The Gathmann Ammunition Co. of Texas, Md., was the first contractor for dummy bombs, building 10,000, which were delivered in the spring of 1918. In the spring and summer of 1918, the Atlantic Terra Cotta Co., the New Jersey Terra Cotta Co., both of Perth Amboy, N. J., and the Federal Terra Cotta Co. of Woodbridge, N. J., each built 25,000 of these bombs. In September additional contracts for 50,000 dummy bombs were given to each of these three concerns, while another contract for 25,000 went to the Northwestern Terra Cotta Co. of Chicago. By the end of November these concerns had delivered nearly 34,000 of the 175,000 bombs contracted for, and were turning them out at the rate of 1,300 per day.
The Essex Specialty Co. manufactured 10,000 phosphorus rolls for dummy bombs, and the Remington Arms-U. M. C. Co. supplied 10,000 shotgun shells for the first bombs produced. Later the Remington Arms Co. produced 100,000 shotgun shells for dummy bombs.
AIRPLANE PHOTOGRAPHIC SUPPLIES.
In four days of the final drive of the Yankee troops in the Argonne district the American photographic sections of the Air Service made and delivered 100,000 prints from negatives freshly taken from the air above the battle lines. This circumstance is indicative of the progress made by military intelligence from the days when a commander secured information of the enemy's positions only by sending out patrols, or from spies. The coming of the airplane destroyed practically all possibility for the concealment by day of moving bodies of men or of military works. Mere observation by the unaided eye of the airmen, however, soon proved inadequate to utilize properly the vantage point of the plane. The insufficient and often crude and inaccurate drawings brought in by the airplane observer were early succeeded by the almost daily photographing of the entire enemy terrain by cameras, which recorded each minute feature far more accurately than the human eye could possibly do. The airplane, to quote the common saying, had become the eye of the Army, but the camera was the eye of the airplane.
This development in military information-getting from start to finish was entirely the product and an evolution of the great war. When the war broke out in 1914 there were no precedents for the military photographer to go by, nor had any specialized apparatus ever been designed by either side for this purpose. As a result the first crude makeshifts were rapidly succeeded by more and more highly developed equipment.
At the outset of the war, before antiaircraft guns were brought to efficiency, it was possible for the observation planes of the British, the French, and the Germans to fly at low altitudes and take satisfactory pictures with such photographic appliances as were then in common use. But as the "Archies" forced the planes to go higher in the air, special equipment had to be designed for longer distance work under the adverse conditions of vibration and speed, such as exist on airplanes. It is a tribute to the photographic technicians of the world that they were able to produce at all times equipment to meet these increasing demands.
TYPE DR-4, DE RAM CAMERA.
TYPE A-3, HAND-HELD AIRPLANE CAMERA.