The Jarrett Legacy

Until I was fortunate enough to be loaned the material which forms the bulk of the preceding parts of this series, I was unaware of the actual details of Colonel Jarrett’s life and eventful career, and the main reason I wanted to write about him was in order to speak of the legacy he left in those arms experts and writers who got their start by working with and for him at the Ordnance Museum at Aberdeen.

In Part I, I mentioned that when I first became interested in guns and gun lore in the 1950s, an early edition of Small Arms of the World was “just about the height of specialization in the field of arms literature.” Thinking back I realize that this was not entirely true, for I vividly recall the impression made on me when I first became aware of the existence of “vertical” gun books, and marvelling that an entire book could be devoted to the history of a single firearm!

The first of this audacious new breed to come my way were The Book of the Garand by retired U.S. Army Major General Julian S. Hatcher, first published in 1948, and Fred A. Datig’s original 1955 edition of The Luger Pistol.

As we have read in Part II, Hatcher, while still a colonel, had recognized the value of Jarrett’s accumulated knowledge and expertise, and had specifically selected him to join the staff of the Ordnance School at Aberdeen in the summer of 1939. As we shall see below, Fred Datig was later one of Col. Jarrett’s staffers at the Aberdeen Ordnance Museum.

Others in the wide Jarrett circle, including some who emerged from under his wing at the Museum, make up a veritable Who’s Who of arms experts and writers who went on to produce many of the most influential arms books written in English over the last fifty years. These men, most of whom are no longer with us, are recalled in alphabetical order as follows:

Donald B. Bady

Donald Bady was the editor of the four-volume Handbook of Small Arms, prepared while working for Col. Jarrett at the D&PS, Library & Museum Division, Aberdeen Proving Ground in 1954.

While in this post he also catalogued the collection of Col. Jarrett’s “Foreign Materiel Museum” – no mean feat considering the size and complexity of the collection. Harold Johnson recalls that when the Museum was closed the contents were meticulously catalogued, by Bady, Val Forgett and Charles Yust, mentioned below, and an Index of all the exhibits was prepared, and then hidden away from the eyes of those who may have been inclined to “cherry pick” the collection.

Donald Bady is the author of Colt Automatic Pistols 1896 – 1955, first published in 1956.

Fred A. Datig

Fred Datig is the author of The Luger Pistol, one of the very first “vertical” gun books, first published in 1955, which is still a respected reference source on these famous pistols.

An inveterate cartridge collector, Datig then wrote a series of cartridge identification books titled Cartridges for Collectors. The series began with Volume I (Centerfire), published in 1956; then Volume II (Centerfire – Rimfire – Patent Ignition), published in 1958; Volume III (Centerfire – Rimfire – Plastic), published in 1967; and Volume IV, (a supplement on Centerfire – Rimfire – Patent Ignition) published in 1983.

Later, his “magnum opus” – a grand new series of books on Russian small arms to be titled The History and Development of Imperial and Soviet Russian Military Small Arms and Ammunition, 1700 – 1986, projected to run to a total of eighteen volumes, was for various reasons cut short with the publication in 1988 of a single thin book – Volume Sixteen – titled Soviet Russian Postwar Military Pistols and Cartridges, 1945 – 1986.

While working at the Ordnance Museum, Datig was apparently the only person on Jarrett’s staff to evince an interest in Russian small arms. This period is recalled by Mr. Datig in the Foreword to his Volume Sixteen on Russian small arms as follows:

…The year was 1949, early autumn; the place was Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland [where] Colonel George Burling Jarrett, Chief, Library and Museum Division, Development and Proof Services… had the long-established reputation of being the foremost authority on the subject [and] may be considered, without question, the founder of modern U.S. Foreign Ordnance Technical Intelligence.

…in 1949, Aberdeen Proving Ground was undoubtedly the world’s largest storage center for military ordnance, both foreign and domestic, being equipped with the multitude of small arms which had seen service in every country involved in the Second World War. The prize collection was that of German weapons, an almost complete assortment. Consequently, and due to the superb design and workmanship of this group, the majority of the Museum’s staff displayed little interest in the small arms of any other nationality. But there was one exception; your chronicler! One day Colonel Jarrett approached us and asked, “Datig, don’t you like German small arms?” We replied something to the effect that yes, of course we did, BUT it just so happened that we chose to take an interest in items which did not seem to appeal to the majority: Russian and Soviet firearms. Having then been asked if our interest was serious and having replied in the affirmative, Jarrett followed with a rather surprising proposal: if we promised to carry forth this study to a relative conclusion, we should pay a private visit to the Colonel’s nearby estate at which time every item of Imperial and Soviet Russian origin or pertinence to be found in Jarrett’s personal private files would be presented to us as a gift! While no firearms or other hardware were involved, the documentation which we received was, and in many cases still is, irreplaceable. The single and most important item, at least to us, was a German ordnance technical intelligence manual marked “Only for Service Use”, which was to be the cornerstone for all our future research… it was entitled Taschenbuch Russisches Heer (Pocket Book of the Russian Army), dated January, 1942, and revealed what little the Germans knew of Soviet armaments as of that date (which was not very much)…

Robert W. Faris

Bob Faris, a dedicated and long-serving Ordnanceman, has himself been the subject of two Small Arms Review interviews (Vol. 11, No. 4, January, 2008 and Vol. 11, No. 5, February, 2008). In addition, an entire chapter on Bob, titled “Reflections of an Ordnanceman”, appears in Dolf Goldsmith’s Collector Grade title The Browning Machine Gun, Volume III: Supporting the Rifle Caliber Brownings (2008).

Born in 1930 and an ordnance veteran of the Korean War, Bob worked for many years as a civilian Test Director in the Development and Proof Services (D&PS) section at Aberdeen Proving Ground, testing weapons, ammunition, accessories and fire controls alongside such men as Bill Brophy and Larry Moore, who was for many years the head of the shoulder weapon section.

On his first meeting with Col. Jarrett, Bob told him that one of his most vivid memories was as a young boy of ten, when during his summer holidays in Atlantic City he discovered Jarrett’s Steel Pier Museum of World War History, and spent all his allowance visiting and revisiting this awesome repository.

In his second SAR interview Bob recalls that he introduced Tom Nelson, who had then just got out of the Army, to Dick Winter of Interarms, “and later he came back down and got a job with them.”

Bob also got to know Don Bady and Val Forgett, both of whom worked for Col. Jarrett at the Museum. Regarding how he began his long acquaintance with Val Forgett, Bob recalls, “… Col. Jarrett called me up one day. He said, `I got an Army G.I. over here, just new, just come in, and he’s assigned to help me out. He’s a real gun nut. Come on over and meet him.’”

Summing up on a serious note, Bob recalls that despite all his expertise and knowledge, Jarrett had no real authority to make decisions concerning ordnance developments, and he was called on the carpet several times with the admonition, “That’s not your job!” Jarrett would respond, “Well, somebody has to do it.” Nevertheless he did influence decisions, in a general way, and the Ordnance Corps was the better for it.

Valmore J. Forgett

Later the founder and president of Navy Arms Company, Inc. and Service Armament Co. of Ridgefield, N.J., Val Forgett worked with Donald Bady at the Aberdeen Ordnance Museum.

Lt. Col. William L. Howard, the compiler of the informal book titled Technological Support of the Air-Land Battle, includes a letter dated February 16, 1983 addressed to himself from Val Forgett, president of Navy Arms Company Inc., excerpted as follows:

… First of all, I was a lowly draftee at Aberdeen, attached to the 19301 special troops. This was a unit made up of draftees who had, at least, four years of college, and many of the people in our unit had their Masters’ and Doctors’ degrees. It’s tough being a private with a Doctor’s degree and having your C.O. with a tenth grade education… Another gentleman, by the name of Donald Bady, the author of Colt Automatic Pistols, and others were attached to this unit and worked with Col. Jarrett in the Museum.

… We did extensive work at the H. P. White Lab, and I spent two weeks in Washington on TDY with the FBI’s Firearms Section. While working under Col. Jarrett, Don Bady and I developed a form of Dewey Decimal System for the classification of firearms, and put together a group of manuals for military attachés so they had some idea of what foreign weapons were known to us. Also, as a separate project, I did a manual on the interchangeability of foreign ammunition – i.e. Italian 7.7 ammunition would function in a .303 Bren gun. When I got out of the Army, Tom Nelson took over my position at Aberdeen…

Col. Jarrett… was not only my Commanding Officer, but a close, personal friend for many years… there are many anecdotes I can tell you about his founding of Ordnance Technical Intelligence… There is an excellent article… called “The Junkman Who Stopped Rommel” [extensively excerpted in Part II of this series].

