Field ArTillery - US Army Center Of Military History

BETWEEN THE WARS
weapons, especially their mobility. The recommendations of the Westervelt board on
field artillery pieces and their transport are outlined in Tables 11 and 12. 9
Motorization and Mechanization
129
Partially accomplished in the field artillery during World War I, motorization
had actually begun earlier in the century. In 1902, the Ordnance Department had let
a contract to the Long Distance Automobile Company for an automobile forge and
battery wagon, which was delivered the following year and tested with an artillery
battery in 1904 near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Al though it served well, it was not
considered totally suitable for military purposes because of its high gasoline and oil
consumption, its weight, and its inability to follow the battery over rough terrain.
Neverthe less, from a design standpoint, the Ordnance Department considered the
vehicle an experimental success and planned to build a better one, but as late as
1914 no such vehicle had appeared. 10
By 1913, the Ordnance Department had turned its major interest toward the
development of an artillery tractor, and testing facilities were established at Rock
Island, Illinois. Prior to this time, some private individuals and companies had tried
to interest the Army in the use of tractor and traction engines, but these efforts had
failed. The Army wanted a four-wheel drive truck capable of towing about eight
tons. In May 1915, tests of trac tors and two- and four-wheel drive trucks began at
Fort Sill and the Rock Island Arsenal and in Hawaii. By 1917, the tractors were
under manufacture. 11
A board, directed in 1917 to consider motorization of field artillery, had recommended
the motorization of the 4.7-inch gun and 8-inch howitzer, the use of rubber
tires on all gun carriages and vehicles, a pool of thirty tractors per division, and
the organization of a board to be sent to France to investigate motoriza tion of field
artillery to the greatest extent possible. Restric tions on shipping space, however,
prohibited full motorization before World War I ended. 12
The Westervelt board, assuming that mobile warfare was more probable for an
American army than positional warfare, recommended in May 1919 the immediate
motorization of all weapons lar ger than the 75-mm. gun and 4-inch howitzer and,
when conditions warranted, the motorization of all divisional guns and howit zers as
well as those in the horsed sections of ammunition trains. Motorization would have
decreased personnel and animals, increased the mobility of field artillery brigades
and divisions, permitted storage of complete reserve batteries (which would have
9 WD SO 289, 11 Dec 1918; “Report of a Board of Officers Appointed by Par. 143, SO 289–9, WD,
1918: A Study of the Armament, Calibers, and Types of Materiel, Kinds and Proportion of Ammuni tion,
and Methods of Transport of the Artillery To Be Assigned to a Field Army, Washington, D.C., 5 May
1919,” copy in FA School files (hereinafter Rpt, Westervelt Board, 5 May 1919). The report was also
published in Field Artillery Journal, July-August 1919, pp. 289–347.
10 Norman Miller Cary, Jr., “The Use of Motor Vehicles in the United States Army, 1899–1939”
(Ph.D. diss., University of Georgia, 1980), pp. 19–23.
11 Ibid., pp. 70–77; Rpt, Westervelt Board, 5 May 1919, p. 44, FA School files.
12 Rpt, Westervelt Board, 5 May 1919, pp. 45–46, FA School files.