United States Army Ordnance Corps
The United States Army Ordnance Corps, formerly the United States Army Ordnance Department, is a sustainment branch of the United States Army, headquartered at Fort Lee, Virginia. The broad mission of the Ordnance Corps is to supply Army combat units with weapons and ammunition, including at times, their procurements and maintenance. Along with the Quartermaster Corps and Transportation Corps, it forms a critical component of the U.S. Army logistics system.
The U.S. Army Ordnance Corps mission is to support the development, production, acquisition, and sustainment of weapon systems, ammunition, missiles, electronics, and ground mobility materiel during peace and war to provide combat power to the U.S. Army. The officer in charge of the branch for doctrine, training, and professional development purposes is the Chief of Ordnance. The current Chief of Ordnance is Brigadier General Robin Montgomery.
History
Colonial period to War of Independence
During the colonial era in America, each colony was responsible for its own supply of ordnance material and its own personnel to supervise it. The first written record of an ordnance officer in British colonial America was Samuel Sharpe in the Massachusetts Bay Colony appointed in 1629 as Master Gunner of Ordnance. By 1645, the Massachusetts Bay Colony had a permanent Surveyor of Ordnance officer. By the time of the American Revolution, every colony had their own ordnance organization responsible for the procurement, distribution, supply, storage, and maintenance of munitions for the colony.In July 1775, Ezekiel Cheever was appointed by General George Washington as Commissary of Artillery Stores, soon to be called Commissary of Military Stores with Major General Henry Knox, the Chief of Artillery. He was the civilian in charge of ordnance support for Washington's army in the field. By the end of the American Revolution, every brigade had ordnance personnel, usually civilian, providing munitions support to the soldiers in the field.
In 1776, the Board of War and Ordnance was established to oversee the conduct of the war. This board selected Benjamin Flower to be the Commissary General of Military Stores. Benjamin Flower was given the rank of Colonel and served in that capacity throughout the American Revolution. The Commissary General of Military Stores was an echelon above the Commissary of Military Stores in the field. His responsibility was to recruit and train artificers, establish ordnance facilities, and to distribute arms and ammunition to the army in the field. In 1777, a powder magazine was established at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and a foundry at Springfield, Massachusetts.
Ordnance in the early republic
In the early years of the 19th century, the ordnance profession played a key role in the burgeoning industrial revolution in America. In 1794, President Washington established the two federal armories; the Springfield Armory in Massachusetts and the Harpers Ferry Armory in Virginia. At these locations, early developments and innovations striving towards interchangeable parts were achieved. Inventors such as Thomas Blanchard, Simeon North, John Hall, and Eli Whitney would perfect the methods and means for mass production. Growing out of the technical innovations of the arms industry, these methods would be widely adopted by American industry by the middle of the 19th century, establishing what has become known as the American system of manufacturing.On 14 May 1812, as part of the preparation for the War of 1812, Congress established the Ordnance Department. It was responsible for arms and ammunition production, acquisition, distribution, and storage or ordnance materiel for the U.S. Army. The act also created a new position, the Commissary General of Ordnance. Colonel Decius Wadsworth, former Superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, was chosen as the Commissary General of Ordnance. The act also directed the new Commissary General of Ordnance, soon renamed to Chief of Ordnance, to "enlist artisans and laborers to direct the inspection and proof of all cannon and small arms to direct the construction of gun carriages equipments implements and ammunition to make estimates and contracts for and purchases of ordnance supplies and stores and to issue them to the army to exact from armories and arsenals quarterly returns of property and to receive from all responsible officers reports of damages to ordnance materiel to establish ordnance depots to prepare regulations for the government of the Ordnance Department and forms of returns and reports".
Wadsworth also took great care in establishing and supervising the training of officers who would join the Ordnance Department. Coming from West Point, these officers, such as Alfred Mordecai and George Bomford, were highly trained in mechanical and chemical engineering and were among the highest ranking of graduating cadets from West Point. These new ordnance officers were usually detailed to the Springfield or Harpers Ferry Armory, or to one of the various arsenals across the growing country, to conduct scientific and industrial experiments in metallurgy, chemistry, or one of the allied engineering fields.
