ARMY: Good Old Ordnance

> The Army Ordnance Department announced that U.S. machine-gun production had increased 460% in a twelvemonth; of ten plants assigned to machine-gun manufacture, all are in operation.

> In Philadelphia, train-building Edward G. Budd Manufacturing Co. turned out its millionth aerial bomb. > In Detroit, where Ford and General Motors are getting ready to join Chrysler in producing tanks, the national production rate (now about 25 a day) is expected to reach 100 a day by spring.

From such signs as these any citizen could well conclude that Ordnance was doing a bang-up job. Yet in the rat-runs of official Washington he could hear a different, an almost contradictory story—that Ordnance, bumbling, inefficient, stupid, had botched its job, is headed for an inevitable shakeup.

Ordnance’s chief, Major General Charles Macon Wesson, has a habit of waving away criticism without answering it. He has also been rightly accused of being over-complacent about a job that is good, but certainly not tops, as the U.S. figures technical performance. Last week “Bull” Wesson was just back from a visit to London to see what Britain was doing in his line of business. (Said he to a pretty girl abed in an air-raid shelter: “Really I ought to kiss a girl like you good night—but I’m a family man.”)

If the performance of General Wesson and subordinates (now 3,649 officers, 23,000 enlisted men) needed excuse, one might well be found in the paradoxical temper of the U.S. For close to 20 years the Ordnance Department, like the rest of the Army, rocked along on niggardly appropriations from a people determined not to prepare for the next war. Since the U.S. would have no munitions business, Ordnance had almost no practice with production, had to confine itself almost entirely to research and limited development of new weapons.

Today Ordnance’s big job is production —in which it has had the yeoman help of U.S. business. One of the outstanding jobs of U.S. defense is Ordnance’s building of a great powder, shot & shell industry (TIME, Oct. 20). But Ordnance was not ready with prepared designs of modern weapons for industry to manufacture. To meet World War II, it had no outstand ing tank models. It had developed no outstanding artillery piece. The one weapon peculiar to the U.S. Army that it developed was an infantry piece: the semiautomatic Garand rifle.

While other armies were developing new light artillery, Ordnance had been satisfied to dress up the old French 75. In 1940 Ordnance at last conceded that the 75 had too flat a trajectory, threw too light a slug. Ordnance had an able substitute in the 105-mm. howitzer, which it had planned as a supplementary weapon. When the 105-mm. finally became the standard field artillery piece, it meant a revolution in the shell-as well as artillery-production program. The Army is only now getting the first of its 1055.

For an anti-tank weapon, in 1938 Ordnance adopted the 37-mm. gun. European armies had already found the 37-mm. too light, had 45-and 47-mm. guns in service, were planning larger pieces. Even today Ordnance has not publicly conceded that the 37-mm. is too light to stop modern tanks. But field soldiers insist they need something more powerful—and Ordnance is getting it for them.

On self-propelled artillery, Ordnance was blank. Under the press of emergency, it is working hard at such essential equipment, but still finds itself in the design stage.

Ordnance’s big 3-in. anti-aircraft gun looked good when war began. It is now being superseded by a 90-mm. piece, on which deliveries are just beginning. For low-flying aircraft there has been an answer beyond the machine gun since 1937: the Bofors 40-mm. quick-firer (Swedish design). But production is just now beginning.

Worst example of Ordnance’s doodling in the peacetime years is the U.S. soldier’s steel helmet. Knowing full well that the helmet of World War I exposed the wearer’s neck to shell fragments and was also uncomfortable, Ordnance delayed adoption of a better helmet. Today, 20 years later, with a crackerjack design in its pocket, Ordnance is delayed in getting production because it can’t get enough manganese steel to make it.

Onetime Cavalryman Wesson cannot be blamed for the sum of Ordnance’s sins of omission. He became Ordnance’s chief only three and a third years ago (his four-year term expires next June). On some counts his department has not made a passing grade. Overall, the average has been reasonably good. Question his critics ask: In 1941, is “good” good enough?