, reports trickled back to Ordnance that supplies of spare parts were
inadequate and that vehicles were deadlined for long periods awaiting repairs. Typical of the reports that came through is the following excerpt from a personal letter written by Col. Ward E. Becker:
Our chief headache continues to be shortage of fast moving maintenance parts, especially those for wheeled vehicles ... Our vehicles have received torturous treatment. ... In general, a 2½-ton truck engine requires 4th echelon rebuild in 10,000 miles, due largely to the lack of parts with which to properly take care of 2nd and 3rd echelon maintenance. Another reason, however, is lack of maintenance discipline. ... We have rear axles for GMC trucks “running out of our ears” but zero stocks of point sets, main bearing kits, carburetor repair kits, overhaul gasket sets, spark plugs, oil filters, etc. ... In many units from 50-75% of the vehicles require ... repairs which cannot be made due to lack of parts.
Pardon my lengthy cry on your shoulder. If you could see our pathetic array of dead-lined trucks, I really believe that you would feel that my official tears are justified.68
The reasons for these conditions were many. Faulty calculation of requirements, early neglect of spare parts, bottlenecks in the distribution system, ship sinkings, unforeseen conditions overseas—all these entered the picture. A spectacular example of the loss of spare parts occurred during the Italian campaign when the SS William W. Gherard sank off the coast near Salerno with more than two hundred long tons of spare parts aboard.69 At the outset, parts requirements had been estimated hurriedly without benefit of extensive combat experience. Priority was given to complete vehicles, and the tendency, particularly with transport vehicles, was to neglect spare parts. Storage and distribution overseas under primitive conditions added further complications. Parts actually on hand at overseas bases were sometimes as good as lost because they were not properly identified by name or number.70 Unusual conditions at overseas bases—whether fine sand or volcanic dust that got into oil filters and bearings, fungus that covered electrical equipment, or land mines that broke front axles—caused excessive damage to specific parts.71 An amusing example was reported to Ordnance by a civilian field investigator who declared that French native troops in North Africa were so ‘imbued with the thought that water was not fit to drink, and so indoctrinated with the importance of good care for their vehicles, that they poured wine into their batteries.72 Under such circumstances, parts mortality tables were meaningless.
The problem was unpredictable and was never “solved” to the extent that it ceased to be a problem, but some improvement resulted from a new system of overseas packaging adopted in the spring of 1943. At the start of the war, first-year parts were boxed in quantities sufficient to supply one hundred trucks or twenty-five tanks. Each set or quarter set contained a complete line of parts and was suitable for initial supply of a depot or for
lend-lease shipments of hundreds of vehicles. But the system soon proved too inflexible for everyday use and had to be abandoned. As Colonel Becker’s letter reveals, a depot might quickly use up all its fast-moving high-mortality parts like points and spark plugs, and have left over a surplus of little-used parts, like axles. When it ordered additional supplies they came in full sets, including duplicates of all the unneeded slow-moving parts.73
To correct this condition the so-called cycle pack was adopted. The essence of the new procedure was to pack parts in the smallest practical quantity that would meet the needs of the lowest echelon of supply. Each box contained only one type of part, was clearly labeled on the outside, and weighed no more than seventy pounds.74 Under this system depots could requisition only those parts they actually needed, and could issue them in small, usable quantities.
After July 1943 all parts were preserved, packed, and boxed for export, generally at the point of manufacture. There was criticism of this policy by the Senate Committee on the ground that some of these elaborately packaged items were consumed in the United States. Ordnance answered this charge by reporting that the percentage of parts destined for overseas use was great, and rising all the time, and no one could tell in advance which parts would go overseas and which would stay at home. It was considered more economical to pack all parts for export, even if some never went overseas, than to attempt operation and scheduling of dual packaging lines.75
Compilation of a 20-volume index of interchangeability data brought some improvement in parts supply. During 1943, OCO-D devoted countless man-hours to the tedious job of listing all types of automotive parts by number with cross references to all other parts that were interchangeable.76 Much of the information on interchangeability came from parts manufacturers who sold to many different vehicle manufacturers, and from the Automotive Council for War Production. With this index, Ordnance depots could quickly determine which parts of different makes of cars or trucks were actually identical. This information increased the usefulness of each part in the supply system and improved service to maintenance companies in the field. But it was so cumbersome and complicated that in some instances it “reposed on the shelves of organizations throughout the war with very little use.”77 When coupled with constant engineering efforts to standardize parts, the interchangeability index, with all its defects, proved to be an effective means of attacking the parts supply problem and
Chart 2: Spare parts buying for tank combat and motor transport vehicles, 1940-1945*
* The transfer of the Motor Transport Service from Quartermaster Corps to the Ordnance Department in 1942 made an uneven break in certain accounts at a time when continued action was more important than accounting details. Records of expenditures were not kept separately for several of these years and accordingly the above annual allocations are strictly in the nature of estimates which we believe, however, are fairly accurate reflections of actual spare parts expenditures.
