A new ammunition bag called the “Balanced Ammunition Delivery System” (BADS) is poised to revolutionize combat deployment of the MAG58 (US M240) and MG3 machine guns. Although these machine guns have been around for more than 60 years, there has never been a good way to feed them because they eject fired cases from the bottom. Feeding solutions have been limited to ammunition boxes hung far out on the left side of the gun to avoid impact with ejected fired cases. The offset load makes the gun unwieldy and difficult to control. It’s not unlike trying to steer a small boat with all the passengers sitting on one side and continually shifting their weight. These unwieldy bags have never been user friendly, so the best solution to date has been to provide the machine gunner with an assistant to hand feed in the linked belts.

Like ammunition boxes of the past, the BADS connects to the machine gun’s box mounting features located on the left side of the weapon, but the similarities end there. Unlike the old boxes, the BADS cradles the ammunition directly under the ejection port. From a weapon handling standpoint, it’s an ideal location for the 100 to 125 rounds of linked ammunition as the weight is located precisely on the gun’s center of gravity. Fired cases and links impact the top of the BADS but are directed out and to the right by a metal deflector plate located above the stored ammunition. Older ammunition boxes were never very popular because they continually jabbed the shooter’s mid-section which made the gun uncomfortable to carry and maneuver, but the underslung BADS does not have this problem.

“Why has it taken so long to develop an ammunition box with the weight of the ammunition along the gun’s CG,” you ask? It’s primarily because bottom ejecting guns are very fussy about anything blocking the path of ejected brass and links. Whenever the bottom of the machine gun gets close to the ground, a rock or the deck of a vehicle or ship, it will eventually result in a fired case bouncing back up through the ejection port to cause a malfunction called a “spinback.” The gun will be firing normally, then come to an abrupt halt. The operator finds a mangled case in the action, but he cannot positively attribute the stoppage as a fired case that suddenly bounced its way back up into the operating mechanism. For this reason, a spinback stoppage is hard to identify without high speed photography.

You might expect the design of an ammunition box to be a simple task. It is not. Linked ammunition does not like to be folded against itself. The round tips from one row have a bad habit of finding their way in between the tips of the rounds in the adjacent row. Put your palms together and interlock your fingers slightly, then try to slide your palms apart. See what I mean? When this happens in an ammunition storage system, a feed jam—or at minimum a feed hesitation—occurs. Unlike other storage systems for linked ammunition, BADS has no separators or other provision to prevent this. I have witnessed thousands of rounds fired through numerous design evolutions of the BADS, and there was never even a hint the ammo wasn’t feeding smoothly.

Considering how easily linked ammunition can jam during feeding, it’s quite surprising how little effort is required to load the BADS. The inventor, Mr. Joe Moody, told me he spent a lot of time working out the size and shape of his ammo box for ease of loading and jam prevention. It was a significant design challenge to determine the correct shape and angle of the deflection plate. I timed the bag being loaded several times. It never took the loader more than 10 seconds, regardless of whether he was standing, kneeling or in a crouched position.

The deflection plate serves another important purpose besides preventing spinbacks. Ejected fired cases are hot enough to burn the skin. When the BADS is fired, both ammunition and links go spewing out to the right—well away from the gunner. Spinbacks can even occur when ejected fired cases strike a mound of links and fired cases that have accumulated under the weapon. Eliminating both the spinback and burn hazard from fired cases is a welcome design feature.

One of the best features of the BADS is the belt holding pawl. In order to keep the belt from falling back into the box, a triangular steel spring drops into the space between linked rounds each time a new round of ammunition is fed. Since the belt holding pawl blocks the feedway, it must be disabled during loading. To do this, the soldier takes a fired case or live round and inserts it between the pawl and the outside wall of the box. This action holds the belt holding pawl out of the feed path so ammunition may be loaded. After loading, the round or fired case is removed, and the pawl springs into action.

Mounting the BADS on the MAG58 or M240 is simple. With the feed cover and tray raised, a keyhole slot on the BADS mounting pad engages a feed box button found on every U.S. and Belgian made gun. Returning the feed tray to the fire position and latching the feed cover closed securely clamps the BADS to the receiver. The feed box button and other engagement with the receiver prevent the BADS from being wrenched away from the gun during maneuvers. Mounting the MG3 BADS variant is much the same.

Another one of the surprising features of the BADS is its height. Normally, you’d expect an underslung ammunition bag like this to be an obstruction to achieving maximum elevation of the machine gun. FN’s plastic underslung ammunition box for the M249 SAW, for example, contacts the ground well before the pistol grip does, limiting how far the gun can be elevated. Even when the BADS is fully loaded, the first thing to contact the ground when shooting at elevated targets is the pistol grip.

While the bag was originally designed for 100-round belts, Mr. Moody found he could easily add an extra 25 rounds. This is accomplished even without compromising box length or limiting the maximum elevation of the weapon. It’s surprising to see that the pistol grip, and not the BADS, comes in contact with the ground first. Although U.S. 7.62mm ammunition comes packed in 100-round belts, we might imagine some tactical scenarios—particularly defensive—where having a few more rounds available would be an advantage. When the BADS is loaded to maximum capacity, only three magazine changes would be needed to fire a 500-round compliment.

Prior to the BADS, the newest ammunition bag for the M240B was developed by the U.S. Army. Like the old FN and German bags, the weight of the ammunition was again far out on the left side of the machine gun. Holding only 50 rounds, the Army bag opens with a button for easy loading, but loading is anything but easy. Layering a 50-round belt in the open bag seems like it would be simple, but the ammunition kept falling out when I tried it. I suppose there is some trick to it, but I have yet to find it.

The design intent of the Army’s small capacity bag is to minimize the annoying offset weight while providing the machine gunner a few rounds of ready ammunition until the assistant gunner arrives. Other than to stick around to help spot the enemy and to bring up extra ammunition, it would seem with the BADS the assistant gunner could be doing other things. Providing suppressive fire with his M4 while the gunner reloads, for example, would offer a tactical advantage on the battlefield.

Since the time I first witnessed the BADS in action, Mr. Moody has been refining his design for production, which is the current status. There are about 120 countries around the world using the M240 or MAG58 as their principal medium machine gun. About 30 countries still use the MG3, and the balance uses the side-ejecting Russian PKM. Ammunition boxes with capacities of 100 and 150 rounds are centrally located under the PKM to provide perfect balance, which the MG3 and MAG58/M240 will have with the BADS.

Mr. Moody says he has interest from a number of foreign users, and the U.S. military will soon be evaluating the BADS. The BADS improves weapon feeding and handling and eliminates a major drawback of the MAG58/M240 and MG3 when compared to the PKM. Overall, it’s a simple design, is long overdue and offers a new opportunity to reconsider how these medium machine guns are manned and deployed.

GE-Developed General Purpose 7.62mm Armor Machine Gun (Author’s Collection)

By George E. Kontis, P.E.

I had started a new job with Ajaxx Gun Works and was meeting with the Engineering Director to discuss my first assignment. Based on my past experience as a product engineer, the Director entrusted me with a project to find the cause and correction for malfunctions on a new automatic rifle that were occurring during automatic fire.

Two firearms technicians had been assigned to work under my direction. The Director asked me to proceed to the range immediately as the technicians would have the guns and the test equipment ready. “Are these two guys any good?” I asked him. “Beener has been with Ajaxx nine years and Chumwell has been here twenty two. Chumwell is the steward of the technician’s union,” he responded. “They both have done a lot of testing. Chumwell has an excellent attendance record. He only missed work when he blew the end of his finger off during a test. He put his finger over an open pressure transducer hole in a cannon barrel. Chumwell noticed he had forgotten to put the transducer in and decided he could plug it with his finger. He’s learned a lot since then.” That really wasn’t the answer I was looking for, but it did speak volumes. I let it all go as I was eager to begin the tests.

At the test site I found only one technician and introduced myself to Chumwell. When I inquired the whereabouts of Beener I learned that he went to get fans. Silently I told myself that fans might be a good idea to cool the guns and move the testing along more quickly. On the table was a stack of guns thrown together in a heap. Nearby was a pile of linked ammunition. “This can’t be our ammo– it’s linked.” I said. “These guns need loose ammo and delinking it will take a lot of our time.” Chumwell said somebody had forgotten to replenish their ammunition supply, but not to worry, because a couple of technicians who normally clean guns would be sent out to delink ammunition for us. “We’ll have to wait for them because we don’t delink ammo.” Chumwell announced. “It’s not in our job description.”

Finally Beener arrived with the fans and it was only then I learned that the fans were not for the guns, they were brought out so my two test technicians didn’t get hot while shooting. Poor dears! Beener switched on the three fans, acoustically transforming our quiet test site to the likes of an active airport runway. I watched as papers, cups, and other small items flew everywhere, and decided to keep my hearing protection on for the duration of the test.

I called Chumwell and Beener over for a meeting so I could outline the tests I wanted to have performed. When I got to the part where I talked about re-lubing the guns, Beener informed me that they didn’t have gun lube at the test site. They never bring it out because, in their opinion, the guns seem to have plenty lube when they come out of the gun cleaning department. Beener was noticeably unhappy when I informed him he would be making a trip back to the factory for lubricant, just as soon as our meeting was over.

It was close to noon by the time Beener arrived with gun lube and the gun cleaners had finished delinking our ammo. Over Chumwell’s objection that it was too close to their lunch hour, I insisted that we begin testing. Not long into the test cycle we encountered our first malfunction. I examined both the gun and the damaged fired case. The ejection port was supposed to be lengthened on this gun. I wondered if that operation could have been missed by the prototype shop. It was easy enough to check. I reached in my pocket for a scale and moved it in the direction of the ejection port. I was surprised to find Chumwell’s hand suddenly blocking mine. “If you want something measured, we’ll do it. We’re the engineering technicians,” he said. When I voiced my disapproval, Chumwell got testier. “If you decide to measure it on your own, I’ll file a union grievance.” Oddly, I found myself thinking about my grandmother. “You can tell if it’s going to be a good day by the way it starts,” she always said. If true, this was going to be a very long day and I was beginning to have my doubts about Ajaxx.

As the testing continued and the number of malfunctions mounted, I was curious as to how many stoppages we’d encountered. I asked Chumwell to hand me the test firing log so I could count them. Chumwell informed me there was no log. Yelling over the din of the three fans, he said: “See these marks here on the table?” He pointed to a series of vertical lines grouped in a series of four with a crossed line indicating the fifth. There were two like this and a single as well. The marks indicated we’d had eleven malfunctions. “We keep track with them this way. We also know how many rounds we bought out and how many we turn back in. That gives us our round count,” he announced proudly. “Hey, what more do you need to know?” I thought about mentioning that some of the malfunctions were failures to extract while others were short recoil failures. Their system didn’t account for the difference, but at this stage I decided it was pointless.

In the next round of tests, a part failed. I asked them to replace it so we could continue. “There are no spares out here,” came the reply from one of them. “It’s too much trouble to bring them out.” During the long wait for the replacement part to arrive from the plant, I noticed a screw had loosened on one of the guns. I pointed it out to Beener and asked him to tighten it. Moving faster than he had all day, he reached into a leather pouch on his belt and proudly drew out a multi-purpose tool. I stopped him. “Don’t we have any screwdrivers?” “Oh, we can do whatever we need with these,” Beener responded, smiling as he proudly pointed out the many features of the tool. I’d had enough. I walked over to each fan, turned it off and motioned to the two technicians in for a discussion. “The next time you guys run a test for me, I want to see a toolbox filled with real tools and a bottle of gun lube. I’m also going to draw up a sample range test log, and I want you two to keep a record of every round fired and every malfunction.” Beener and Chumwell were not happy, but I didn’t care. I found myself rethinking the wisdom of my decision to sign up with the Ajaxx Gun Works.

Now it’s time for a confession. I never worked for Ajaxx Gun Works and as far as I know, a company with that name has never existed. I have never worked with technicians named Beener or Chumwell either. The events related, however, are based on actual events that either happened to me or they were told to me by other engineers in our industry.

I told this tale to illustrate an important point. A good engineering technician is essential to the development and production of every firearm. In every place I’ve worked, I have been fortunate to have worked with outstanding technicians. There were, however, a very few who made the job more demanding.

I measure the performance of every firearms technician against the one who stood out above the rest. Bill Frigon received his training at the U.S. Government’s Springfield Armory and went to work for the General Electric Company, Armament Systems Division after the Armory closed in 1968. He was an amazing engineering technician.

Bill was assigned to work with me in the development of a 7.62mm General Purpose Armor Machine Gun (called GPAM and later designated AMG). The Army had funded GE, Hughes, Maremont and others, to develop a coaxial machine gun for the M1 Tank. The Army realized they had made a huge mistake by introducing the Springfield Armory designed M73—which they later called the M219.

Before we took the AMG to the firing range for the first time, Bill asked if he could spend some time in the drafting/design office. I was curious as to the reason for this unusual request and was quite pleased to learn that Bill wanted to go through the weapon cycle with the designers. He wanted to look at the individual piece part drawings to see how they were dimensioned and to see what materials and surface treatments were used. A few days later, I was less happy when Bill informed me he was not yet ready to go to the range. I reminded him he had already spent quite a lot of time up in the drafting department and down in the engineering lab. Now what was he doing?

Bill invited me to visit him in his work area so he could better explain. There he proudly showed me a large pile of compartmentalized plastic boxes filled with parts. He had labeled each compartment with the name and part number of each of the spare parts we’d built to support our testing. Bill also showed me a chart he’d constructed. With the drafting room’s help, he had developed a table of events for the gun cycle. Where did the feed stroke begin? Where did it end? What was the location of the barrel extension when the bolt began its acceleration to the rear? Significant events such as these were all indicated on Bill’s chart. Still somewhat a novice in the gun business myself, I didn’t fully appreciate why Bill was taking these great pains for a table of events. None of the other GE technicians ever did this. Bill told me he needed one more day to organize his tools and spares and he’d be ready to test.

