Preparedness 1941

This emergency is so dire, so immediate and so pressing that no effort we could conceivably make would be more than just enough. The very best we can possibly do . . . will be just good enough, with nothing to spare. . . . Such was the judgment passed on the U.S. defense problem last week by OPM's Director Donald M. Nelson.

It was a judgment not only of the magnitude of the emergency but of the insufficiency of present preparations. The President. William S. Knudsen, John D. Diggers, Donald Nelson of 0PM all cried that not enough was being done, that more and more and more had to be done if the U.S. was to win.

Black Jack Pershing in France with the A.E.F. 24 years ago would have been pleased to have many of the resources which are today available to Chief of Staff George Catlett Marshall. Even General William Crozier, boss of the Army's Ordnance in 1917, would have jumped at the chance of obtaining as much or as good equipment as the U.S. Army's Ordnance chief, General Charles M. Wesson, is able to provide today.

For in its basic, national readiness for war, in the energy and quality and amount of its pre-war planning and production, the U.S. of last week was incomparably ahead of the U.S. of pre-war 1917. It was even ahead of the U.S. of midwar 1918. By the dollar measure alone the U.S. in that war spent a total of $22,000,000,000; last week, the U.S. had already spent or committed itself to spend $51,800,000,000.

The U.S. during World War I manufactured 64 tanks; last week it was producing 13 per day. It produced 1,642 light and heavy artillery pieces during World War I; its planned (but by no means attained) production of a single type of anti-tank gun for World War II is almost four times that total. The U.S. last week had an Army of 1,300,000 poorly equipped, as yet half-trained men; not until nine months after World War I was declared did the U.S. of 1917 have that many poorly equipped, skimpily trained men.

But all these pleasant comparisons are no guide to the adequacy of present U.S. preparedness. The number and quality of tools adequate to win World War I are utterly inadequate to make even a creditable showing this time.

And in some respects the U.S. is no better off than in the last war. Washington last week was phenomenally like the Washington of January 1918. Then, as last week, there was a central agency (the early War Industries Board in 1918; the Office of Production Management last week), without a head empowered to decide, to act, to compel obedience. Then, as last week, there was a President passionately dedicated to the purposes of production, yet unready and unwilling to delegate final power to get that production done.

Then, as last week, there was one bottleneck that really counted: the bottleneck at the White House. There was confusion, despair, individual convictions that less than enough had been planned or done. And there were men who looked at the facts, cried that those facts were all--that the war was already lost.

Then, as last week, such men overlooked a larger fact: that with all the bobbling and mistakes, the nation was learning how to produce for war, in spite of everything was building the wherewithal to produce.

And then, as last week, there was a cumulative set of circumstances which required the event which finally came (in March 1918): the naming of one able administrator with power to direct the whole effort. In 1918, that man was Bernard Mannes Baruch. Up to last week, that requirement was still to be met.

The fact that the U.S. has always muddled its preparations for war does not condone another such muddle. But if all these facts loom large and dark, their ultimate sum is smaller than the ultimate sum of U.S. vigor and resource.

In the light of the emergency with which the world is desperately confronted, we are doing a terribly inadequate job. We should be producing twice the 1,400 airplanes that were produced in April. So said Industrialist William L. Batt, now one of William S. Knudsen's deputies in OPM.

OPM's aircraft schedule now calls for the production of between 75,000 and 80,000 planes in two and a half years. That is a hope and it may be fulfilled, but OPM officials do not forget that since last fall they have revised the schedules of monthly deliveries three times, and every revision has been downward--from hopes toward realities. Early last October they anticipated an April 1941 production of 2,068 planes (450 combat aircraft and 1,159 noncombat planes for the U.S. Army and Navy; 429 for the British) and June 1941 production of 2.466.

That list went into the wastebasket months ago. So had an even more optimistic one which preceded it. So did a third which followed it. OPM's fourth schedule called for 1.268 planes in April, 1,575 m June, and so on up to 3,300 in September 1942--the equivalent of present German capacity. April production beat the new schedule's quota--so far so good.

