LN1903 Debate question (NOT for the reason you're thinking)

[slamfire]

United States Bulletin: Monday Sept 29, 1919, page 139

https://books.google.com/books?id=hy...rsenal&f=false

Brass and Steel for Sale:
2 Oct 1919

48 steel billets, 4 1/2 inches square, semi finished, about 8,126 pounds located at the US Eddystone Storage Arsenal, Eddystone PA, where it may be inspected by applying to the District Ordnance Office, Philadelphia, PA

The United States Bulletin has this bold banner " ESTABLISHED under an order of THE PRESIDENT of the UNITED STATES. AUTHORITATIVE RECORD of all U.S. GOVERNMENT ACTITIVIES"

The bold print is in the original format. This document looks to be a combination of the Early Bird and the Commerce Business Daily. As it is, it is an official Government Document and the US Government is calling Eddystone, Eddystone Arsenal, or if you want to nit pick, US Eddystone Storage Arsenal.

If the argument for credibility is whether Eddystone was an Arsenal or not, I am going to claim that my credibility is good. If the argument for credibility is whether I wear black pants belts with black shoes, then my credibility is not so good.

Anyway, sorry for upsetting you John. I still think you have a Springfield Armory centric view.

It does not make sense to move Eddystone equipment to Springfield

You mean outside of the fact that it was in fact moved to Springfield Armory right? Stored there. The equipment from the machine gun plants was stored at RIA.

Very interesting! As an analogy, before the old man's corpse got cold, his ever loving relatives drained his bank account and walked off with his possessions! . I have not found the Budget Discussions you mentioned, would love to read them, but what I read into this is Springfield Armory eliminating the competition. By gutting Eddystone Arsenal as rapidly as possible and taking the tooling and machines, they were ensuring that it was impossible for Eddystone jto make any future rifles, even if someone wanted M1917's instead of 03's.

To me it makes more sense, if you are going to make M1917's, to do it at Eddystone. You had a trained workforce, a local supplier base, and a factory. You want to kill the M1917 program, you destroy the factory.

The double heat treatment did not fix the brittleness problem, because the brittleness problem was due to lack of temperature control in the forge rooms.

Which would be all fine and good but heat treatment was never the real problem. Do not use Hatcher as your source unless you're able to get past his lies of omission. Which people have seemingly been unable to do since it was printed. I did. Wasn't difficult. Go to the official sources and it's starkly clear what was the problem and why.

Thank you very much for the reference!
Report of Tests of Metals and Other Materials made in Ordinance Laboratory at Watertown Arsenal Mass, Fiscal Year 1918, War Department Document 901, 338 pp.

This is a very interesting document and it sure does put things into a more interesting light. Like most people the only reference I had was Hatcher's Notebook and derivative sources, but this sure puts the low number Springfield problems in a much better light.

I am of the opinion that you are right, Hatcher has a number of lies of omissions. After working in a professional, hierarchical organization for decades, it becomes clear what Hatcher is doing in his writings. Hatcher had just retired, but before retiring he had climbed his way to the top of the Ordinance Department, which was something very difficult to do. In all respects Hatcher is an exceptional man, probably an outstanding manager, and he is ambitious. All during his career he made himself a celebrity with his writings in the Army Ordnance Magazine, in the Arms and the Man/American Rifleman. He is a well known individual with brand recognition within the shooting community and within the Army. He also writes and sells a number of books, gaining more name recognition and deriving a good income. This guy must have been a 16 hour a day sort of work a holic. All his activities can be understood in the light of career advancement and financial remuneration. Which I must say, is in of itself, not evil, but sometimes people have to sell their souls to make their goals.

