Production feats: American manufacturing did wonders during WWII

Guns Magazine, Sept, 2008 by Mike "Duke" Venturino

Most likely the world will never see firearms manufacturing feats to equal those of the United States during World War II. The American military entered the conflict in December 1941 desperately short of all sorts of weaponry and ended the war in September 1945 with the best-equipped armed forces on the planet. And along the way the US Government also supplied vast quantities of arms to various allied nations. (Unfortunately within a few years many of those weapons were turned against us, but that's another story.)

Not least among American production feats was the making of rifles, carbines and submachine guns. Here's a quick example. The US Army officially adopted the M1 .30 Carbine as early as October 1941, but none actually were delivered until June 1942. By last delivery in August 1945, a total of 6,117,827 were made---for an average of roughly 161,000 for each of those 38 months.

Of course, there were nine primary contractors making all those M1 Carbines and a 10th one attempted to but failed to actually get "on line." Its contract and some already manufactured receivers and parts were taken over by one of the other producers. (See the June issue's Montana Musings.) Also worthy of note is except for the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, none of the M1 Carbine manufacturers had ever made firearms previously.

Production of the full-size M1 Garand rifles may have been even more impressive than the M 1 Carbine because only two facilities made them during World War II. Although the M1 Garand was officially adopted by the US Army in January 1936 and by the US Marine Corps early in 1941 only a few tens of thousands, perhaps between 40,000 and 50,000 had been produced before America entered the conflict. All of those had been made by the government-owned Springfield Armory.

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Upon the declaration of war the United States government also asked Winchester Repeating Arms Company to join in M1 Garand production. Between the two locations 4,028,375 M1 rifles were made before hostilities ceased. Broken down by manufacturer, Winchester made 513,880 with the remainder made at Springfield Armory. (Figures come from Bruce M. Canfield's US Infantry Weapons Of World War II.)

Weighty Thoughts

In another of Canfield's books, The Complete Guide To The M1 Garand And The M1 Carbine, I found the following information: As early as September 1943, Springfield Armory hit 100,000 Mls in a single month, and topped out with an amazing total of 122,001 delivered to the government during January 1944. Such figures are so large as to almost be meaningless to us ordinary laymen. So let's put them in a different sort of perspective. That figure of 122,000 rifles divided by the 31 days of January figure to 3,935 Mls per day. At 10 pounds per rifle, that computes to 39,350 pounds of dries each day of January 1944 or 19.675 tons of rifles per day.

Think about that. Besides making them, what sort of effort would be required to inspect 3,935 rifles a day? What about packing 3,935 rifles per day? How much manpower was needed to even move almost 20 tons of rifles a day or how many trucks were required to move out nearly 20 tons of dries every 24 hours? It's just about mind boggling.

The Thompson

Before WWII the American military's use of Thompson submachine guns had been limited. The Army, Navy and Marine Corps had purchased some Models 1921 and 1928, but they were not considered standard issue. Then in 1938 the US Army officially adopted the Thompson as the Model 1928A1 and it was produced as such by the parent company Auto-Ordnance and also under license by Savage Arms. Still by 1940 only a few hundred over 20,000 Thompsons had been ordered by the US Government. American entry in the war kick started both Thompson manufacturers and by early 1943 562,511 Thompson Model 1928A1 submachine guns had been purchased by the government with about 300,000 supplied to allies in the form of lend-lease aid.

In an effort to reduce both costs and production time enough changes in the Thompson were made its designation was changed to Submachine Gun, Caliber .45, M1 in early 1942. In about a year 285,480 of those were made when more changes caused the model to become the M1A1 of which another 539,142 were produced by both companies. All Thompson submachine gun production for the US Government ended in 1944 (Author's note: There was overlap in production of the different models of Thompson submachine guns.)

These production figures were drawn from Canfield's US Infantry Weapons Of Worm War II. So of the three basic military models of Thompson in about five years the government procured from only two companies a total of 1,397,133 45-caliber submachine guns. This is an interesting tidbit: circa 1939 the Model 1928A1 cost the government about $209. By 1944 the M1A1 price was down to about $44. (I've never been able to find a breakdown of just how many of those WWII Thompsons were made each by Auto-Ordnance and Savage.)

All of this weapons manufacturing is impressive enough but something we must also consider is quality. In my extensive reading of WWII history, I've seldom if ever encountered mentions of troops having problems with any of the three types of shoulder arms listed above. They all worked in the overall sense of functioning, and if surviving samples are any indication, they all delivered more than acceptable accuracy for their intended purposes. M1 Carbines were often accused of being underpowered or better stated perhaps, of being poor manstoppers. Such would be more a flaw of cartridge design and not a fault of manufacture or the carbine itself.