We were joined at the firing range by Larry Brainard, a talented instrumentation technician. For our tests, Larry was testing out a new data collection system that used large reels of magnetic recording tape to store data. Larry had set up the system to record inputs from two transducers that were mounted to the gun bolt. One transducer would tell us the position of the bolt and the other would tell us bolt velocity during the time the bolt was cycling. Also new, was an ink pen plotter that printed out the data for us right at the test site.

After a few days of testing, I realized how valuable Bill was to our program. Each day before the testing started, Bill would review our results from the day before, present data and show trends that helped us decide what tests we would run that day. There was never a want at the test site. Spares, tools, lubrication, and cleaning equipment were always on hand, thanks to Bill. Bill requested that he be the only one to maintain the firing records. On these, he kept a meticulous accounting of the rounds loaded, rounds fired, and malfunctions that occurred. When there was a malfunction, Bill made careful note of where in the cycle it had occurred. He marked the fired case or the round damaged by the malfunction with the round number for later examination.

Sometimes a part needed a minor modification—a small chamfer or a surface polished, for example. It was something we could do right at the range without returning to the factory. Whatever modification was done, Bill gave a complete explanation right in firing log. He often added a sketch to explain the change so that if it was determined to be helpful, it could be added to the drawing in order that future parts could be properly modified using the machine tools at the factory.

Bill, Larry, and I had a lot of fun with the new instrumentation. It was great to have the data presented immediately following the firing, so the effects of changes could be seen right away. The only drawback was the time it took us to figure out the velocity of the bolt at any given point in the cycle. This required determining at what time the event occurred using the time-displacement plot and then finding the bolt velocity at that same point in time using the time-velocity plot. There had to be a better way.

The three of us put our heads together and came up with a new approach. Since we had all the velocity and displacement data recorded, could we plot out the velocity with displacement and eliminate time altogether? We tried it and it worked! With Bill’s table of events in the gun cycle, we could tell exactly how fast the bolt was moving at every point in the cycle. The first time we saw it we were excited, but was this method really giving us accurate information? We noticed a curious dip in bolt velocity that occurred at the same point on every plot as the bolt was going forward. What was that? A quick look at Bill’s table of events chart and we knew the answer. The velocity dip corresponded exactly with the point where the bolt picked up a new round from the feed tray. At this point, a tab on the link firmly engaged the extractor groove on every round. In order to feed the round, the bolt had to overcome the grip of the tab on the extractor groove—hence the drop in velocity. During automatic fire we could watch the plotter pen go through the cycles and could see how consistent the velocity remained throughout the burst. Plotted data indicated we had an excessive amount of bolt bounce which would have to be addressed before we went into production. We ended up using these plots of velocity and displacement (we dubbed them VD curves) for every single barrel gun developed at GE thereafter.

I’ve worked with a lot of engineering technicians through the years. Most were very good, some were excellent, a few were Beeners and Chumwells, but in all of my years, there has only been one Bill Frigon.

Try to name a firearm that doesn’t use at least one spring? I can’t think of a single one, and it’s likely that none exist. The reason for considering the question is that springs are not reliable when used in weapon systems, so the guns with fewest springs tend to be the most reliable. The reason for this is not because springs are difficult to design correctly, hard to make properly or prone to failure. In fact, the opposite is true. Consider, as an example, a typical helical spring you might find in a ball point pen or one of those huge springs under your car’s chassis that cushion the ride. Those springs give reliable performance over many cycles, and are rarely broken. While they are the same kinds of springs found in guns, there are important reasons why those in a weapon system are less reliable.

In order to design a helical spring properly, the spring designer calculates the stresses at maximum spring compression and compares this stress level with what is recommended for the wire material. It’s all pretty easy if there is adequate space, but for gun systems there is usually not enough room. This is because the firearm needs to be as small and light as possible, forcing the designer to complete the design with at least a few overstressed springs.

Another step in the spring design process is to check the stress level at solid height – that is the point of maximum deflection when all the spring coils are touching. Some designers skip this step, thinking that they have designed the mechanism in such a way that the spring will never be compressed to solid height. This is a big mistake. The shock, or impact loads, from firing cause spring surge waves to travel back and forth on the spring. These surge waves can cause adjacent spring coils to touch or come very close to touching, which is precisely the same effect as compressing the spring to its solid height. In a study performed by Mauser in Germany, the life of impact loaded springs was determined to be in the range of 3,000 to 10,000 cycles before failure, compared to 100,000 cycles in a normally loaded spring.

You can get the feel of spring surging from a simple experiment using any of the AR-15 series (M4/M16, etc.). First, check the weapon to assure there is no ammunition or magazine present. Draw the bolt & bolt carrier to the rear and latch it there using the hold back latch. Shoulder the weapon with your cheek firmly against the buttstock. Point the weapon in a safe direction, depress the release button on the hold back latch and allow the bolt assembly to fly forward. After the bolt slams home, you’ll hear and feel the surge waves traveling up and down the main drive spring housed below your cheek.

Shock loads from firing are highest when they are in line with the firing barrel, so spring orientation on weapons is important. High shock loads can affect the spring so that it doesn’t give the right load at the right time and, as Mauser found, these springs are also more prone to failure. You may agree this is all common sense, but all too often springs are aligned with the gun barrel when the mechanism could have been designed with the spring perpendicular to it.

When springs are highly stressed beyond what is termed the elastic limit of the material, they have reached the point where the deflected metal does not spring back completely to its original shape. Springs that reach the elastic limit become noticeably shorter and are unable to reach the same level of performance as when they were newly installed. Springs that have shortened in this manner have taken what is known as a permanent set and should be replaced to maintain peak performance.

Safety is another consideration that should not be ignored. Springs by their nature store energy. That same energy that is useful in operating the weapon also represents a safety risk during assembly/disassembly. Care should be taken to design the mechanism so springs can’t launch components or themselves to endanger the maintainer. The drive spring of the M1911 pistol, for example, can easily be launched and become dangerous during disassembly and assembly. It is primarily the potential danger from these spring-induced hazards that Operator and Armorer’s manuals carry a warning that safety glasses should be worn during maintenance.

Many firearms are designed with little consideration as to how they will eventually be maintained. For military and law enforcement weapons, where trained armorers will be disassembling the weapon and replacing components, it is unwise to use springs of the same diameter in different lengths. Doing so makes it far too easy for the soldier or maintainer to mix them so they end up in the wrong place. Along these lines, springs that are not symmetric should only be able to be assembled one way—the correct one.

So far we have confined our discussion to helical compression springs since they are the most common and most reliable types used in guns. Round wire torsion springs (mousetrap type) have firearm applications, but are prone to failure from their highly stressed ends. Leaf springs and flat springs are found on guns but also have issues as they are easily deflected to the failure point, either by a snag hazard or by operator carelessness. Generally considered the worst choice among common spring types is the extension spring, or “screen door spring” due to its high failure rate at the loop or hook at the ends. Besides using springs as energy storage devices in gun systems, they are also used to dissipate energy. Buffer springs are purposely designed to convert kinetic energy of motion into heat. Here are some spring types commonly found in firearms:

Helical Compression Springs

To best understand how a helical compression spring works, first consider the torsion bar. A torsion bar is a long straight piece of metal, usually steel, that is held at one end while the other end is twisted. The greater the twist angle, the greater the spring force. The longer the bar, the less torque it takes to twist it. As long as the bar has even dimensions, there will be an even twist all along its length. A helical compression spring works exactly the same way. It is simply a torsion bar wound into a helix and its “springiness” comes from the wire twisting as the spring is compressed.

Provided they are able to be designed to work within reasonable stress levels, helical compression springs are likely to be the most reliable type spring for a gun application. They must be sized and used properly, which includes providing spring guidance. This is to prevent buckling – where the spring moves sideways and longitudinally as it is being compressed. Springs are very prone to buckling when their length is more than four times their diameter. Springs should be supported by a rod or confined to work in a hole to minimize buckling.

Recognizing that most gun springs are overstressed, a good design engineer or reliability technician should take note of the progressive shortening of the springs during endurance testing in order to establish a replacement rate. This information can eventually be incorporated into the operator’s and armorer’s manuals. If maintainers are aware of when they should replace springs, there is a better chance that they’ll do it.

Nested Springs

Another way to maximize the energy capability of a helical spring is by nesting two or more springs, placing one inside the other. For a nested pair, the designer will size the inner spring to take 1/3 the load with the outer spring designed to take the remainder. To avoid interference between coils, one spring is wound left hand and the other right hand. These springs may even touch during use, but a little bit of friction between them is useful in dampening spring surge. Nested springs introduce a maintainability risk because the maintainer must be trained that the application requires more than one spring. By itself, a single spring will not have the required force and system reliability suffers.

Shaped Springs

Helical compression springs in guns are not always made of round wire. In applications that require the spring provide the maximum travel before all of the coils touch at the solid height; a flat wire spring is sometimes used. These usually have to be custom made from specially drawn wire. Shaped springs are prone to buckling and should always be used with an internal guide rod or in a hole.

Stranded Wire Springs

Of the springs discussed thus far, the design objective has been to deflect the spring to store energy and then to gain back as much of that energy as possible. There is a special kind of spring used in guns that is specifically designed to give back slightly less than the full amount of energy, with the balance going into friction. These are called stranded wire springs as they are formed into a helix from a wire made from three or more wires twisted together. During use, the twisted wires develop friction and that friction energy is used to dampen the effect of spring surge. The damping effect is more pronounced at high velocity. Stranded wire springs were first found on the battlefield in Russian machine guns used in the Spanish Civil War in 1936 at a time in history when Spain was receiving aid from Russia. Observers noted these machine gun springs lasted three to five times longer than comparable single wire springs. For a proper stranded wire spring to work correctly, the strands must be wound in the opposite direction to the coils of the spring. If they are not, the twist that develops in each coil will unwind the strands. If there are four or more strands, a center wire is required for the strands to wrap around or else the wrap is unstable.

Extension Springs

Extension springs, or “screen door springs” as they are sometimes called, are rarely used in guns for a very good reason. The coiled ends of these springs are normally folded perpendicular to the spring coils in order to connect the ends to the items being drawn together under the spring load. The stresses are much higher at the ends of the spring, making failure at this point common. Additionally, extension springs are easy to overstress if pulled too far apart, and it’s the operator or maintainer, who is generally responsible for this failure mode.

With all of the above in mind, there are some successful applications. The M107 .50 Caliber sniper rifle uses four extension springs as the recoil spring for the barrel. Ronnie Barrett ignored the spring design experts and figured out how to make these work. In his M107, the extension springs don’t have the hooks at the end, but use a separate metal end that is retained by a set screw. A second set screw is used like a jam nut to prevent loosening and loss. Oddly, the screws don’t fall out much and the springs are pretty reliable. The Harris Bipod is another application where extension springs also survive the rigors of combat.

Torsion Springs

The free arm on the helical torsion spring can reach out far from the spring centerline to perform a load or retaining function. The helical torsion spring is also useful in storing energy for rotating components or to sometimes to cushion shock loads in them. Torsion springs are often used in small arms for trigger return springs, and if they are not overstressed and wound carefully they often survive without problems. When they do fail, it’s usually the highly stressed tail of the torsion spring that goes. There are other design peculiarities. The motion to wind these springs must always be in the direction that tends to wind up (tighten) the coil, otherwise the ends coils bend outward and fail because they end up carrying the entire load.

Flat or Round Wire Leaf Springs

In a well-deserved last place for desirability in small arms and medium cannons are the round wire and flat leaf springs. Since they can be overstressed by the user, they are sometimes designed with limit stops to prevent this failure mode. Heavy shock loads from firing can sometimes reach a level to disengage these springs from what they are intended to retain, so care must be taken to minimize their weight.

Non-Circular Helical Compression Springs

Anyone who has ever disassembled a rifle magazine knows that helical compression springs don’t have to be round. Magazine springs are usually formed into a rectangle with round ends and are all too often designed by cut and try. This is unfortunate because it’s relatively easy to design these with the normal design equations for round springs. One need only to calculate the distance around one spring coil of a non-circular spring and determine an equivalent round wire spring with the same circumference. Use the proportions of this imaginary spring with spring design equations to yield final results for the odd shaped springs. Accuracy is generally within 5 to 10% of the actual loads and stresses.

Belleville Springs (Also Called Belleville Discs or Washers)

These cone discs are usually stamped from high carbon steel. They are usually held on a rod via a central hole and used for buffering high loads or for taking up a small amount of tolerance (slack) in clamping adjustments. These springs are stiff, having such a high spring rate (stiffness) that most applications require several of them. Since they can be stacked two ways – parallel or series – here’s what happens. When they are in parallel – that is, all the washers stacked in the same direction – they yield double the load of a single washer for the same amount of deflection, triple the load for three washers and so on. When two washers are stacked in opposite direction – or series – the result is double the deflection of a single washer for the same load. Three washers give triple the deflection and so on. Washers can also be stacked in both parallel and series patterns permitting the designer to tailor the properties of the spring stack for the desired combination of load and travel.

Belleville springs are often used as buffers with the friction between the mating surfaces converting spring energy to heat, dampening the load. They are relatively reliable but do have features that make them undesirable for gun systems. Due to their nature, Belleville washers are heavy. This is not only because of the large number of springs needed, but also because of the rugged support housing and guide rod required. Belleville springs are subject to metal fatigue and failures are usually slow but sure. Realizing the Belleville pack is not functioning because of a failure is generally after other gun parts have already been damaged. Since Bellevilles are normally housed and well-secured in a rugged tube that is packed with grease, it’s not easy or pleasant to inspect them. Belleville springs are also a nuisance to service. The armorer must be trained to stack these springs correctly when replacing them; otherwise the spring rate will be totally incorrect. Since there are always multiple stacking possibilities, this translates into a lot of ways of replacing them incorrectly.

Ring Springs

Patented in the 1920s by German inventor Ernst Kreissig, the ring spring is an unusual design, with limited weapon applications in recoil buffering systems of aircraft cannons and heavy machine guns. The ring spring is so efficient in absorbing energy; it gives back only about 1/3 of what it takes in.

Ring springs work in pairs, with an inner ring spring that nest in an outer ring spring. The inner ring has an angled surface on the outside diameter and the outer ring has a mating angled surface on the inner diameter. When an axial load is applied, the mating angled surfaces cause the inner ring to get smaller while the outer ring grows larger. The tremendous amount of friction generated between them is responsible for the large amount of energy transformed into heat.

