Part 19

This chapter already so bristles with statistics that a few more can do no harm. They may open your eyes, moreover, to the magnitude of our preparations for producing nitrates—a project which has cost the American people more than $120,000,000, but of which not 1 in 10,000 of them has so much as heard. Take Plant No. 2, at Muscle Shoals, for example. I would be willing to wager almost anything you please that you have never heard of Muscle Shoals before. For your information it is on the Tennessee River, in northern Alabama, about midway between Nashville and Chattanooga. The power-house of this plant, with its capacity of 135,000 horse-power, has the largest annual output of any steam-power plant in the world, developing two-thirds as much power as all the hydroelectric plants at Niagara Falls put together. It contains a 90,000 horse-power steam-turbine—the largest ever built. The ammonia-gas plant is the largest in the world. The liquid-air plant is five times larger than any other installation of its kind in existence. At its peak the camp at Muscle Shoals had a total population of 21,000. One of its score or more of mess-halls seats 4,000 persons at one time; in it 750 gallons of soup have been prepared and 2 tons of meat have been roasted for a single meal. More than a thousand hogs were raised on the waste from this mess-hall alone. (Attention of Mr. Hoover!) The camp laundry washed 6,000 blankets in a single day. That may give you some idea of the labor and money involved in preparing to make our own nitrates.

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When it is considered that the personnel of the Ordnance Department, at home and overseas, consisted of 6,000 officers and nearly 100,000 enlisted men—almost as many as we had in the entire Regular Army before the war—and that these officers and men were called upon to perform work of a highly technical and specialized nature, it will be seen how important was the work of the Training Division. Among the innumerable activities of this division was the Ordnance Engineering School, where in three months a technically trained engineer was given an insight into the design and manufacture of ordnance materials; the Powder School at Carney’s Point; the Ordnance Supply School at Fort Hancock, and the Machine-Gun School at Springfield. In addition to these there was a school for tractor operators, a school for instruction in the repair and maintenance of ordnance trucks, another for the repair and maintenance of railway-artillery, and still another for training men in the repair of optical and precision instruments. It is sufficient for an infantryman to know how to use a pistol, a rifle, and a machine-gun, but the men who wear on their collars the insignia of the Ordnance Department have to know not only how to operate those weapons, and how to give instruction in their operation to others, but they have to be familiar with every detail of their manufacture and repair.

By far the most fascinating feature of Ordnance activities in America is the great proving-ground at Aberdeen, Maryland, thirty miles from Baltimore, on the shores of Chesapeake Bay. On this remote and jealously guarded reservation is tested every weapon and device, with the exception of small arms, produced by the Ordnance Department. During the height of our war preparations, more shots were fired here in a single day than were fired at the old proving-grounds at Sandy Hook in a year. A far greater quantity of explosive was expended daily than was used in many of the important battles of the Civil War. Here can be seen in action every type of American artillery from the vicious, hard-hitting little 37-mm. infantry cannon to the camouflaged monsters on railway-mounts, streaked like zebras and spotted like giraffes, which can drop a ton of explosive on a given target thirty miles away. Giant tanks, looking for all the world like some strange species of prehistoric monster, smash their way through patches of woodland or take twelve-foot trenches in their stride; field-guns of all calibres, camouflaged and tractor-mounted, go rocking and reeling across the broken fields; airplanes, circling in the blue, drop their half-ton bombs upon the targets marked out on the fields below; showers of shrapnel from the antiaircraft guns burst about the target parachutes in suddenly unfolding blossoms of white and scarlet. In the recovery-fields hundreds of men are at work with pick and shovel retrieving the fragments from the shell-bursts in order that they may be studied by the experts in the laboratories. (In order to facilitate this extremely important work, there has recently been built a huge concrete reservoir, known as a “recovery-tank,” into which the shell are fired, the fragments being recovered by means of giant magnets.) In the powder-bag department one can see storerooms filled to the ceiling with rolls of the heavy silk used for making the bags in which the propelling charges are contained; in adjoining rooms—“sweat-shops” they are jokingly called—scores of enlisted men, trained in the clothing-shops of New York’s East Side, cut and stitch the silk into cylindrical sacks in sizes to fit the various calibres of guns, and some distance away, in small, isolated buildings, other men fill the sacks with greenish-yellow granules which look like mildewed macaroni, but which is really smokeless powder. Over _ten thousand miles_ of this silk was required for our war programme. And it had to be the finest quality of silk, for no other material could be depended upon not to leave smouldering fragments in the barrel after its discharge, which would mean a burst gun and death to the crew when the next charge was inserted. Everything considered, one can get more thrills and see more things of interest at Aberdeen than at any place I know.

