Low Number Debate from the Eye of Ordnance Chief

Processing files for my online library for next month and these jumped out at me.


The issue of the low number debate from the Admin Office of the Chief of Ordnance.

Shows how "dramatic" the Office of Chief of Ordnance can be.
The first imagine is from a 1931 report. "We need to prevent these rifles from being dangerous to anyone ever again. Not only we are taking them out of service, we're mutilating them in such a fashion where they can never harm anyone ever again."

The second is from a report in 1944 on steel lots: "well as long as they're properly head spaced, they're safe with standard ammunition."

Interesting to read through the files and how drastically their attitude changes.

Please take into account some pretty significant variables....

1931 - Depression Era, Congressional funding for the Office of Chief of Ordnance (which Springfield and Rock Island fell under).

1944 - Massive World War raging in Europe and the Pacific.

Just fun reading these old documents, and the National Archives always have a lot to read!

Enjoy your week!

Once they got to 800,000 they never went back and changed that number. Even though they were aware of problems outside the 800 range with some rifles. Also seems like SA didnt want to lose anymore work until they were sure they would manufacture the Garand so they had to be on top of addressing previous concerns/doubts effectively. Glad they did.
Thanks for posting your research efforts. One day I want to pick up an old one that's been around some. The nickle steel ones aren't quite the same.

By 1944 wasn’t basically all ammo in service military Ball M2 (150gr FMJ)? I am pretty sure that is actually lower pressure than military Ball M1 (175gr FMJBT). So if you were shooting a 1903, it was probably with M2 Ball. Maybe that was part of the change in attitude, not just wartime exigencies.

I have a low number Springfield (ca 1910) and so far what I have read says there are no known failures of rifles made in 1910. So when it warms up I'm going to take her to the range see how she shoots.

Depending on the theater of war it was very common for most ammunition issued to infantry was not M2 but black tip AP. It wasn't universal but it did simplify logistics. 1903 rifles saw far more combat use than one would believe from movies and television...often one man per squad was issued a 1903 or 1903A3 and a grenade launcher device since one had not been developed yet for the Garand rifle. Rear echelon troops and MP units were also commonly issued '03s to free more Garands for front-line use.

My uncle was disgusted by the poor stopping power of the M1 Carbine ("I hit that sumbitch three times and I bet he's still running!")...and picked up an '03 and carried that until be was wounded and invalided out of combat on the road to St. Lo.

trailtoy said:

I have a low number Springfield (ca 1910) and so far what I have read says there are no known failures of rifles made in 1910. So when it warms up I'm going to take her to the range see how she shoots.

Click to expand...

I have a 1910 rifle as well. 445k range with its original September 1910 barrel. I've put probably 100 rounds of M2 Ball through it with no problems. It was rebuilt for WW2 and probably shot then as well. That said, my high-number Rock Island gets all my 1903 range time now.

If you read the official report on this (I have only read excerpts), which was written after Congress mandated it, it seems that the failures were explained more by ammunition failures, failure due to lack of cleaning, or reasons other than a defective receiver. If I remember right, I think there were 109 failures of all types, and 87 were attributed to non-receiver issues. I highly doubt that Springfield Armory, which had been in the business of heat treating steel for over 100 years, suddenly forgot how to do it in the panic of WWI. That is not to say that in the course of making 800,000 complex forgings that mistakes were not made or casting/machining/heat treating defects did not occur. My belief is that the same thing happened to the 1903 that happened to the F-14 Tomcat: The F-14 disappeared and was shredded ostensibly because Iran "might" be able to source parts and keep their fleet flying. I think the real reason was that the USN wanted new aircraft and the reliable, sturdy F-14 was too good to just throw away. So they came up with the bull excuse that Iran might get the parts (anybody who has ever bought anything from DRMO knows how unlikely that is) and the aircraft disappeared from inventory. The Army wanted to make what ultimately became the Garand, and they weren't going to get new rifles with all the 1903's sitting around in armories, still reliably serving. So the excuse of failed receivers came up, and lots of people jumped on the bandwagon.

Two things- first, it was a good thing they did not get rid of the 1903's in the 1930's. If we had, the early part of WWII would have taken a lot longer to get going and we would have had a small arms shortage.

Second, years ago at a Pikesville Armory show, I bought a 1929-manufactured 1903 which was being sold for parts. This was due to the receiver having two rectangular slots cut into it. It was done in a way that you could see the threads of the barrel, in a 1/2" by 1" long segment, one on each side of the receiver. It was also missing the rear sight- the base was there, but the sight ladder was not. At the time, I thought it was some junk rifle somebody put together for kicks. I still have it, and now I think it was part of the investigation trials that went on around the 1929-1931 time frame to address this "problem." I think the slots were cut out to try and measure the pressure on the receiver when rounds were fired. They didn't need the rear sight because it got in the way of whatever apparatus they used to measure pressure. If anybody has seen anything like this anywhere else, I'd like to know.