by the early part of 1918 the Savage Arms Company at Utica, New York, was producing Lewis guns of the flexible type for use on aircraft (the large orders for Lewis ground guns having been diverted to aircraft use upon the cabled recommendation of General Pershing); the Marlin-Rockwell Corporation at New Haven was manufacturing large quantities of Marlin Aircraft machine-guns of the synchronized type; the Colt’s Company was building Vickers machine-guns of the heavy mobile type, while various factories selected by the Ordnance Department because of their facilities were energetically tooling up for the immense production of Browning machine-guns and automatic rifles which later followed. Early in March, 1918, the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, to whom, as the result of the arrangement already referred to, the Browning plans and specifications had been turned over, produced the first Browning rifles, and two months later the New England Westinghouse Company turned out the first Browning machine-guns. When the Armistice was signed, the American Expeditionary Forces had been equipped with 41,348 Browning heavy machine-guns and 48,082 Browning rifles. As the Marlin Aircraft machine-gun was available and was giving a considerable degree of satisfaction, no particular effort was made to push the development of the Browning Aircraft machine-gun, as it was feared that to do so might interfere with the production of the Browning machine-gun for ground use. Only a few hundred Browning Aircraft guns had, therefore, been produced up to the time of the Armistice. These had, however, been satisfactorily synchronized so as to fire through the airplane propellers, and had been speeded up to the amazing rate of fire of _1,300 shots per minute_. [Illustration: JOHN M. BROWNING, THE INVENTOR OF THE PISTOL, RIFLE, AND MACHINE GUN WHICH BEARS HIS NAME. Mr. Browning is holding the automatic rifle which he invented. _Photograph by Signal Corps, U. S. A._] [Illustration: THE BROWNING HEAVY MACHINE GUN. This, the deadliest weapon of the war, can fire at the rate of 1,000 shots a minute. _Photograph by Signal Corps, U. S. A._] [Illustration: A RIFLE GRENADIER. His rifle is fitted with a “tromblon” for firing rifle-grenades.]