The American Expeditionary Forces after the armistice had on their hands some 65,000 tons of field ammunition, mostly of French manufacture, besides several thousand tons of German ammunition taken in the advance to the Rhine under the terms of the armistice agreement. At first it was thought that the French ammunition, shipped to the United States, would be a military asset for several years to come; but as the months went on it became evident that, instead of being an asset, this ammunition was an embarrassment and a liability, and finally the War Department was glad enough to pay various foreign governments to take it off its hands.
Gas shell, for instance, it was thought, could not be stored, because the contained chemicals would soon destroy the metal, and the shell would begin to leak their lethal contents. Later experience, however, showed that there was no sound basis for such an apprehension. In the advance through Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine, Luxemburg, and the German Rhine country, the American forces collected about 7,000 tons of German ammunition, none of which would fit our own guns and much of which consisted of gas shell. The gas shell could not be destroyed in dumps because of the danger to civilians in the neighborhood. The only safe method of destruction was to transport it to sea and sink it in deep water; but the A. E. F. had no labor to spare for this work, and, besides, the French Government refused to allow the gas shell to be shipped on the French railroads. Finally, for a price, the French themselves undertook to dispose of this German gas ammunition.
In Belgium we had 6,000 tons of captured German ammunition. The Belgians could not use it, forbade its destruction in dumps because these dumps were in territory which had not been devastated by the war, and would not permit it to be moved by rail to the devastated districts, because of the supposed danger from the gas shell. The A. E. F. therefore had 6,000 tons of ammunition which it could not use, give away, destroy, or move. Finally, by agreeing to give the Belgians a large quantity of German engineering and construction material found in this area, the American authorities induced the Belgian Government to accept responsibility for this ammunition.
The German ammunition found in Germany was sold to German contractors, and, under the eyes of American inspectors, changed into useful commercial products.
As to the A. E. F.’s own 65,000 tons of loaded shell, it was decided to destroy all gas shell and all explosive shell and cartridges loaded with explosives of doubtful stability and to return the rest to the United States. The work of shipping the serviceable ammunition home actually started, but it went on slowly because of the lack both of labor and of ammunition ships. A fire destroyed one of the three collection dumps in the Château-Thierry area. As the ships repatriated the A. E. F. at a faster and faster rate, the various army areas were evacuated one by one, but it was necessary to leave guards behind at the various ammunition dumps. Then the War Department began studying the problem with a practical eye. Nearly all this ammunition was “war quality”: good enough for rapid consumption on the field, but made hurriedly by inexperienced labor under conditions that made its permanent stability questionable. It was found to be impossible to separate the better ammunition from that of doubtful stability. It was conceded that under ideal conditions this ammunition might be stored safely for five years. Some of it had already been stored for eighteen months; it would take at least a year to transport it all to the United States; and therefore in this country it would be good for only a brief time. Accordingly the A. E. F. authorities negotiated with the French to assume liability for the ammunition, and it all went into the general settlement of 1919 with the French, but as an American liability reducing the financial liability of the French under the agreement.
The chief permanent benefits accruing to the United States from its extensive war industry engaged in the manufacture of instruments for sighting and controlling the fire of field guns were (1) a reserve of optical instruments of the most advanced types, some of which had previously been produced only by the French, (2) a large collection of machinery for making these and similar instruments, and (3) an optical glass industry more than sufficient to the normal needs of the country. Before 1914 little, if any, optical glass had been produced in the United States. In demobilizing this industry, the Ordnance Department took care that all these military assets were properly fitted into the preparedness plan.
Again we see at work the policy of centering future production in an arsenal. Frankford Arsenal was designated as the military center for fire-control instruments, and here were brought the reserves of materials and tools acquired by the Government in the course of the enterprise.
The production of some of the artillery sights proved to be almost beyond the mechanical ability of American workmen. It took three skilled organizations to produce the panoramic sights. Warner & Swasey, of Cleveland, built these sights, but had to turn to the J. A. Brashear Company, of Pittsburg, for the optical-glass prisms to go into them. That company, in turn, did not have a skilled force large enough to correct the roof angles of all the prisms required. The Ordnance Department found a man who understood the correction of optical plane surfaces in the person of Dr. G. W. Ritchey of the Mt. Wilson Observatory, Pasadena, California. He trained a number of men in this recondite craft, and they staffed an important department of the extensive optical shop which the Carnegie Institution built at government expense at Pasadena.
An extensive production of military optical instruments was permitted after the armistice and before the contracts were terminated. The work of producing some of these instruments was long and difficult, the instruments themselves would not deteriorate in storage, and the evolution and improvement of such instruments is slow. Moreover, the labor cost is by far the greatest cost in making optical instruments. The value of the unfinished components as scrap, even from an industry as large as that created in 1917–1918, with its eighty-three factories at work on contracts of a value of $50,000,000, was almost negligible. As a result of this permission to proceed, the industry reached its peak of production late in January, 1919. The only contracts terminated were those under which no production had begun before the armistice, those the holders of which asked for termination, and those which had already produced undue excesses of easily made articles.
The largest producer of army optical instruments, the Bausch & Lomb Optical Company, of Rochester, held contracts amounting to more than $6,000,000 in value and produced before the armistice materials worth over $3,000,000. The War Department obtained no machinery from this plant when the contracts were terminated, but it received and shipped to Frankford Arsenal large quantities of finished parts of instruments. The present optical shop at Frankford was largely equipped with machinery originally procured by the Recording & Computing Machines Company of Dayton. This company, which had never built optical instruments before the war, took contracts worth $4,000,000, built and equipped a complete optical plant, and became a producer, among other things developing a mechanical method of milling glass for prisms. Similar methods of demobilization were followed at all the war factories making sights and fire-control instruments: desirable machinery and unfinished components were collected at Frankford Arsenal, and the excess materials were sold. This plan put thousands of instruments into the war reserves, enough of some sorts to maintain the military establishment for years to come. Of certain important classes of instruments the quantities obtained from the war industry are deficient.