XIV

CONTRIBUTIONS OF METALLURGY TO VICTORY.

IN

HENRY M. HOWE

N this story of the contributions of metallurgy to victory let me first tell of that which was of transcendent importance, the human element, and then consider some of the technical advances, of the new alloys, and of the new adaptations of old ones. In the space available only a few striking and typical cases can be given. To tell all that was noble or noteworthy would need a shelf rather than a chapter. I have naturally written of those events most familiar and readily verified.

The metallurgist's great contributions were the wonderful increase in the production of ordnance material, and the equally wonderful spirit of coöperation which underlay it. It is not simply that each steel-maker who knew how to make steel fit for cannons turned his manufacture from peace to war products, and increased the scale of his operations, but that the few, the perilously few, who had this knowledge from long and costly experiments, from risking their solvency, and from every kind of strenuous endeavor, deliberately gave it freely to their own competitors, actual and potential. Only thus was it possible to create the mechanism which could make the enormous quantities imperatively needed. Each owner of furnaces whose lack of special knowledge had till now restricted his work to the cruder kinds of steel must now be taught how to make the best. Where this giving was due to patriotism it was to high patriotism; where it was to enlightened self-interest, how clear was that enlightenment! The ordnance officers who urged this course had indeed the strong argument, "What good will

the exclusiveness of your knowledge do you if Germany wins and takes everything, down to the clothes on your back, exclusiveness included? Better to tell your competitors your secrets than to run the risk of beggary and blows for yourselves and dishonor for your women."

The case of France is the most striking. Her northeastern iron district, her most important, was overwhelmed by the first German onrush, and she thus lost about 81 per cent. of her pigiron capacity and 63 per cent. of her steel-making capacity. But in about two and one-half years she nearly tripled the number of her blast furnaces, and increased that of her open hearth furnaces by about 60 per cent. During the war she increased her annual production of rifles 290 fold, of machine guns 70 fold, of 150 mm. shells 225 fold, and of 75 mm. shells 15 fold, the production of these last reaching the enormous number of 200,000 a day. Far as these numbers are beyond our mental grasp, they suffice to correct the impression that it is by necessity that France has usually devoted herself to the exquisite perfection of her products rather than to their quantity. Her gigantic output of munitions, for her own army, for ours, and for those of five other Allied nations shows that, in habitually devoting herself most strikingly to products beyond the skill of all other people, she is following choice and not necessity.

The part played by an illustrious French ironmaster, Dr. Schneider, may well be recorded. He controls about 250,000 workmen at Le Creusot and his many other steel works, shipyards, iron and coal mines, optical works, machine tool works, electrical works, Diesel engine works, locomotive works, bridge and other works. He supplied about three-quarters of all the artillery used in the war by the French, including the Schneider 21-inch guns. He provided the American Army with about half of its heavy artillery, and all of its field artillery, besides sending much to the Belgian, Italian, Roumanian, Russian and Serbian Armies, and making enormous quantities of the most varied war products, tanks, aircraft and machine guns. This

achievement is not dimmed by our sending ordnance of other kinds to Europe on a like scale, As early as March, 1915, foreseeing our eventual entry into the war, he sent engineers to introduce into this as well as other countries the French methods of making shells and gun steel, thus lightening the work of the French commissions later sent to buy munitions.

Like Dr. Schneider's story is that of the Perrone Brothers, President and Chairman of the Ansaldo Company of Genoa, makers of ships, turbines, locomotives, electrical machinery, and like products.

Seeing clearly, and long before the war, the menace to Italy in the German peaceful penetration all about them, they pledged themselves beside their father's coffin to keep all German interests and influence away from their great industry. When we remember how the treacherous Teuton succeeded in controlling Greece and in causing Russia's perfidy towards Roumania, we are hardly surprised that this strictly Italian company, with its wonderful possibilities, could get no orders from its own government. Nothing daunted, the management started at the beginning of the war to turn its plants into gun-making establishments, and actually completed two thousand cannons before it could get an order. Then, when the terrible Caporetto disaster came, the government turned to it for guns, and seems to have been greatly surprised to learn that these two thousand guns were even then on hand ready for immediate shipment. Thereafter, indeed, came orders in plenty, till the company, now employing a hundred thousand men, had made ten thousand guns.

To the stupendous task of making these was added that of financing the manufacture, for, plenty as the orders now were, there was no pay. At one time the government owed the Ansaldo Company about one hundred and forty million dollars. In order to carry so great a load a combination of banks had to be made.

In the last two years of the war this company bought and brought from America in its own steamers nearly fifty million

dollars worth of war material. Besides 10,000 cannon it made 3000 airplanes, fifty million projectiles, and great numbers of warships, torpedo boats, and submarines.

To illustrate the British metallurgical contributions my story may well give some examples of the work of one of the very most interesting figures in modern metallurgy, Sir Robert Hadfield, inventor, general of investigators, vitalizer of societies, astonishing captain-major of industry, and inexhaustible fountain of enthusiasm to all about him.

Of his manganese steel helmets I tell in a later section. Other important war uses of this material were found, of which not tell.

I

may

In the terrible autumn of 1914 he was asked by the War Office to install several factories specially planned for making the high-explosive shells of which the Allied armies were in such grave need. It was characteristic of his exuberant driving power that he built two plants and had them delivering finished shells in one case in 5 months and 3 days and in the other case in less than six months after beginning to build. He also built new plants and converted existing plants, giving them a weekly capacity of over 8,000 of the important 9.2 in. Howitzer shells. Before the war a weekly production of 200 such shells was about the normal.

The flexibility with which he adapted his works to new and very difficult products is illustrated by his making 3000 gun tubes of calibers running up to 9.2 inches, and 3400 trench howitzers, though he had never made either guns or howitzers before March, 1917.

It was by such feats that the steel makers of Great Britain and France enabled their battered armies to hold back the German flood till the general ammunition campaign became effective later on.

Sir Robert's firm made nearly 21⁄2 million shells of about 20 different kinds for the British Army, and I million of 37 different kinds for their navy, including the immense armor piercing shells, weighing a ton and a half each, for the 18-inch monitor

guns. The gun itself weighs about 150 tons, and can send its shell more than 30 miles. The total Hadfield production of shells was equivalent to nearly 30 million 18-pounders, and their total production of all kinds of steel was about 750,000 tons, valued at about $160,000,000.

American Contributions. When we entered the war it was wisely decided that our ordnance makers should concentrate their attention first on making the products with which the Allied armies as a whole were least well supplied; and second and chiefly on laying the foundations for an overwhelming production of ordnance for 1919 and 1920, even though this meant deliberately restricting the joint production of the Allies for 1918 to but little beyond their bare necessities.

The former of these principles is illustrated by our throwing the chief accent on the manufacture of explosives, propellants, and certain specific kinds of shells, because the British and French works already had capacity sufficient for supplying all the Allied armies, including our own, with most kinds of guns throughout 1918, and with most kinds of shells at least till June of that year.

If, as seems probable, the German general staff was allowed to learn of the second of these two principles, our straining everything to create establishments which could prepare the vast quantities needed for an irresistible onslaught in 1919, it would naturally do as it did, stake all on a series of titanic efforts to break through the Allied line at all costs before our help could come, and when these failed abandon hope. If Château-Thierry could happen in our unreadiness, what would we be when ready? Why fight and bleed till then?

In order to weigh fairly what we did in gun making you must understand our shameful situation in having before the war only two establishments at which great guns of first rate quality could be made. Think of that, the richest country in the world. in natural resources, in assets in general, and in power of industrial organization, with a hundred million inhabitants generous to prodigality, and only two establishments, public or