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

[Fred]

Man, I'd like to see photos of your USMC 03's

[jgaynor]

Hey I don't mean to beat a dead horse. But I recently spoke to an advanced collector of M1903s.

Now I don't want to get into the safe vs safe. Debate because that's a bit over done...

But while talking with this gentleman he brought up a very thought provoking point.

We all know the numbers of rifles produced as well as how many documented receiver failures there were documented in various sources including Hatcher's notebook.


Wouldn't there be a good cause to politically blow up this issue before the public in the WWI post war years? Typically during peacetime, especially following a war the military sees a significant reduction in funding for their budget due to the need the threat of war has been removed.

If you want to maintain your war production capabilities and justify funding in the post war peacetime era, how do you justify it to the Congressmen and Senators? You create a problem, crisis that needs immediate attention....

You need to completely revamp the whole production process which is going to require tooling, personnel, training and most importantly a non-stripped budget. So that way you don't lose your factory and workers.


Now I don't know if this is a dated argument or been done before. I haven't heard it before. But everything in government goes back to money. Could this LN debate been started by the War Department trying to hang onto its budget when the Armistice was signed?

I thought it was a thought provoking argument, I'm don't know if it holds water.

It doesn't hold water. I have a copy of a report prepared by the individual responsible for all ordnance procurement in ww1. Ordnance was canceling munitions contracts before the ink on the armistice was hardly dry.

Besides there was no need to focus on the low numbers. Ordnance and the Army had their eyes on a semi auto MBR by the mid 20's at which point ALL the bolt action rifles would become, at best, substitute standard.

[Col. Colt]

Gentlemen, it is a problem that is NOT a problem - until YOUR Low Number grenades in your hands. And it may never do that - or it might with the next round. Thus people get fatalistic and choose to pretend there is no problem. And the US pre-WWII and WWII military establishment could not afford to throw away what might be good rifles just at the start of the next World War. The Marines overhauled LN rifles, and directed that they not be used for firing rifle grenades.

Go to the section in Brophy's Springfield book and read about the overall LN heat treatment problem - and look at the pictures of the fractured recievers vs. the bent but unbroken double heat treated units in testing. Read in Hatcher's Notebook - Hatcher tells of striking the reciever rail of a LN and the reciever breaking "like Glass"! I remember one account of someone dropping a LN reciever - and it shattered.

This is NOT a phony, manufactured problem. It was scientifically investigated, proven, and a fix instituted. The Armory System did not fail - it just relied on ancient "eyeballing" methods of heat treating too long instead of changing to using instruments until a problem was identified with the old method. If fixed that. End of discussion. Private companies have Labor strikes at inopertune times, and cut corners to make more money. The lack of a US Army controlled Armory Test routine caused the initial failure of the M16 in Vietnam. Colt reengineered the M16 on the fly, to their credit. The US Armory System built a LOT of Excellent guns during it's life.

Most LN M1903s are undoubtably fine and strong - but there is simply NO WAY of KNOWING the condition of any individual LN reciever. As with life in general, proceed on your own Judgment, at your own Risk! CC

[Smokeeaterpilot]

Wait a second. Not diminishing the safety of the LN1903s. Now what I was throwing out there....

I may be looking into the wrong area but.... I can't find in my copy of Hatcher's notebook where it covers the number of personnel in the post war years. Consider this... in the pre-war years 97 officers worked for the ordnance department. By the end of the war 5,800 officers and (72,720 civilian clerks). Following every war a stage of demilitization follows. The Defense department and war munitions funding sees a drastic reduction. If you're in the military do you want to go back to the pre-war years? The problem of LN1903s was solved. BUT how many much of a reduction in personnel and funding did the Ordnance Department see. The board that recommended scrapping all LN recievers, I read came from a Springfield Amory board. If you scrap those rifles, you need to replace them (ie manufacture new ones, furthermore "you need us to make new ones!")

The point I was getting at is with anything regarding the government is a giant chess match of obtaining Congressional funding. Since the people who made their recommendations came from the Ordnance Department (not a third party and to me that's HUGE) they had a vested interest in justifying their existence and their funding to solve the problem so they would not see a reduction. I'm sure they saw a reduction, but did this issue help prevent a scaling back even further. Did it protect their interests as employees at Ordnance Department?

Hatcher's notebook covers the mellurgy in detail. But there's gotta be more to the story. Politics and the chess match.

Put yourself in a high ranking ordnance department official or General's position....

Are you gonna say "nah we got this. Go ahead and scale us down, the war is over, we'll just crank out whatever we can and start replacing units as we can with whatever you give us." Or are you going to a serious issue worse to maintain your Congressional funding? Again on Capital Hill with a Budget committee this is a giant chess match as I see it.