Harold E. Johnson

Mr. Johnson is an Infantry Weapons Analyst for the U.S. Army Foreign Science and Technology Center [FSTC]. A member of the Handguns, Machine Guns, and Shoulder Weapons sections of the A.O.A.’s Small Arms & Small Arms Ammunition Division, he also is on the Firearms Advisory Panel of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue and frequently acts as a consultant to other government agencies on matters pertaining to small arms.

Hal Johnson, who had been a warrant officer and an armor expert in the Marine Corps, succeeded Joseph E. Smith as Chief of the Small Arms Division within the Ordnance Technical Intelligence Agency in 1975.

Daniel D. Musgrave

Dan Musgrave was a retired Army officer who as a young lieutenant had participated in the 1944 Normandy invasion. He also came on board at the Museum under Col. Jarrett while Tom Nelson was still working there, and the two men became fast friends.

Musgrave later worked for the Foreign Science & Technology Center (FSTC, established in 1962) with George Chinn for some time, and actually wrote much of what became Chinn’s The Machine Gun.

A published author in his own right, Dan Musgrave also collaborated with Tom Nelson on several highly successful book projects.

Thomas B. Nelson

Lt. Col. William L. Howard, the compiler of the informal book titled Technological Support of the Air-Land Battle, includes the following short biography of Tom Nelson:

Born in New York City and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, Thomas B. Nelson early developed a lively and avid interest in all types of small arms, but particularly the many and varied types of automatic weapons. During his studies at the University of Miami in Oxford, Ohio, and the University of Cincinnati, he started laying the groundwork for his book. After college, Mr. Nelson made an extensive tour of Europe and Scandinavia, collecting data and information from most of the larger arms firms within these areas. Immediately upon his return to the United States, he was called to duty by the U.S. Army. After basic training, he served under Col. G. B. Jarrett in the Foreign Materiel Section of the Ordnance Museum at Aberdeen Proving Ground. At Aberdeen, too, he attended the Army Ordnance Intelligence School. He was subsequently stationed at Arlington Hall Station, in Arlington, Virginia, there to perform comprehensive work in the small arms section of the Ordnance Technical Intelligence headquarters during the remainder of his tour of duty in the service. In 1961, after military service, he entered the private sector… He continues to be an avid student of military history and ordnance hardware.

Tom Nelson Recalls His Debt to Col. Jarrett

In his own words from one of the several phone interviews I conducted with Tom Nelson, he recalled that after leaving college in 1958 he travelled all over Europe gathering material for his book, to be called Submachine Guns of the World. After this “grand tour”, he enlisted in Army.

After basic training, Tom was sent to Aberdeen Proving Ground, with no apparent assignment. It was here that he met Col. Jarrett, who after closely questioning Tom on his knowledge of, and interest in, military firearms, took him on as his aide. Tom recalls that his first assignment was to clean a long row of LMGs, which were stored on the upper balcony of the Museum building.

Shortly after assuming his duties in the Museum Tom was introduced to another newcomer, Dan Musgrave, who took over the first desk in the office.

At that time the U.S. Army Ordnance Technical Intelligence School was usually reserved for officers and senior NCOs, but Tom Nelson wangled an interview and, thanks to his accumulated knowledge and expertise, he was allowed to attend the school, whence he graduated 1st in his class.

In 1959, Nelson was given a letter from Col. Jarrett as an introduction to Joseph E. Smith, the civilian Chief of the Ordnance Technical Intelligence Agency (Conventional Weapon Division), later designated the Foreign Science and Technology Center (FSTC), then headquartered at Arlington Hall Station in Arlington, Virginia. On the strength of Col. Jarrett’s glowing letter of recommendation, Tom was taken on and served as Joe Smith’s aide from 1959 to the end of 1960, during which time he helped write the revised edition of Smith’s Small Arms of the World.

From December, 1960 to April, 1970, Tom traveled all over the world working for Sam Cummings, president of Interarmco. Still later he founded several companies of his own, including Ironside International Publishers Inc.

Tom recalls that in 1976, while he was in Tokyo, word came that Joe Smith had died at the young age of 54, and was succeeded by Hal Johnston as Chief of the Ordnance Technical Intelligence Agency. The remembrance he wrote for Joe Smith appears below.

As for his debt to Col. Jarrett, Tom sums up that today he has no idea what direction his life would have taken without Jarrett’s influence and example. His time at the Aberdeen Museum as Jarrett’s protegé, and the letter Jarrett wrote that introduced him to Joe Smith and the world of Ordnance Technical Intelligence, changed his life.

Col. Jarrett Praises The World’s Submachine Guns, Volume I

The book that put Tom Nelson on the map, The World’s Submachine Guns, was published in 1963. It featured a Foreword written in typically authoritative style by Tom’s old mentor, retired Ordnance Col. G. B. Jarrett, Director of the Ordnance Museum at Aberdeen Proving Ground, which is excerpted as follows:

This book deals with a weapon whose entire history goes back less than half a century, for the submachine gun was born in the trench warfare of World War I… This study gathers together, for the first time, pertinent data and illustrations of all significant submachine guns manufactured to date. In addition to serving as an excellent reference for the collector and a guide for the designer, it provides an invaluable information source for law-enforcement and intelligence personnel…

The author is highly qualified in his field, and his treatment of the subject is noteworthy for its clarity and comprehensive coverage. He shows a rare insight into the need or reason why any piece was developed and is especially knowledgeable as to what extent a piece may or may not be a worthwhile weapon from the user’s standpoint…

Ludwig Olson

A concise biography of Ludwig “Lud” Olson, taken from the back of the dust jacket of the third edition of Mr. Olson’s classic book Mauser Bolt Rifles, first published in 1976, reads as follows:

Ludwig Olson is presently serving as the Technical Editor of The American Rifleman, and is without question the most eminently qualified man living to undertake, and so magnificently accomplish, the task of writing Mauser Bolt Rifles… Joining the U.S. Army in 1935, Olson served with the Coast Artillery Anti-Aircraft. as an armorer in Ordnance, at the Ballistic Research Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Ground, in charge of the Foreign Document Section at the Development & Proof Services… with the Ordnance Foreign Materiel Museum, as an instructor on Ordnance Technical Intelligence, on the staff of the Armored School at Fort Knox, as one of the writers of the book Rifles used by The Ordnance School at Aberdeen Proving Ground and at other widely varied ordnance and related assignments in Europe and the Far East. Upon retirement in 1956 after a 20-year career with the Regular Army, Lud joined the Technical Staff of The American Rifleman where his concise and authoritative articles on a wide range of firearms subjects… have earned him a worldwide following…

Philip B. Sharpe

Phil Sharpe was a well-known arms expert and writer with long experience with both military and commercial small arms. He was the author of the classic book The Rifle in America as well as numerous articles and opinions which appeared in many journals and periodicals during the years between the wars.

During WWII Sharpe worked for U.S. Ordnance Technical Intelligence, where under Col. Jarrett he collaborated on the writing of Technical Intelligence Bulletins.

Joseph E. Smith

Joe Smith was the civilian Chief of the Ordnance Technical Intelligence Agency, Conventional Weapons Division, originally located at Aberdeen Proving Ground, then moved to Arlington Hall Station in Arlington, VA, where Tom Nelson recalls joining the Agency, and finally to a new headquarters in Charlottesville, VA.

Tom Nelson wrote a lengthy appreciation and obituary for Joe Smith after his untimely death in 1976 at the age of only 54, which was included in Lt. Col. Howard’s informal book Technological Support of the Air-Land Battle. This is excerpted as follows:

Rage Killed Joe!

Fortunate, indeed, is the man who is able to pursue his hobby through his vocation and his interests through his career. Such a man was Joseph E. Smith, my friend and mentor of 20 years, who in March, 1976, regrettably died of heart failure at the age of 54.

Joe Smith was internationally known and respected by ordnance buffs and experts as the revisor and later co-author of Small Arms of the World, that technical classic considered by many to be the “Bible” in its field…

Always an avid student of history, he eventually concentrated on his particular specialty, conventional ordnance. He became an international authority on the subject, and at the time of his death was Chief of the Weapons Systems Division (Conventional Weapons Section) of the Foreign Science and Technology Center (FSTC…

After distinguished service in the Army during World War II, he finished his education, graduating from Syracuse University, and in 1952 was employed by the U.S. Army Ordnance Technical Intelligence Agency (later, in the 1960s, designated FSTC). During the succeeding years his obvious expertise and dedication propelled him upward in his career. These same two qualities were the reasons for his frustration and, indirectly, his death…

In the U.S. bureaucracy it appears that no one is in charge. In fact, so many are in charge that it is difficult to get anything accomplished. The plethora of development groups is caused by our ever-expanding bureaucracy. An example is the Army Materiel Development and Readiness Command, DARCOM – (formerly the Army Materiel Command), and Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), both of which operate with no consistent voice and the end result is that development programs are widely fragmented, and in some cases hemmorrhage from within, to such a degree that no meaningful projects are finalized. Since these groups have no single authority, development is unnecessarily delayed, duplication of effort is omni-present, and R&D is frequently pushed forward in isolation from the ultimate user – the man in the field…

W. H. B. Smith

As I mentioned right off the bat in Part I of this series, the most famous gun book of all, for me at least, is Small Arms of the World, originally written by W. H. B. Smith. This classic remained in print for decades in numerous editions, with the writing and editing duties passing on first to a collaboration between W. H. B. Smith and Joseph E. Smith, who were not related; and then to Joe Smith alone and then to my own personal mentor, Edward C. Ezell.