Ring springs are designed to be well-lubricated as they work, so they are usually packed in a sealed housing. They are easy to design correctly and failures are rare. If they do break, they can continue to function, but with much less energy absorption. A stack of ring springs can easily tilt in the assembly if the load is removed fully, so for that reason they are always used with a preload – a fixed amount of compression that exists even when these springs are not in use. This preload amount is at a minimum 4,000 pounds (1,800 kg), so extreme care must be taken during disassembly and maintenance. Ringfedern, a manufacturer of ring springs, and the brand most commonly used in gun designs, has this warning in their manual:

Rings in spring cartridges without pretension components must only be transported and stored when protected in a casing. To prevent jammed rings from being forced apart explosively by the stored energy (Caution, Danger), they can only be released within a safety enclosure by hitting the rings with a hammer stroke, after the rings have been carefully tied up with a strong rope.

Design Considerations/Conclusions

It is difficult and sometimes impossible to correctly design a spring for a gun, and every time a new one is introduced, it lowers the overall reliability of the system. Experienced engineers minimize the number of springs and approach their design with caution. Mr. Bob Chiabrandy, Staff Engineer at GE’s Armament Systems Department, had a knack for producing simple gun designs with minimal parts and few springs. During one design project I recall him telling me: “When I’m forced to use a spring, I make sure it does more than one job.” It would take Bob a little bit more time to think through his design approach, but when he would specify a bolt drive spring, for example, you could be sure this spring was also serving to retain a takedown latch, anchor the backplate, or perform some other task. All of Bob’s gun designs were like this – a minimum number of springs, the same spring used in multiple locations, and size variations that left no doubt in the operators mind as to their proper location in the design.

The Model 1896 Broomhandle Mauser pistol saw extensive use in World War I. It was reliable, accurate, and very popular because it was easy to maintain, requiring no tools for assembly or disassembly. Much of the design success was due to the fact that there were few parts, and only one of them was a threaded fastener. A single screw, used to secure the pistol grips to the weapon frame, has today become the source of an urban legend. The story has it that Paul Mauser reluctantly used this screw because he could not find any other way to fasten the wooden grips to the pistol’s frame. Reportedly, this so frustrated Mauser, at design completion he sat down and cried.

Closer to the truth is that it was not Paul Mauser, but three brothers working in his Oberndorf factory who designed the Broomhandle Mauser and it is not likely there were any tears shed over this hot selling product. In any event, it makes for a good story and emphasizes some important points. The first being that over one hundred years ago, some clever gun designers led the way by demonstrating they could design a gun that requires no tools, no threaded joints, and no fasteners. What’s more, these designers had already learned there were very valid reasons to avoid threads of any kind when designing a gun. More than a hundred years later, it seems we’ve learned very little from the Mauser example.

Threaded fasteners are a handy way to connect parts and threaded joints make it easy to connect parts together – so what is the big objection to their use? Threaded fasteners are unreliable. Vibration from firing shakes them to the point where they loosen and sometimes fall completely out. Threaded joints are problematic because of the motion between the male and female threads during firing. They look and feel tight under static conditions, but during firing, high shock loads cause movement in the joint. Sometimes you hear it described as “rocking on the threads.” Care must be taken in the design of the threaded interface so this doesn’t happen. The tight fit between threads in gun systems is much less rigid than you might think, and can and does cause problems.

Since the late 1800s when the Broomhandle Mauser was designed, extensive studies have been conducted to understand why threads loosen. Engineers studied their use, focusing first on what happens during the tightening process. They determined that a threaded fastener is nothing more than a very stiff spring, which becomes stretched, twisted and bent during tightening. After being torqued into place, the only forces that hold it in place are friction forces that occur at contact points. If they are subjected to high vibrational loads the threads will eventually loosen. They further determined that joints loaded in shear (perpendicular to the threads) vibrate loose more often than joints loaded in tension.

In the late 1960s an American engineer, Gerhard Junker, conducted mathematical studies on bolt torque equations and presented what is known today as “Junker’s Theories.” Junker determined that when the bolt is stretched during tightening, there is enough torque created to cause the bolt to loosen. When subjected to high vibrational loads the male and female threads slip. Simultaneously, the area where the bolt touches the joint surface loses contact with the component being held so that the frictional holding force in this area is also lost. With the holding friction gone, both ends of the bolt are freed and the energy stored in the bolt from tightening cause the bolt – not the nut – to rotate loose.

The use of any threaded fastener or joint on a firearm gives the assembler, soldier or maintainer the responsibility of applying the correct amount of torque to each fastener or joint. Depending on their particular body strength and the tool used, too little or too much torque can be applied. This is a disadvantage since over tightening and under tightening are both problems. This is sometimes “corrected” by specifying the amount of torque that should be applied. A host of new problems accompany this. Specifying a torque load is fine for the gun assembly department, but in the field it requires a torque wrench and either a technical manual or a good memory to recall the torque requirements. We Americans make it even harder for the rest of the world by failing to give the metric torque equivalents. Torque wrenches everywhere else in the world read in newton-meters rather than our inch-pounds. Returning to Junker’s theories and the discoveries by other engineers, unless some serious provision is made for maintaining preload under the shock loads of firing, why would you bother to specify torque in the first place?

In the past 100+ years, few gun designs are up to par with what we might now call the “Mauser Challenge.” Instead, designers have attempted to rely on “self locking” fasteners and other means that have been developed since the days of the Broomhandle Mauser. These can be classified in three categories: 1. Devices added to mechanically retain the fastener such as lock washers or retaining wire. 2. Nuts or bolts with deformed threads or ones that come with patches of anti-loosening materials formed on the threads. 3. Liquid solutions called thread locking compounds that are applied directly to the threads during installation.

Mechanical devices that include lock washers, toothed lock washers, Belleville washers, wave washers, and jam nuts are all better than nothing but none work very well. Some that do better are castellated nuts (also called crown nuts) and lock wire, which is sometimes called safety wire. After the castellated nut is torqued on, the assembler passes a cotter pin through a hole in the bolt, assuring retention. Properly installed lock wire assures that the nuts or bolts can’t loosen and fall out. Unhappily, neither the pinned castellated nut nor the lock wire is it very effective in preventing loss of preload. Just a tiny bit of rotation from vibration causes the fastener to tighten against what retains it while the preload is lost or reduced. Lock wire requires special pliers and reasonable skill to install. Both are a hazard once it’s in place because lock wire and cotter pins have sharp edges that can injure the end-user or maintainer.

There have been successful methods of simultaneously maintaining preload and retaining fasteners. On one of their aircraft cannons, the Russians ran bolts through the outside of the receiver to hold cams and guides on the inside. After installation and torqueing, each of the bolt heads was welded to the receiver body. It wasn’t pretty or elegant, but the bolts held their torque and didn’t vibrate out. The U.S. Marines discovered a similar solution for the bolts that kept loosening and falling out of their tank treads. When treads were new, they made a quick run through the surf and the bolt heads rusted tight to the treads.

Sometimes the threads of nuts or bolts are modified to create an interference fit with the mating thread. These have limited success on firearms because any time the nut or bolt is removed, the deformed thread becomes “undeformed” and looks like a normal thread. Other types have a patch of nylon added to the threads to prevent loosening, but after removal very little of the nylon patch remains. Once removed, these fasteners should be replaced with new ones and the maintainer must be trained in the importance of discarding used hardware. Unfortunately replacement hardware availability and adequate training are not always up to par in combat conditions so reliability is compromised.

Last but not least are thread locking compounds. These are liquids that come in a color coded bottle to aid the designer or user in determining just how serious he or she is in maintaining the joint preload and the securing of nuts or bolts. Depending on which color is selected, retention ranges from locking the threads just enough for easy removal by mechanical tools to compounds that require the joint to be heated with a special heat gun before loosening can occur.

Loktite is the thread locking brand most commonly used on gun systems, and I can assure you, their factory representatives hate to visit when I’m around. It’s not that their product doesn’t work. It does, but there is a high price to pay for using it. In order for it to work correctly, the threads must be totally free of lubricant or protective oils, so they must be degreased before application. Keep in mind that almost all threaded fasteners have been coated with protective oil just after manufacture to prevent corrosion. You can be relatively sure that threads right out of the box are greasy. If the degreasing operation is missed, Loktite doesn’t work.

Thread locking compounds have a finite shelf life and every bottle has an expiration date. The next time you see a bottle in an arms room or in an armorer’s tool box, check the date. Don’t be surprised to see ancient bottles lying around because it seems nobody ever likes to throw them away. There is more. Since it’s a liquid it’s easy to apply where you want it and even easier for it to go in places where it doesn’t belong. I’ve seen more than my share of field problems caused by a sloppy application.

Once Loktite is applied and the joint is torqued to the correct value, there is no way to tell that Loktite is present or that a sufficient amount was applied. This presents a challenge to the Quality Control Inspector. Correctly applied from a fresh bottle on a properly prepared surface – it works. Add the human element, and all bets are off. It’s easy to make mistakes in application and even easier to miss the application altogether should the assembler lose focus – particularly when multiple threads are involved.

I suggest you buy or borrow a Broomhandle Mauser. Take it apart, and observe the ease of assembly and disassembly. Fire a few aimed shots and note the high level of accuracy achieved from the fixed barrel. Next, attach the wooden holster to the backstrap and fire it from the shoulder to see how the accuracy further improves. Remove the screw from the grips and ponder ways of replacing it with something that doesn’t have threads. Let your mind wander to high mountain tops in Afghanistan, where soldiers are challenged with torque wrenches, lock wire, and special tools. Think about civilization’s last 100 years of progress in engineering. Remember the 1896 Broomhandle Mauser, and then have a good cry.

(The opinions expressed are solely those of the author.)

The instant his front and rear sights were aligned with the bull’s-eye, he squeezed off a round. Clearing the fired case, he raced to examine the target. This time he was trying a new sabot, designed to come apart immediately upon exiting the barrel, allowing the fléchette to fly on its own. His face fell when he saw the target. The elongated hole was proof positive the fléchette was tumbling end over end. Maybe it was because there were no fins. Surely a phonograph needle was not the ideal fléchette. If only he could watch the projectile in slow motion! He was sure he could easily have figured out a solution.

In spite of this failure, he was certain this would be the direction for ammunition of the future. The year was 1934, and the shooter was a fourteen year-old named Irwin Barr. Win, as he preferred to be called, was no stranger to experimentation with firearms and explosives. Only recently had he finished working off his punishment for detonating a homemade explosive charge in the basement. The force from the blast blew pieces of the linoleum away from the floor of the kitchen, located just above. Win was surprised at the magnitude of the explosion, considering he had gleaned the blasting powder formula from a well-known bomb maker’s manual, The Encyclopedia Britannica.

For much of his youth, Win’s heroes were inventors, with gun designer John M. Browning and engineer Nikola Tesla heading the list. He added Thomas Edison after visiting his laboratory, not far from Win’s home in Linden, New Jersey. Win had a creative mind, artistic talent, and a keen imagination. He spent most of his spare time drawing and building models of bombs, tanks, guns, and aircraft and his boyhood dreams included designing all of the small arms for the U.S. military. Deciding on a technical career after high school, he entered the two-year program at the Casey Jones School of Aeronautics in Newark, NJ. His choice of schools stemmed from two factors: His father, a family doctor, had died when Win was 16, leaving insufficient money for Win’s college tuition. Casey guaranteed an engineering job to anyone who completed its rigorous program. Win accepted the challenge and became one of the few attendees to succeed in that challenge.

Excelling in all of his engineering and drafting courses, Win completed the Casey program and found employment at the Glen L. Martin Company (today after multiple mergers known as Lockheed Martin). Win worked in Martin’s “bull pen” among other designers and engineers in an ocean of drafting boards. His assignments involved creating extensive layouts on huge sheets of drafting paper. Using a pencil and a drafting machine in designing aircraft gun turrets and aircraft was slow and tedious, as was using tables, charts, and slide rules in making structural and aerodynamic calculations.

In many respects Win was a traditional engineer, using tolerance analysis and engineering computations rather than “cut and try” to improve the chances of a first-time success. It was a different culture in those days. It was engineering based, innovative excellence that was the real driver for everything. Where Win differed was in his approach; it was always innovating, always pushing the technology envelope as far as it would go. Often, he didn’t solve a problem, he defined it.

In 1944, Win left Martin to serve in the Army Air Corps. Because of his experience, Private Barr was assigned to the Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to work on rockets and rocket launchers. His successful rocket launcher design was slated to be demonstrated for U.S. and British military personnel. The design had been demonstrated previously but at the last minute Win decided he could shorten the time between launches. His untested new design exploded during the demo and Win learned an important lesson that lasted a lifetime – never demo anything that hasn’t been thoroughly tested. In spite of this setback, the rocket launcher, in its original configuration, was standardized and Sgt. Barr was recognized with a commendation medal. While still in the Army, he continued his fléchette experimentation at home, using the flame from his gas range to heat the heads of sewing needles before hammering them to form one pair of the fins while fashioning the opposing pair from a piece of razor blade.

When the war ended, the Glen L. Martin Company welcomed Win back, promoted him to armament engineer, and gave him a new challenge: to work as Group Engineer on America’s first liquid fuel rocket, the Viking. Others working on this project included a German expatriate named Werner Von Braun and Robert Goddard, the inventor of inertial guidance. Von Braun must have been surprised by Win’s rejection of the rocket steering technology, which the Germans had used successfully for their V2. Instead, Win and two of his co-workers favored a gimbaled rocket engine and jet controls for roll, pitch and yaw. The three were awarded a patent for their successful design innovation, whose method is still used today as the preferred means of steering rockets.

Working for Glen L. Martin was interesting particularly after the success of the Viking rocket system, but Win and some of his fellow engineers had other ideas. They wanted to work on guns and gun-related projects, not on aircraft alone. As these interests were not on the Martin agenda, the splinter group left to form Aircraft Armaments Incorporated. This new company would focus on research and development to encourage the most advanced thinking in the defense industry.