In 1832, the Ordnance Department established the non-commissioned officer rank of Ordnance Sergeant to be in charge of the ordnance stores at any of the growing number of Army forts and establishments across the country. This rank remained until the reorganization of the Army under the National Defense Act of 1920.
During the Mexican–American War, the Ordnance Department established the Ordnance Rocket and Howitzer Battery to service the then new M1841 12-pound howitzers and Hale war rockets, which had not yet entered Army service and were still being tested. This was the only Ordnance unit established primarily for a combat role. This unit included junior Army officers who would serve as senior leaders in the Civil War; including Jesse Reno and Benjamin Huger.
Civil War and post Civil War
During the war, the Ordnance Department furnished 90 million pounds of lead, 13 million pounds of artillery projectiles, and 26 million pounds of powder for a Union Army of over 1 million soldiers. However, despite the growth of the Army, the Ordnance Department did not grow in a corresponding manner. By the end of the war, it numbered only 64 officers and approximately 600 soldiers, officially. Yet, to support the ordnance needs of the Army, officers and soldiers who had civilian experience in ordnance responsibilities were assigned additional duty in their units, so that every unit, company-echelon and above, had someone assigned in ordnance responsibilities.For those few ordnance officers who had been part of the pre-war Army, several of them accepted line positions, such as Major Generals Oliver O. Howard and Jesse Reno. Most, however, remained in the Ordnance Department and rose in rank to serve as ordnance officers at one of the various arsenals or senior ordnance command for the Union Army, i.e. in the Army of the Potomac. About half of the ordnance officers left to join the Confederacy, including its sole Chief of Ordnance during the war, Josiah Gorgas.
By 1872, the Ordnance Department reflected the Army's return to a small peacetime status with 50 officers, 475 enlisted soldiers, and 1,738 civilian workers. Despite this constriction, the Ordnance Department continued its tradition of technological innovation and increased professionalism. Ordnance officers, including the Chiefs of Ordnance – Stephen Vincent Benet, Daniel Flagler, Adelbert Rinaldo Buffington – refined, improved, and even invented new ordnance materiel. Steel breech-loading artillery, machine gun development, smokeless powder, improved gun carriages, officer promotion via examination, and training through apprenticeship at government arsenals and shops characterized the Ordnance Department during the latter 19th century. In 1874, the first dedicated proving ground was established at Sandy Hook, New Jersey. Watervliet Arsenal was chosen as the location for the first federal cannon foundry in 1887 and a seacoast cannon shop was added in 1889.
World War I
Even though World War I had been raging in Europe for nearly three years, the Ordnance Department had to play catch-up when the United States entered the war. With only 97 officers and 1,241 enlisted soldiers, the department had a myriad of problems to overcome:- no system below the Office of the Chief of Ordnance to coordinate with industry,
- no plan for mobilizing industry,
- an inadequate proving ground,
- no system of echeloned maintenance,
- a lack of sufficient schooling for enlisted Soldiers,
- and only 6 armories and manufacturing arsenals at Watervliet; Springfield and Watertown, Massachusetts; Picatinny, New Jersey; Frankford, Pennsylvania; and Rock Island, Illinois.
The Ordnance Department established 13 Ordnance districts across the country that had the authority to deal directly with industry and award contracts. By the end of the war, almost 8,000 plants were working on Ordnance contracts. To offset industry's reluctance to build new plants, the U.S. Government established a system of constructing the factories but contracting out their operation. By the war's end, 326 Government facilities were operating under the auspices of contractors. This practice would be employed even more successfully during World War II.
By the end of the war, the Ordnance Department numbered 5,954 officers and 62,047 enlisted soldiers, with 22,700 of those officers and soldiers serving in the American Expeditionary Force in France.