Hatcher retires and in 1947 writes Hatcher's Notebook, a book still in print. He has already embarked on his second career, and that is climbing to the top of the NRA leadership. Incidentally, something which he accomplishes. I have looked at current pensions for Major Generals, and while good, it is chump change compared to a top rank NRA salary. Current top level NRA salaries are around $600,000 to $800,000 a year. And you probably get free parking. One very critical, perhaps the most critical job requirement at the NRA, is good relations with the Army. The Army punted the NRA out of the Pentagon in 1968, so now it is hard to realize the close relationship the NRA had with the Army, but it was more than close. The NRA acted more Green than Green and you can see this particularly in the 1960's magazines. The Army financed the National Matches, which was equal to at least 25% of the total NRA budget, the Freedom Flintlock presented to the Army Chief of Staff, the Marine Corp Commandant, kissy, kissy, huggy, huggy. There are all sorts of stories about shooters the NRA trained shooting their way to victory in Vietnam, etc. NRA writers could call up the Army and receive technical answers and data, and I am quite sure there was more going on between the two than what I see in print.

So, after retiring, Hatcher is writing another book. More income, but he wants to maintain good relationships with the Army. Hatcher is always supportive of the Army, never critical. Hatcher is a master of the misdirection, nothing is ever the Army's fault. He masterfully spins the low number 03 failure into an Army Triumph. The Army overcame those evil, rascally forge shop workers and built the ultimate 03: the double heat treat. In my opinion, the whole low number episode was a complete Army failure. They built 1,000,000 rifles that as a class, were so defective, that they should have been scrapped. This information was held in house till 1927, and even then, a reasonable accounting of the dangers of these things does not come out until 1947. Till then, the Army was issuing defective rifles to troops, as it was cheaper to injure a Soldier, Sailor, Marine, than replace the inventory of defective rifles. I consider it immoral what they did: keep a defective product in the field, till the rifle blew up, or wore out.

I have copied a couple of the Watertown summaries, listed here.

Examination of Receivers from United States Rifles Model of 1903, burst during Navy Target Practice
Conclusions:
One of the receivers was neither case hardened nor heat treated. It was in the perlitic conditon as show by the micrographs. The structure was very coarse.

Examination of United States Rifle, Caliber 30, Model of 1903, which failed at Camp Greene NC

Conclusions.
The receiver of this rifle had not been properly heat treated prior to being put in service. Microscopic examination showed the metal to be very coarsely crystalline and the structure was that obtained by cooling at a fairly rapid rate from a high temperature. The metal was very brittle under impact, as evidenced by its being readily broken when struck a light blow with a hammer.

Broken Bolts from United States Rifle, Caliber 0.30 Model of 1903

Object: The object of this investigation was to make a complete examination of these two bolts and if possible determine the cause of failure.
Conclusions: It is the conclusion of this laboratory that the failure of both of these bolts is due to the same factor. Both were very hard and brittle and their resistance to sudden impact was very low, as could be ascertained by securely fastening the metal in a vise and striking light blows with a hammer. the brinell hardess number on one of these was 430 and on the other it was 489. these structure of both was martensitic. This structure is characteristic of very brittle material

The chemical composition of these bolts is not within the specified limits with regard to carbon, manganese, and silicon

A couple of issues fall out, and they are not as simple as evil forge shop workers. Firstly, the materials they are using are inconsistent. They evidentially don't have an incoming material inspection nor a material certification of incoming materials. I know from historical sources that the materials of the age were widely inconsistent, and the chemical analyses by Watertown shows that. Another issue has to do with heat and temperature. Too much heat, too little heat, no temperature controls. Generally the parts are brittle which is an indication of too much heat, but to have a receiver which was neither case hardened or nor heat treated shows a production line out of control. They are shipping junk, either intentionally, or because they don't know they are making junk.

So the story is far more complicated than "evil forge shop workers" and virtuous Army Officers. Makes a good morality tale though?

Thanks much for the reference. Maybe you can tell me where to find the budget debates on the Eddystone closures?

[kragluver]

WDD 901 was very enlightening. I went back and re-read Hatcher on the topic too. I didn't think Hatcher was leaving anything out. The tabulation of failures at the end of his book is in line with the Watertown Arsenal report. The author of 901 states three contributing factors to the failures: 1) high Sulphur and Phosphorus content in many of the samples; 2) poor quality control of heat treat ; and 3) square barrel threads. They also question SA's continued use of case hardened Carbon steel in the bolt and receiver application when much better steel alloys were then available.

Thanks for all the good discussion here - we can all learn from this topic.