Win and his partners invested in an 80-acre tomato farm in Cockeysville, just north of Baltimore, MD. It was an ideal location, close enough to customers in the Washington, D.C., area, yet far enough away to have firing ranges and expansive R & D facilities. Their venture almost ended in disaster when the military unexpectedly shifted its interest to arming aircraft with missiles and no longer wanted guns in turrets. Fortunately, the fledgling company secured some contracts developing tank turrets and was able to sustain the business.

At 30 years old, Win had a mind that couldn’t stop inventing, self-confidence bolstered by his success in rocketry, and the Army-adopted rocket launcher. Due in a large part to Win’s hard work and influence, Aircraft Armaments Incorporated enjoyed success after success. Win not only came up with many unique armored vehicle innovations, during this time inventing the long rod penetrator and puller sabots which increased by tenfold the ability to penetrate armor, he also invented a lightweight amphibious tank, a new vision block, and high-strength bearings for heavy-load application. Wisely, Win insisted on patenting every one of his inventions, helping to secure the future of the company he helped found.

An early challenge faced by AAI (the name now shortened after a “no brainer” naming contest) was to assist Springfield Armory in the design of a new .50 caliber machine gun. Opportunities for innovation included the call for a Browning cycle with an extremely short receiver to enable the gun to fit within the tiny cupola of the new M60 main battle tank. A new push-through link replaced the rearward end-stripping link of the M2. The customer insisted on a dual-rate weapon – low rate for tank application and high rate for short-time on-target applications – and the resulting weapon was successfully designed and designated the M85 machine gun.

At the end of WWII, military studies showed that a lightweight rifle system was desirable for use in concert with an onboard grenade launcher. In 1951, the Army initiated its SALVO program, which sought a weapon firing multiple projectiles to increase hit probability; requiring not only a lighter weight rifle but also lighter weight ammunition. Here, Win Barr thought, was the perfect opportunity to further develop his all but lifelong dream – a fléchette firing rifle. Although Win could not interest the Army in the AAI approach at that time, he remained convinced he had the best solution and pursued further development of the fléchette model with in-house money.

As pressures increased at work, tragedy struck on the home front in 1957 with the sudden death of Win’s wife. His AAI partners and their families provided sympathy and support as Win handled this loss. A widower with four children, he remarried in the fall of 1959 and, with his wife Dorothy, moved the family to Lutherville, close to AAI’s Cockeysville headquarters.

In the mid 1960’s, Win’s responsibilities grew when AAI was awarded a development contract for the M203 grenade launcher. Eliminating the stand-alone launcher, the AAI grenade launcher would give a platoon a grenadier without the expense of losing a rifleman. The military’s 1968 adoption of the M203, along with its adoption of the M85, was a great source of pride for Win and his team. During this same timeframe, Win initiated the development of an underwater pistol and the construction of an important asset for AAI, an underwater firing range.

When the SALVO project was terminated, the Army replaced it with the Special Purpose Individual Weapon program (SPIW). This time AAI did receive government funding, and the timing was perfect because now Win had the ballistic stability information he needed for the projectiles. It was no coincidence that the fléchettes fired in Win’s XM19 rifle had a strange resemblance to the Viking missile, because Win used the Viking’s wind tunnel test results in their design. AAI had competitors, of course, but the accuracy of the XM19 could not be equaled. While the burst fire effectiveness was significant, the failure to meet single shot accuracy requirements at long range was the principal reason the project ended

At the same time the XM19 was in development, AAI worked on a 22mm cannon for the new armored personnel carrier, which today is known as the Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle. TRW introduced a gas-operated candidate designed by Gene Stoner while General Electric offered a recoil-operated cannon. These competitors offered traditional approaches, but that was not the case for AAI. Win sought the reliability of gas operation but didn’t want the troublesome gas residue that he knew would foul the weapon. He achieved this by using a unique ammunition concept with a primer that acted as a piston to power the weapon. He had successfully deployed this system on the SPIW and adapted it to a cannon sized weapon. Other weapons used a variation on this ammunition design – a closed piston pusher so gas did not escape from the cartridge. This concept was used on underwater pistols, grenade launchers, and special weapons for clearing enemy tunnels in Vietnam.

During his tenure as Vice President for R & D, Win had fine-tuned his philosophy and his means for motivating his engineering staff. When he became AAI President in 1969, in the course of his typical 10-hour day, he would work his way through the entire plant, from the lathes and mills to the firing ranges and engineering offices. At any time, pretty much anyone could expect a visit from Win, who always was eager to discuss progress on each project, to offer encouragement, and, above all, to help infuse new ideas. He also became known as the only head of a major corporation whose office featured a well-used drawing board.

Win often worked out design solutions by sketching them on paper. He would then turn the paper over to rough out some quick calculations that verified the new approach would work. If you were gone by the time Win got to your work area, you could expect to find on top of your desk one of these sheets or a simple note with Win’s directions on how to proceed. To the credit of Win’s managerial skills, nobody recalled feeling pushed or needing to push back. They all respected Win’s abilities and wanted to be a part of these unique opportunities for technical innovation.

Win was soft-spoken – but insistent. As long-time members of the engineering staff independently reported, you could tell him anything and he would consider what you said. Then, with a quiet intensity, he’d charm you into believing his way was the best, as it so often was.

Win’s fascination with advancing the state-of-the-art in tank design was manifested in a new lightweight, low-profile, air-droppable tank. It would be hard to hit, provide maximum protection to its crew, and carry 60 rounds for a rapid firing cannon. At the outset, AAI designers of the T92, as it was eventually designated, got carried away and drew up a vehicle much larger than Win had envisioned. One evening after everyone had left; Win studied the huge pencil drawing that had taken draftsmen many hours to produce. He took out his ball point pen and, at a point about 2/3 of the way along the vehicle’s length, drew a bold vertical line through the tank, and left a note saying: “Make it this long.” Although the drawing was ruined and had to be restarted, the results were dramatic. The technical innovation of this vehicle found a home in the Israeli Merkava tank and the French AMX-13 after the T92 was beaten out by the problem-plagued M551 Sheridan.

While excellent development opportunities arose with the military, there were slow times to be dealt with. This was never a problem for Win, who was a virtual fountain of fresh ideas. Solar power, for example, was an underdeveloped energy source that warranted exploitation. Surely, with Win’s ideas and a few calculations, there could be a business opportunity or two for AAI. Win selected one of his top engineers, Tony Farinacci, and gave him a project – to design a solar and wind-powered cooling system for brine tanks used in cheese-making. Tony had plenty of experience with weaponry, but was no expert on solar or wind power, or cooling systems. Without hesitation, Win sent Tony back to school to learn what was needed. This was typical of Win, always wanting the best equipment and the best people to do the job. If they didn’t have the right preparation or the right skill set, getting it was only a matter of time and money. For Win, it was worth every penny. The solar energy endeavor eventually found success at the Reedy Company in Orlando, whose solar roof design provided electrical power for years until the mirrors succumbed to the Florida sun and lost their efficiency. A large number of patents on the roof and building design for solar energy collection were awarded to Win during this time.

In the late 1960’s Win began thinking seriously about remotely piloted vehicles. In 1958 he filed for a patent on a flying saucer that was years ahead of its time. Its unique design required sophisticated computers to manage the controls. This stands as one of the few designs in Win’s lifetime where the technology had not yet advanced far enough to allow his design to work. Little did Win know that his efforts then would be the beginning of a major product line for AAI. Today, AAI’s Shadow Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (TUAV) serves as an intelligence-gathering workhorse for coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

By 1970, in business for 20 years, AAI had grown to 1,000 employees, almost a full third of whom were engineering staff. The company’s goal remained the same: boundary-pushing research and development for military and commercial markets. At this point, two thirds of AAI’s income came from non-armament projects that included hydraulics and material handling systems. Typical examples of AAI’s successful design innovations include the training systems for the Apollo space program, crew station trainer and lunar module procedures simulator, a unique cutting tool for the space station, and a destruct system for the Saturn rocket.

All AAI engineers were expected to evaluate the stress levels of components they designed while at the same time making them as lightweight as possible. Often this meant designing with a low margin of safety, which sometimes led to failure. Win was not overly disturbed when he learned of part failures because he knew his teams were staying on the technological edge, keeping weights as low as possible. It should come as no surprise, then, that Win was a big fan of maraging steel – an ultra-high-strength steel with high cobalt content. Any time a design is boxed into a corner where the part cannot be made on a larger scale, this is the steel that can save the day. At the other extreme, Win hated torsion springs. In spite of the book calculations that predict safe stress levels, these springs are famous for breaking at the retention arm and are often avoided by gun designers.

In July 2010 I arranged for a visit to AAI for the purpose of interviewing Tony Farinacci to gather firsthand knowledge about Win Barr. When I arrived, I was surprised to find that Paul Shipley, Steve Miller, Ron Christ, and Dennis Trump had heard about the interview and insisted on joining us to contribute their experiences working with Win. This eventful meeting brought out a lot of information about Win and a litany of the many small arms projects he influenced. These include the AAI 6mm Squad Automatic Weapon, 4.32mm Serial Bullet rifle, Caseless Advanced Individual Weapon System, 12 gauge Combat Assault Weapon, TriCap shotgun, 5.56mm Advanced Combat Rifle, and completion of the development of Picatinny Arsenal’s .50 caliber Dover Devil.

I asked the group to give me some insights into Win’s personality and what it was like to work with him. They all agreed that Win loved his work and valued the people who worked with him. He never asked anyone to work harder than he did and spent most of his vacation time at work, rather than play. Win loved the Bahamas, and did find some time to visit and even buy property there; planning a retirement that could include developing a small business to employ the locals. Usually his Bahamas trips were short, except for the time a water skiing accident put him in the local hospital. Win had no patience for languishing in a hospital bed, so he arranged for a steady stream of AAI engineers to fly to the Bahamas in order to review their projects and to get new marching orders.

Much of our discussion centered on Win’s humanitarian side. Before he retired in 1989, he invented a heart pump and a steerable catheter for use in heart operations. Decades earlier, Win had invented a special tear gas grenade with a dispensing method that was less likely to start fires. They told the story about Win’s young son Alan who one day heard his dad sobbing in another room and asked if he was all right. Win told him not to come in, explaining that he was testing tear gas and wanted to try it on himself rather than risk anyone else being harmed.

Win’s excitement about projects was contagious; he loved to share his observations, thoughts, knowledge, and new ideas with anyone in the company who would listen. Janitors on the second shift, often the only ones around for Win to share his ideas with, spent many an evening lending an ear, even if their understanding was sometimes minimal.

An accomplished artist and photographer as well as a visionary engineer, Win Barr distinguished himself in the development of aircraft, vertical lift aircraft, rocket launchers, guns, solar power, military tanks, spacecraft, watercraft, and space technology. He committed most of his designs to patents available to all for study, touching on fields of medicine and energy as well as aerospace and defense. A man considered ahead of his time and a tireless worker who cultivated confidence and curiosity in his workforce, Win discovered how to increase his efficiency by building a company, filling it with top-notch technical talent, and leading his teams to solve critical problems.

In a sense, Win successfully “cloned” himself through his engineers, setting an example and using his persuasive skills and managerial expertise to get ideas rapidly developed. In the 1990s, AAI formally adopted Win’s not so secret method for motivating people to do their best: Employee Recognition. Among the annual coveted honors, the Win Barr Award for Innovation recognizes the AAI engineer or engineering team demonstrating the greatest degree of innovation and creativity.

Inducted into the Ordnance Hall of Fame in 1985, Win received numerous awards throughout his thirty-eight years with AAI, including the ten years he served as President and Chief Operating Officer. To mark Win’s retirement in February, 1989, a host of AAI colleagues, personnel, clients, representatives of local government and industry, and officers of virtually all branches of the U.S. military participated in the nearly three-hour ceremony. For one, General Alfred M. Gray, then-Commandant of the United States Marine Corps, gave Win a standard-issue helmet, making him “an honorary Marine,” saluted, and presented a Certificate of Commendation which concluded, “Mr. Barr’s total service to the Defense Industry in key executive positions and industry committees exemplifies the highest traditions of distinguished service….”

Before his death in 2005, Win’s life’s work yielded more than 200 patents, the majority of which he had proven feasible, successfully built, and tested. Today, AAI continues the same quest for innovation, producing and developing small arms and new products for the military and other industries. Working under Army contract to create caseless ammunition, the company’s forward-thinking engineering teams recently distinguished themselves by designing the Lightweight Small Arms Technologies (LSAT) machine gun that fires case-telescoped ammunition – a timely invention in the Barr tradition.

There at AAI, the spirit of our Renaissance man Win Barr lives on.

During the 60s, 70s, and 80s, the General Electric Armament Systems department employed several hundred top notch engineers charged with the development of Gatling guns, single barrel cannons, and both linked and linkless ammunition handling systems. These highly effective and reliable weapons were widely acclaimed during the Vietnam War, Gulf War, and conflicts in between. GE was never a company to single out any of their employees as a standout in the field, yet a select few of their engineers had talents to rival John M Browning. Lewis K. (Lew) Wetzel was one of those engineers. His first project at GE was to put the M61 Gatling gun into production, and from that point on, was a major contributor to nearly all of GE’s gun and feed system designs.

Lew used what might be considered as 360° thinking in his designs, considering every aspect including accuracy, durability, production, reliability, maintainability, and quality. His designs controlled the round, fired case, link (if there was one), at all times in the weapon cycle. This discipline and through minimizing the number of components, propelled the reliability of the GE systems far above what John Browning ever achieved, and maybe even envisioned. Lew kept a careful eye on his design teams, insisting that if they were to use threaded fasteners (bolts) or pins, he would allow them to select two of each – one long, one short, to be used in the design. As neither was of the same diameter, there was no guessing for the maintainer and spares were minimized. Later in his career Lew developed a 30mm cannon that required no threaded fasteners at all.

We ended Part I of the interview with George asking if the 25mm Caseless Gatling cannon design project was the one to be used on the F15 fighter jet.

Lew: That’s right. We set up a separate unit that I headed up.

