The Bamberg herald. [volume] (Bamberg, S.C.) 1891-1972, 1919-08-21
GREAT WEAPONS
WERE BEING USED
UNCLE SAM WAS GETTING INTO
STRIDE.
AS End of War Came
Assistant Secretary Crowell, Director
of Munitions. Prepares His
tory of Efforts.

WASHINGTON. June 4.-Behind the
armies in France which smashed a
road to victory through the German
defenses last fall, the United States
was forging, before the armistice was
signed, weapons gigantic and power
fuI, counted upon to make ultimate
victory certain. In the American ar
tillery programme alone, the full
fruition of which could not have been
reached before 1920, there was in
creation an agency believed by army
men to be of itself able to bring vic
tory.
An official and detailed account of
that programme is contained in the
chapters made public last week OF
"Munitions,' the historical report
prepared under the direction of AS
sistant Secretary Crowell, who was
director of munitions during the
war.
The whole story of guns, from the
81 nm t'infantry cannon with its
inch and one-half bore, designed for
use in the front lines of combat, to
the 16-inch mortar on a railway
mount which was to work havoc on
the enemy from points miles behind
the fighting front, the story of the
extraordinary efforts of American in
dustry to equip an army with artil-
lery on scale never before attempt
ed is graphically pictured. Through
It all runs the same spirit of partner
ship in the war enterprise between
industry and the government that
made possible such an undertaking.
The chapters devoted to guns are
so extensive as to make up consld-
erable volume in themselves. They
contain the names and the statistical
records of achievement of all the
firms in the years to come.
Among the many interesting things
in the report is the account now Of
ficially given of the reasons that i'm
PEELED the war department to cast
aside except for training purposes all
the 3-inch field artillery with which
the American army was equipped
when the United States entered the
war, and to substitute for these
weapons three types of guns fitted to
take ammunition of the Is nm type
employed by the French light pieces.
Problem of Production.
There has been much controversy
because of the alleged failure to
adopt at the outset Of the war the
French Is, famous for it's perform
ances in the war, as the standard
American piece of this type. The
report shows that, the gun was adopt
ed for combat purposes, but that its
production in quantity in the United
States proved to be even more of a
problem than the governments ex-
perts had anticipated. For that rea-
son the American 3-inch gun, rede-
signed for Is ammunition, similarly
recham bered, were both put into pro-
duction in order to make use of ev-
cry facility for manufacture. The
American and British type were in
tended primarily for training work
and were so employed. But the wis
dom of putting these guns into pro-
duetion on a quantity scale is en-
phasized in the following paragraph:
''In the year and one-half of our
war experience the manufacturing 6
production problems were all prac-
tically and completely solved with
one exception-that of building
French hydro-pneumatic recuperators
for the Is nm guns. This, perhaps
the hardest manufacturing job in
the whole range of war industrial
enterprises and naturally the last
one to come through, had not been
solved when the armistice was signed
However, it is only fair to state that
the solution was imminent on No
vember II, 1918"
The recuperator is the recoil de-
vice which makes these French guns
what they are. Their construction
was French secret and to builc
them there is required degree ot
precision comparably only, the report
states, to that necessary in Building
as delicate an, instrument as sex
tant. It was with difficulty that an!
American manufacturer was persuad
ed to undertake it, yet on April 3
1919, 67 of these recuperators hat
been completed and SO OF thes'
passed by French experts and accept
ed by the government. They were
the first of these devices built out o