Note, now, the measures adopted in terminating the work. It is evident that the post-armistice operation was going to deliver to the Government 262 finished guns and 238 unfinished ones. The latter would stand for a government expenditure of millions of dollars. As an industrial commodity these unfinished tubes would have value only as scrap steel, to be melted up and made into other things. Yet to the Government they possessed a real military value. In the event of another war occurring before the present-day types of artillery become obsolete, the Army would need not only reserves of guns ready for use, but also another great gunmaking industry, to produce for an indefinitely expanding field force. Therefore proper war reserves should consist not only of guns, but also of reserve facilities for manufacturing guns—machinery and tools, designs, plans, and instructions, and, especially, the rough forgings of gun elements, so that, the moment a new gun factory was organized and equipped, it could start working, without having to wait weeks and months until the raw materials came up from the forging plants. The Bullard Works were instructed to stop work on the incompleted units at such points as would enable future gunmakers, if necessary, to resume the work without difficulty. All incomplete units, however, were to be carried through the shrinking process before being dropped. The various hoops and jackets which are shrunk upon gun tubes are machined to a precision expressed in thousandths of an inch. In heavy metal working, such exactness is ordinarily unknown. It is evident that only a little rusting would destroy the fit of the contact surfaces and ruin the unassembled jackets and hoops, and therefore the company was instructed to assemble these otherwise perishable elements before stopping the work. After the shrinking, all uncompleted pieces were slushed in grease, packed for protection, and stored away, to be used, according to the plan, in the manufacture which will be necessary in the peace-time maintenance of the artillery equipment. Some of the incomplete Bullard tubes of the 155’s were later transferred to the Watervliet Arsenal and finished with the machinery there. The arsenal completed 300 guns of this size after the armistice.
This, essentially, so far as the partially finished units were concerned, was the procedure followed by the Ordnance Department in all nineteen emergency gun plants. Although the mills turning out rough forgings for the gun plants were taken from this branch of war work immediately after the armistice, the Ordnance Department reserved and stored a supply of forgings in order to keep the future gun plants in operation until new forging mills can come into production.
Seventeen of the emergency gun plants were closed out altogether after the armistice. Two remain among the war assets of the United States, held “in ordinary,” as the phrase goes, meaning that they are closed, but ready with machinery and materials in all stages of completion to start up in full operation as soon as the workmen can be recruited and the fires started. These two additions to our arsenal system were named the Rochester Gun Plant and the Erie Howitzer Plant; and at these two plants and at the government arsenals the Ordnance Department concentrated the great equipment of machinery, tools, plans, and materials left on its hands after the dissolution of the gunmaking industry created by the war, all stored so systematically that the War Department, at any time for years to come, can, in theory, at any rate, quickly reëstablish a gun industry on the scale known in 1918. Recently it has been proposed to transfer the facilities at Rochester to some other place.
The existence of this manufacturing equipment in the possession of the Ordnance Department gives the United States a stronger military potentiality than the nation ever possessed before. For the first time in our history the Government itself during peace is in possession of extensive facilities for the manufacture of light and medium-heavy artillery. Before the war the Army procured all its field guns (and those only in negligible quantities) principally from private makers. Its two gunmaking arsenals, Watertown and Watervliet, turned out principally large guns for fixed mounting at the coastal forts. Before showing what was done at the Rochester and Erie plants, it is worth while pausing to note the legacy received from the war industry of 1917–1918 by the two established gunmaking arsenals.
The Watertown Arsenal is to-day the War Department’s chief permanent establishment for the production of gun forgings. Watervliet is the great gun-finishing plant. At a cost of many millions these two institutions were built up and expanded on a vast scale during the war. After the armistice these two arsenals received the reserve supply of machinery and materials used in making the heavier field guns—principally 155-millimeter guns and 240-millimeter howitzers—forging machinery at Watertown, finishing machinery at Watervliet. For the manufacture of lighter guns, the machinery has been stored principally at the new Rochester and Erie plants.
With the new equipment installed at the Watervliet Arsenal during the war, that institution reached a productive capacity of sixty 155-millimeter guns a month and sixty 240-millimeter howitzers. These facilities to-day are set up and ready for immediate operation. But in addition to the arsenal’s own proper plant, the Ordnance Department has stored at Watervliet reserve machinery sufficient to manufacture fifty-two 155-millimeter howitzers, seventeen 4.7-inch guns, and forty-nine 75-millimeter guns every month. This machinery, in the event of another war, is to be shipped to emergency war plants and set up in them. Besides this, all the war-time equipment for producing anti-aircraft guns has been stored at Watervliet. One of the later inventive developments of the World War was to increase the power of the already powerful 155-millimeter gun by increasing its caliber to 194 millimeters and adding to its length, making an entirely new weapon, but one of the same type as the 155. None of these guns was actually built during the war, but machinery able to produce twenty of them every month is included within the equipment at Watervliet, one-third of this machinery set up and needing only slight rearrangement and modification to be ready for immediate operation.
All this equipment at Watervliet for the production of medium-weight field guns is idle and probably will remain so as long as the great reserve of finished artillery accumulated during the war continues to have military value. Unless another great war comes to upset the plans, the only production of light field artillery in this country for many years henceforth will be that resulting from the operation of a small experimental gun plant at Watervliet, to be maintained in operation to the sole end that the United States may keep pace with the progress of artillery manufacture. Whenever improvements are devised, the necessary changes will, if Congress provides the funds and present ambitions are realized, be made in the reserve machinery to enable it to turn out the improved models from the start of operation.
Meanwhile Watervliet and Watertown will continue to be what they were before 1917—the main reliance of the Army for its guns of the largest calibers for use at the coastal forts and on railway mounts. At best, the production of such weapons is a slow and intricate process, and the only way to procure a supply of them is to keep producing them all the time. Watertown makes the forgings for these guns, and Watervliet, with its own great equipment augmented by machinery from the dismantled war plants, can now manufacture guns up to 16 inches in caliber and howitzers from 12 to 16 inches. At Watervliet, too, has been stored some of the machinery from the American Ordnance Base Depot in France for relining big guns and restoring them to use.
Now let us look at the two chief auxiliaries to the two gunmaking arsenals, the Rochester Gun Plant and the Erie Howitzer Plant, which are now “stand-by” factories for the production of field artillery of the smaller sizes—75-millimeter and 4.7-inch guns and 155-millimeter howitzers. The Rochester Gun Plant, with its own war tools and with the equipment concentrated there during the demobilization, is now equipped to turn out 360 75-millimeter guns every month. Its equipment includes not only the elaborate finishing machinery, but also a shop capable of heat-treating and rough-machining 200 sets of black forgings for the gun every month. This plant alone can produce 75’s to keep pace with the needs of a great army, including its battle wastage, until a new gun industry can come into existence. All the buildings are new steel and concrete structures. The plant was built on twelve and a half acres of ground at Rochester during the war by the Symington-Anderson Company for the Government. This site is now leased by the Government. Its purchase would guarantee the continued existence of this important military asset.
The Rochester plant is held entirely in ordinary: machinery slushed in grease and boxed, and materials at hand in every department ready for machining, but watchmen the only occupants of the buildings. Not the least important part of the plant’s equipment is a book containing a detailed mechanical description of every one of the 521 manufacturing operations in the production of a 75-millimeter gun, and including even a chart showing the correct organization of the working forces at the plant. Even such complete plans, however, cannot be made to include the small kinks and short cuts of shop practice, which must be developed and learned by actual experience at the machines. Any future force of plant operatives, therefore, would have to learn the obscure secrets of manufacture before the plant could reach great efficiency.