There were two 25mm caseless guns in competition. Ford Aerospace and GE had parallel contracts, and each of us used different ammo contractors. We farmed out the ammo to Hercules and had a shoot off. We both had problems. You know that ammo is uncased and it can just go up in flames. They had a special water deluge system to douse the fires. I know both GE and Ford had fires. We might have had one more than Ford, but in the end, the Air Force decided Ford was the winner.

During final negotiations, the Air Force decided the contractors should respond with a Firm Fixed Price contract with guaranteed performance. You know, this is kind of dumb for a high risk program. Not only was it risky, but they tried to get me to agree to their technical requirements too. I said, “These requirements are mutually exclusive. We can’t meet the recoil requirements and at the same time use the energy to drive the gun. You have to back up the recoil with something!” In the end, I priced it accordingly and Ford won. Ford ended up investing about $20 million of their own money and finally the program was cancelled. You know that’s really sad because caseless is still a good idea.

George: We’re still trying to get into case telescoped and caseless. AAI’s new machine gun works just like our old 25mm.

Lew: Well of course, how else are you going to do it? You know the real problem was that if you have a misfire you have to eject it. It might just be a hangfire and that gets really hairy. They had some interesting concepts on coating the round – like using intubescent paint as a fire retardant. This gun system was going to be the primary armament of the F15. The whole system could be jettisoned so in case you had a fire you’d push a button and the whole thing would eject. It was part of the original design.

After the caseless program was lost, I designed the XM188 30mm cannon. It used the WECOM 30mm round designed by the Army. My proudest accomplishment was that you could disassemble the whole gun with your bare hands. I remember going into the Pentagon one time to give a presentation. Dick Bruce was the marketing manager at the time. He and I drove up with the gun in our trunk and parked at the bottom of the stairway at one of the entrances. The gun had a belt of dummy ammunition hanging out of it. We found a guy with a push cart and we asked him if he’d mind taking the gun up to the conference room on the fourth floor. He said, “Sure. I’ll do that for you.” You know, the guy took us right past Robert McNamara’s office (who was then Secretary of Defense,) with what was obviously a gun – no IDs, no badges, no nothing! I got into conference room and told the general I was surprised at the lack of security here. We walked right in with a gun and nobody challenged us. He answered, “We are our own worst enemy. If anybody ever tried to attack us, only then would we get organized.”

George: Lew, you and I worked on the XM188 together. I designed an adjustable gas deflector that was supposed to improve accuracy. I remember that really neat spring you designed that required no tools to disassemble the recoil adapters. Remember it? It was a spring that two ends you squeezed with your thumb and forefinger.

Lew: You want to see it? I have the prototype.

(Lew disappears and returns momentarily with the prototype. A spring wound in opposite directions wraps around threads on a shaft, preventing rotation of the shaft in either direction. Lew brings out the patent too.)

George: I remember you always said to make a simple prototype and then keep refining and refining it until all the bugs are worked out?

Lew: Yeah, I remember that. I keep this stuff handy to remind me I did some simple things. It’s pretty slick. After I left the XM188 gun program, they turned it over to the Production Engineering group. The first thing they did was to take off all of the no tools features.

George: I’ll get a photo of you and with the patent too.

Lew: Nobody will recognize me without glasses. I don’t need them anymore, but I’m so use to wearing safety glasses, having worn them my whole life, I appreciate how important they are. Oh yeah, there was another project we worked on together; putting our single barrel GE120 single barrel cannon into the Marine Corps’ LVTP-7 amphibious tracked vehicle.

George: We had some problems with that one. We had some technical problems and I couldn’t figure out what went wrong. You figured it out and saved my butt. I love to tell the story about the FMC turret technician who was about to check the electrical continuity of an electrically primed 20mm round that had misfired. He was going to use an ohm meter. He was getting ready to touch the primer with one of the ohm meter probes (which would have sent a low voltage current through the round) when you stopped him.

Lew: Yeah, I knocked it out of his hand. It saved his life. He was holding it right in his crotch too. I took the round away from him and chambered it back in the gun. I said, “If you want to test it, let’s do it while it’s in the gun.” I connected his ohm meter to the firing circuit to test it – and it fired! His face turned absolutely white, and you should have seen the faces on all of the Marines! (Lew brings out a picture of him standing next to the LVTP-7 with a bent barrel.” I can’t imagine what happened to the gun barrel in that picture.

George: After that, I recall we worked together on the 30mm GPU 5/A gun pod, but I don’t recall how that project got started.

Lew: After the 25mm caseless program, I worked on a few small jobs but I didn’t have a major program. Management decided they’d give me an Independent Research and Development Project to get me back to work. You remember those? We’d come up with advanced concepts and Corporate would fund the ones they thought had the best chance for adoption.

GE had already scored high marks for the design of the A10 gun system that involved a whole new airplane build around the 30mm GAU-8 guns system. It was a very effective system, and I got to thinking it would be a good idea to give this same armament capability to a lot of other jet aircraft. I started fooling around with the idea and came up with the feed system concept. I built a simple prototype of it, and it kept growing from there.

One of the most significant things in the design of the Pod was the muzzle blast deflector. The way the gun is mounted, recoil tends to make it deflect downwards during firing. But with the blast deflector it completely counteracted the downward force. The pod was super accurate as a result. A lot pilots who fired the pod told me they were very surprised at how accurate it was. The last blast deflector was probably not patented, but it should have been.

George: You know, there are two slots left un-machined on the M16 rifle flash suppressor that do the same thing – in this case it’s controlling muzzle climb.

Lew: That’s probably why we didn’t succeed in getting a patent for it. I remember you designed the feeder, remind me what other parts you designed?

George: I also designed the turnaround sprockets – there were about five of them that kept the conveyor buckets transporting the ammunition. I also designed the recoil adapters and got a patent on that design. I made the first feed system prototype that we test fired. I worked with a talented designer named Woody Evans and the designer you worked with was Ed Proulx. I learned from you how important it is to test increasingly more complex prototypes. When these were tested out and de-bugged, there were few, if any, major problems left.

Lew: There was one more thing that really made the Pod program work. When we were putting our project plans together in order to get corporate approval, I remember I asked for $1.5 million to finish the design. Then I put an Appendix on the Program Plan. This was a cost breakdown to complete the prototypes, and that would take another year and $6 million. Upper management was mad at me. None of the other engineers were giving out the follow-on cost information, and I wasn’t supposed to either.

I told them, “When I submit a project to corporate; I want them to know the whole story. No surprise for later.” So, I refused to take it out. Wouldn’t you know it, the whole program was funded! Corporate locked the program in, so it was guaranteed for completion. This also enabled us to make long-term commitments to Northrup and General Dynamics and we were able to flight test it on the F5.

George: I always thought that was clever when you decided to power the whole pod off of compressed air.

Lew: Sure, they always have air compressors at Air Force bases. You don’t need anything special for a compressor. The other neat thing was a built-in test. This was long before they had built-in testing for anything. During the development, our instrumentation group designed a fault code that would let you know where the problem was if anything had gone wrong. And I said “This would be handy to have on the production model” so they did it so the whole test unit could interrogate. They do this now in automobiles, but remember this was 40 years ago. By the way, did you get involved in any of the flight testing?

George: No, by then I had taken over as project engineer on the 7.62mm Armor Machine Gun.

Lew: Well, you missed some fun. We had it on the A7 and the F5. One of our young engineers, Charlie Hillman, went over to Korea for the F5 testing. Pilots really liked it. I’m sure the blast deflector played a major part. Everybody was happy and we got the production contract. Strangely enough, the production contract was through the National Guard. They did all of the testing. I remember we went out to Tucson, Arizona and did some firing out there. It scared the hell out of me when I was leaving. As we were leaving the Tucson airport, I recognized the bunker we were firing in to. It was right next to the main runway! What if you got a stray round or ricochet?

George: How many 30mm gun pods were built?

Lew: Hundreds of them went into production. We got the production contract in 1980 and they had a big party out there in Colchester. I was sure our Foreign Military Sales of the Pod would be big. I wanted to make sure that the pod would fit on the French Mirage jet. That’s what the Egyptians were flying and they were on our side. We wanted to make sure our pods were compatible. There was plenty of clearance for the pod, all we had to do was to make a special electrical cable – the bomb racks were already compatible. Our marketing just didn’t push it hard enough. We missed this one and a lot of other marketing opportunities.

We got the production contract $275 million worth of contracts. We made a good profit on the pods because our contracts people had negotiated a lot of incentive fees. These were for weight, mean time to repair, reliability, on time delivery, etc. We met all the goals and got the maximum incentive fee. It all added up. Our manufacturing department did a fantastic job of building it.

The next project that my engineering unit developed was a .50 caliber Gatling gun. Quent Sawyer was the project engineer.

George: I remember it. I started the concept and got the money allocated for it. The idea was to size it for a 6 barrel gun but we’d do it first in 3 barrels. They assigned me a designer to work with and we were scheduled to start it in the fall of 1981. That’s when I left to go to work for FN and Quent Sawyer ended up designing it.

Lew: That gun had some pretty rough political problems. We got the prototype working and it was fantastic. We had it set up on a pintle mount and we got word that after all our testing we were still trying to find a place for it in the military. We were in negotiation with the Air Force to get it on the V-22 Osprey. We heard the commandant of the USMC would be in Burlington, Vermont and would be in after the commencement exercise at Norwich University. We invited him for a firing demo so I said, “We’re going to demonstrate it and let’s let him shoot it.” I had it all arranged – even the offer to let him fire it. All of a sudden, they decided not to let me go. “No, they said, we have to keep the number of people down to a minimum.” So I wasn’t there. Then came the edict that we were not going to let the general shoot. My technician was told not to let the General shoot under any circumstances. After the technician fired a few bursts, the General went up to him and asked: “Do you need any help with it?” The technician said he was tempted to let him shoot it anyway. But he didn’t. He was told they were worried about the General’s safety.

I said, “What the heck! There is no safety problem. Heck, I wouldn’t let my technician fire it if there was any danger. So guess where the General went? The next week he attended the rollout ceremony for the new V-22 Osprey. He’d have probably would have said he wanted that gun on the Osprey. Just about the time I was leaving they wanted to sell a license to Royal Ordnance. They were all set to buy the license but Royal Ordnance closed its doors.

George: What was your position at that time?

Lew: I was manager of Advanced Weapons Engineering. The pod was split off into a separate unit. Newt Garland had managed that group, and when he retired, I took over. We were getting into liquid propellant, and I was also responsible for barrel development. Dave Perrin was the main barrel guy; He did some real pioneering barrel work before they closed down the barrel shop. I retired in 1988.

When man first walked the planet, metal ores of iron could be found just lying about. The ancients eventually figured out how to extract it and form useful items from iron – the fourth most plentiful element on the planet. As early as 2000 BC, bronze began to be replaced by metallic iron which was extracted from ore though a smelting process. A hot charcoal fire was necessary in order for the oxygen in the iron to combine with the carbon monoxide in the ore to form carbon dioxide, leaving the molten metal behind. The iron was produced along with a lot of impurities known as slag. For many years, blacksmiths would remove the iron from the furnace and hammer it on an anvil to drive out the cinders and slag. Forged this way, this “wrought iron” could be worked to remove a large percentage of the carbon. Wrought iron is tough and easily formed, and for that reason it found widespread use in tools and weapons.

At very high temperatures the high carbon content, 3 to 4.5%, in cast iron, makes it extremely hard and durable. Because of the extreme hardness it is not easy to forge. Wrought iron has between 0.02 to 0.08% carbon, which makes it malleable and ductile, but not incredibly strong or hard. Just in between these two, with a range of 0.2 to 1.5 %, steel has properties of both of the irons but can be made harder, more ductile, and malleable.

Steel was known to be the better and more useful form of iron but its manufacture was not widely known. The Hittite tribes and sword makers in India kept the secret of steel making as their own. Since steel has more carbon content than wrought iron, it was usually made by accident, when the blacksmith left a hot piece of wrought iron in the hot charcoal overnight. This introduced more carbon into the wrought iron, making steel. One thing was certain, no matter by what means it was made, production of steel was slow and painstaking. Rarely was more than a small quantity produced at one time. When the first hand cannons showed up in the 1200s the material choices were limited to bronze, wrought iron, or cast iron.

In the late 1700s a method called “puddling” was used to separate the more desirable, wrought iron from the molten iron. A special furnace, developed by an Englishman named Henry Cort, was designed so a skilled craftsman, called a “puddler” could stir the molten metal in a special part of the furnace. As the carbon content decreased, the melting point would rise, so small bits of iron would appear in the liquid mass. The job of the puddler was to observe when the solid pieces would occur, gather them, and work them in a forge. Unfortunately, the process was painfully slow. The demand for wrought iron was high and the well-paid puddlers were unable to keep up. Mechanization of the process was tried many times but always without huge success.

For most of the 1700s the British were the best at manufacturing steel. So envied was their expertise that Napoleon offered a sum of 4,000 francs to anyone who could match the British process. A young German, Friedrich Krupp, was fixated on this prize. So much so, that even without a solid scientific background, he opened Gusstahlfabrik – Cast Steel Works – in Essen, Germany on 20 September, 1811. Its purpose was “for the manufacture of English cast steel and all articles made thereof.” Krupp failed miserably and died at 39 with little success in steel making and a mountain of debt. After a very brief mourning period, his energetic 14 year old son, Alfred, walked into the mill, determined to learn how to make the world’s best steel. At first, it was not of English quality, but was consistent and good nonetheless. His primary “secret” was getting a high grade ore from Sweden. Swedish ore had very low phosphorus content, an element that made steel brittle. Alfred was continuously looking for ways to improve his process and thought he might get a good head start in England. He spent five months there trying to figure out what they were doing but came away with more questions than answers.

Undaunted, Krupp kept his focus, developed his own technology, and produced two hollow-forged, cold drawn steel musket barrels in 1843. Alfred went immediately to the Prussian military to see if they were interested, but the officer on duty thought the idea of a steel weapon actually funny. The Prussians considered them briefly, but returned them with little enthusiasm. Krupp went to the English and the Germans, but nobody was interested. Next he tried building a steel barreled artillery piece. The Prussians tested it and liked it, but it was too expensive and they had no requirement, preferring to stay with the bronze guns that worked so well for them at Waterloo.

