America's Munitions 1917-1918United States. War Department
History
America's Munitions 1917-1918
United States. War Department
United States. Army -- Supplies and stores; Weapons; World War, 1914-1918 -- United States -- Equipment and supplies
The first thought of the Ordnance Department was to produce grenades
by the assembling and quantitative method; that is, by the production
of parts in various plants and the assembling of those parts in other
plants. But, due to delay in railway shipments and difficulties due
to priorities, it was discovered that this method of manufacture,
however adaptable it might be to other items in the ordnance program,
was not a good thing in grenade production; and when the war ended the
tendency was all in the direction of having the assembly contractors
produce their own parts either by purchase from subcontractors or by
manufacture in their own plants.
The orders for the redesigned grenades called for the construction of
44,000,000 of them. So rapidly had the manufacturers been able to reach
quantity production this time that a daily rate of 250,000 to 300,000
was attained by November 11, 1918, and by December 6, less than a month
after the fighting stopped, the factories had turned out 21,054,339
defensive grenades.
It should be remembered that the great effort in ordnance production
in this country was directed toward the American offensive expected on
a tremendous scale in the spring of 1919. Had the war continued the
fragmentation grenade program, in spite of the delays encountered in
its development, would have produced a sufficient quantity of these
weapons.
Special consideration is due the following-named firms for their
efforts in developing the production of defensive grenades:
Caskey-Dupree Co., Marietta, Ohio.
Spacke Machine & Tool Co., Indianapolis, Ind.
Stewart-Warner Speedometer Co., Chicago, Ill.
Miami Cycle & Manufacturing Co., Middletown, Ohio.
American Radiator Co., Buffalo, N. Y.
International Harvester Co., Chicago, Ill.
Doehler Die Castings Co., Brooklyn, N. Y.
Precision Castings Co., Syracuse, N. Y.
The American offensive grenade was largely the production of the Single
Service Package Corporation of New York, both in the development of
its design and in its manufacture. The body of this grenade was built
of laminated paper spirally wound and waterproofed by being dipped
in paraffine. The top of this body was a die casting, into which the
firing mechanism was screwed. Practically no changes were made in the
design of this weapon from the time it was first produced, and the
production record is an excellent one.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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