W.H.B. Smith’s precursor to Small Arms of the World, titled Basic Manual of Military Small Arms, first appeared in 1943. The Foreword to the First Edition, heavily stressing the value of Ordnance Intelligence to America’s fighting men in time of war, was written by Col. Jarrett. It is excerpted as follows:

This book is a military classic. It is of real value to every man who uses military arms.

The coverage of the basic United States weapons will help any service man achieve a quick and comprehensive understanding of his weapons. The sections on foreign arms will also help to develop a “weapons sense” in the reader; prepare him to grasp opportunities on the field of battle; and serve to increase his confidence in the superlative arms with which he is equipped.

…The photographs were specifically prepared from the actual weapons themselves to teach step-by-step all the essentials. The original working drawings are simple and clear…

There are no military secrets in this book: everything in it is known to our enemies, who have captured and are using specimens of all our arms. But there is a tremendous wealth of valuable military information in it for every American who cares to arm himself with a knowledge of a subject on which our national security rests, and on which it will rest for a long time after the present war ends.

The author is perhaps the one person in the United States with the necessary combined knowledge of firearms, writing and editing to bring this remarkable book into being…

G. B. Jarrett
Lt. Col. O. D., Army of U.S.
Chief, Foreign Materiel Section
Aberdeen Proving Ground.

An obituary for W.H.B. Smith, a famous yet reclusive man, which appears without attribution in Col. Howard’s book, is excerpted as follows:

Walter Harold Bingham-Black Smith died on 5 April, 1959… [He] gave us some pioneering gun books. He started many of us on a quest for more knowledge about firearms. But he remained a private person in the process. Perhaps in a publicity-seeking age when many authors want media exposure to enhance the sale of their books, Smith was a unique individual. He let his books sell themselves. Considering the popularity of his writings, his policy appears to have been a wise one…

Charles E. Yust, Jr.

Charlie Yust, a dedicated arms enthusiast and an advanced cartridge collector, worked for some time with H. P. White and Burton Munhall on the staff of the famous H.P. White Ordnance Co. He later purchased H. P. White’s cartridge collection.

During WWII he joined the Army, and because of his expertise he was transferred to the Museum at Aberdeen Proving Ground, where his duties included sectioning cartridges, etc. His first tour ended in the 1950s.

He returned to the Aberdeen Museum around 1967, and worked for Col. Jarrett and his successor, Karl Kempf, until his retirement in the 1980s.

While he was the editor of the Gun & Cartridge Record, Yust wrote a fine tribute to Col. Jarrett which appeared in the “Who’s Who” column in the July, 1958 issue of that magazine:

When a man, for one reason or another, chooses a field of interest to follow, and as time eventually proves, has devoted the greater part of his life… to this interest, he must be very sincere and devoted to it. As the years go by he may develop a severe honesty in the way he conducts his efforts and in expressing his views on this subject.

In the field of research associated with historical matters, this quality is of inestimable value, as well as one of great rareness. Anyone possessing such a quality certainly is entitled to any and all recognition and honors which may be extended. This is as it should be, but unfortunately, [the bestowal of such recognition and honor] does not always come to pass…

Finale: George Burling Jarrett, 1901 – 1974

An unattributed thumbnail sketch in LTC Howard’s book of the massive railroad gun the Germans called Leopold and the Americans dubbed “Anzio Annie” is excerpted as follows:

The Leopold Railway Cannon

It is hard to imagine that the Germans could conceal a weapon capable of firing a 550-pound shell. The German Leopold Gun was the largest weapon which lobbed shells at American troops at “Anzio Beach.” An aura of mystery surrounded the employment of the gun. To the bewilderment of Allied officials who knew the approximate location of Leopold, the gun could not be silenced. Repeated bomber and naval attacks failed.

It wasn’t until the Allies broke out of the “Anzio Beachhead” and sent the Germans scurrying that the secret was revealed. The Leopold, supported by 24 railcar wheels, was mounted on railroad tracks which led in and out of mountain tunnels. When not firing, the gun was rolled back into the tunnels out of sight of Allied reconnaissance. Because bombs had destroyed Italian rail systems, the Germans were forced to leave the Leopold and its twin gun “Robert” behind. Although both guns had been extensively damaged, Allied forces were able to salvage the Leopold and after reconstruction of the railway, moved the gun to Naples for shipment to the United States

“Anzio Annie” as the gun was known to the Allied troops at Anzio, is the only German railroad gun known to have survived WWII.

LTC Howard comments on this, as follows: Once again, our failure to have an adequate intelligence service and the lack of Technical Intelligence effort would result in Technological Surprise and the loss of life at Anzio Beach until the Secret of the Railway Gun was revealed. The design of this German gun influenced the design of the [U.S. 280mm] Atomic Cannon, [a long range gun capable of firing both conventional and atomic munitions, introduced in the Army inventory in the early 1950s].

(About the Author: R. Blake Stevens is the founder and president of Collector Grade Publications, Inc., which he established in 1979. To date the firm has produced 50 “vertical” titles on important modern small arms, of which 38 currently remain in print.)

(Acknowledgements: The author acknowledges with gratitude the kind assistance of the following, who have provided the information and documentation from which the foregoing articles have been extrapolated: James Alley, Jr., Ph.D., Elliot Deutsch, Chairman, Aberdeen Military Museum Foundation, Inc., Robert W. (Bob) Faris, Harold Johnson, Thomas B. Nelson, President, Ironside International Publishers Inc., Dan Shea and Cholly Steen, President, SARCO Inc.)

The U.S. Army Ordnance Museum Established at Aberdeen Proving Ground

An article in the November/December, 1971 issue of Ordnance, published by the American Ordnance Association, records prophetically that the Ordnance Museum at Aberdeen Proving Ground, established in 1919 [and] raided for scrap metal in World War II and again during the Korean conflict has a history of struggle.

1927: Jarrett Joins the Reserve Army – the Aberdeen Museum Opens

An article published in the Harford Democrat on April 14, 1966, to commemorate then-Colonel George Burling Jarrett’s retirement as Curator of the Ordnance Museum at Aberdeen Proving Ground, records that Jarrett was commissioned in the U.S. Army Reserve in 1927.

A later article in the same newspaper, published on April 4, 1973, titled A New Museum to Open, records that the original Ordnance Museum at Aberdeen was officially opened in that same year, 1927: Although it had been in existence for seven years prior to that time, the museum was housed in a rectangular metal building which had been manufactured in France. This structure was utilized by the Army for a time following World War I. It was then dismantled and shipped to the Proving Ground for reconstruction and use as the post museum.

WWII Breaks Out in Europe – Jarrett Ordered to Active Duty

The draft of Jarrett’s own May, 1970 article continues to chronicle his first visit to “the real” Aberdeen, and then, as the new war became a reality, his growing involvement with the Ordnance Department:

I had gone to Aberdeen Proving Ground as early as 1924 to see the famous Ordnance Museum which was a display made from World War I captured materiel. They had a fine collection of tanks, artillery, various artillery ammunition and bombs, and some of the more important small arms.

The 1938-39 period was full of a new war threat, as Hitler did as he pleased in Europe. Then, in the late summer of 1939, war did burst on Europe. This caused an alert in the U.S. and, having been a reserve officer since 1927, I was invited by Colonel Hatcher (later Maj. Gen.) to join his staff at the Ordnance School then being expanded at Aberdeen Proving Ground, long a Mecca of Ordnance as far as I was concerned. I closed up all my display activities, built a series of sheds at the farm, and stored all my collections. Then in November of 1939, I went to Aberdeen and joined Colonel Hatcher.

In 1939 when I joined the Staff and Faculty of the school, I was also given the added duty of Curator of the Museum.

Since teaching about small arms, artillery and or munitions was very much the same as I had been doing with my own museum displays, the teaching-lecture job as a staff and faculty member at the Ordnance School was just a continuation of my former work. There was one important difference, however: this time, this knowledge could be of use to our Ordnance Program in the mobilization of the Army.