At the very first World’s Fair held in 1851 at the Crystal Palace in England, Krupp decided to make his big move. It was time for some unprecedented showmanship. For his display, he brought a 4,300 pound steel ingot – twice as large as anything coming out of England. There was one more display item: Highly polished and beautifully crafted with beech wood trim, it was a thin-tubed breech loading steel cannon. As he predicted, it was the cannon and not the ingot that got all of the attention. At that time it was the largest cannon ever forged without welds. Krupp thought it might have too much new innovation for his old fashioned potential customers so he was careful to point out that the breech plug could be secured and loading could take place from the muzzle if desired.

The English press had a field day writing pros and cons about Krupp’s cannon. Most doubted that the thin walls would resist the high pressure of firing successive charges, but everyone marveled at the beautiful workmanship. It was magnificent. Like a proud father, Krupp came prepared for questions about his shiny steel baby. With every price list, Krupp handed out a four page technical document, presenting the calculations of Dr. H. Scheffler. Recognized in Europe for his work in structural analysis, Dr. Scheffler had recently written a book validating the Lamé equations for calculating stresses in thick walled cylinders. These same equations, formulated by the famous French mathematician, are the same ones gun barrel designers use today. Scheffler used the Lamé equations in an example that compared three gun tubes of equal proportions. He showed that the cast iron barrel would burst when the chamber pressure exceeded 18,000 pounds per square inch (psi), the bronze barrel at 33,000 psi, and the steel barrel at 117,000 psi.

Krupp received many requests for loans and sales from world leaders and royalty. The end results were disappointing. In Russia, military evaluators fired 4,000 rounds in an exhaustive test without as much as a scratch in the bore – a feat that far exceeded the capability of their bronze cannons. They were amazed, but not ready to buy. What they thought they had witnessed was a miracle. It was one of a kind to be enshrined forever in the Museum of the Fortress of Peter and Paul – which they did, at the same time neglecting to pay Krupp.

Krupp was the pioneer who determined that steel is the ideal form of iron for firearms including small arms, cannons, and other weapons. He realized that the high hardness, flexibility, strength, and wear resistance was ideal for firearms. Yet with all these advantages, steel remained difficult to produce in the quantity and quality needed. The demands for steel kept growing, but production remained slow. The culprit was carbon. There was just no good way to regulate it.

Finally, a better steel making method did emerge. The process involved shooting a blast of hot air up through the molten iron. This caused the carbon monoxide to combine with the oxygen, driving off much of the carbon to make steel. Many of the impurities were burned off at the same time. It was called the Bessemer process, after the Englishman who invented it. Before his work in steel production, Bessemer was an inventor of some renown who, by his own admission, knew little about metallurgy. In 1853, the Crimean war had united the French and British forces against Russia and inspired many inventors to focus their interest in advancing the state of the art in weaponry. Henry Bessemer was among them. He had received a patent on a grooved projectile, designed to fire in smooth bore weapons. The grooves were intended to act like a wind turbine to spin the projectile enough to stabilize it. The projectiles were long and heavy which caused the chamber pressure to rise to dangerous levels during firing. Most of the development took place in France with Bessemer working alongside Commandant Claude-Etienne Minié, who was famous for the development of a rifle bearing his name.

Here is a short version of the steel process invention story as Bessemer related in his autobiography: One December day, just before Christmas, Bessemer spent the day attending shooting trials in Vincennes. When the trials ended, Bessemer caught a ride back to Paris in a horse drawn carriage. On the ride he reflected on a conversation with Commandant Minié who told Bessemer that he was afraid that unless a better material came along soon, all of their development work would be for naught. Bessemer said this “was the spark which kindled one of the great revolutions that the present century has to record, for during my solitary ride in a cab that night from Vincennes to Paris, I made up my mind to try what I could to improve the quality of iron in the manufacture of guns. At that time nearly all our guns were simply unwrought masses of cast iron, and it was consequently to the improvement of cast iron that I first directed my attention. My knowledge of metallurgy was at this time very limited but this was in one sense a great advantage to me, for I had very little to unlearn and could let my imagination have full scope.” Bessemer said he went on to develop the air blowing process, obtaining a U.S Patent in 1854.

Bessemer pocketed huge royalties from licensing out his technology, and was knighted in 1879 for his contribution to science. His account of his contribution to the world’s first high volume steel making process did not play well in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It seems another story about a home town boy, a pretty girl and a very pesky mineral called shadrac has more credulity there. William Kelly studied metallurgy at the University of Pittsburgh, and after graduation went to work in his father’s dry goods business. While on a sales trip to Nashville, he met Mildred Gracy, arguably the most beautiful 16-year old girl in her high school class. Inspired, Kelly moved to her home town, Eddyville, Kentucky, where he opened a general store. The business was a success, Kelly was accepted by her parents, and Millie became his bride.

At heart, Kelly was a metallurgist, so when he found high grade iron ore lying above ground, near the banks of the Cumberland River near his home, he could not contain his excitement. What an opportunity! Besides the iron ore, there were plenty of trees for fuel, vacant land, and a river for transportation. He and his brother bought 14,000 acres and began producing cast iron products. When the surface ore ran out, they found the subsurface ore to be of a much lower quality, containing a form of flint called shadrac. When they tried to smelt the ore they found they could not rid the molten metal of shadrac.

Kelly had a very good understanding of chemistry and metallurgy, and theorized that blowing air up through the molten steel might cause the carbon in the steel to combine with the oxygen, burning off impurities, and freeing the steel from the excessive carbon. Almost everyone he discussed it with, thought he was crazy – surely the molten metal would get cooler not hotter when the cold air passed through it! It didn’t help that he told everyone his new process was going to “make steel without fuel.” Kelly’s theory became an obsession that almost wrecked his business and his marriage, but he persisted until his “pneumatic process” of refining iron was proven out.

Always on the lookout for hard workers, Kelly was pleased when two energetic and inquisitive Englishmen showed up looking for work. Up to this point, Kelly had decided to keep his process secret, and the two Englishmen seemed so honest and were so helpful and hardworking that he trusted them as he did all of his workers. It was only when the two Englishmen left suddenly and without warning that Kelly became concerned. Worried his secret might be compromised, Kelly tracked them to a ship that had left for England. It was not long afterwards that Bessemer filed for a U.S. patent to protect “his” process. At that point in time, Kelly had already completed his experiments and had been producing steel with his pneumatic process for about seven years. Kelly challenged Bessemer in U.S. courts, who found in favor of Kelly and granted him a patent that was for some time, an impediment to the Bessemer claims.

While the Kelly and Bessemer process was effective in removing carbon and other impurities from molten iron, it was not a process that was easy to control. Their processes worked so well, that it often removed too much carbon and instead of producing steel, it made wrought iron. Neither steelmaker could figure out how to stop their process at the right time. Along came an English metallurgist named Robert Mushet, who came up with an amazingly simple solution. That was to continue the blasts of air and operate the process until most of the carbon was gone. At that point, carbon was put back in. With the amount of molten iron known, the exact amount of carbon could be added to yield steel with just the right percentage of carbon.

The Bessemer process aided by the Mushet development boosted the production level of steel around the industrialized world, but there were limitations. There was still a high level of sulfur and phosphorus in the steel, and the phosphorus was particularly bad since it made the steel brittle. That problem was solved by restricting the Bessemer process to use only expensive, high grade ores from Sweden and Wales which had naturally low phosphorus content.

In spite of the flurry of activity circulating around the new and easier method of making steel, the introduction of steel into U.S. weapon development was slowed because of the focus on the Civil War that began in 1861. There is another interesting reason: The U.S.-produced iron used in cannon making was much better than the best irons the English could produce and the U.S. designs were excellent. Two Union officers, Army Captain Rodman and Navy Admiral Dahlgren contributed to this success. Both of them were innovators, pushing the state of the art in casting techniques and cannon design. Admiral Dahlgren found ways of combining cast iron, wrought iron, and bronze to achieve the best performance at a safe level. Some of Dahlgren’s cannons were a unique bottle shape that usually went 1,500 to 2,000 rounds before cracking. Oddly, in spite of their shape, the Rodman guns, the Dahlgren guns, and all the others eventually broke, and all in the same manner – split down the middle at the breech with a crack that went forward past the trunnions, then travelled sideways in opposite directions, leaving three large, useless chunks.

Designers sometimes went to the extreme in reinforcing their cannon barrels. Take for example the cannon designed by Lynall Thomas in 1862. His 7-inch gun was made from rolling a 1-inch plate of wrought iron around a cast iron steel tube. Two 13-inch bands of wrought iron, 3 inches thick were wrapped around the breech for reinforcement. This 11.5 foot long beast burst on the second round after being test fired.

When the Civil War was over, in 1865, Dahlgren and Rodman proclaimed that wrought iron was just too soft and too weak for the production of guns. It was time to turn to steel. Formed to create industry standards, the American Iron Institute had just changed its name to American Institute of Iron and Steel (AISI,) after being established in 1855. The AISI even modified their charter to include the organization and standardization of steel alloys. By then it was realized that higher the carbon, the stronger the steel, so one of the AISI’s first jobs was to classify carbon steels. Low carbon steels were defined to have carbon in the range of 0.08 to 0.15%, medium 0.15 to 0.35%, and high carbon steels 0.65 to 1.2%.

Improvements in steel and steel making came fast in the second half of the 1800s. In 1875, Sidney Gilchrist Thomas, discovered that burned limestone added to the molten iron was effective in removing phosphorus from iron ore. This meant the Kelly/Bessemer process could use even low quality ores for steel production.

In the beginning of the 1800s chemists discovered and isolated other metals that weren’t of much use by themselves but now found they could be alloyed with steel to improve its properties. Robert Muchet discovered that alloying with vanadium would produce better steel – up to three times the strength of common steel. Manganese was added to improve workability, strength, and wear resistance. Nickel and chromium imparted toughness, heat and corrosion resistance, while molybdenum offered hardenability and heat resistance. At the dawn of the 20th century, cast and wrought iron firearms were quickly becoming a distant memory. Time has diminished the interwoven history of steel and guns as these and other steel alloys ushered in a new era in weapon design.

During the last century, John M. Browning gained well deserved prominence in the field of firearm design. None have been able to equal his record for developing a wide variety of novel gun systems. There is one individual who stands out as the developer of not only guns, but some of the most varied and unique ammunition feed systems. That man is Lewis K. (Lew) Wetzel. He began his career at the General Electric Company working on the final development and first production of the M61 20mm Gatling gun. The high rate of fire capability of this new externally powered weapon was unprecedented and would not have been successful without flawless storage and feeding of the ammunition. It required screw conveyors, sprockets, carefully machined guides, and complex geometrical shapes to guarantee perfect round control throughout the cycle. Perfecting the ammunition storage and feed was as important as the development of the weapon itself in the achievement of their legendary high reliability.

GE assigned engineers and mechanical designers for these developments, and these teams usually had one common denominator: Lew Wetzel. From linked feed fed from ammo boxes to complex linkless feeds, Lew Wetzel distinguished himself as the premier designer. What resulted from his efforts and those he directed as a manager was a high level of gun and feed system reliability never before having been achieved.

During most of my 15 years at GE Burlington, I worked for or alongside Lew and gained valuable insight into his techniques for design, analysis, and testing. I recently called Lew and asked him if he’d consent to do an interview and was glad he accepted.

When the General Electric Armament Systems Division took over the Bell gun turret factory in Burlington, Vermont, a new era had begun in the design of high speed cannons and machine guns. GE transferred the ongoing development work for the M61 from a New York plant to the Burlington, Vermont facility. This was to be the first production of an externally powered Gatling gun. Success of this cannon was important to arm future fighter aircraft on their way to fight a new war in Vietnam. In this war, 20mm cannons armed jet aircraft, and 7.62mm Gatling guns were invaluable in helicopter and fixed wing applications. GE Burlington could only meet these urgent wartime needs by hiring top engineering and manufacturing personnel. The company quickly rose to significant prominence as a weapon designer, developer, and producer, and Lew Wetzel was one of their most prized secret weapons. We met at Lew’s house in Colchester, Vermont:

George: Tell us, Lew, where are you from and where did you go to college?

Lew: I’m originally from Michigan, but I studied engineering in an Ohio school, Antioch College. I fell in love with the school’s co-op program, where you alternate semesters between work and classes. It’s great because you can work in a field before you spend four years learning it and then decide that’s not what you want to do for the rest of your life. You make contacts and find job leads too. It was an excellent school with a well-rounded curriculum. I had some interesting jobs and classmates including Corretta Scott King and Rod Serling – the guy who created The Twilight Zone. I knew them both very well. Rod had started a campus radio station. I was a nerd then too, and I helped him build some of the equipment. He was the nicest guy you will ever meet. He graduated a year ahead of me.

George: So when did you start a full time engineering job?

Lew: It was right after the Korean War and they were still drafting people. GE and a lot of other companies came in to recruit. They explained their engineering test program and the opportunity to get critical skills draft deferment. I didn’t want to go back to Michigan. The test program involved three month assignments in different GE locations. I figured it would be interesting and I’d get around the country. I went to the Ohio, Evendale plant and worked in jet engines. After three months I put in GE-Burlington as my third choice and was a little disappointed at not being selected for the other two. But, on the way up driving on Route 7, I saw Lake Champlain and the mountains. I figured this would be a place I’d like to spend the rest of my life. So far I have.

George: I recall at that time GE had just taken over the plant from Bell. What did you do there?

Lew: I started in test equipment design, then engineering had problems with certain guns and they wanted somebody to run some tests. One of the problems was the 20mm Hispano Suiza in the turret; it was the electric primed M24. Anyway, that gun would misfire if it got dirty, and particularly at high altitude. Nobody could figure out why. So, I got them to send some guns in after test firing and before cleaning and put them in the environmental chamber. I quickly found out where the electric circuits were shorting out. Just about the time I figured out how to fix it, they stopped using the gun. Years later, after I retired, one of my engineer buddies at GE called me and said the Portuguese Air Force was having misfire problems with their M24’s. We put together a proposal to go to Portugal to investigate the problem. “You pay our way, for us and our wives, and I can solve your problem.” They didn’t go for it and it kind of ticked me off because I figured I was probably the only guy in the world who could solve that problem in a hurry and that would have saved them a lot of time and money. (Lew proceeds to describe the problem and the way he fixed it. He jokingly voices some concern about how he is now releasing details of the fix).