Better sounding is the fact that plane production has actually doubled since last November. From last October till last week contracts had been placed for 44,836 combat and noncombat planes (16,000 of them for Britain and Canada). In addition plans have been made for 2,400 medium bombers and 1,200 heavy bombers, whose parts are to be manufactured by automakers and assembled in Government plants.

Last week the President demanded a huge increase in this bomber program. He gave no precise figures -- talk in Washing ton was of 500 a month -- for the Government had just waked up to the fact that it had not planned for enough big bombers.

The U.S. had (and missed) a chance to begin amassing a fleet of long-range, high-load bombers in 1938. Boeing's famous four-engined Flying Fortress had been tested and proved, the company was anxious to go into real production. Louis A. Johnson, then Assistant Secretary of War, and General Malin Craig, then Chief of Staff, decided instead to concentrate on cheaper, lighter, shorter-range bombers and pursuit ships. Their reasons seemed good at the time: limited funds then available would obviously buy more of the cheaper planes; the British had advised against long-range aircraft.

In violent disagreement with this decision was Major General Frank Maxwell Andrews, who then commanded the Army Air Corps's chief combat branch (the General Headquarters Air Force). General Andrews pleaded in vain for immediate, maximum orders for Boeings and any ' other long-range ships to be had. Over ruled, he reverted temporarily to the shelf and the rank of colonel, was later put on the General Staff, is now air commander in the Panama Canal Zone.

World War II meantime wrote the lesson of the bomber plain in the skies of conquered Europe. The British were slow to read: as late as last year, their representatives in the U.S. boggled at buying any large number of big bombers. Some officers in the U.S. naval air service, the Army Air Corps, had waked up. But not all. As late as last February the Chief of the Army Air Corps (Major General George H. Brett) assured a Congressional committee that the chief value of the bomber orders then considered was to prove the capacity of new plants to produce the planes. For the bombers themselves, said he, the Air Corps had no absolute need. Big Bill Knudsen vigorously dissented. He told the same committee: "If we had 2,000 of that type now we could fix things up over there."

Last month the wall of official blindness cracked. The War Department's two new Assistant Secretaries, Robert A. Lovett (for Air) and John J. McCloy, saw the need for more bomber orders. They finally succeeded in convincing Army, Navy and OPM (the British by then needed no further convincing). Finally they convinced the President. But months and years had been wasted. To impose a new long-range bomber program on top of the huge aircraft program already stretching the industry will now be very difficult.

If this picture seemed dark, it was not all dark. Tremendous aircraft orders had been placed, production was rising, lessons had been learned from the inevitable mistakes.

In one breath I say we are not producing much, but in the next breath I tell you that an outstanding job of production preparation is being done. So said last week Alfred Robinson Clancy, chief of the OPM section in charge of getting ordnance, the stuff to fight with: guns, shells, tanks, etc.

Navy, Army and OPM ordnance officials no longer think solely in terms of so many thousand guns, millions of shells to be produced. The limit of U.S. effort is their limit. Nearest they could come to a statement of their goal last week was: full equipment for a U.S. Army of 2,000,000; partial equipment for 800.000 more; facilities for the rapid equipment of a 4,000,000-man Army, when & if it is called; armament for the two-ocean U.S. Navy; supplies for Great Britain; supplies for the rest of the democratic world.

At one stage they had plans for 24 plants to make shells, powder, the chemical components of munitions. Now there are to be several more. By June, OPM expects to have 50% of its originally planned capacity in this type of munitions -- and that 50% will be double the total capacity developed during World War I. Planned also was capacity to manufacture 20,000,000 rounds of .30-caliber (rifle and machine-gun) ammunition, 4,000,000 rounds of .50-caliber machine-gun ammunition every 24 hours. Now the goal is as much more as can be produced. Tough-talking Mr. Glancy is fond of somewhat fanciful translations of this vast economic effort into human effort: "These 3-in. (antiaircraft) guns shoot 25 rounds per minute, or 100 per battery. One round costs $22.37, or $134,220 per hour, or at $1 per hour the productive labor of 134,000 men. Mr. Ford, at Detroit, has about 100,000 men on his pay roll. If he should increase that force by 34%, Mr. Ford could just keep one battery of 3-in. guns going."