Col. Icks’ 1974 article in the Ordnance Journal continues the story by describing some of Lieutenant Jarrett’s early accomplishments after joining the Ordnance Department in 1939:

[Jarrett] was among the first few reserve officers in the United States to be ordered to active duty early in the period preceding Pearl Harbor, and the first reserve officer to become a member of the staff and faculty of the Ordnance School at Aberdeen Proving Ground. In 1939, the late Major General Julian S. Hatcher (then a colonel in command of the school) requested that Lieutenant Jarrett be ordered to duty at the school… Lieutenant Jarrett’s background and interest caused him to be made Museum Officer. He also helped… establish a Bomb Disposal School.

Jarrett Sent to Egypt to Assist the British

Col. Icks continues:

Under Lend-Lease, the first shipload of American light tanks went to Egypt for the British in May, 1941… Since the British also were receiving other American weapons, they were in need of an ammunition expert. Jarrett, by now a captain, was ordered to Egypt as a one-man technical section to act as ammunition advisor to British GHQ.

Jarrett’s own May, 1970 draft article fleshes out the beginning of this crucial phase of his career as follows:

I was sent from the Ordnance School to General Maxwell’s Ordnance Staff in Cairo in November of 1941, which had the responsibility of helping the British 8th Army to understand and use the American Lend-Lease equipment then being furnished them… Soon I was to see all sorts of Allied and enemy materiel in daily use as the British fought the Axis armies.

I also became the Director of the USA Ordnance School, Middle East, and our job was to teach the British troops how to use the Lend-Lease equipment. These were the U.S. M3 Light Tank, called the Stuart, the M3 Medium called the Grant, the M4 Medium called the Sherman and the M7 Gun Motor Carriage, called the Priest… Up to that date I had known many of the designers in the Office, Chief of Ordnance and the proof engineers at Aberdeen who tested their designs. So I was well aware of the ordnance thinking of that august body at the time, and then being in the Middle East I was soon to examine and test many of the captured items.

With the advent of Rommel the desert warfare took on a new aspect as he certainly had fine operational plans, excellent designs in their ordnance (some of which proved sensational as the war progressed), and certainly very courageous and brave soldiers. The world was treated to a new concept of warfare and equipment as the war in the desert opened up.

To me it was apparent in 1942 that a lot of American design thinking of that period had not enjoyed that which the Germans had given to their ordnance. During WWII we learned quickly and made many vast improvements, but in some areas such as tank guns and armor we lagged behind, with badly-needed new designs not being available until the close of the war.

The Origins of U.S. Ordnance Technical Intelligence

An excerpt from the book Planning Munitions for War continues with an overview of U.S. Ordnance Technical Intelligence – or the lack thereof – as World War II began in earnest for American forces:

The U.S. Army’s disregard of developments in foreign munitions before 1940 is a perpetual source of astonishment to the European… the extent of what the Ordnance Department did not know about German, French and British ordnance is plainly revealed in a list of questions prepared by the Office, Chief of Ordnance in June, 1940.

At the end of August, 1940 the General Staff inaugurated an Army-wide intelligence system. The Ordnance Military Intelligence Section was established in September… From the data supplied by the special bulletins of G-2, the small staff of the Ordnance section periodically prepared detailed analyses of information bearing on ordnance. The Ordnance Intelligence Bulletins, averaging monthly nearly fifty pages, circulated among interested agencies… As early as March, 1942 the communications of the Acting Ordnance officer in the Middle East [Jarrett] described features of German weapons encountered by the British in the recent battles for North Africa, and a series of photographs of captured equipment arrived at Aberdeen soon after.

Some actual specimens of German materiel also were shipped to the States, although in 1942 they formed a thin trickle compared to the flood that was to reach Aberdeen in the summer of 1943.

Early in 1942 General Barnes was convinced that research and development would benefit by a more direct flow of technical information [and] that summer, as soon as he became head of the separate division for research and development, he persuaded G-2 and the rest of the War Department that… specially briefed Ordnance teams should be sent to the active theatres. The first Ordnance intelligence mission accordingly went to North Africa soon afterward.

The New York Times Confirms “New U.S. School in Africa”

Under the heading “Aberdeen Men Busy in Africa”, a New York Times story by-lined Cairo, May 9, 1942, reads in part:

Major General Russell L. Maxwell, head of the United States Military Mission in Africa, announced today that his organization has opened an ordnance training school for the Eastern Mediterranean area… The school is intended to train non-commissioned officers of the British armored corps in the maintenance of United States equipment, particularly tanks… Commandant of the school is Major G. B. Jarrett, formerly of the U.S. Ordnance School in Aberdeen, Maryland.

Establishing the Foreign Materiel Section at Aberdeen

A further excerpt from the book Planning Munitions for War continues as follows:

Meanwhile, Jarrett’s Finest Hour

As noted above, Jarrett went to Egypt as a captain in May, 1941, assigned as an ammunition advisor to the British Army in North Africa, where his vast knowledge of U.S. and European ordnance was to be used to its fullest value. For his outstanding achievements during this mission, chronicled in detail below, Jarrett was awarded the Order of the British Empire (O.B.E.), and the Legion of Merit.

The following long excerpts from the excellent article in the December, 1957 issue of Cavalier magazine, rather irreverently titled “The Junkman Who Stopped Rommel”, indicates that author Arch Whitehouse spent a great deal of time and care researching this crucially important period in Jarrett’s career:

Hitler’s Afrika Korps had swept across North Africa in one victory after another, and was now threatening Cairo itself. The only entrance to the city was through the back door, which the British had managed to keep open by defeating the Italians earlier in Eritrea.

That is one terrible region. The world has some bad deserts, like the Sahara, the Arabian, the Sind, and Australia’s Great Sandy, but that lifeless stretch of dead volcanoes, volcanic glass, and drifting sand between Khartoum and the Red Sea can make them all look like a fruitful paradise. To make matters worse for… Jarrett, the only desert transportation available was an aged Grumman flying boat that was definitely not made for emergency landings on sand… By the time he landed in Khartoum he had referred so frequently to his new, pocket-sized edition of the New Testament that most of his suffering fellow-passengers thought he was a chaplain.

But once he was in the land of the Nile, Jarrett felt as much at home as in his own museum. Egypt was the end of the line, but so desperate had grown the battle for North Africa that every weapon, new, old, or obsolete, was being pressed into service. Worst in the lot, according to the complaints of the British, was a lot of Lend-Lease “junk” sent over by the United States, and it was with the correction of this rather unflattering impression that Jarrett was primarily concerned.

Brigadier General R. E. Maxwell, in command of the United States North African mission, made it bluntly plain that the trouble Jarrett faced was not trivial. “I sent for you” he explained, “because I need a specialist in everything. I’m appointing you Ammunition Advisor to the British, and I must say they have a real problem. Frankly, unless something is done immediately to ‘surround’ this problem, they can lose this war right here in Africa. They are having trouble with our tanks, with our anti-tank guns, and with our ammunition. Now you know this lend-lease stuff is not the most modern equipment in the world, but when the British say they can do more damage throwing kippers at the Nazis than they can with stuff marked ‘Made in U.S.A.’ well, that’s not good, you know. Get up there to Heliopolis and find out what’s wrong.”

Jarrett’s acquisitive heart pounded when he saw the foul-up at Heliopolis. Spread out for acres were such an array of English, French, German, Italian, Russian, and American weapons, only a few alike and most of them of World War I vintage, that his collector’s soul ached to think of their being destroyed in combat. At the same time his long-subdued gadgeteer’s instinct wanted to see everything belching smoke, and with that his dander rose. If there was something pathetic about trying to pit these aging relics against Rommel’s modern, fast, heavily-armed tanks plated with shell-deflecting Krupp steel, Jarrett did not think so. These were his pets, and he knew what they could do.

Fortune favored Jarrett on his first contact with the British. Ordnance officers were puzzling over the fact that some of their men had apparently been machine-gunned with their own bullets. “The only difference,” said a major, “is that these are stamped ‘7.7’. Otherwise they are identical to our .303 ammunition.”

Jarrett hefted the [cartridge case] and peered owlishly at its [headstamp]. “Easy”, he said. “In World War I you British supplied the Italians with Vickers and Lewis guns, and .303 ammunition to match. They ran out of ammunition long ago, but with the guns being as good as ever, Mussolini just ordered more of the same ammunition from his own munitions factories. Everyone knows that in the metric system, 7.7 is the same as .303 in British inches.”

“They do?” Somewhat dazed, the British major looked at Jarrett with new respect.