George: That’s OK, Lew. When I write this interview up, I’m going to say that the problem was easily solved by: dot, dot, dot. (laughter-Too bad for you, Portugal!)

Lew: I could have solved it in five minutes. Anyway, that was one of my jobs on the test program. We had taken over the turret business from Bell aircraft. After the turrets were assembled, I had to sell them to the USAF, and I had an Air Force inspector who watched as I put the turret through its drills.

George: Which aircraft would that have been?

Lew: These were for the B29, and B47. The gun was the 20mm Hispano Suiza single barrel cannon. This was before Gatling guns. I managed to wrangle two assignments in Burlington, but still had to do a fourth, so I went down to Lynn, Mass and worked on steam turbines for a few months. Then it was back to Burlington for about a year. Then I got drafted. The armament business was slowing down so the Pentagon decided they would stop sending out deferments and start drafting the engineers that had them. The Army was smart though, they still needed engineers, so they set up the science and professional program in the Army. Instead of putting us in infantry they put us in jobs where we could do engineering.

I was sent to Aberdeen Proving Grounds. Two years at Aberdeen as project engineer on the new 110mm howitzer. If you go to downtown Aberdeen, Maryland, in front of the police station is a prototype of the howitzer. The Germans were developing a new artillery piece. The Allies found a prototype in Poland after the war and sent it over to Aberdeen so they could look it over and test it. They decided it was a neat one. I was the project engineer for testing – “Proof Director,” as they called it. I worked on it almost exclusively for the whole two years I was there. It was a nice size – very compact. It had a range of nine miles.

George: Did the howitzer go into production?

Lew: No, Too bad too, because it was a very neat design. It had four trails, so it could fire in 360 degree positions. It had variable recoil. As you elevated the gun the recoil adapter would diminish so it didn’t have to be staked down. I had a gun crew trained to fire 40 seconds after the vehicle stopped. It would also lift the wheels off the ground automatically.

One day on the test range, we were test firing at maximum elevation. I got clearance to fire and they said, “There’s a lot of wind, but we’ll try to track it.” After the first round I got the command, “Hold your fire – that one landed on the eastern shore!” Another time we were putting on a demo at Aberdeen and we had all these weapons lined up to take turns firing. After this one guy fired a bazooka, he laid it on the ground next to us. The next system up was my 110mm howitzer with a muzzle brake on it. The blast from that muzzle brake shattered the bazooka into a million pieces.

We had a 155mm we were developing too. These were both cancelled in 1955 or ‘56. I have a picture of myself in front of the gun. Years after that, one of the GE engineering technicians, Ski Beckwith, and I were in Aberdeen driving down the main drag when I spotted it. I said, “Ski, pull over, I need to take a picture.”

George: Sounds like the Aberdeen experience wasn’t bad at all, why didn’t you stay there?

Lew: They did make me an offer. At the time I was a buck private and I had a second lieutenant working for me. I had become the right hand man of the branch chief. He introduced me to the lieutenant and told the guy, “This is private Wetzel. You work for him. Do whatever he says.” (laughter)

After they offered me a permanent job, they said “We’ll have to put you on a different project until your security clearance comes through.” I said: “What? I already have a security clearance.” “Yeah, but that’s all gone when you leave the service.” I thought to myself: “Do I want to put up with this kind of bullshit?”

It would have been an interesting job, but I was living in the South, in a trailer with no air conditioning. I thought, if I had a civilian job, I could afford air conditioning. Then I decided to go back up to Burlington. I interviewed other places too, though. Raytheon was one. They had a crazy project they were working on to cook food with microwaves! Can you imagine that? They were looking for engineers to develop what they called a “Radar Range.” I could have gotten in on the ground floor. I went to TRW too. Their office was in downtown Cleveland and they said they’d be moving to Port Clinton, but didn’t say when. Did I want to commute down there every day? So I turned it down and went back to GE Burlington.

It was very shortly after that they got the first production contract for the Gatling gun. Up to that time, the engineers and all of the development work had been done in GE-Schenectady. I spent a few days down there and a few days back in Burlington basically moving the whole project. Not all of the engineers moved up, so I took over responsibility for the engineering work of people who stayed back.

George: How far along was the development of the M61 when it moved up from Schenectady?

Lew: You know, it was just barely working. They had prototypes but they had a crash at least once a week. We had a production contract for a gun that still wasn’t working. The biggest problem was the feed system. You know the major problems are always there; trying to feed a high rate of fire gun. We really tore into it and tried to figure out what was going wrong while at the same time production people were trying to figure out how to build it. I was responsible for all the feed systems and for the clearing methods for the Vulcan. We used a hold back clearing for the first guns while other guns used diversion clearing or declutching feeders. A cookoff in one of these guns could be disastrous, so they had to be clear at the end of every burst.

It wasn’t up to the 6,000 shot per minute rate we use today. The linked ammunition caused us to hold the firing rate to 4,000 shots per minute. The F104 aircraft was the first aircraft to use the M61.

George: It takes a lot of power to move all the ammo at full speed.

Lew: It’s not just the power; it’s the wear and tear on the parts too. The F104 was the first application and the F105 was coming along. The Roy Sanford company had developed the double lead, helical auger, linkless feed concept and they had a prototype which they could make work – once. They had only one technician, who would tinker the system for a week and only then could they get one burst off. Sanford had convinced the Air Force that the prototype was working, but we had the production contract and we spent a lot of time tearing into it. Here again, we were trying to design the production system and at the same time trying to get the prototype to work.

We did a combination of debugging and production design and built another prototype and it worked out very well. That was the very first linkless feed system for the electric powered Gatling. It did work. This was the first Gatling aircraft system used in Vietnam.

After the Vulcan was in production I went right into the design of the feed system for the M75 40mm grenade launcher. It was a Ford externally powered gun that went into a turret on the front end of a Huey helicopter. It was classified at the time. There was never any publicity on it. I talked to some pilots from Vietnam who told me it was super for hitting sampans. That 40mm grenade is wicked. The guys used it and loved it. I developed the turret too. After we got it into production, I got to fly all over the range at Underhill making helicopter strafing runs. Our favorite target was the abandoned Doyle farm down range. We’d shoot into the roof. That was a lot of fun.

My next project after they designed the 7.62mm Minigun was the Minipod….

George: Hold it, Lew! Tell us who designed the Minigun?

Lew: It was Ray Patenaude, but you know, in the beginning we had two Miniguns. One was designed by Bob Chiabrandy and the other was Patenaude’s. Chiabrandy’s worked all the time and Patenaudes’ only some of the time. There was no question Chiabrandy’s was superior.

But for some reason…. Well, you know Ray intimidated the hell out of people. So anyway, after developing the gun, I got to design the Minipod. We built prototypes. My position was to develop the feed system. I was almost always working on feed systems. I was lead engineer and I had Bert Clark and Bob Kirkpatrick working for me as a designers.

George: Tell me Lew, who came up with the ammunition handoff between the feed drum and the Minigun?

Lew: I can’t remember who it was right now, but I do want to say that it was one of the neat things about the GE system. The engineer and the designer worked together. Nowadays, the engineer works alone on a design project. I think you lose a lot because we used to have two guys tossing ideas back and forth.

George: It’s a mini brainstorming session.

Lew: It really is. I think the GE system was just so super. Bert Clark and I butted heads all the time. I was forever telling Bert: “If you think that will work, then draw it up and we’ll build it.” He was on notice and the pressure was on to get it done. Most of the time he came through. You know, Bert had worked for Werner von Braun on the space program when he was in Huntsville, Alabama. He was really sharp.

George: So we’re at Minipod – you were doing feed systems…

Lew: It was during Vietnam and we had to get that thing going really fast. The stupid thing was that the Minipod and the Minigun were on separate contracts. After we finished acceptance testing the pod, we’d check everything over, take the gun out, and pack up the pod less the gun. The gun went into another box. Each went on its own way, shipped on its own contract. One day we got a call from Vietnam: “We have a bunch of pods but no guns.” And another base called and said they had guns but no pods. We sent George McGarry over there. Do you remember him?

George: Yeah, George was a Marine who worked for Col. George Chinn studying the guns and helping him write the first four volumes of The Machine Gun. He came to GE after he retired from the Corps.

Lew: Well, McGarry commandeered a C47 and got the two back together. George knew how to get people to do things. He put the pods back together. Unfortunately some of the pods got shipped upside down. They had NiCad batteries with phosphoric acid which leaked out and he had to repair a lot of things. Eventually he got them working and on the aircraft. I don’t think it could have happened without McGarry. You know, someone with his experience.

That was right after we tried to side fire. You’re aware of how Puff the Magic Dragon came about?

George: Not exactly

Lew: There was an Army Captain at Wright field – his last name was Terry – I can’t remember his first name. CPT Terry came up with the idea to side fire out of an airplane flying a pylon turn around a target. His thinking was that that was a good way to bring a lot of firepower on a target. At the time, the Vietnamese were having a problem in their walled cities, with the Viet Cong getting on ladders and invading them. These cities were being attacked at night, and CPT Terry believed the side firing technique would work.

Terry asked if we would help mount some Minipods on a C47. We gave them a technician and tried it at Hurlbut Field and at Eglin: it looked pretty promising. They tried 20mm Vulcan pods too, but the Vulcan pod was overkill. For anti-personnel the Minigun was fine. After using it for a while, they decided to make a pedestal mount (Minigun Module) just for that purpose; which they did. That helped in the Vietnam War. When CPT Terry came up with the idea, General Lemay was Chief of Staff and said “That’s the dumbest idea I ever heard.” But CPT Terry was so convinced; he risked his career on the decision to go ahead with it. It’s the kind of thing that it takes some times to move the technology forward – to try things you are convinced will work. Luckily, it really did.

George: Did you work on the Minigun module?

Lew: I did the concept for the module. I basically developed the whole feed system for it. It was a helical feed drum, like a Minipod but turned on end. I developed the whole thing, and then we were starting on the 25mm caseless Gatling cannon and they put Jay Trumper in charge of the Minigun module. The module was designed with the gun at a right angle to the linkless ammunition feed system. It was designed with simplified controls so an operator could reload it easily at night. As soon as they went into production the Module quickly replaced the Minipod on the C47 Dragon ships.

George: So, after you left the Minigun Module project you started working on the 25mm Caseless cannon that was designed to be used in the F15?

Lew: That’s right. We set up a separate unit that I headed up.

There were two 25mm caseless guns in competition. Ford Aerospace and GE had parallel contracts, and each of us used different ammo contractors. We farmed out the ammo to Hercules and had a shoot off. We both had problems. You know that ammo is uncased and it can just go up in flames. They had a special water deluge system to douse the fires. I know both GE and Ford had fires. We might have had one more than Ford, but in the end, the Air Force decided Ford was the winner.

During final negotiations, the Air Force decided the contractors should respond with a Firm Fixed Price contract with guaranteed performance. You know, this is kind of dumb for a high risk program. Not only was it risky, but they tried to get me to agree to their technical requirements too. I said, “These requirements are mutually exclusive. We can’t meet the recoil requirements and at the same time use the energy to drive the gun. You have to back up the recoil with something!” In the end, I priced it accordingly and Ford won. Ford ended up investing about $20 million of their own money and finally the program was cancelled. You know that’s really sad because it is a good idea.

George: We’re still trying to get into case telescoped and caseless. AAI’s new machine gun works just like our old 25mm case telescoped gun.

Lew: Well of course, how else are you going to do it? You know the real problem was that if you have a misfire you have to eject it. It might just be a hangfire and that gets really hairy. They had some interesting concepts on coating the round – like using intubescent paint as a fire retardant. This gun system was going to be the primary armament of the F15. The whole system could be jettisoned so in case you had a fire you’d push a button and the whole thing would eject. It was part of the original design.

The interview with Lew Wetzel continues with a look at the only medium caliber cannon to be designed for “no-tools” assembly/disassembly. Lew explains how to take one of these cannons along with you for a briefing in the Pentagon. After some design work on single barrel cannons, Lew explains how and why he designed the 30mm GPU 5/A as a companion weapon system to the gun system on the A-10. These and other interesting tales that offer a unique insight into his unique design ability where he makes extensive use of modeling to prove out the most challenging parts of his designs, reducing risk, saving time and minimizing costs.

They were called the “Whiz Kids,” – a bunch of overachievers that were called to duty in the late 1960s at the request of Robert McNamara. Their job? To assist him in running the U.S. Department of Defense. It would mark the first time the Defense Department would be run like a business, with modern management systems, operations research, game theory, and computing. The legacy of the Whiz Kids included the closing of iconic, yet money losing entities, like the Springfield Arsenal, along with programs that yielded the F-16, F/A-18 Hornet, and the A-10 Thunderbolt II ground-support aircraft. Although many of the Whiz Kids were from industry, they respected the viewpoints of highly regarded tacticians, like U.S. Air Force’s Col. John Boyd, who, with Colonel Everest Riccioni, and Pierre Sprey were proponents of a new close interdiction aircraft called the AX (Attack Experimental)

From the day of its inception to this present day, the AX – later designated A-10 – has been a subject of controversy at top levels in the Air Force. It is an aircraft that doesn’t fit the USAF mold for high speed, agile fighters, or long range bombers. Few Air Force generals supported the development and practically no one could accept that for the first time in the history of the U.S. Air Force, a single purpose, slow flying, close support aircraft was to be purposely designed to fly so low that air traffic controllers would lose contact with it. It was so vulnerable to small arms fire that the pilot’s compartment would have to be protected by titanium armor. The A-10 was to be a fixed wing aircraft designed for a role that many understood the Army’s Cheyenne helicopter was for: to carry a substantial cannon for use against armored targets.