When time has given it the justice of perspective, the war-effort of Army Ordnance will be recognized as the greatest industrial achievement in the history of mankind. The more one learns of it the more it staggers the imagination. In nineteen months the Ordnance Department effected the most complete mobilization of science and industry the world has ever seen; it produced munitions of certain classes in unprecedented quantities; it developed and supplied material of such superior design and workmanship as to win the praise of our allies and the grudging admiration of our enemies; it designed, manufactured, and sent overseas the best service rifle, the best automatic rifle, the best pistol, the best machine-gun, the best field-gun, the best railway-artillery, the best tractor, and the best motor-truck possessed by any army in the world, and it stood ready, when the Armistice was signed, to turn loose on Europe such an avalanche of munitions as the world had never dreamed of. The American people seem to have completely overlooked the fact that we had in full swing, after we had been at war less than forty weeks, a mightier munitions programme than Germany could attempt after preparations which took forty years. But, though the American people did not realize the stupendous magnitude of their own effort, the Germans did. It was the news of the programme adopted by Army Ordnance, and the realization _that it was going through_, which, more than any single factor, perhaps, convinced Germany of the utter futility of further resistance. The Ordnance Department, like the biblical prophet, was not without honor save in its own country.

VI

FIGHTERS OF THE SKY

At about the time that the German War Lord, resplendent in the eagle-crowned helmet and silver cuirass of the Guard Cuirassiers, was haranguing in sonorous phrases the punitive expedition which was about to depart for China, two young mechanics in greasy overalls were at work in an obscure machine-shop in an Ohio city on a strange invention which was destined to prove a far more potent weapon than the Kaiser’s boasted “shining sword.” Now it is certain that at this period the All Highest had never heard of these young mechanics, and though they, of course, had heard of him, I imagine that to the accounts of his spectacular doings which appeared almost daily in the newspapers they paid about as much attention as they did to the gaudy lithographs on the local bill-boards which heralded the annual visit of the circus. Yet, could William of Hohenzollern have looked a dozen years into the future, he would have seen that these two silent, earnest, unassuming brothers from the Middle Western town were destined to have a profounder effect on the future of the great empire which he ruled, and, indeed, on the history of the world, than he and all the princes, soldiers, and statesmen who surrounded him.

Notwithstanding the jibes and forebodings of the professional critics, the ponderous sarcasms of senators and congressmen, and the sensational stories of failure which have appeared in the press, there are few more brilliant chapters in our national history than the story of the airplane. Do you realize, I wonder, that the airplane is the development of barely a decade? Had a life-insurance company, ten years ago, learned that one of its policy-holders was planning to take a ride in a “flying-machine,” it would promptly have cancelled his policy. Yet to-day planes carrying the air-post between the cities of the Eastern seaboard go booming down the air-lanes as regularly as express-trains and without attracting much more attention.

The story of the airplane, so far as its relation to the American Army is concerned, begins on the little flying-field of Fort Myer, on the Virginia side of the Potomac, opposite Washington. In the late winter of 1907 the Signal Corps had issued an advertisement and specifications for a heavier-than-air flying-machine, the chief requirement being that it must remain in the air for an hour without landing. Most of us will remember the world-wide interest which was aroused by this promised realization of the dream of the ages. During the trials the eyes of the world were centred on the parade-ground at Fort Myer. The President and the members of his cabinet were in frequent attendance and even Congress adjourned when it was announced that a flight would take place. The story of how the strange contrivance, looking like a combination of a box-kite, a baby-carriage, and a windmill, which had been brought on from Dayton by the two sober-faced brothers, was trundled out onto the field; how, after skimming along the ground, it rose into the air as gracefully as a swallow, and how, after fulfilling every condition imposed by the War Department, the first machine was purchased by the government, needs no elaboration here. The most amazing feature of the affair, barring only the performance of the airplane itself, was the fact that during the eight years following the demonstration at Fort Myer _the entire appropriations by the government for military aeronautics amounted to less than a million dollars_. Think of it, my friends! With the secret of aerial navigation in our hands—a secret which had been sought for by scientists all down the ages—Congress devoted less money to its development during the first eight years than it spent on many a post-office or government building. But the astounding apathy which characterized our attitude toward this epoch-making invention did not extend to the great European nations. They, always seeking to obtain military superiority, instantly recognized the significance and the potentialities of those early flights at Fort Myer. France, in particular, during the next few years making marked advances in aircraft design and construction. Thus it came about that when the war-cloud burst over Europe in the summer of 1914 the United States, where the airplane had its birth and where it had first demonstrated its practicability, possessed only a few decrepit and almost obsolete training-machines, while our fliers could almost have been numbered on the fingers of one’s two hands. Whose was the fault for this deplorable and inexcusable condition? A certain amount of blame undeniably attaches to the army, for in those days many of our higher officers were graduates of the old Indian-fighting school, who regarded with doubt and scepticism the claim that these new-fangled flying-machines could have any real military value. I think, however, that the real cause of the neglect in developing the airplane could have been found in the building with the great white dome which stands at the far end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