Mr. Glancy, an ex-Du Pont Republican with patriotic urge to lick his terrific job, has an act for people who ask: "How are we doing?" In the top right-hand drawer of his desk is a tight roll of paper six inches wide. To explain this gadget he huddles with visitors and unrolls the end of the paper. There are the years and opposite them black bars representing the money that Army Ordnance has had to spend. The black bars through the '20's and '30's are about as long as a finger nail and represent about $12,000,000 each year. To see the whole black bar for '41 he gives you the roll and you walk back ward unrolling a six-foot strip ($5,000,000,000).

"Ordnance inefficiencies? Hell, yes," says Mr. Glancy, "but it's a marvel to me how they held together at all under that kind of expansion. For 20 years Ordnance officers have been begging this manufacturer to develop a sight, that manufacturer to redesign a breech block, another for a recoil mechanism, with never enough money to back it up, and now all of a sudden ordnance is expected to have mass production. It just isn't in the wood."

Others are not so charitable toward the Army Ordnance Department headed by Major General Charles M. ("Bull") Wesson. From war-tried London have come British criticisms: that U.S. Ordnance does not have enough punch; that the Ordnance Department's ideas of tank armament in even its latest medium tank are already obsolescent; that the Department has refused to go into immediate production of tried foreign models, instead has gone through the tortuous process of originating designs and building and testing models, before tooling for production. This last charge, at least, is no longer wholly true. On order in U.S. plants are Swiss automatic cannon (for the Navy), Bofors (Swedish) 40-mm. anti-aircraft guns, several other foreign designs.

The Department can show progress in the agonizingly slow business of starting ordnance production. Turned out of a Milwaukee plant last week was the first model of a new 105-mm. howitzer (which will replace the famous French 753). Forty more are expected this month, 220 per month by early 1942. The first models turned out by an industrial plant of a new, 37-mm. automatic anti-aircraft gun appeared recently. The Department's goal (now outmoded) was for 1,250-plus 90-mm. anti-aircraft guns. Aside from four test models, none had been produced last week and quantity production won't occur till 1942. And the British think the 90-mm. gun will fall 6,000 feet short of the necessary range for fighting modern bombers.

In anti-aircraft as well as other items, Ordnance is shooting for the moon and setting tentative (if always out-of-date) goals. It wants, for example, 6,000-plus 37-mm. anti-aircraft guns--apparently a good weapon against low flying planes (present production, 20 per month; desired production, 300 per month); 6,500-plus 37-mm. anti-tank guns--probably not heavy enough against modern tanks (current output: twelve per month); 400 or more 155-mm. field guns (current production: none); 3,500 light tanks (production now a promising 13 a day, being pushed toward 100); 1,800 medium tanks.

Said General Wesson last week: "About two months ago ... I expressed some concern about our ability to meet completion dates for these new (ordnance) plants. ... I would be most happy . . . if it were possible for me to say that this outlook has brightened. ... If anything, it has grown darker, due to large increases in naval and aircraft programs [which have] higher priorities. ... I am not decrying our priorities system. It is essential that we have such a system."

The master priorities put aircraft first, shipping second, followed by machine guns and ammunition, anti-aircraft artillery and its fire-control devices. Tanks come last, probably because the British need other things more and the U.S. Army does not expect immediate action against mechanized ground forces.

At least a year will pass before we can have an Army and an air force adequate to meet the air and ground forces which could be brought against us. . . . We have ... a naval instrument prepared and ready. ... So said Secretary of War Stimson last week. Army and Navy officers add some important qualifications to this estimate, but in general they agree with Mr. Stimson.

The Marines are expanding from a force of 35.000 to 80,000 men. They are well fixed for seasoned, ranking officers, will soon be short of qualified junior officers. Rated first though they are for fighting now, they need more automatic and semiautomatic weapons, pack artillery, transport vessels. Said a ranking Marine last week: "We are going to have an amphibious war, and damn soon. I wish we had another year to train our people. I don't think we'll get it."

The Navy is indeed ready, within the limits of Mr. Stimson's meaning. He meant Atlantic convoy, and the Navy has the ships for that duty in itself. But he did not mean that the U.S. Navy was ready to take on all the Axis powers in two oceans. If it were, the U.S. would not now be desperately building a second-ocean Navy which is four to six years from completion.

