When an army of 100,000 men expands and becomes an army of 3,000,000, it becomes a job just 30 times bigger to feed the 3,000,000 than it was to feed the 100,000. A soldier of a campaigning army eats no more than a soldier of a quiet military post. The same is true approximately in the case of clothing an army. But the army's consumption of ammunition in time of war is far out of proportion to its numerical expansion to meet the war emergency.
For instance, an Army machine gun in time of peace might fire 6,000 rounds in practice during the year. This was the standard quantity of cartridges provided in peace. Yet it is necessary to provide for a single machine gun on the field in such a war as the recent one 288,875 rounds of ammunition during its first year of operation, this figure including the initial stock and the reserve supply as well as the actual number of rounds fired. Thus the machine gun of war increases its appetite, so to speak, for ammunition 4,700 per cent in the first year of fighting.
| War. | Army. | Approximate rounds per gun per day. |
|---|---|---|
| 1854-1856, Crimean | British and French | █████ [4]5 |
| 1859, Italian | Austrian | ▎ .3 |
| 1861-1865, Civil | Union | ████ 4 |
| 1866, Austro-Prussian | Austrian | ██ 2.2 |
| Prussian | ▉ .8 | |
| 1870-71, Franco-Prussian | German | █ [5]1.1 |
| 1904-5, Russo-Japanese | Russian | ████ 4 |
| 1912-13, Balkan | Bulgarian | ███████ 7 |
| PRESENT WAR. | ||
| September, 1914 | French | ████████ [5]8 |
| Jan. 1-Oct. 1, 1918 | Italian | ████████ [5]8 |
| Jan. 1-Nov. 11, 1918 | United States | ██████████████████████████████ [5]30 |
| Jan. 1-Nov. 11, 1918 | French | ██████████████████████████████████ [5]34 |
| Jan. 1-Nov. 11, 1918 | British | ███████████████████████████████████ [5]35 |
[4] Siege of Sebastopol.
[5] Field gun ammunition only.
The rates are based upon total expenditure and average number of guns in the hands of field armies for the period of the wars.
A large part of the heavy expenditure of artillery ammunition in the present as compared with other modern wars can be attributed to the increased rate of fire made possible by improved methods of supply in the field and by the rapid-fire guns now in use. In wars fought before the introduction of quick-firing field guns, four or five rounds per day was the greatest average rate. Even this was reached only in the siege of Sebastopol, where armies were stationary and supply by water was easy, and in the American Civil War, which was characterized by advanced tactical developments. The guns of the allied armies in France fired throughout the year 1918 at a rate about seven times greater than these previously high rates.
In the case of larger weapons the increase in ammunition consumption is even more startling. Prior to 1917 the War Department allotted to each 3-inch field gun 125 rounds of ammunition per year for practice firing. Ammunition for the 75-millimeter guns (the 3-inch equivalent) was being produced to meet an estimated supply of 22,750 rounds for each gun in a single year, or an increased consumption of ammunition in war over peace of 18,100 per cent.
| PAST WARS COMPARED WITH ONE MONTH OF PRESENT WAR. | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Year. | War. | Army. | Rounds expended during war. |
| 1859 | Italian | Austrian | | 15,326 |
| 1861-1865 | Civil | Union | ██████████████ 5000000 |
| 1866 | Austro-Prussian | Prussian | ▏ 36,199 |
| Austrian | ▎ 96,472 | ||
| 1870-71 | Franco-Prussian | German | ██ 817000 |
| 1904-5 | Russo-Japanese | Russian | ███ 954000 |
| 1912-13 | Balkan | Bulgarian | ██ 700000 |
| 1918 | Present | British and French | In one month.[6] ████████████████████████████████████ 12710000 |
| EXPENDITURES FOR ONE YEAR, CIVIL AND PRESENT WARS. | |||
| 1864[7] | Civil | Union | █ 1950000 |
| 1918[8] | Present | United States | ████ 8100000 |
| 1918[8] | Present | British | ████████████████████████████████ 71445000 |
| 1918[8] | Present | French | ████████████████████████████████████ 81070000 |