Source: Record of U.S. Army Ordnance Combat and Motor Vehicle Spare Parts Policies and Operations from 1940 to 1945, by OCO-D, Nov 45, copy in OHF. Compiled under direction of Lt. Col. Daniel J. Clifford and Maj. R. O. Alspaugh.
earned for Ordnance words of praise from the Mead Committee in December 1944.78
Ordnance officers derived some consolation from the fact that they were not alone in finding spare parts supply a persistent problem. When General Somervell attended an Ordnance conference in Detroit in 1944, he offered the following comments on spare parts:
I don’t want you to think for a minute this is something that applies only to Ordnance. It is equally applicable to all the other services. We had a terrible time ... with spare parts for kitchen ranges in QMC. We had a terrible time with spare parts in radio equipment. We are having perhaps the worst situation of all in the Engineers with respect to spare parts for construction equipment and tractors.79
Nevertheless, reports that parts were not available when needed made Ordnance officers feel they were failing in their mission to support combat troops. At first they found reports of parts shortages overseas incredible in view of the enormous quantities procured. In the single year of 1943 Ordnance spent $1,364,750,000 on vehicle parts procurement, both concurrent and replenishment, or more than $100 million worth of parts each month. (Chart
2) This represented roughly 27 percent of the $5 billion spent that year on the whole combat and transport vehicles program.80 Yet parts deliveries were frequently behind schedule, and vehicles were often delivered with some of their tools or spare parts missing. For trucks or tanks at bases in the United States, the problem was usually not serious. But for units in overseas theaters the lack of certain parts or tools could sometimes not be made good for months. Shipping space was at a premium, and supply routes, particularly in the Pacific area, were long and slow. Although reports from overseas struck a more optimistic note in 1944,81 at the end of the war Ordnance officers were convinced that improved supply of parts to permit more effective field maintenance was one of the Army’s most pressing needs.82
The spare parts problem is a striking example of the Army’s failure to profit fully from its own experience. World War II saw a repetition, with variations and on a much grander scale, of the same type of maintenance failures that plagued the AEF in 1917–18. Indeed, as one historian has remarked, “Turn your field glasses on World War II and you will be looking at the Mexican Punitive Expedition insofar as vehicle maintenance is concerned.”83 There was the same multiplicity of makes and models, the same difficulty with parts supply and field maintenance, and the same encounter with rough terrain and severe climatic conditions.
Had the Army in the 1930s standardized its truck fleet along the lines suggested by World War I experience, the number of different makes and models in World War II would have been held to a minimum and interchangeability of parts greatly increased. But the fleet was not standardized, and in World War II there were actually more different types of vehicles in service than in World War I—about 330 as compared to 216. Standing alone, these figures are somewhat misleading. A few widely used types such as the jeep, the 1½-ton, and the 2½-ton cargo truck accounted for the bulk of all World War II transport vehicles, so the situation in 1945 represented a considerable advance over 1918. The number of different parts needed for tank-automotive maintenance was considerably less than in the earlier conflict—some 260,000 as compared to about 445,000 in 1917–18. Nevertheless, procurement and distribution of such a vast array of items to meet virtually unpredictable demands from all parts of the world imposed a heavy burden on both industry and Ordnance.
Some automobile manufacturers, observing the Army’s struggle to supply spare parts to its troops overseas, recommended abandonment of all combat zone maintenance except organizational upkeep. They contended that it would be easier for industry and cheaper for the Army to supply
new vehicles instead of repairing those that were worn out or damaged.84 After the war a modified version of this recommendation was developed by an Army civilian maintenance specialist with long experience with military vehicles. At a Supply Group Staff Conference in March 1948, Wilfred G. Burgan asserted that 15 percent of the different types of spare parts issued during World War II had met approximately 85 percent of all combat zone maintenance needs.85 He therefore proposed that the Army cease its effort to repair all damaged or worn vehicles and concentrate on those that could be readily repaired in the field with a limited variety of parts. The others might never be repaired at all or might be torn down to yield special parts not normally issued.
Although superficially attractive as a means of quickly solving the parts problem, the Burgan plan met with little favor among Ordnance officers with overseas maintenance experience. They felt that its major premise—that modern warfare precludes higher echelon maintenance in combat zones—was contrary to their experience.86 In World War II, they declared, the tendency was all the other way, toward requiring lower echelons to perform higher echelon repairs. They asserted that in both the European and Mediterranean theaters higher echelon maintenance was carried on in the field even under fluid tactical conditions. For the acknowledged difficulties encountered in the process they saw no simple or easy solution. Better tables of parts mortality, further standardization of designs, and more complete records of interchangeable parts were all recommended. Patient accumulation of experience data and constant pressure toward standardized components appeared to offer the best prospects for future attacks on this knotty problem.