How well and amply we were producing ammunition for our machine guns and rifles is indicated by the fact that our average monthly production, based upon our showing in July, August, and September, 1918, was 277,894,000 rounds as against a monthly average for Great Britain of 259,769,000 rounds and for France of 139,845,000.
Our total production of machine-gun and rifle ammunition during the 19 months of warfare was 2,879,148,000 rounds, while in that period England produced 3,486,127,000 rounds and France 2,983,675,000, but it must be remembered that they had been keyed up to that voluminous production by three years of fighting and that our monthly production rate indicated we would soon far surpass them in quantities.
The following table shows how our total production of ammunition for all small arms, including machine guns, rifles, pistols, and revolvers, grew month by month during the war:
| Rounds. | |
|---|---|
| Nov. 30, 1917 | 156,102,792 |
| Dec. 31, 1917 | 351,117,928 |
| Jan. 31, 1918 | 573,981,712 |
| Feb. 28, 1918 | 760,485,688 |
| Mar. 31, 1918 | 1,021,610,956 |
| Apr. 30, 1918 | 1,318,298,492 |
| May 31, 1918 | 1,616,142,052 |
| June 30, 1918 | 1,958,686,784 |
| July 31, 1918 | 2,306,999,284 |
| Aug. 31, 1918 | 2,623,847,546 |
| Sept. 30, 1918 | 2,942,875,786 |
| Oct. 31, 1918 | 3,236,396,100 |
| Nov. 30, 1918 | 3,507,023,300 |
| Dec. 31, 1918 | 3,741,652,200 |
| Jan. 31, 1919 | 3,940,682,744 |
CHAPTER XIII.
TRENCH-WARFARE MATERIAL.
Like many of the other war implements produced by the Ordnance Department for use in France, the weapons employed in fighting from the trenches were entirely novel to American industry; and in the production of them we find the same story of the difficulties in the adoption of foreign designs, of the development of our own designs, of the delays encountered and mistakes made in equipping a new industry from the ground up, but, finally, of the triumphant arrival at quantity production in a marvelously brief time, considering the obstacles which had to be overcome.
When the movements of armies in the great war ceased and they were held in deadlock in the trenches, the fighters at once began devising weapons with which they could kill each other from below ground. For this purpose they borrowed from the experience of man running back to time immemorial. They took a leaf from the book of the Roman fire-ball throwers and developed the hand grenade beyond the point to which it had been brought in the European warfare of the last century. They called upon an industry which had once existed solely for the amusement of the people, the fireworks industry, for its golden rain and rainbow-hued stars for signals with which to talk to each other by night. Other geniuses of the trenches took empty cannon cartridges and, setting them up as ground mortars, succeeded in throwing bombs from them across No Man's Land into the enemy ranks. They even for a time resurrected the catapult of Trojan days, although this device attained no great success. But from all such activities new weapons of warfare sprang, crude at first, but later refined as only modern science and manufacture could perfect them.
America entered the war when this development of ordnance novelties had reached an advanced state. It became necessary for us, then, to make a rapid study of what had been done and then go ahead with our own production either from foreign designs or with inventions of our own.