The model submitted by Kraeuter & Co., Newark, N. J., was adopted and 5,000 were manufactured and sent to France. Although this was the best cutter developed in this short time, it was evident that it was not the right article, and the Engineering Division of Ordnance continued experimenting to make a more satisfactory one. In this connection a one-hand wire cutter was developed by the William Schollhorn Co., of New Haven, Conn. This cutter was a very efficient and satisfactory article, and, although it was never adopted by the American Army during the war, it is worthy of consideration. The American Expeditionary Forces eventually sent back drawings and sample of the French wire cutter, which was developed abroad and known as model 1918. This was a large, two-handed cutter. Production was started. The article was found difficult to manufacture, but the manufacturers undertook it with a will and production was well under way when the armistice was signed.
The mess equipment of the soldier included the following items: meat can, condiment can, canteen and cup, knife, fork, and spoon. These articles were practically the same as the Army had always used, with one exception—the meat can. Advice was received from the American Expeditionary Forces that the meat cans in which the soldiers' food was placed by the cooks of the various organizations were not large enough to hold the portions that the American doughboys needed when they were fighting at the front. Although production was well under way with various American manufacturers on the old model, a new model can was designed which was half an inch deeper. The American manufacturers immediately, with a great deal of trouble to themselves, changed their dies and tools and manufactured a new meat can which was larger than the old. Thousands of cans were turned out daily.
BOOK II.
THE AIR SERVICE.
CHAPTER I.
THE AIRCRAFT PROBLEM.
When the United States entered the war against Germany in 1917 there was no phase of her forthcoming industrial effort from which so much was expected as from the building of airplanes and equipment for aerial warfare; yet there was no phase of the immense undertaking in which the United States was so utterly unprepared. In many other branches of the work of providing matériel for a modern army, however inadequately acquainted America might be with the developments which had gone on in Europe since 1914, yet she had splendid resources of skill and equipment which could quickly turn from the pursuits of peace to the arts attending warfare. But there was no large existing industry in the United States which could turn easily to the production of airplanes, since such airplanes as were known in Europe in 1917 had never been built in the United States.