Hatcher notes 68 receiver failures by serial number in his book. The WDD 901 report (for fiscal year 1918 only) documents 14 more where the S/N was destroyed and unknown. In addition, Hatcher mentions pulling "several" receivers at random from the assembly floor at SA and several of those shattered when tested (he doesn't say how many). Anyone who believes shooting a LN 1903 is safe today because of so few reported failures needs to do some more research. The problem was serious and more widespread than many recognize today.

[DRAGONFLYDF]

to throw a wrench in the mess, how about the 03s that were produced from 03 to 1915 ? they were not under wartime build up pressure, they were produced at peacetime paces, and a number were sold to civilians in the form of NRA Sales rifles.

[kragluver]

Right - in fact every s/n that is quoted in the 901 report is from a rifle made prior to 1917.

The issue is two-fold. They had a weak design with a nascent failure mode but it wasn't uncovered until ww1 when poor quality ammo caused a large number of case head failures. Shooting normal, good quality ammo in the rifle doesn't create a problem. Its when the ammo fails or some other overpressure event occurs.

In ww1 you had a large number of rounds being fired so the number of potential incidents increased by orders of magnitude. Couple this with poor quality ammo and the design and manufacturing issues of the rifle are uncovered.

In the airplane industry we say that it takes at least three factors to cause an accident. Take away any one of those factors and the accident doesn't occur. The same is often the case in any industry.

[slamfire]

to throw a wrench in the mess, how about the 03s that were produced from 03 to 1915 ? they were not under wartime build up pressure, they were produced at peacetime paces, and a number were sold to civilians in the form of NRA Sales rifles.

It is my memory that the first low number blowups from Hatcher's Notebook were at a cartridge manufacturer. The first receivers listed as blown up were a 1907 vintage receiver and a 1917 receiver. These receivers blew at National Brass & Copper Tube factory, a factory making ammunition for the US military during WW1. The 1907 receiver fragmented and blew a piece of shrapnel piercing the lung of the operator.

National Brass & Copper Tube had college educated and trained metallurgists, you can see that in the report. They were able to refute any self serving BS coming out of Springfield Armory about their receivers. Some thing that a lowly Infantry Officer could not, and would not. Something that is important to remember that hierarchical organizations are incapable of self reform. The first thing they do is shoot the messenger of bad news and denign there is any problem. Reform can only occur due to outside influences, and here you have it, an organization not under the War Department, outside the chain of command, pointing out that Springfield Receivers were burnt.

It is apparent that quality control, and more important, process control on the factory floor was uncontrolled or unstable. You just have to have gone though old line factories to see piles of in process product, defective product tossed in corners or on the side of a bin. In time no one knows why there is pile there and the defective product gets put back into production. With piles of in-process parts in bins, it takes a long time before they figure out that a certain batch of parts was defective. The inspection criteria assumed a certain number of defectives per lot. Mil Std 105 shows this inspection process. Lets say the Standard allowed 2 defective parts per 100, and the inspector found three, then he was supposed to pull more, and if lets say out of the next 50, only found 1 defective part, the whole lot was shipped, even though they had just found that 4 parts out of 150 parts were bad! There is no reason to assume that there were "good" years because at the time, it was assumed that some bad product was going out the door. Back then, it was a cat and mouse game between production and quality control. Production was monetarily incentivized to ship everything, Quality Control was trying to separate out the good from bad. Also, no one wanted strict Quality Control because then, no product would go out the door!

I recall a quote from a General Motors Executive from the 1970's. A huge number of these cars were defective. The Executive was asked about this, and he said "Marketing sells it, manufacturing makes it, and Customer Service makes it work". That was the attitude then. I toured the GM Arlington plant in the early 1980's and at the end of the line, at the time I was there, seven guys were pushing a car away because it would not start. I have toured a couple of modern automotive factories now, and if you ask, "when was the last time a car did not start", no one knows. If it happened, it happened so long ago, they don't know. Anyway the old GM attitude towards product quality almost bankrupted GM. If a customer spends a year salary on a new car, they don't want to be spending days or weeks at customer service, waiting for the grease monkey's there to fix the thing. They expect a good product the day they drive the car from the lot.

