This money had to cover the operation of the whole Department, including its six major manufacturing arsenals and Aberdeen Proving Ground. While the total appropriations for the Army were around 350 million dollars a year, the average annual Ordnance appropriation during that period was only 11 million dollars. This effort included the sending of selected Ordnance officers abroad to study foreign developments, to insure that the weapons being developed in this country were not lagging behind those of Germany, France, Italy, England, and other foreign countries.Д«etween 19 the Department was greatly handicapped by the meagerness of its annual appropriations. Peacetime ActivitiesДuring the years of peace between the First and Second World Wars, the officers, scientists, and engineers of the Department worked continuously on the development and perfection of new types of weapons and ammunition. And so on- through a list of approximately 1,800 major items and more than 600,000 principal components. Ordnance equipment also comprises armored fighting vehicles-tanks, tank destroyers, armored cars, scout cars, personnel carriers and motor transport for the Army, including the many types and sizes of trucks.

It includes all types of bombs, except armor-piercing bombs, from the 4-pound fragmentation to the 45,000-pound demolition bomb, and the various types of bomb fuzes. It covers aircraft armament, including machine guns, automatic cannon, and their ammunition. It embraces antiaircraft artillery from the 37-mm to the 120-mm stratosphere gun, and ammunition it also includes directors, height finders, electric transmission systems, and electronic power control for the guns. artillery, including the 240-mm howitzer and approximately 150 different types of ammunition for these weapons. Ordnance equipment includes all the weapons of the soldier-his grenades, rifles, carbines, machine guns, mortars, and their ammunition artillery, from the small, 37-mm antitank gun, through the division, corps, army, and G.H.Q. In addition, by mutual arrangement, it equips the Marine Corps with its fighting weapons and provides many items used by the Navy. The responsibilities of the Chief of Ordnance * so defined include the design, development, procurement, storage, issue, and maintenance of all ordnance equipment required by the Army.

The broad scope of Ordnance responsibilities is defined by the National Defense Act of 3 June 1916, by other statutes, and by Army Regulations No. Ordnance procurement in this war accounted for approximately forty-one cents out of every dollar spent by the Army for supplies and equipment. While the Army Air Forces provided the airplanes, the Ordnance Department developed and supplied the weapons, bombs, and other types of armament used by both the Army and Navy Air Forces. As it turned out, the Department furnished not only the fighting equipment for the American army but also a considerable part of the effective weapons used by the British, Russian, French, Chinese, and other Allied armies. The purpose of the Ordnance Department in this war was to equip our armies with fighting weapons. THE ORDNANCE DEPARTMENT Purpose and Function

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