Now I don't have the numbers with respect to how far back the Ordnance department was scaled after WWI.

But if I did, whether or not this argument holds water would come from what was recommended in their initial budget/funded positions and what they ended up with after this investigation.

On a personal note I'm a government worker. We do this all day long. Whenever there's a budget problem, you have to play games with government officials so you don't lose funding. Hatcher's notebook to me leaves much to be desired in my eyes. I'm sure there's more to the story...


Again, I'm not coming up with a conclusion. It was a fascinating argument I have yet to see anything that really addresses the motivation behind it and if it holds water.

[Johnny P]

The total number of receivers that failed will never be known. The failures occurred from the first rifles manufactured right up through the time the new heat treatment was put into use. The failures had been occurring for years before Hatcher was assigned the job of determining the cause. It was not a failure of the design, but a manufacturing defect, and being a manufacturing defect there was no way of knowing which receivers were brittle and which ones were not until they failed.

[Johnny P]

Prior to the end of WWI the U.S. Military had issued contracts for 3,025,000 Model 1911 pistols in addition to those already being supplied by Colt. Of that number Remington-UMC delivered something under 22,000 pistols. Virtually as soon as the war ended the contracts were cancelled. Colt's contract was also cancelled at the same time, and no more pistols were ordered until 1924, when 10,000 were ordered.

[jgaynor]

{snip}
Hatcher's notebook covers the mellurgy in detail. But there's gotta be more to the story. Politics and the chess match.

Put yourself in a high ranking ordnance department official or General's position....

Are you gonna say "nah we got this. Go ahead and scale us down, the war is over, we'll just crank out whatever we can and start replacing units as we can with whatever you give us." Or are you going to a serious issue worse to maintain your Congressional funding? Again on Capital Hill with a Budget committee this is a giant chess match as I see it.

The most important consideration in this argument is the simple fact that rifle production and the costs there of, were a mere pimple on the ass of all the WW1 US ordnance expenditures.

PS I hate to digress into the technicalities of the '03 failures but some of the same old misunderstandings are still being repeated today.
1. The weak receiver issue had NOTHING to do with heat treatment. A tiny percentage of receivers were "burned" in the forge shop. Those were the weak ones.
2 Forge temperatures were judged by eye until pyrometers were mandated. When the receivers went for heat treatment they were packed inside closed containers filled with charcoal. Eyeballing receivers during heat treatment was impossible.

[Smokeeaterpilot]

The most important consideration in this argument is the simple fact that rifle production and the costs there of, were a mere pimple on the ass of all the WW1 US ordnance expenditures.

PS I hate to digress into the technicalities of the '03 failures but some of the same old misunderstandings are still being repeated today.
1. The weak receiver issue had NOTHING to do with heat treatment. A tiny percentage of receivers were "burned" in the forge shop. Those were the weak ones.
2 Forge temperatures were judged by eye until pyrometers were mandated. When the receivers went for heat treatment they were packed inside closed containers filled with charcoal. Eyeballing receivers during heat treatment was impossible.

I'm not arguing the either way with regards to the "pimple on the ass" on how much rifle production took up of the ordnance department's budget.

What I'm saying is I don't have the data to argue it one way or another. But I'm not sure producing the standard service rifle for the entire US military would be small. Now it may be small with regards to all ordnance produced. But to the Springfield Armory and Rock Island Arsenal production capabilities, what did it represent to their capacities. How much of their budget went to producing the standard service rifle for the entire US military. Was this an attempt of taking a small issue and saying "hey the war's over, how to we justify everyone's job?"

Again, I don't have this data.

These numbers would give more clues to what happened behind the scenes. Everything comes back to money. Follow the money and find the source of the argument.

Now this could be a "red herring" but there isn't any information to come to a conclusion either way.

[firstflabn]

A sure sign this discussion is in big trouble is when I have to save it with my metallurgical expertise. But, since in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, I'll do like OJ and take a stab at it.

First, Hatcher was no metallurgist. Even in the context of the science of his day, he was a beginner. I think he says he took ONE course in metallurgy. He says a couple of really stupid things in his Notebook, but that discussion can wait for another day.

A couple of comments:

1. According to a chart prepared by the Tempil stick folks (if you don't know what a Tempil stick is, stop reading and go find out, you won't benefit by going further now), there is only about a 100 deg F difference between the top of the safe forging temp range and the bottom of the burnt temp range. Therefore, it is ludicrous to believe SA didn't have pyrometers in their forge shop, Hatcher or no. Further, the FY18 report in Brophy's SA book says they installed improved pyrometers in the hardening shop. Why would they have the good stuff - and upgrade it - to use on a much less critical operation at a 1000 F lower temp and none at all in the forging shop?