As a direct consequence of our systematic discouragement of airplane development, when we entered the war there was no such thing as an aviation industry in the United States and the number of aeronautical engineers and designers was so small as to be practically negligible. In this respect the problem of developing an air-fleet was unique. The United States had built ships before, it had manufactured cannon, rifles, ammunition, it had fed and clothed and housed armies, and it had at its command thousands of men qualified to do these things and do them well, but, barring a handful of experts in Dayton and Buffalo, there was no one in this country with experience in the designing or building of either training or fighting planes. In short, the government was faced with the problem not merely of developing a new industry, but of _creating_ it.

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In April, 1917, there were being built in the United States only four makes of aircraft engines that were sufficiently developed to be of any military value, and even these were useful only for primary training. We had no engines suited for service on the battle-front, or, indeed, even for the advanced training of pilots. Though the largest engine manufactured in the United States at this time developed about 220 horse-power, it had not measured up to the exacting requirements of combat. The other American-built engines ranged from 90 to 135 horse-power. It being evident, therefore, that the existing American engines could be used only for purposes of preliminary instruction, it was accordingly decided that their further manufacture should be limited to the training requirements. As a result of this decision, by far the greater part of the primary training of pilots has been conducted with the Curtis 90 horse-power engine, a quantity production of which was obtained early in the war, this engine being particularly valuable owing to the very satisfactory training-plane which had been designed around it. Considerable use was also made of the Hall-Scott 100 horse-power engine until the Curtiss motor could be manufactured in sufficient numbers to meet all demands for primary training. Two European engines, the Gnome 100 horse-power and the Hispano-Suiza 150 horse-power, were also being put into production in the United States at this time. These engines represented the highest product of European design and engineering skill, and were in a perfected and standardized state, at least according to European ideas, when their manufacture was undertaken in this country. But the changes involved in adapting them to manufacture by American methods required so much time, and the advances made in aeronautical engineering were so rapid, that before they could be produced in sufficient numbers they were almost obsolete for service on the front. These two engines were, however, of unquestioned value for advanced training purposes, the Hispano-Suiza in particular playing an important part in this work. Later another European engine, the 80 horse-power Rhone, was also put into production.

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One of the serious mistakes into which the Allies had fallen at the time the United States entered the war was the development of such a multiplicity of types of engines and planes that it was impossible to have a large number of any one of them. Indeed, by the spring of 1917, there were almost as many types of planes skimming over the Western Front as there were types of motor-cars skimming over American roads. As a direct consequence of this condition, the trained personnel had grown to such proportions that it was estimated that from thirty to fifty men were required on the ground to keep each plane in the air. It was obvious, therefore, that unless this large number of trained attendants could be materially reduced, it would be hopeless to expect to put thousands of fighting planes into the air within a reasonable time, for, on this basis, 1,000 planes would require from 30,000 to 50,000 men to take care of them. It was realized, moreover, that copies of foreign designs could not be made available in time to answer the insistent demand that America should put on the front an air force of overwhelming proportions.

Although, immediately upon the declaration of war, an aircraft commission had been sent to Europe for the purpose of gathering first-hand information, public sentiment would not have permitted the government to sit idly by and wait with folded hands for this commission to make its report. What the country demanded was action with a capital A. Now it is not generally known, perhaps, that, instead of engines being designed for certain types of aircraft, the most successful airplanes are designed around specific engines. And, as the development of the engine requires the greatest expenditure of effort and time, some one suggested that, instead of waiting for the members of the commission to come home and tell about the European engines they had seen, to manufacture which under American conditions might well prove impracticable, an all-American engine, combining the best features of the various European types but particularly adapted for manufacture under domestic conditions, be designed by the best engineering talent in the country and immediately placed in production. At a meeting of representatives of the Signal Corps—which then had charge of military aeronautics—and the Aircraft Production Board it was decided to put this suggestion into immediate execution, at the same time purchasing in Europe whatever equipment might be available in order to tide over the period while the all-American engine was being put into production.