“Of course, these did not come from your guns,” continued Jarrett as though he were lecturing in his museum. “These came from an Italian Fiat machine gun. Every weapon leaves its own particular identification on…”

“We know that, but in this man’s war there are hundreds of different kinds of weapons. We’d have to set up a Scotland Yard here to identify them all.”

“Not at all,” said Jarrett modestly. “I know every single one.”

“… Now what’s your biggest problem?” asked Jarrett.

“Those lend-lease 75mm shells of yours” said the colonel in command. “At long range, with a high trajectory, they work fine on a stationary target. When they come bang-on down on the nose, they are quite satisfactory, but it so happens we did not order them for that. We need them against tanks, and I must say I take a dim view of their performance there.”

“Tell me exactly what happens.”

“Nothing, dammitall. Not a dashed thing. You must know these tanks are fast. You shoot ’em like you shoot rabbits with a shotgun. Figure out the range, lead ’em a few feet, and blaze away. Hardly proper for artillery, shooting from the hip, as it were, but this war is hardly proper from the beginning. Now here’s the thing in a nutshell – at a flat trajectory, your shells bounce off those tanks like peas, and when they explode, if they explode at all, it’s when they ricochet into the ground a mile or so beyond. I will say this for the Heinies – they hang their armor plate on their tanks at so many angles that it is almost impossible to score a direct hit.”

The two months Jarrett had spent exploring the secrets of the French “75” fuse raced through his mind. The word was “creep”. Those World War I fuses were so sensitive that the mere brushing of a shell through the treetops was enough to jar the “creep” into sliding up to detonate the charge. The Americans, vexed at so many premature bursts, had taken the creep out of their fuses, and were gratified thereafter when the shells exploded only upon making direct, nose-on contact with the target. That was fine when all artillery targets were stationary, but for World War II, against racing tanks, that old creep or “graze” fuse could be mighty handy. Even though a shell only kissed an angled plate of armor, it would explode fast enough to rattle a few teeth.

“The last of the creep fuses were made in 1918,” announced Jarrett from his stockpile of obsolete knowledge, “but if I know the French, they did not throw away the surplus of old fuses when the new models came in. Aren’t there a lot of French Foreign Legion outposts around the Sahara somewhere?”

The British colonel had not achieved his rank through being dim-witted. “Better yet, old chap”, he announced. “A lot of the French forces from Syria have joined us, bringing in their old French “75s” with them. Seemed a little hopeless at the time, but now that you mention it, our RAF blokes can fly you up to their encampment in a couple of hours.

Within 24 hours of his arrival, Jarrett had master-minded his first triumph. At the French encampment he located a store of 90,000 “creep” fuses, No. 1898/09, and had them airlifted back to Cairo. It marked the turning point. With Rommel within 90 miles of Alexandria on his “unstoppable” drive, the Tommies went into action with the Jarrett-improved shells. It was a slaughter. On modern shells the old museum-piece fuses, some of them dating back to 1915, acted with uncanny assertiveness, needing, as one Tommy said, “only a whiff of sauerkraut to go boom.” The supply lasted all through the Libyan battles the following May, and Egypt was saved.

Meeting Major Northy

At length [Jarrett] came to an ammunition dump, and there, leaning disconsolately against a mound of captured shells, he met a Major Northy, ammunitions expert with the Australian forces. Instinctively Jarrett looked first at the shells.
“High explosive ammunition used in the 7.5cm tank cannon of the Panzer IV,” he catalogued aloud.

“Righto,” agreed Major Northy. “And what bloody chance do we have with our pea shooters when the Jerries have got ammo like this?”

“But they haven’t got this pile,” observed Jarrett, blinking. “We have. Let’s toss it back at them.”

“Wrong size. I suggested once that wars be fought with interchangeable ammunition, but nothing ever came of it.”

Jarrett measured the shells with nothing more scientific than his eye. Except that the rotating band looked a little thick and wide, he had just the gun to fire it. “The old M2 tank gun,” he mused. “Frankly, I’ve always said the tank and the gun were better than their ammunition. If you don’t mind, this is my chance to prove something.”

Major Northy could see no reason why he should mind. An hour later they were in Cairo requisitioning an old engine lathe from a British-owned machine shop. It was not self-powered, but that little detail meant nothing to Jarrett. Back in his junkyard he had enough old trucks, belts, gears, and other incidentals to power a dozen machine shops. By mid-afternoon of the next day his borrowed lathe was hooked up to the drive wheel of an old truck, and a crew of mechanics who knew better but didn’t give a damn were busy trimming the rotating bands of the captured shells to fit the M2 tank gun. Among the minor miracles of the war is that not a single shell exploded while being spun furiously on the lathe.

Out on the Suez Road Test Range, even Jarrett was surprised at the results. In its native German gun, the captured ammunition had a muzzle velocity of 1,650 feet per second: in the M2 gun it blasted out at 1,950 feet per second, with an increase in its power to penetrate that was truly fantastic. When tested on a captured Panzer tank, it not only pierced the armor plate, but with its high explosive burst it scattered the tank over the desert.

“Wow, that’s better than our best ammunition,” exclaimed Jarrett, picking up a twisted chunk of “invulnerable” armor plate. “Back in Aberdeen there’s a big argument about armor-piercing shells. One group claims the shells have to be high-explosive to do any real damage, and the other says a standard charge is plenty. We can settle that little debate right now.”

Another Panzer IV was rolled out onto the range, and this time Jarrett let the tank have it with the latest M61 shells. The penetration effect about equalled the German ammunition, and while there was little doubt that the shell would knock out the tank crew, the tank would be in fine shape again after a few repairs, this was the proof Jarrett wanted. The shells had to be high-explosive to decisively knock out a tank.

“That does it. I’m sending a cable to Aberdeen tonight, and we’d better get a photographer out here so the boys can see for themselves the difference in the damage. This is going to change a lot of thinking back home.” said Jarrett.

“Back home?” exclaimed Major Northy. “It’s changed a lot of thinking right here. Let’s get those 15,000 captured shells processed!”

Within another 24 hours the British Royal Armored Ordnance Corps had a score of lathes in operation, all patterned after Jarrett’s original model and powered by old trucks.

With that operation in high gear, Jarrett started one of the weirdest and potentially the most dangerous munitions operation in the world. Calling upon his wide knowledge of explosives, fuses, and shell cases, he began turning out a hybrid ammunition made up of a little bit of everything. With the Ordnance Corps improvising shell pullers and crimpers, and with Arabs for labor, he began taking shells apart for their assorted parts. American M72 and Mk I high explosive shells provided the primed cartridge cases and charges. German shells were pulled and their cases disposed of. And then, to get the desired velocity of 1,950 feet per second, all sorts of recovered gunpowders were carefully weighed, dumped into cleaned oil drums, and there blended under the hot desert sun with wooden paddles. At one point in this safety-last operation, with Jarrett himself stirring up a barrel of powder with an oar, it is estimated enough propellant was being mixed to blow the whole junkyard into bits should so much as a small spark be struck on one of the steel drums. And there was no shortage of flint-like rocks being kicked around. But the inevitable never happened, and when the hybrid shells went into action they performed so far beyond anything yet on the field that Jarrett was awarded the Legion of Merit medal.

Augmenting British Weaponry

By that time he was deep in his next task. Rifles and all sorts of small arms, plus ammunition, were in desperately short supply. In his dash across North Africa, Rommel had made a point of striking first at supply depots, and by the time he had the Tommies backed up against the Pyramids, most of them were reduced to the few weapons they had been able to carry with them, and the few rounds of ammunition that remained in their belts. What was more; the wily Desert Fox had done an excellent job of severing all their supply lines. Rising to this crisis, Jarrett recalled the stacks and stacks of Italian materiel he had seen during his brief stopover in Eritrea. Included had been thousands of rifles piled up in the open, and slowly being covered with drifting sand.

The admiring British at this stage were willing to grant Jarrett anything he asked for; knowing in advance few of his requests would be either sane or reasonable. They were not surprised then when Jarrett called from the Eritrean Service Command, requesting an Alfa Romeo automobile assembly plant and a score of machine shops left over from Mussolini’s Ethiopia campaign. Nor were they surprised a few days later to learn that Jarrett had cut across national lines, and that British and American armament men were working side by side in a fast-operating weapons reconditioning factory. Sand-choked weapons were being fed into one end of the converted automobile plant, dismantled, cleaned, inspected for worn parts, and reassembled at the rate of several hundred a day.