If the pre-1918 forge temp range is the same as the 1942 spec presented in Brophy (p. 549) - 2300-2340 F - then SA is into the 100 deg F no mans land between safely forging and burning.

2. The plot thickens - as carbon content rises, the burnt temp drops. Brophy shows a carbon range of .30 to .38 for receivers. Moving from .30 to .38 LOWERS the burnt temp by about 30 deg F. Interestingly, the FY18 report celebrates their brand new chemical lab which allows them to (apparently for the first time) do a chemical analysis "for all the steel entering into components or tools." This smells like they previously had only checked the paperwork from the outside supplier providing the receiver blanks. 30 deg may matter if you're bumping up against the safe max temp already.

3. According to the Tempil chart, the forging range is a bit over 600 F wide. Thus, SA wrote specs to operate at the tippy top of the safe range. They might have been worried about forging laps, etc., but that kind of defect would probably have been revealed in proof firing - so, they were concerned about budget (in peacetime) and production (in wartime), not burnt steel.

4. Interpreting the Tempil chart on my ancient monitor, there is no discernable difference in color between the top of the safe range and the bottom of the burnt range (100 F, remember). I'd have to ask someone with foundry experience, but Hatcher's story sounds suspect to me - he may not have known enough to call BS on the "cloudy days" cover story.

3. Another reference I have warns that care must be taken when working forgings that have been heated to near the max safe forging temp as getting in too big a hurry (whomping with the whomper) will raise the forging's temp from friction. My bet is that when that happens, the chewy chocolate center is hotter than the outside, so even modern pyrometers would not help.

I suspect this knowledge existed in heavy industries doing really big pieces - locomotive, ship building, hydropower, etc., but that the combination of stodgy old ordnance officers and budget parsimony created an avoidable (but inevitable) f*ck up.

What I wish I could find out is whether the acid etch test (to identify burnt steel) was available in those other industries before WWI. I have no experience with it, but from my materials lab knowledge it doesn't look too tough to perform and interpret. It's a destructive test, but I wonder if the edge of the tang or one side of the recoil lug could be tested and still have a functioning receiver (with possibility of leaving no more than a blemish). I'm no longer in the testing business, so I don't know who to call for a freebie. If it could be done and only leave a minor boo boo, somebody could have a booming business. The test is 100% reliable, though the interpretaion is visual, so might need a practiced eye.

I'm tired of hearing myself type, so I'm out.

[Southron]

Well, regarding the "politics" in 1917....President Wilson had won re-election in 1916 with the slogan: "He Kept Us Out Of the European War."

Beginning in 1914 (shortly after the outbreak of World War I) the J.P. Morgan Bank had signed an agreement with the British government that the Morgan Bank would perform ALL THE PURCHASING IN THE UNITED STATES for the British war effort. Of course, the Morgan Bank was loaning the British government millions and millions of dollars to pay for the purchases they were making. Now these "war supplies" were far more than just guns and ammunition but also included food to feed the British Armies and to a certain extent the British civilian population, horses and mules, cloth and clothing for British Army uniforms and tents,trucks, cars, medical supplies-literally anything and everything the British government required to sustain their war effort.

The money required for this massive purchasing of supplies was far beyond the means of the Morgan Bank. Hence the Morgan Bank had to resort to borrowing money from other American Banks all over the United States. This borrowing literally drained the reserves of most American Banks.

By the Spring of 1917, the "money supply" of the Morgan Bank was drained and so too the money supply of most American Banks that had loaned the Morgan Bank money to support the British. In February of 1917 the Imperial German Government sent the "Zimmerman Telegram" to the government of Mexico. The telegram promised that IF Mexico declared war on the U.S., the German government would supply funds to the Mexican government and form an alliance with Mexico. The idea behind the German Alliance was that Mexico could re-conquer the states of Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, and California.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimmermann_Telegram

The telegram was intercepted by British Intelligence and made public in the United States, this enraged the American population. Another factor was in the Spring of 1917 German submarines started sinking American ships, FLYING THE AMERICAN FLAG carrying supplies to Britain.The end result was that the United States declared war on Germany in April of 1917.

So, the Morgan Bank "Lucked Out" and avoided bankruptcy. For with the declaration of war on Germany, the United States became an ally of the British and the U.S. Treasury made good the loans that the Morgan Bank had made to the British. Uncle Sugar also took over supplying our British ally with the material the British needed to continue the war on their part.

So, my point is with the U.S. entry into World War I, the huge battles taking place in Europe the "Low Number Scandal" probably didn't get much (if any) newsprint with all the other world shaking events taking place then.