Guy E. Tripp.

The first article in the first issue of Ordnance magazine was "Decentralized Production," penned by retired Brig. Gen. Guy E. Tripp. Tripp was Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Co. 's chairman of the board of directors when he was called to duty at the outset of World War I and asked to lead the Army Ordnance Department's production division. His first task was daunting: to modernize the U.S. munitions industry so it could catch up with Germany. The problem he faced is outlined in this excerpt. After the war, he returned to his position at Westinghouse and was one of the association's first directors. President Woodrow Wilson awarded him the Distinguished Service Medal.

It is impossible, and unnecessary, here to enter into a discussion of what a lack of preparative knowledge cost us during the period of that war. A single instance must suffice as a type of many. Up to April 1917, no booster and adapter had been used in the makeup of artillery ammunition. It was a device developed in the concept of modern tools of war in Europe, and when we, in June of 1917, decided to make our ammunitions interchangeable with that made under the French practice, it became necessary to develop this most important part of the modern projectile. It all looked simple enough--just a little piece of steel tube, closed at one end, a thread cut on the other, and a nut--the adapter--screwed on this, a few little additions, such as felt washers, a fuze socket, a fuze socket holder, a loading of the tube with TNT and tetryl--and there you are. Quite simple.

So this simple little problem was attacked in the best spirit in the world. Orders were given to the tube manufacturer to make the booster casings. His plant was, perhaps, in Cleveland. Other orders were given to the aluminum and brass workers to make the fuze sockets. Their plants were in New England. Other orders were given to screw machine plants in Pittsburgh and Indianapolis to cut the adapter head threads. Philadelphia manufacturers made felt washers, and a plant in Worcester made the fuze socket holders. Then all these component parts were shipped to the loading plant in Morgan, New Jersey, or New Castle, Delaware, for loading and assembly.

Thus far all was well, but when the assembly began it was discovered that the slightest variations in thread cutting, the slightest off-center drawing of the metal for the fuze sockets, caused a lack of concentricity, and when the booster was screwed into the shell...