Factory organization was but a small part of Jarrett’s job. The captured Italian weapons were of all shapes and sizes, and in all states of disrepair. Until he got his machine shops going making spare parts, as many as three rifles might have to be dismantled to get enough parts to make one good one. All told, he found 53 types of rifles requiring 13 different kinds of ammunition, and he could only wonder how Mussolini had ever managed to defeat Emperor Haile Selassie’s spear-carrying warriors. He produced order out of this chaos by combining the useful parts of a dozen obsolete weapons to make a half-dozen efficient hybrids. For example, he found several hundred old Vickers and Lewis machine guns that had been stripped from old aircraft. The guns were useless as ground weapons, the whole firing mechanism of each weapon being dependent upon power supplied by the aircraft engine in synchronization with the propeller. But Jarrett had made them work in his museum, and now, by taking parts from other, less efficient machine guns, he was able to put them back in action, complete with a new spade-grip hand-trigger component and tripod mount.

His biggest triumph came when he reconditioned thousands of Mauser rifles and assured the British their own 7.92mm cartridge would fit perfectly. “It has to,” he informed a skeptical British ordnance man. “You might not know it, but your British Besa gun is an adaptation of the old Czech Brno, and the Czech gun was originally designed to use Mauser 7.92mm ammunition. So you see, Major, in copying the Czech gun you copied the German ammunition, and I happen to know we have plenty of 7.92mm ammunition in Cairo.”

Now for the astonishing part of Jarrett’s foray into the Eritrean junkyards. To classify all the Italian weapons and ammunition, sort them out according to usefulness, cross-breed those necessary to produce his hybrids, organize his reconditioning factory and machine shops, and start the flow of desperately needed weapons to the front, had taken just two weeks. He was back in Cairo just sixteen days after his departure, and spent the night writing a handbook translating American technical terms into British nomenclature.

Jarrett Draws Some Crucial Conclusions

As a captain and then as a major, Jarrett continued to follow Rommel’s retreat across North Africa. When he discovered German shell cases made of blued steel instead of brass, he was the first to announce that Hitler’s copper supply was nearing exhaustion. By taste and smell he was the first to discover Hitler’s motor fuel was ersatz, a synthetic substitute that would break down on a long haul. Both of these discoveries enabled the Allies to increase the pressure on the Germans at a time when such pressure would have been suicidal had Jarrett been wrong.

Jarrett Returns to APG a Light Colonel; Proceeds to “Raise Hell”

Col. Icks’ Ordnance Journal article describes Jarrett’s return to Aberdeen as a Lieutenant Colonel in charge of the Foreign Materiel Branch, where he was to remain until the end of the war:

A promotion to Lieutenant Colonel took place prior to his return to the United States to head up a Foreign Materiel Branch for testing and evaluating captured weapons. Finding no action had been taken on producing a delayed action fuse and finding that the 100 rounds of German ammunition he had shipped from Cairo had never been tested, it was characteristic of him to raise hell from top to bottom over the matter. Rank for its own sake meant nothing to him and sacred cows to him were for slaying… A few heads were weary when he had finished, but American tankers quickly were on the way of receiving something badly needed, although an entire year had been wasted through negligence.

Jarrett on the Foreign Materiel Branch (FMB)

In a document titled Ordnance Research Center General Story for Press and Newsreels dated November 26, 1943, Col. Jarrett spelled out the important mission of the center which he headed as follows:

The Foreign Materiel Branch was established in the latter part of 1942 to receive and store enemy weapons sent to the United States by groups of Ordnance Intelligence officers and enlisted men from the various theaters of operation. Directly responsible to the Office, Chief of Ordnance in Washington, the Branch’s mission includes the analysis of all materiel for evaluation and for possible adaptation of noteworthy designs into our own equipment, to maintain a collection of the available weapons and to conduct training programs to disseminate information on this captured enemy equipment.

The flow of German, Japanese and Italian weapons into Aberdeen Proving Ground has been continuous, and at the present time there are approximately 4,000 tons of enemy pieces, comprising 1,300 principal items. Results of the detailed analyses of the materiel tested here and at other stations are maintained in the files of the library together with intelligence received from Military Attachés and other overseas observers.

The Importance of Ordnance Technical Intelligence

Lt. Col. William L. Howard, the compiler of the informal book titled Technological Support of the Air-Land Battle, penned the following under the heading “Introduction and Purpose”:

My purpose in preparing this booklet was to record in picture and letter format the evolution of the U.S. Army’s Technical Intelligence Operations from about 1918 until the present. It is primarily the story of a select group of men in the Army who have defied the traditional career patterns and forged ahead into the future…

Certainly Col. Jarrett qualifies as perhaps the most important of this select group of men.

Jarrett in Europe, Leading a Technical Intelligence Team

Col. Icks’ Ordnance Journal article continues:

Before World War II was over, he was ordered overseas again, this time to Europe. There he participated in the industrial and military interrogation team efforts in evaluating German experimental material found in various plants and proving grounds. Again much of the material which had value to us was shipped to APG for further study and comparison…

An Excerpt from Intelligence Bulletin Vol. III, No. 6, February, 1945

Tom Nelson recalls that Col. Jarrett, along with Phil Sharpe and other noted U.S. ordnance experts, gathered and edited the material which appeared in the Technical Intelligence Bulletins, published by the Military Intelligence Division of the War Department, which proved of great value to the Allied cause.

In a related article about captured WWII Japanese aircraft being tested by U.S. Technical Air Intelligence, reprinted in Lt. Col. Howard’s book titled Technological Support of the Air-Land Battle, author Robert Mikesh leads off with these sardonic words:

“The Germans fought for Hitler, the Japanese fought for their Emperor, and the Americans fought for souvenirs.” This was the comment most often repeated by members of the Technical Air Intelligence Units, whose first responsibility was to keep G.I.s away from captured enemy equipment.

This sentiment was echoed in an article titled “Ordnance Intelligence Teams Uncover Technical Secrets”, published in February, 1945 in Vol. III, No. 6 of the Intelligence Bulletin, excerpted as follows:

“One of the biggest difficulties that Ordnance Intelligence Teams face is the continued refusal of combat units to recognize the importance of technical information gained from a study of enemy ordnance.”

… This report [from a lieutenant in charge of an Ordnance Technical Intelligence Team now operating in the Pacific] emphasized an unfortunate condition which has existed for a long time. Combat troops, preoccupied with fighting or souvenir hunting, are unaware of the part captured enemy equipment plays in the progressive development of our own weapons, and of its usefulness in enabling intelligence officers to predict the probable widespread use of new weapons by enemy troops.

This difficult master-minding is a job of the Army Service Forces Equipment Intelligence Service Teams. These teams include trained personnel from each technical service. Specifically, where weapons are concerned, it is a job for Ordnance Technical Intelligence, which must keep the army up to date in this highly technical aspect of warfare.

Early in the war, the U.S. Army saw the necessity for immediate first-hand technical observation, and in December 1942 the first Ordnance Intelligence Team, a handful of specially-trained officers and enlisted men, was dispatched to a combat zone. Its mission was to procure enemy weapons and ship them to the United States to be used in a continuous study of the latest developments and trends in the enemy armament industry and to rapidly develop counter weapons. Today teams of trained technical observers work in every theater of operations.

Col. Jarrett’s Team at the Walther Factory

An interesting anecdote from Chapter One of author Fred A. Datig’s book on postwar Russian small arms, titled Soviet Russian Postwar Military Pistols and Cartridges, 1945 – 1986, discussed further in Part III of this series, concerns an important and timely visit by a U.S. Technical Intelligence team, led by Col. Jarrett, to the Waffenfabrik Walther plant shortly after the end of WWII in 1945:

… The United States Army’s Technical Intelligence team, headed by the late Colonel G. B. Jarrett, was able to enter Walther’s factory only 2 hours before the Soviets (thanks to Yalta and Potsdam) were to take charge officially. Jarrett’s group was able to cleanse the premises of the entire collection of some hundreds of prototypes of pistols, rifles and machine guns, plus much pertinent documentation, and to whisk everything, including Fritz Walther himself, away to the West.

A Typical Jarrett `Take’ on a Pentagon Briefing

Tom Nelson, who will also be mentioned in greater detail in Part III of this series, recalls a briefing which Col. Jarrett was invited to give to an assembly of general officers at the Pentagon in 1946. Casting his eye about the thousands of exhibits and artifacts at his disposal in the Museum, and concerned about just what he would be able to cover in the limited time available to him, in the end Jarrett selected and took with him five items, each of which he felt represented an outstanding advance made by the Germans in WWII.

The first items he put on the table were a captured MP44 (Sturmgewehr) and an example of its 7.92x33mm intermediate cartridge. The advantages of this new weapon system were many fold, he explained: constructed very largely of plain carbon steel stampings requiring no scarce, exotic alloying elements, production of this weapon was cheap and fast, compared with a U.S. product like the M1 rifle. Even more importantly, he said, it represented the dawn of a new tactical era, one for which the U.S. had no comparable weapon or cartridge, other than the M1 carbine and its comparably weak cartridge. (History has shown that while the U.S. was to flounder along with the underfunded M14 program until 1957, the Soviets took these advances very much to heart and were soon to emulate both the German StG concept and its intermediate cartridge with the adoption of the 7.62x39mm AK47.)

