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Research and Development in the Army ch a p T e R Tw o During World War II, the United States turned out unprecedented quantities of guns, ordnance, aircraft, and ships to equip American and allied combat forces fighting in Europe and Asia. Firms in the steel, automobile, aircraft, electrical, and other critical manufacturing industries suspended commercial operations to help the War Department meet the rapidly growing demand for all types of military hardware. Perhaps nowhere was the demand more acute and the transition from civilian to military production more difficult than in the Army. Like the other military services, the Army was responsible for the design, fabrication, and procurement of ordnance materials. The centerpiece of this effort was the Army’s arsenal system, which provided much of the technical knowledge and manufacturing expertise used by corporate America to mass-produce everything from small-arms ammunition and artillery shells to field guns and tanks. During the postwar period, however, the arsenal system played an important but steadily diminishing role as the Army and the other military services turned to academia and industry for the latest advances in science and technology to support ongoing production programs. 1 The origins of the arsenal system in the United States can be traced back to the earliest days of the Republic, when the federal government established in-house production facilities to meet the expanding weapons requirements of the regular army and the state militias. The Springfield (Massachusetts) Armory was established in 1794. 2 Watervliet Arsenal (New York) was founded in 1813, and Watertown (Massachusetts) and Frankford (Pennsylvania) arsenals followed three years later. The two remaining arsenals, Rock Island (Illinois) and Picatinny (New Jersey), were established in 1862 and 1880, respectively. Springfield produced rifles and other small arms, whereas Watervliet pioneered the development and manufacture of large-caliber guns and artillery. Watertown produced howitzers and seacoast and antiaircraft guns. Frankford manufactured 1 On the arsenal system during World War II, see Constance McLaughlin Green, Harry C. Thomson, and Peter C. Roots, The Ordnance Department: Planning Munitions for War, in United States Army in World War II, The Technical Services (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1955); and Harry C. Thomson and Lida Mayo, The Ordnance Department: Procurement and Supply, in United States Army in World War II, The Technical Services (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1960). Also on wartime weapons production, see R. Elberton Smith, The Army and Economic Mobilization, in United States Army in World War II, The War Department (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1959). For a general overview of weapons production facilities owned and operated by the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force during the Cold War, see Philip Shiman, Forging the Sword: Defense Production during the Cold War (Champaign, Ill.: Construction Engineering Research Laboratoriesa, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, July 1997). 2 Also founded in 1794, the Harpers Ferry Armory was destroyed during the Civil War. On the history of this armory, see Merritt Roe Smith, Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology: The Challenge of Change (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977).
12 so u R c e s o f we a p o n sy s T e m s In n o v a T Io n In T h e depaR TmenT o f defense small-arms ammunition, artillery projectiles, fuzes, gun cartridges, and optical and fire control instruments. Rock Island manufactured artillery recoil mechanisms, gun carriages, and combat vehicles. Picatinny Arsenal was the Army’s primary source of explosives, propellants, bombs, and other munitions. All six arsenals were assigned to the Ordnance Department, which had played a seminal role in the mechanization of arms production in the United States during the nineteenth century. 3 Established by an act of Congress in 1812, the Ordnance Department was one of the seven independent technical services operated by the Army at the end of World War II. 4 That the government routinely favored a policy of rapid postwar demobilization often left the arsenal system without the requisite institutional resources to maintain an extensive manufacturing capability on standby status. Taking its place was a more diversified in-house research and development function to help the industrial sector meet ordnance production requirements in time of war. The extent of this transformation was especially evident during World War I, when industrial firms converted their manufacturing operations to focus on the mass production of weapons developed in the arsenals. 5 Even during World War II, following another significant expansion in manufacturing capacity, the arsenal system produced less than 10 percent of the Army’s total ordnance require- 3 In addition to the six principal manufacturing arsenals, the Ordnance Department also owned and operated repair and storage facilities, typically referred to as arsenals or depots. Prior to 1940, major operations were located at Augusta Arsenal (Georgia), Benecia Arsenal (California), Ogden Arsenal (Utah), Raritan Arsenal (New Jersey), and San Antonio Arsenal (Texas). The Army also operated a network of proving grounds responsible for weapons testing and evaluation. See, for example, F. B. Pletcher, “Aberdeen Proving Ground,” Iron Trade Review 73 (18 October 1923): 1091–96; “Some Recent Advances in Ballistics,” Journal of Applied Physics 16 (December 1945): 773–80; “Metallurgical Activities at Aberdeen Proving Ground,” Metal Progress 59 (April 1951): 499–502; J. P. Hammill, “Research in Ballistics,” Ordnance 44 (September-October 1959): 235 –38; W. D. Hodges, “New Role for Aberdeen,” Ordnance 56 (September-October 1971): 132–35; Levin H. Campbell Jr., The Industry-Ordnance Team (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1946), 46–53; Herman H. Goldstine, The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), part 2; and David H. Devorkin, Science with a Vengeance: How the Military Created the Space Sciences after World War II (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1992), chap 7. 4 Like the Ordnance Department, the Quartermaster Corps, Corps of Engineers, Signal Corps, Transportation Corps, Medical Department, and the Chemical Warfare Service operated their own research laboratories or maintained institutional connections to outside R&D organizations. For a discussion of the scope and content of these functions at the end of World War II, see the articles under the general title, “Mobilization of Scientific Resources—V: The U.S. Army,” in the April 1945 issue of the Journal of Applied Physics. See also the review articles and reports of research findings published in Army Research and Development News Magazine, a monthly periodical introduced by the Office of the Chief of Research and Development in December 1960. On the Ordnance Department and its contributions to the development of American manufacturing technology, see David A. Hounshell, From the American System to Mass Production, 1800–1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984); Merritt Roe Smith, “Army Ordnance and the ‘American System’ of Manufacturing, 1815–1861,” in Military Enterprise and Technological Change: Perspectives on the American Experience, ed.. Merritt Roe Smith (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985); and Smith, “Military Arsenals and Industry before World War I,” in War, Business, and American Society: Historical Perspectives on the Military Industrial Complex, ed. Benjamin Cooling (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1977). 5 Smith, “Military Arsenals and Industry before World War I,” esp. 35–41. The sharp rise in the outsourcing of weapons production to industry during the war was matched, albeit on a much smaller scale, by a major expansion of manufacturing capacity in the arsenals. See W. H. Tschappat, “The Manufacturing Arsenals and Their Equipment,” American Machinist 78 (14 February 1934): 141–44.
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co n c l u sIo n : RevIew a n d ReT
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Unpublished Documents Converse, Ell
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BIBlIogRaphy 115 A History of Rock
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