The Model 1903 rifle had been built in two factories and only two—the Springfield Armory, Springfield, Mass., and the Rock Island Arsenal at Rock Island, Ill. Our Government for several years prior to 1917 had cut down its expenditures for the manufacture of small arms and ammunition. The result was that the Rock Island Arsenal had ceased its production of Springfields altogether, while the output of rifles from the Springfield Armory had been greatly reduced.
This meant that the skilled artisans once employed in the manufacture of Springfield rifles had been scattered to the four winds. When in early 1917 it became necessary to speed up the production of rifles to the limit in these two establishments those in charge of the undertaking found that they could recover only a few of the old, trained employees. Yet even when we had restaffed these two factories with skilled men their combined production at top speed could not begin to supply the quantity of rifles which our impending Army would need. Therefore, it was obviously necessary that we procure rifles from private factories.
Why, then, was not the manufacture of Springfields extended to the private plants? Some ante bellum effort, indeed, had been made looking to the production of Springfields in commercial plants, but lack of funds had prevented more than the outlining of the scheme.
Any high-powered rifle is an intricate production. The 1917 Enfield is relatively simple in construction, yet the soldier can dismount his Enfield into 86 parts, and some of these parts are made up of several component pieces. Many of these parts must be made with great precision, gauged with microscopic nicety, and finished with unusual accuracy. To produce Springfields on a grand scale in private plants would imply the use of thousands of gauges, jigs, dies, and other small tools necessary for such a manufacture, as well as that of great quantities of special machines. None of this equipment for Springfield rifle manufacture had been provided, yet all of it must be supplied to the commercial plants before they could turn out rifles.
We should have had to spend preliminary months or even years in building up an adequate manufacturing equipment for Springfields, the while our boys in France were using what odds and ends of rifle equipment the Government might be able to purchase for them, except for a condition in our small-arms industry in early 1917 that now seems to have been well-nigh providential.
Among others, both the British and the Russian Governments in the emergency of 1914 and 1915 had turned to the United States to supplement their sources of rifle supply while they, particularly the British, were building up their home manufacturing capacity. There were five American concerns engaged in the production of rifles on these large foreign orders when we entered the war. Three of them were the Winchester Repeating Arms Co., of New Haven, Conn.; the Remington Arms-Union Metallic Cartridge Co., of Ilion, N. Y.; and the Remington Arms Co. of Delaware at its enormous war-contract factory at Eddystone, Pa., later a part of the Midvale Steel & Ordnance Co. These concerns had developed their manufacturing facilities on a huge scale to turn out rifles for the British Government. By the spring of 1917 England had built up her own manufacturing facilities at home, and the last of her American contracts were nearing completion.
Here, then, was at hand a huge capacity which, added to our Government arsenals, could turn out every rifle the American Army would require, regardless of how many troops we were to put in the field.
But what of the gun that these plants were making—the British Enfield rifle? As soon as war became a certainty for us the Ordnance Department sent its best rifle experts to these private plants to study the British Enfield in detail. They returned to headquarters without enthusiasm for it; in fact, regarding it as a weapon not good enough for an American soldier.
A glance at the history of the British Enfield will make clear some of our objections to it. Until the advent of the 1903 Springfield, the German Mauser had occupied the summit of military-rifle supremacy. From 1903 until the advent of the great war these two rifles, the Mauser and the Springfield, were easily the two leaders. The British Army had been equipped with the Lee-Enfield for some years prior to the outbreak of the great war, but the British ordnance authorities had been making vigorous efforts to improve this weapon. The Enfield was at a disadvantage principally in its ammunition. It fired a .303-caliber cartridge with a rimmed head. From a ballistic standpoint this cartridge was virtually obsolete.