[ Non-Gun Companies Making Guns ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another "Ask Ian" Q&A on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and our question today comes from Brian on Patreon.
Brian says, "Would you give your thoughts and comments on non-gun companies making guns.
For example Baldwin Locomotive or Eddystone making '17s,
International Harvester M1 Garands, GM M16s, most of the M1 carbines,
maybe even TRW M14s. How did the experiment work out?"
I would say that in general the experiment worked out really quite well.
And I think it is one of the elements that was a substantial contributor
to the US industrial dominance during World War Two in particular.
... I mean, we were going to be an industrially dominant country just because of scale, regardless.
But being able to take that industrial capacity and exploit it
to the end of producing war materiel efficiently and at high quality,
there's no way that that ever could have been done without the use of non-firearms companies.
And this wasn't something that happened by accident.
This was something that was fairly carefully designed, and planned, and set up.
During World War Two the United States had a War Production Board
that assessed what industrial factory capacity existed,
and what it was best suited to produce for a wartime economy.
Even before the war began, the government and companies were looking into this.
Like for example, in 1938 Congress passed what was called the Educational Orders Act,
which allowed Congress to place an order with a company
for typically it'd be something like 1,000 guns of a given model.
Along with, the contract would specify that you had to produce
a complete set of tooling for this firearm.
Or not necessarily a firearm, they did this for a variety of military type products.
So artillery shell fuses for example, all sorts of stuff.
And you'd have to produce a set of tooling to manufacture these parts,
you'd have to make a reasonable sized run of the gun
(or whatever it was that the contract was for).
The tooling was actually technically property of the United States government,
but the company contractually would store it at their own facility
for some period of time, 10 years, or more, or less, depending.
And the idea was this paid for the development cost, the tooling cost, of a company
learning how to manufacture a product, that's why it was called an "Educational Order".
And it was a way to bypass some of the uncertainty,
and some of like the commercial competition that would exist.
There's no good reason for a company to tool up to make, say, the M1 rifle in 1938.
Because ... at that point they don't know for sure that the rifle is actually going to be adopted.
They don't know that the US government is actually going to need to build six million of them.
Why would you spend all the money to make a tiny number of guns?
Well, these sorts of educational contracts were specifically done to give a company
the financial incentive to invest that.
And it was seen as a worthwhile risk of public money that,
"Yeah, maybe we'll never need this stuff.
But if we do, we've now like pre-placed the ability to manufacture it."
Now this was done in conjunction with the Springfield Armoury.
Which, it's important to point out, is completely unrelated
to the current company called Springfield Armoury.
The Springfield Armoury was set up shortly after the United States became a nation
to develop and manufacture military goods. Mostly small arms, but also other stuff.
By the time we get to World War Two, one of the main roles of Springfield Armoury
is to develop the manufacturing processes for firearms.
They weren't necessarily expected to produce the bulk of American firearms.
They were expected to be there to allow other companies to produce the bulk of the guns.
... They were that leverage between a government-funded arsenal
that's going to use public money to develop small arms,
and figure out how to produce them efficiently.
And then leverage that into the industrial capacity of the private market.
And so that's why you see, ... (like World War Two is by far the best example of it),
all sorts of companies that have nothing to do with firearms, making guns.
So you have typewriter companies that are making BARs.
You have typewriter companies that are making M1 carbines.
International Harvester, it's a tractor company,
after World War Two they get a contract to make M1 rifles.
Interestingly, just a little side note on that,
probably the biggest reason that International Harvester got that contract
despite having no former experience making firearms,
is that they were almost 1,000 miles away from Connecticut.
Up until that point, like all of M1 production took place in about a 60-mile radius.
And once nuclear weapons become a thing there's a reliable argument that
a couple of nuclear bombs could obliterate US capability to produce the basic infantry rifle.
So maybe we should have a company that's
set up somewhere in a totally different blast radius able to make those rifles.
And, ... probably, hence you get International Harvester
getting a contract to make 100,000 M1 Garands.
Anyway, ... I would say in general this sort of program worked really quite well.
Because it wasn't just a matter of the government offering a contract to make rifles,
and a company bidding on the contract, and then trying to make rifles.
Because usually when that sort of thing happens, a company will significantly underestimate
how difficult it's going to be to make guns.
Like, this happens all the time, it happened even
... during the World War Two production we're talking about here, and post-World War Two production.
Companies still didn't really understand.
You take a company that makes tractors, or typewriters, or bicycles or something,
and they think "Yes, we make complex mechanical stuff. Of course we can do a rifle, how hard is it?"
I'll tell you what, guns are actually really hard to make.
That's something that I've harped on over and over, that we see time after time
looking at historical firearms development and production, they're really hard.
But having Springfield Armoury there to be able to provide the technical assistance.
To be able to provide a complete set of drawings, gauges, drawings of the gauges,
and the expertise of having figured out how to make these things in the first place.
That's what allowed non-gun companies to get into production
relatively quickly, and with relatively few problems.
They all had some problems at first, but these were all problems that they were able to overcome.
If you look at M1 carbine production ... some were a little better than others, obviously.
But as a general rule, all the M1 carbines were really quite well made.
They were effective. M1s are the same way.
When you get to the M14, you had two gun companies
and one non-gun company that made M14s.
TRW, Thompson, Ramo & Woolwich, got a contract to make M14s,
they were the only commercial company doing it.
And they were actually more successful at it than the two gun companies.
So overall I think it was a very successful program.
In particular a successful program for the contingency of
requiring huge scale production on short notice for wartime.
Springfield Armoury was shut down in the 1960s as a cost-cutting measure.
It was essentially seen that they were doing redundant work.
That America's commercial companies are full of all sorts of engineering
and production experts, and they can figure out this stuff on their own.
And we don't need to be subsidising a government armoury
that's going to figure it out first, and then sit on their thumbs doing nothing.
Which I think is a very unfair characterisation of what Springfield Armoury
would have been doing had they remained in existence.
And so the armoury was shut down by McNamara during the Kennedy administration.
Personally, I think that was a mistake.
I don't think it's a mistake that we've had any consequences from really.
Arguably maybe some consequences with M16 scaled up production.
But it seems unlikely that we are going to get into another war on the scale
of World War One or World War Two where this sort of production would become essential again.
If we do, I'm pretty sure people will regret losing this capability.
Unless the capability still exists and I don't know about it, which is possible.
I am certainly not an expert in modern defence production logistics.
But now I'm just kind of rambling. Good question Brian.
As a slight side note, one of the other cool outcomes of this ... program
was that it provides collectors with all sorts of interesting
manufacturers to collect firearms from that you don't normally see in commercial production.
Anyway, thanks for watching, hopefully you guys enjoyed this one.
If you would like to have one of your own questions answered in video format like this,
head on over to Patreon or Utreon.
I have threads on both of those platforms each month
to solicit questions for Q&A videos just like this one.
Thanks for watching.