The second example he laid on the table was an MG42. This fast-firing weapon incorporated the improved cartridge belt and direct feeding system, the quick-change barrel, and the recoiling “softmount” of the Einheitsmaschinengewehr (all-purpose machine gun), all features which had been introduced in the earlier MG34, which in its day was by far the most advanced machine gun in the world. The MG42 went one step further, and like the MP44 it was also made very largely of plain steel stampings, which meant that it could be manufactured five times as quickly as a comparable U.S. Browning machine gun.

The third was, ironically, a German copy of the American “Rocket Launcher, A.T., M1″, commonly known as the Bazooka, which fired a larger (3.5″) and more powerful shell than its U.S. 2.36” counterpart. The shaped charge of the larger German projectile was capable of defeating the armor on virtually all existing tanks and self-propelled guns. Jarrett urged that the then-U.S. bazooka round be increased in size and power. (Here again his remarks soon proved to be prophetic, as U.S. soldiers rushed from Japan to Korea in 1950 were to discover that their bazooka rounds bounced off the armor of the latest Russian T-34/85 tanks.)

The fourth item was a large German artillery shell, which had been made of cheap cast steel rather than as an expensive machining as were U.S. projectiles. Jarrett pointed out that the German round was thus much quicker and cheaper to make, although it produced the same degree of devastation on impact as did the machined projectile. The advantages were obvious.

The fifth and final example Jarrett piled on the table was a late-war German Panzerfaust (literally, the “tank fist”). This he regarded as being capable of improvement (as indeed it was during the final stages of the war), because the German design was a dedicated single-shot launcher which, once fired, could only be discarded. Jarrett recommended that development be undertaken to produce a similar device, but one that could be reloaded multiple times with separate grenades – exactly like the highly successful and ubiquitous East Bloc RPG, which still accounts for a high percentage of Coalition casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan to this day.

As an extremely dedicated and knowledgeable man but one with few social graces, Jarrett harangued the assembled officers with the dire prediction that if the U.S. did not recognize and copy the advances that these examples represented, the looming threat of Soviet aggression would be difficult if not impossible to overcome in the future. The days of NMA (not made in America) were over, he concluded.

Unfortunately, his forceful demeanor and the brusqueness of his presentation rubbed his august audience the wrong way, with the upshot that rather than inspiring improvements, his urgings were ignored.

Jarrett Released from Active Duty – Becomes Civilian Curator

The Harford Democrat article recording Jarrett’s retirement in 1966 contained the following brief comments regarding his release from active duty:

… Following his release from active duty in 1947, [Jarrett] continued the study of foreign materiel until the Korean War as civilian museum curator.

Jarrett on WWII Russian Ordnance

A further excerpt from the draft of his May, 1970 article contains Col. Jarrett’s typically pragmatic overview on the state of Russian ordnance during WWII and later:

Throughout the war we, along with the British, supported the Russian effort and sent Ivan boatload after boatload of equipment, fuel, various other supplies and food, and never even got thanks. But the Germans who first faced the Russian materiel and at the time easily forced the Soviets to retreat deep into the interior, later got up against some very remarkable Russian-designed ordnance. This material, in the final analysis of combat, surprised the Germans; and let us not forget that the Russian T-34 tank provided enormous support for the great Soviet offensives which eventually drove the Germans out of Russia. The Russian engineer was no fool, was brutally realistic and [was] eventually capable of producing such vast quantities of materiel, plus training of personnel, that one day Ivan drove the German armies out of Russia.

Many Russian pieces of ordnance were reliable and capable enough of excellent field performance that they were utilized by the Germans for combat replacement in the German Army. The Russian 7.62cm field gun, model of 1936, as one example, was used by the Germans in great numbers and eventually modified to improve its performance. It turned up in Libya in 1942. When I saw this piece I was deeply impressed, and from that time on I was anxious to examine any Russian piece of ordnance we could find. I was to see many of them prior to the war’s end, and again from Korea.

By the time we were involved in the follow-through for the D-Day venture in France, use of countless Russian pieces of ordnance by the Germans was found to be commonplace, and eventually we shipped a large collection of it as captured enemy materiel to Aberdeen. After the war we conducted a considerable examination of all these pieces and coupled it with reports made by the Germans (which we had captured), who had of course captured it first. Thus we managed to become well informed on all of it and its performance. When the Korean War broke out, we possessed priceless data and an understanding of the Russian equipment which we discovered was then in use by the North Koreans, including the Russian T-34 tanks equipped with the highly satisfactory Russian 85mm tank guns.

Jarrett Appointed Honorary Curator of the West Point Museum

Col. Jarrett’s friend and admirer Charles Yust, at the time the editor of the now long-defunct periodical Gun & Cartridge Record, who as discussed in Part III served under Jarrett at the Aberdeen Museum, recorded the following concerning a new accolade bestowed upon Col. Jarrett in 1952:

In the “Who’s Who” Department of our July [1952] issue, we ran the biography of Colonel G. B. Jarrett, and feel that it is in order to add a bit of new information which has recently come into our possession…

This was followed by an extract from an official letter dated November 16, 1952, signed by Superintendent of the United States Military Academy, West Point, New York, appointing Jarrett an Honorary Curator of West Point Museum:

y Dear Colonel Jarrett:

In recognition of your standing as an authority in the field of Modern Ordnance and in acknowledgement of your generous activities in an advisory and consultive capacity… it gives me great pleasure to appoint you an Honorary Curator of the West Point Museum…

It is a distinction for the Museum that it may welcome you as an “ex officio” member of its staff, and I trust you will have no objections to the recording of your name as an Honorary Curator in appropriate future publications of the Military Academy and the Museum…

A Jarrett Retrospective on the Acid Test: Combat Performance

Jarrett’s draft article of May, 1970 contains the following retrospective thoughts:

In more than 50 years of curio collecting, I have owned or cared for and tested at Aberdeen well nigh countless pieces of ordnance. Many were extraordinary, and yet many many items were well nigh worthless. Some enjoyed amazing physics lab performance and fooled people into thinking them capable of great military potential, but on the battlefield they fell far short of such performance…

It has been my privilege to observe a lot of armored force equipment in action, made movies or stills of these tests, fired their guns and shot at them to observe their armor qualities, and long ago came to the conclusion that most tanks over the years had more penalizing points than good ones. In our Ordnance Museum at Aberdeen we have had a remarkable collection of wheeled or half- and full-tracked vehicles, headed under the general title of Armor. These have come from World Wars I and II and since. Of all the collection only maybe 4 or 5 were outstanding fighting vehicles, by which one might expect to affect the outcome of WWII or of modern warfare. I’d list them as far as WWII is concerned as the German Panzer IV, with long-barrel 7.5cm gun, the Panther with its super-long 7.5cm gun, the U.S. Shermans with the British 17 pdr. A.T. gun (which the British put on the Sherman tank), the U.S. Sherman M4A3E8 (better known as the “Easy 8″on which we had put the then-new 76mm gun, and lastly the famed Russian T-34/85. All these tanks were capable of good movement and their gun performance did great hurt to the enemy, and did affect combat operations favorably for the side in question.

Jarrett Retires as Curator of the Aberdeen Ordnance Museum

Col. Icks’ Ordnance Journal article frankly sums up some of the accomplishments, setbacks and tribulations of Col. Jarrett’s remarkable career on the occasion of his retirement as Curator of the Ordnance Museum:

Before his demobilization from active duty [in 1947], Colonel Jarrett was offered a permanent commission in the Regular Army, but he decided to remain at APG as a Civil Service employee and did so until his retirement in 1966. He built up the Foreign Material Branch and the Ordnance Museum and during the Korean War played an important part in evaluating Chinese and Russian weapons and equipment in comparison with our own. A short-sighted Chief of Ordnance permitted another scrap drive, duplicating one which took place… during World War II. On both occasions, priceless museum pieces were lost forever. His own collection also suffered from lack of care while he was away. Most of the planes were in bad shape. He planned to move them to his new home on an estate near Aberdeen, but shipping costs precluded it. Eventually he sold two of the planes and most of the other weapons and moved the rest to Aberdeen.

He trained the first Ordnance Technical Intelligence team which went to Korea, but the job was then given to the Ordnance School in 1951. With fine disregard for their own part in the matter, higher authority criticized him for not having had such teams ready when they were needed. He found shortcomings in our equipment and was not reticent about letting it be known, in spite of incurring the wrath of higher-ups who preferred not to rock the boat.