"Under construction" in the Navy's program--biggest, costliest ($4,000,000,000) ever undertaken--are 17 battleships, 54 cruisers, 201 destroyers, 78 submarines, 12 aircraft carriers, 175 auxiliaries. Two of the battleships (Washington, North Carolina, both ordered in 1937) will go into service this year; the last, not until 1945 or 1946 at best. Actually under construction in shipyards are 69 of the 362 naval vessels on order. Technically under construction (i.e., plans are being drawn, parts manufactured) are 260 more of the 362.

The Navy's program is going fairly well because it got started in peacetime, but naval constructors now see harder days ahead. Competing for limited U.S. shipways are 661 seagoing commercial vessels. The machine-tool bottleneck caused by aircraft and ordnance speed-up is beginning to tighten on the Navy. Naval shipbuilders are expanding 50%, 100%, 200%. Said a worried admiral last week: "It won't be enough, I'm afraid." In morale, in guts and ability to fight with what they have, the Navy's officers and men cannot be excelled. The quality of its command, the planning and execution of the construction program are all high--by the Navy's accepted standards. Whether those standards have been high enough for modern war, only such a war can tell.

The Navy's one big admitted blunder has been its longtime failure to provide protection for anti-aircraft gun crews on the decks of its vessels. The Navy's Secretary Frank Knox* said last month: "Our officers appreciated the possibility of air attack, but their failure to translate the appreciation into protection for the ships is the one real miscalculation they made during the 20 years of peace." This miscalculation of the effectiveness of aircraft also was mirrored in the failure of the High Command to provide as much aircraft equipment as a modern navy should have.

The Army's prodigious expansion since last fall speaks for itself: 1,300,000 men put into uniform, 45 new cantonments completed or nearly so, a new Armored Force (two divisions) now doubling, and soon to triple, many & many another example of conquered difficulties, great accomplishment. Against the physical, visible facts of that record, the sum total of delays and mistakes seems picayune. Army men need not blame themselves when they accept Secretary Stimson's estimate that they are at least a year from readiness for modern war.

The U.S. and its Army will be doing very well if that estimate is made good. If General Wesson's fears for delayed ordnance production are fulfilled, it will take more than a year to equip the Army. At super-human best, peak production on most of the schedules already drawn will not be reached before 1942. Since aircraft production has first place on these schedules, the rest of the Army can hardly expect to fare faster or better than the Air Corps.

Last Feb. 25. Secretary Stimson said that the Air Corps had nearly 4.000 planes. Mr. Stimson had rated only 650 as "first-line" planes, and conceded that the Air Corps had none up to the battle standards of World War II. About seven in every ten of the military planes now coming from U.S. factories are being exported, mostly to Great Britain. At this rate, the Air Corps will be fortunate indeed if it is anywhere near equipped for war on its own by late 1942.

If Britain should fall, and all plane exports stop, the Air Corps probably would get about two-thirds of the total U.S. production (the Navy would get the rest). Piling up aircraft on that basis from next June on. the Air Corps could expect to have about 8,000 new planes by 1941's end. Of these, a large proportion would be trainers; an unhappily large proportion also would be fighters whose prototypes are already obsolescent in horsepower and firepower. By September 1942 (on present production schedules) the Air Corps would have perhaps 20,000 new planes--in numbers at least, a very respectable war force--plus the production necessary to replace battle losses and maintain an adequate reserve.

The Army has a vast problem in training men and officers as well as producing machines. Not till 1942 will most members of the draft Army have a year's training as soldiers. With shortages of equipment and of trained field officers the training of the men will probably be none too far advanced by then.

Among field officers a thorough weeding will have to be carried out. A similar process has already begun in the high command. Of the officers who headed General Staff sections in Washington early last year, only one remained last week: Brigadier General Sherman Miles, in charge of Army Intelligence.

Today the Army in the field is a great school force, whose officer-teachers themselves have to be taught. Given equipment, given time, given competent command, the job ahead can be done, but so far it has only been begun.

* in a fortnight notable for its realistic official statements, Secretary Knox perpetrated a notably unrealistic one when he said: "In another 90 days the nation will be producing more war equipment than any other country in the world --including Germany.,"

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