At noon on May 29, Lieutenant-Colonel J. G. Vincent and Lieutenant-Colonel E. J. Hall, two of the most brilliant automotive engineers in America, shut themselves in a room of the New Willard Hotel in Washington. When they left that room again on the afternoon of the 31st, though haggard from lack of sleep, they had in their hands the completed assembly drawings of an entirely new airplane engine. Thus was born the famous Liberty engine, about which hundreds of speeches have been made and thousands of columns have been written in scepticism, in criticism, and in praise. As the result of the enthusiastic co-operation of some ten manufacturers, each of whom produced those parts for which his factory was best fitted, the first Liberty, an 8-cylinder, was built in thirty days. The first 12-cylinder engine completed its official endurance test eighty-two days from the time the order for samples was given, the unqualified success of this test removing the Liberty from the realm of experimentation to that of established reputation. In just one year from the day that Lieutenant-Colonels Hall and Vincent pushed the thumb-tacks into their drawing-boards in the hotel room, 1,100 Liberty “twelves” were produced—a remarkable illustration of the ability and ingenuity of American engineers and the energy and resourcefulness of American manufacturers. Thanks to the energetic co-operation of many manufacturers, more than 14,000 Liberty engines had been completed when the Armistice was signed. There are few finer passages in the history of America’s participation in the war than the story of how our manufacturers put aside their private interests and their commercial rivalries and threw themselves and their organizations, heart and soul, into the work of building an airplane that would make America mistress of the skies.

When the signing of the Armistice brought our efforts to an abrupt conclusion, there had been developed, tested, and adopted by the army four types of airplanes, production of which would have started early in 1919. They were the Lepere, or L. U. S. A. C. II, a two-seated fighting-plane equipped with a Liberty engine; the U. S. De Havilland 9-A, a day-bombing and reconnaissance plane also fitted with the Liberty engine; the huge Martin bomber, with a gross weight of nearly 5 tons, driven by two Liberty engines; and the Loening, a two-seated combat plane fitted with the 300 horse-power Hispano-Suiza engine.

A striking illustration of the new problems and extraordinary ramifications incident to this great new industry which so suddenly came into existence in the United States is the fact that it was found necessary to despatch an agricultural expert post-haste to India to purchase enormous quantities of castor-beans, as it was at first believed that castor-oil was the only satisfactory lubricant for these new types of high-speed, high-power engines. India’s stock of castor-beans being quickly exhausted by the immensity of our demands, more than 100,000 acres of the bean were planted in the United States. Meanwhile, research work with mineral oils was carried on intensively, a lubricant eventually being developed which proved satisfactory in practically every airplane engine except the rotary type, for which castor-oil is still preferred.

But the aircraft problem was by no means solved with the development and production of the Liberty engine. Far from it. To build airplanes requires wood; the best timber in the world is none too good; and of suitable timber there was a comparatively limited supply. The best wood known for airplane construction is the Sitka spruce, which combines the required qualities of strength, resiliency, and lightness. This spruce grows mostly in the Pacific Northwest, along the tide-lands of Washington and Oregon, at a low elevation. But not all the planes were built of spruce, fir, as it grows in the Northwest, being largely used for the heavier wing-beams. Port Orford cedar was eagerly utilized whenever it could be obtained. It is of somewhat smaller growth than spruce or fir, but a straighter-grained wood, harder and more dense than either of the others. Of this splendid wood there is, however, only a comparatively small quantity, 2,000,000,000 feet, perhaps, anywhere in the world, mostly near Coos Bay, on the coast of Oregon. Being less affected by water than any of the other woods, it was reserved for use in seaplanes. The government commandeered the entire supply of Port Orford cedar for aircraft production, but released it upon the signing of the armistice.

There is plenty of suitable airplane timber—spruce, cedar, and fir—in the Far Nor’west—miles and miles and miles of it. The mountain-slopes are as solid a black with the evergreens as though a giant had painted them with soot. “Massed in their black battalions stand the bleak, barbarian pines.” Foolish men have tried to destroy these forests. Twenty years ago a colony of Poles settled amid the virgin forests of the Olympic Peninsula—a portion of the United States which to this day remains virtually unexplored. Timber was not worth a dollar a million feet then. On the chance that the ground might be tilled if the timber could be cleared off, the settlers started a fire that burned over ten square miles and destroyed timber which, at prevailing prices, would be worth close to half a million dollars. The great area of blackened waste which remains is still known as “The Polander Burn.”