He frequently got along on only a few hours of sleep a night, his usual working day being about 18 hours. His energy was boundless, and yet he was and is no recluse. With all this, he lived a normal social life with his wife and one daughter who now is married to a young Regular Army officer.

Jarrett Makes Aberdeen’s Collection “The Largest in the World”

The April 14, 1966 Harford Democrat article marking Col. Jarrett’s retirement as Curator of the Aberdeen Ordnance Museum records that “He added, from his personal collection, 9,000 items to the museum, making it one of the largest and finest collections in the U.S. Army.”

The April 4, 1973 article in the same newspaper goes further, calling the Aberdeen Ordnance Museum “the largest consolidated collection of such material in the world.”

The Ordnance Museum is Closed: Collection Moved to a Small Barracks

The Harford Democrat article dated April 4, 1973, titled “New Museum to Open”, records that the old pre-WWI French steel “Truscon” building, which had long served as the Ordnance Museum, was closed indefinitely in 1968 and the building slated for conversion into the new, modern home for the Headquarters of the U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command.

The real reason behind this move was related to the author by long-time Ordnance expert Harold Johnson, who explained that there was a total freeze on the construction of new buildings at Aberdeen at the time, but that existing structures could be “improved”. Col. Jarrett had antagonized a number of highly-placed officers in the military by this time, and when all the possible locations for the new headquarters were surveyed, the building housing his Museum was selected. In the end the only feature that was saved was the concrete pad – the building itself was completely demolished and a totally new structure was erected on the original floor.

According to the article in the November/December, 1971 issue of Ordnance, the Ordnance Museum was thenceforth housed ignominiously “in a small, wooden barracks-type building and reduced (in terms of materiel actually on display) to a few carefully selected items and files of photographs.”

The 1973 Harford Democrat article concurs, stating that:

Despite many attempts to find a new home at the Proving Ground for the Ordnance artifacts, none were successful. It was decided to mothball the thousands of items rather than permit them to either deteriorate, be destroyed, or transferred to other installations and thereby losing the largest consolidated collection of such material in the world.

Consequently the job of labeling, recording, protecting and packing these items was begun. The larger items were moved to an outdoor area to augment an existing display of tanks, self-propelled weapons and the large field and railroad artillery weapons systems.

In 1968 the Ordnance Historical Exhibit was opened in a one-floor wooden barracks type structure. It contained a few hundred selected items, models and photographs.

Col. Icks pulls no punches in describing how Jarrett’s outspoken attitude had contributed to this public humbling of the importance of his work, and thus of himself:

It was a hard blow for this sincere and earnest man to reach the age of retirement, but an even harder blow was to have higher authority decide that his Museum Building was needed for other purposes and that all the contents should be placed in mothballs indefinitely.

This was the last job that he supervised, almost like a man attending his own funeral. After the Army reorganization which did away with the Ordnance Corps as such, APG became just one of many testing facilities now controlled by the Army Materiel Command. All the Defense experts seemed to be looking ahead and apparently saw no need to look back or even to look around to see what the competition is doing.

Colonel Jarrett fought that kind of smugness and is still fighting it. He believes with all his heart in the United States and cannot understand anyone putting personal prestige ahead of his country’s interests. Stuffed shirts are his favorite target and, as can be imagined, he has intensely loyal friends and intensely bitter enemies.

The Ordnance Technology Foundation and the New Museum Building

Characteristically, however, Jarrett bounced back. As recorded in the final excerpt from Col. Icks’ Ordnance Journal article,

… [Jarrett] did not take the placing of his beloved Museum on the shelf as final, but is working hard toward the building of an Ordnance Center of Technology at APG supported by private subscription…

The article in the November/December, 1971 issue of Ordnance continues, recording that:

… ground was broken on August 27, 1971 [and] the new building will dominate the center of the APG’s Foreign Tank and Artillery Park… Arranged around the building will be the entire collection of foreign tanks and artillery while, inside, small ordnance items will be displayed.

The value of the present collection has been appraised at $24 million – and this tremendous treasure of armament artifacts and information has been guarded and kept together almost single-handedly by Col. G. Burling Jarrett, U.S.A. (Ret.), who, however, is the first to call attention to the help that has been received over the years from individuals and groups who have the Nation’s defense interests close at heart.

The April 4, 1973 Harford Democrat article further records that:

… six years of dedicated labor by local citizens, businessmen and both retired and active U.S. Army officers will be culminated when the Ordnance Center of Technology Foundation, Inc. donates the new structure to the Army.

The museum construction was undertaken by the foundation, a private corporation.

Museum Size, and Jarrett’s Role, Severely Curtailed

Despite his Herculean efforts, described above, which “single-handedly” guarded and conserved “this tremendous treasure of armament artifacts and information”, and then his dedication in organizing the non-profit Foundation which raised the money for the new museum structure, Col. Jarrett had meanwhile seen his future role reduced to that of a mere “adviser” to the museum.

In addition, despite the best efforts of the Foundation, which had envisaged a building of some 300,000 square feet capacity, the money raised proved sufficient only to underwrite a much more modest structure, which measures some 10,000 square feet.

A Typical Jarrett Broadside Greets Plans to Curtail Exhibits

In an article published in the April 26, 1973 edition of the Baltimore Sun, the new curator described in detail how he planned to arrange only a comparatively few exhibits in the new museum, in effect utilizing only 15 percent of the available material.

Typically, Jarrett objected strenuously to these plans in a letter to the Sun Editor, which is reprinted as follows:

Sir: I have read your article (The [Baltimore] Sun, April 1) on the Ordnance Museum with considerable amazement. You were duped into the background, for the article is not only misleading but parts are downright incorrect and could only be the work of misrepresentation on the part of the person interviewed. The picture is very distorted.

The Ordnance Center of Technology Foundation has had a difficult time over the past seven – eight years to realize this goal, and quite frankly your article at this critical time comes as a shock. That the story could be so diverted from the facts is a dreadful sham – and by one who has only personal aggrandizement as a basis for it.

[Gordon W. Chaplin] may be a good history teacher but is no ordnance expert. To condemn 85 per cent of this famous collection to stay in the warehouse by his display arrangement certainly is a dreadful shame. The current design of the display media while exquisite is exceptionally wasteful of space.

It is a great shame that your article had to appear at this time, less than two months prior to dedication… I have spent more than 30 years of effort on making that collection and creating a building and I must repeat: to condemn 85 per cent of it to the warehouse is inexcusable.

G. Burling Jarrett, Colonel U.S.A. (Ret.),
President of the Board,
Ordnance Technology Foundation.
Aberdeen.

An excerpt from a one-page In Memoriam to G. Burling Jarrett, Colonel, United States Army Reserve, Retired, records that the new museum did open as scheduled, with Jarrett himself serving as master of ceremonies:

On May 18, 1973, the completed structure was dedicated and accepted by the Army in an impressive program. Colonel Jarrett served as master of ceremonies. Until his final illness, he continued to serve as an adviser to the museum.

A final excerpt from the May 19, 1973 article in the Harford Democrat states as follows:

Thousands of historical ordnance items presently in storage will see the light of day on May 19, 1973 when the new Ordnance Museum is… turned over to the U.S. Army and opened to the public.

Priceless and historically irreplaceable, this collection represents more than a century of [U.S. and foreign] ordnance development.

A Final Tribute, to an “Outstanding American”

A letter to the editor published in the March/April, 1972 issue of Ordnance, the journal of the American Ordnance Association, titled “Outstanding Americans”, by Hanson W. Baldwin, contained the following tribute to Col. Jarrett:

I am delighted that Col. G. Burling Jarrett’s single-minded devotion over many years has at last paid off in a new building for the Ordnance Museum at Aberdeen… I well remember the days when Col. Jarrett, a born collector of ordnance of any kind, was fighting a lonely struggle for recognition of the importance of such a museum. For years the “museum” was his own back yard: only Col. Jarrett’s perseverance over the years overcame official indifference – and even opposition – lack of funds, and apathy.

The End of the Road

A final excerpt from the Harford Democrat of July 3, 1974 reads as follows:

Colonel George Burling Jarrett USAR (retired) died at his home in Churchville on Monday evening [July 1, 1974].

Col. Jarrett was Curator Emeritus of the Ordnance Museum at Aberdeen Proving Ground and his leadership within the Ordnance Center of Technology, Inc., a non-profit organization, resulted in the building of a new U.S. Army Museum at the Proving Ground. The structure was dedicated on May 18, and Col. Jarrett served as Master of Ceremonies.

He is survived by his wife, the former Marguerite Workman, a daughter, Mrs. Nancy Jarrett Travis of Oak Ridge, Tenn., and three grandsons, Michael, Richard and William Travis II.

Interment will be in Arlington National Cemetery at 1:30 p.m. [on July 5, 1974].