What the Citizen Should Know About Our Arms and Weapons: A Guide to Weapons from the 1940s

195 Pages·2015·15.6 MB·English

by  Hicks

First Published in 1941
First Skyhorse Publishing edition 2015
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
Cover design by Owen Corrigan
Cover photo credit: Thinkstock
Print ISBN: 978-1-63220-278-9
CONTENTS
PREFACE
I PISTOLS AND REVOLVERS
II MUSKETS
III RIFLES
IV MACHINE GUNS
V GRENADES AND MORTARS
VI FIELD ARTILLERY
VII RAILWAY AND COAST ARTILLERY
VIII ANTIAIRCRAFT ARTILLERY
IX TANKS AND OTHER MECHANIZED VEHICLES
X ARTILLERY AMMUNITION AND AIRCRAFT BOMBS
XI THE ORDNANCE DEPARTMENT
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
1. Model 1799 flintlock pistol
2. Model 1805 flintlock pistol
3. Model 1842 percussion pistol
4. Model 1847 percussion revolver and cartridge
5. Model 1874 and 1875 metallic cartridge revolvers and cartridges
6. Model 1911 automatic pistol and magazine
7. Model 1917 revolver and cartridge in cups
8. Model 1918 automatic pistol and cartridge
9. U.S. muskets and rifles
10. U.S. musket and rifle actions
11. Small-arms cartridges
12. U.S. magazine rifles, 1896-1917
13. U.S. rifle actions, 1896-1917
14. Small-arms cartridges
15. U.S. Semiautomatic Garand Rifle; Model 1905 knife bayonet
16. Model 1895 U.S. Gatling gun
17. Maxim automatic machine gun
18. Model 1895 automatic machine gun
19. Model 1918 pursuit plane
20. Vickers machine guns
21. Machine gun on ground mount
22. Model 1918 automatic rifle and close-up of action
23. Machine guns mounted in the wing of XP43 plane
24. A modern Falcon fighter
25. U.S. machine gun on mount
26. Hand grenades
27. U.S. mortar
28. Bronze cannon
29. Model 1750 field gun
30. Model 1840 field gun
31. Model 1885-1897 field gun
32. Model 1902 3-inch field gun
33. U.S. antitank gun
34. Model 1897 French field gun
35. U.S. 75-mm. M2 gun
36. U.S. howitzer on carriage
37. Model 1918 A1 U.S. howitzer
38. Model 1917 U.S. 8-inch howitzer
39. Ten-inch Rodman gun
40. U.S. rifled gun on siege carriage
41. Twelve-inch coast artillery rifle
42. U.S. siege mortar
43. Gun on railroad mount, Model 1918
44. Model 1890, U.S. mortar mounted on Model 1918 railway car
45. 155-mm. gun, M1, on carriage
46. Field gun on truck
47. U.S. antiaircraft gun
48. U.S. automatic antiaircraft gun on carriage
49. Universal director for antiaircraft fire control
50. Modern sound detector for antiaircraft fire control
51. Modern antiaircraft searchlight
52. Model 1917, six-ton tank
53. U.S. tank, Mark VIII
54. Light tank
55. U.S. medium tank
56. Half-track personnel carrier
57. Scout car
58. Fuses, 1700-1878
59. Grapeshot; case shot or canister
60. Parrott shell; case shot with wooden time fuse; Sawyer canister
61. Types of artillery ammunition
62. Fuses (Modern)
63. Shells
64. A 1918 model Glenn Martin bomber
65. Flying fortress
66. Aerial bombs
67. Mark V bomb release rack
68. Mechanical arming, Vane-type percussion bomb fuses
69. Organization of the Ordnance Department
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THE author wishes to thank Mr. André Jandôt for executing with such
meticulous care the illustrations appearing in this book.
To Mr. Roger Cholin for much-appreciated help.
To Technical Sergeant H. A. Johnson, Ordnance Department, for help in the
selection of illustrations and captions.
J. E. H.
PREFACE
IN THE present crisis it has become imperative for Americans to learn of the
forces that shape the outcome of battles. The factors making for either defeat or
victory are many, and some of them are not entirely within the grasp of men. Yet
those which depend purely on human efforts may be generally classified as
morale, leadership, tactics, and ordnance. It is of the last factor, ordnance, that
we wish to tell in this book. Ordnance is a general name for military supplies
such as small arms, cannons, tanks, tractors, and ammunitions of all kinds. Thus
our Army maintains a special service, the Ordnance Department, to provide
munitions for our soldiers and to supervise the manufacture of both the defensive
and offensive weapons of warfare.
Ordnance is a factor all the more important in battles, because it is upon the
quality of military supplies that hinge matters of morale, leadership, and even
tactics. A soldier must have complete confidence in his rifle. Weapons superior
to those of the enemy enable a general to carry out his plans with a minimum of
interference, and his tactics will change in accordance with the relative merits of
the arms which are at his disposal. Ordnance has had a particularly important
effect upon the history of Ethiopia. In 1886 the French Army adopted the Lebel
rifle and rejected Daudeteau’s gun. A few thousand pieces of the latter type were
sold to Ras Menelik, an Ethiopian war lord. It was one of the first small caliber
rifles (8mm.) fed by a magazine carrying five cartridges. When the Italians tried
to conquer Ethiopia in 1897 they met defeat at Aduwa, where Ras Menelik’s
men sent small bullets propelled by smokeless powder to a greater distance, with
much more speed and accuracy, than the Italian rifle could give with its 11-mm.
caliber and its black-powder cartridges. Thus, superior ordnance rather than
leadership or tactics made it possible for semicivilized peoples to repel the
aggression of a well-trained European army.
A civilization’s first task is self-defense, and the best of that civilization—its
inventive genius, its productive power, all its resources—must strive to give the
country the best tools of war. Defensive and offensive weapons must keep in
step with advancing science. A modern rifle is even more a symbol of our
mechanical progress than the automobile or the radio, for the last two thrive only
behind the wall of security that our armed forces provide. Our Army consists not
only of a group of men eager to defend their country; it includes numerous
technicians, specialists in all fields of human effort, whose duty it is to keep
abreast of potential enemies.
The Ordnance Department alone has a task full of responsibilities. It has
been an important factor in shaping the course of our nation’s history since it
must select those weapons which stand by our soldiers whenever the enemy
strikes. Indeed, it has played an even more important part in furthering the
evolution of all arms. It is the purpose of this book to study that part, to trace the
development of weapons such as the pistol, the rifle, and the cannon, so that
laymen may know the problems involved in the use of our Army’s more modern
tools. We have centered attention upon the arms which the country has used
since General Washington’s time, although it has been necessary to glance over
the progress made prior to the American Revolution as well as over the
Continental innovations which have influenced the general trend of arms.
Through this historical treatment we have attempted to explain the perennial
limitations which inventors are still trying to overcome and which check the
capacity of weapons. Inasmuch as tactics depend upon the weapons available, it
is necessary for the citizens who would understand the problems of warfare and
interpret its vicissitudes to turn a few leaves of the United States Ordnance
history.
This book is in no sense an official publication or text, nor is it intended as
such. It does not represent the opinions of the Ordnance Department nor of the
War Department of the United States, the author alone being responsible for the
book.