GM was incapable of self reform, and it took the Japanese with their cheap, but quality cars, to force GM to make decent cars. I remember people buying those cheap 1970's Japanese cars and finding out, they suckers ran. They did not fall apart. Then the Japanese moved into the mid scale market and that almost killed GM, Ford, Dodge. In fact, in the 1980's, GM was selling their Nova at a discount. At one time the GM Nova was a rebranded Toyota. Car companies do this all the time, buying cars from a rival and putting their decals on the car. Even though it was a Toyota, they had to sell the Nova at a discount because GM did not stand for quality. The same car, at the Toyota dealership, people were paying above sticker price for the same. car.

[5MadFarmers]

Hatcher retires and in 1947 writes Hatcher's Notebook, a book still in print. He has already embarked on his second career, and that is climbing to the top of the NRA leadership. Incidentally, something which he accomplishes. I have looked at current pensions for Major Generals, and while good, it is chump change compared to a top rank NRA salary.

Snip. No, you're on the wrong track. The answer is contained in the official history of the Ordnance Department in WW2. The green volumes. Read them carefully and do a bit of math and you'll get the answer. I'm being guarded as you seem to enjoy digging so I'm not going to spoon feed you the information. Better for you to enjoy the hunt. Spoon fed information is how this mess has become so ingrained in the first place.

WDD 901 was very enlightening. I went back and re-read Hatcher on the topic too. I didn't think Hatcher was leaving anything out.

Not "left something out" but "put it in using a fashion making something non-obvious that should have been made very obvious." John seems to place his faith in the double heat treat but he's missing the solution for what was the bigger problem. Double heat treatment was only half the answer.

I covered it clearly already elsewhere.

[jgaynor]

I must have a different edition of Hatcher's notebook than some of the members here. I find nothing in the way of "startling revelations" in this thread that Hatcher himself did not publish 60+ years ago.

[John Beard]

sure miss the gold old days

The "Good Ole Days" are still here! It's called the CMP!

J.B.

[CJCulpeper]

If low number rifles were so dangerous as most have alleged, then why didn't the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps scrap and replace their low number rifles as well during overhaul? Surely their rifles were no stronger or more reliable than those in the Army.

If low number rifles were so dangerous as most have alleged, then why did Army Ordnance suspend scrappage of low number receivers a full year before Pearl Harbor and U.S. entry into WWII?
Are we to suppose that time cured the problem and strengthened the receivers?

Food for thought.

J.B.

Could it be that the World War in Europe started in September 1, 1939 and the Paciifc had been at war since July 7. 1937 with the 2nd Japanese-Chinese War? Roosevelt (may he rot in hell) and his fellow interventionists were hedging their bets that they could get us into the shooting matches. They would need all of the rifles laying around for Lend Lease and our own involvement.

[Cosine26]

Hi danco101
I do not mean to nitpick, but I will. The replacement high number receivers for the low numbered receivers through the DCM were not free. I have the DCM price lists for the period and they were exchangeable for $7.90. I ordered two, one in 1964 and one in 1965. The packing handling was $1.52 for a total of $9.42.
The procedure was:
1. A request was submitted to the U.S Army Weapons Command at Rock Island Arsenal. The request required the serial number of the SHT/LN receiver that you wished to exchange.
2. Rock Island replied with approval and requested that the old receiver (stripped) be turned in.
3. Upon receipt of the SHT/LN receiver, a Purchase Order would be prepared and forwarded to the purchaser stating the price and the P&H charges.
4. Purchaser would submit a money order with the purchase order and the receiver would be shipped on an AMSWE form 99.
My original request was submitted on October 24, and I received the replacement receiver on Dec 15.
When the supply of high numbered M1903 receivers was exhausted, A barreled 03A3 receiver would be shipped, until the supply was exhausted at which time the program was terminated circa 1970.
In the pre WWII years, receivers were available to NRA members for purchase including NM receivers and star gauged barrels. If one sent in a rifle having a SHT/LN receiver, the Armory would provide a new receiver for free.
FWIW.