Cheyenne helicopter or not, there was a huge motivation for the development of the A-10. Its purpose was to aid in overcoming, or at least delaying the overwhelming odds of the numerically superior Soviet forces that faced off against NATO. These were the days of the Cold War. We were so sure we understood the intent of this potential enemy that NATO leaders had even pinpointed the exact spot where the conflict would begin. Known as the Fulda Gap, it was a place in West Germany where one million troops faced off. The Soviets had more than 1,500 tanks deployed there. The A-10, like practically every piece of tactical equipment designed in the late 1960s, would be evaluated for its effectiveness in this single potential war zone.

Military tacticians studied the Fulda Gap and with simple math uncovered disturbing results. The allied forces did not have enough armament to engage all the enemy tanks. Missiles were a possibility but a decisive engagement would require an incredible and cost prohibitive number of them. Bombs would be less effective, and even together with available missiles, there still wasn’t enough available war stock. It would take too long to ramp up production should the Soviets decide to breach this Gap. Tacticians had little option but to turn their attention to “competent munitions” as a potential solution. Competent Munitions were defined as guns and rockets. These are low cost, effective, and easy to manufacture, with production lines that can be quickly ramped up during wartime.

Yet there were limitations. Guns had been used against tanks almost as soon as these new fighting vehicles appeared on the battlefields of World War I. Those years witnessed an arms race, of sorts, with bigger and bigger guns developed to defeat tanks having thicker and thicker armor plate. Since the gun had to be carried and shoulder fired by a soldier, the gun got too big before the tank did. Soviet tanks were particularly well-armored, with extremely thick side walls to protect against gunfire and rockets and a thick underside for protection against mines. Still, there remained one place these tanks were vulnerable. It was a place where the tank couldn’t get thicker without compromising its design and functionality. It was also a place where the soldier’s anti-tank rifle couldn’t reach. It was the top of the tank. Guns and rockets that would eventually arm the new A-10 would be developed to exploit this weakness. There was little the enemy could do about it.

Colonel Bob Dilger was a distinguished war hero and F4 pilot who worked for A-10 concept design leader, Pierre Sprey. Col. Dilger led the gun system development, initiating the project at the Air Force Armament Labs in 1966. By the spring of 1967, the Air Force was ready to move forward on an aircraft with a gun system that would specialize in “top attack.” The Air Force turned to industry with a challenge “to select the smallest round that would defeat the hardest target.” Beyond this, the Air Force decided to let industry develop the specification. They awarded “System Definition” contracts to Ford, GE-Burlington, Harvey Aluminum, and TRW.

Their resulting analyses took into account the defeat of the target while incorporating tactics, logistics, and system capability to develop both the round and the weapon system. This was to be an aircraft with an armament system custom tailored for the fight. Ultimately the A-10 Thunderbolt would carry a seven-barreled, 30mm Gatling gun called the GAU-8A.

The General Electric Armament Systems Department in Burlington, Vermont found itself in a unique position to win a big part of the competition. GE had perfected the design of the Gatling gun for aircraft and boasted an awesome group of talented interior and exterior ballisticians in their ammunition research department. At the time, I was a young engineer, working there on another R&D project. I wasn’t among those selected to work on the GAU-8A program, but my seating arrangement provided me with a unique vantage point. My desk, in the open office “bullpen” set up, was strategically located with the GAU-8A gun and ammunition handling system design team on one side and the ammunition development group on the other. My ringside seat was conducive to witnessing and learning, so I kept my eyes and ears open and got a first-hand look as the design unfolded.

Gun studies were performed with some “what if” ammunition designs, but not much progress could be made in the gun design until the ammunition design was complete. Trade-off studies for the ammunition included not only poking a hole through the top of the tank, but established the accuracy and rate of fire requirements as well. The study was very comprehensive. Each aircraft sortie was designed for a specific number of engagements. On each sortie the aircraft would engage the target for X seconds, at which point Y number of rounds would be fired with accuracy to assure a kill. Hit and kill probabilities were taken into account and the gun rate of fire was established at 4,200 shots per minute. Many believed the system might be more accurate than the calculations indicated. Should that be the case, the gun system would be designed so the rate of fire could be halved, thereby doubling the number of engagements possible on a single sortie.

While penetrating the tank top was easier than penetrating the side or bottom, it still presented a substantial challenge to the ammunition designers. A tungsten penetrator moving at high velocity would do the job. There was one problem. Tungsten was incredibly expensive and much of the world’s supply was in China and the Soviet Union. There were already huge demands on this valuable metal and with very little available in the free world, it would be easy to imagine that requirements from other industries would make wartime projectile manufacture a lower priority. The engineers were forced to consider another solution. A newly-available hard metal from nuclear waste called depleted uranium, or DU, was considered. In its depleted form it had very little radiation and could be compressed into the desired shape using powder metal technology. It had one other advantage that showed up in the testing. DU is pyrophoric, meaning that as soon as it passes through a target, projectile fragments break off and burst into flames.

The gun and ammunition handling system design was straightforward. GE had already developed the highly reliable 20mm M61 Gatling gun. They had also perfected the linkless feed ammunition handling system that stored the bulk of the ammunition in a large round drum. An auger screw in the drum conveyed live ammunition to the Exit Unit where it was transferred to a conveyor bucket or “element.” A train of these elements transported the rounds through chutes until they reached the gun. Here, the Transfer Unit fed the ammunition sequentially into each of the gun’s seven bolts, and this same unit placed fired cases, into empty conveyor elements. The elements with fired cases (and the occasional misfired round) were transported through chutes to the Entrance Unit where they were placed back into the storage drum. As the gun was fired, the system transitioned from completely full to completely empty. The position of every round, fired case, and conveyor element was controlled 100% at all times throughout the cycle. This was a major secret to the high system reliability.

Each time the pilot hit the trigger, the entire 1,350 rounds (fired and unfired) were put into motion, accelerating until the gun rotor was turning 600 revolutions per minute and the 4,200 shot per minute firing rate was achieved. It was a challenge to design a lightweight, yet robust hydraulic drive system, yet there was one major concern that complicated the design even more. To prevent rounds from cooking-off in hot chambers the gun had to be clear after every burst. The M61 Gatling guns used “hold back” clearing that kept the sprockets, rotor, bolts, and conveyors timed together by continuing to feed the gun bolts, but prevented them from moving forward to fire. This worked well, but also means that eight or so live rounds would not be fired on every burst. The 7.62mm Minigun used diversion clearing that sent the same number of unfired rounds overboard at the end of each burst. Another successful clearing method used a de-clutching feeder that almost instantaneously stopped feeding the gun bolts and allowed the gun rotor that housed them to rotate freely, firing the last round and clearing the fired cases from the weapon. The huge 30mm rounds could not be dumped overboard or carried out to the battlefield only to be returned unfired. Nobody even wanted to try the declutching feeder concept. This would have necessitated all moving ammunition handling system components and ammunition come to such a quick stop that system inertia was sure to develop extreme loads and result in failures. A clutch big enough to do this job couldn’t even be imagined. The GAU-8A gun system needed every round accounted for and available to be fired. Another method of clearing had to be found.

There was one other way. It had been considered early during the M61 development, but was seen as potentially problematic and was discarded. That method is called “reverse clearing.” Reverse clearing means that all the system components remain in time with each other but at the end of every burst the hydraulic drive system would be shifted into reverse, changing the direction of every component in the gun and ammunition handling system. Not only would this require high-strength components, but would mean that fired cases just leaving the gun would reverse direction and be rechambered. What’s more, when the gun was fired again, some of these cases would be making a third visit through the barrel chamber. The concept was risky, but the hydraulic drive system was purposely designed for reverse for clearing. A young engineer named Richard Tan was almost solely responsible for the hydraulic system – a design that worked flawlessly. With clearing under control, the system design process continued with emphasis placed on minimizing weight, power requirements, and system reliability.

As I said, I wasn’t on the GAU-8A design team but the location of my ringside seat did offer unique advantages. One day on my way back from the coffee machine I walked past a darkened conference room where I saw a high speed video of the GAU-8A feed system being reviewed by the gun design team. The photographer had flooded the area with light in order to see the black parts better, but the light illuminated the flying grease and other debris, obscuring the view. Steel parts could be seen waving about as though they were made of rubber. The camera had been set so close to the moving parts, it was difficult to tell one part from another. In spite of the distractions, the film showed that control of the round was being lost in the cycle. Chief project engineer, Bob Kirkpatrick, and his team watched it carefully to determine the cause.

After one run through the film, Kirkpatrick explained how he saw the events and what he believed caused the round to go out of control. Watching from the doorway, I was surprised to hear an explanation that was completely different from what I thought I’d seen. Everybody agreed with Bob’s explanation. I must have missed something. I was happy when they decided to run it again. Unnoticed, I entered the conference room and took a seat. After the film ran again, Kirkpatrick repeated the first explanation and everyone started discussing possible solutions.

Given my short time with the company and status as the “new guy,” I probably should have held my tongue, but I couldn’t stand it. I blurted out, “Hey guys, that’s not what I saw at all.” I asked them to run it again and I explained what I thought was happening and what was causing the problem. Besides a number of “NO WAY’s” I also caught a few looks that said: “What the hell are you doing here? This isn’t even your project.” I persevered. Just as the film ended, Jay Trumper – their boss, and mine, came in to check on the progress. Kirkpatrick ran the film again for him. Kirkpatrick explained the problem – but this time it wasn’t his original explanation, it was mine. I smiled, left the room and went back to my desk to finish my coffee. It wasn’t much of a contribution to a great gun system, but it was something, and it was fun.

After some research, the ammunition engineers determined there was already a round that was close to meeting the requirement; it was the 30mm Oerlikon 304 RK round. There was one drawback, and it was major. The case was steel and that would make the system unbelievably heavy. Something had to be done. Amron, GE’s ammunition partner for the study, suggested aluminum cases could be developed that would shave off 800 pounds on a fully loaded system. Problems with aluminum cased ammunition were challenging, yet well understood. Such a design might have a chance if the right engineering talent could be found, and it was.

Leading the aluminum case study was an Austrian gun designer who, like Werner von Braun, was recruited out of Nazi Germany during Operation Paperclip to aid the U.S. defense industry after World War II. Otto von Lossnitzer had already completed the successful development efforts on the M39 Revolver cannon used in the F5 aircraft, and now worked at Amron.

Von Lossnitzer had a very complete understanding of what it takes to make a reliable cartridge. He espoused a philosophy that characterized the life of a cartridge into four stages. In the first place, a cartridge must function as part of a package. Its construction is such that it holds its components together, protecting them from the environment and keeping them together and functional. Even if the cartridge is subjected to rough handling it must keep the component parts intact. In the second place, the cartridge is part of the machinery in the feed system, where it is fed through sprockets and transported in conveyor elements through chutes, where it is capable of withstanding high speed stops and starts. Its third and most challenging job is as a pressure vessel. During firing the cartridge case has to be the element that seals the chamber under extremely high pressure, returning back to its original shape after firing, lest it stick in the chamber and cause high extraction loads. The fourth job of the case is essentially as a scrap metal, yet before it is relegated to the recycler, it has to cleanly extract and eject from the gun system, often being required to retain its shape so that it can travel smoothly through the ammunition handling system. In other instances it is merely deposited into a case collection bin.

Von Lossnitzer’s testing uncovered two major problems. Either the cases were too soft and stuck in the chamber or they were too hard and resulted in case splits. High speed gun gases escaping through split cases, damaged barrels. In some instances a situation arose where the aluminum ignited and melted the chamber and bolts. Primer selection was also tricky. If the primer was too big it caused the powder to ignite too fast making pressure go high. If the primer was too small, it was also too slow and resulted in hangfires. In all externally powered gun designs, hangfires are extremely dangerous since the bolt unlocks and extracts the round every time, whether the round has fired or not. Von Lossnitzer settled on a proven percussion primer, steering clear of electric primers because of well-documented explosion hazards in high radiation areas-like those found on airfields.

In order to use the aluminum case, careful stress analysis of the barrel was required. This was necessary to assure the chamber did not stretch beyond the point where the aluminum could spring back. If it did, case extraction loads would be high, raising the power level required by the system. Elsewhere in the barrel there were other concerns. In order to get the 5,000 grain projectile spun up to achieve stabilization at the velocity of 3,200f/s, the barrel would have to be seven feet long. Plastic rotating bands were placed on the round to extend barrel life after they learned that the traditional copper rotating bands, reduced barrel life by a factor of three.

Each design review was attended by Col. Dilger, who usually left GE pleased with the progress being made on the gun. As they neared design completion, the sizes and weights of the system were established. GE prepared for the review by Col. Dilger, and the airframer, Fairchild. They knew Col. Dilger was onboard with the design, but from past experience with airframers who always wanted sleek lightweight aircraft, they were afraid Fairchild would not accept the huge ammunition drum that necessitated a jumbo sized fuselage. But Fairchild understood the task at hand and there was no push back. Fairchild just made the fuselage as large as needed to accommodate the ammunition drum, even though the gun and AHS represented a full 16% of the weight of the aircraft.

When the first gun system was built and tested, nobody could believe the belching smoke that spewed from the muzzle. It was an awesome sight that caused many to wonder if it could ever be made to fire safely from an aircraft. The engineering team searched through the system to find places where control of the round could be lost. As quickly as they did, they came up with a fix and implemented it. They verified each fix by filming with 16mm high speed cameras to assure the problem was solved.

After the gun system design was well underway, the Air Force decided they would complete the A-10 gun system design with the development of a unique ground support loading system. The system was required to download empty fired cases while uploading the ammunition handling system. It had to be fast, practical and reliable. After all, what would be the sense in designing an aircraft with a rapid firing gun system to effectively engage the enemy in multiple sorties, only to have it become bogged down during the loading and unloading of the ammunition? The Air Force wanted ammunition boxes that would be loaded at the factory then sent to the field where they would interface seamlessly with loading equipment. The ammunition boxes were to return to the ammunition factory with fired cases ready to be scrapped out and replaced with live ammunition. The concept favored by the Air Force involved a plastic tube that housed the rounds. With a round in the tube, the cartridge/tube combination became a cylinder and no longer a tapered object with a nose that could tip and jam the rest of the rounds in the box. The tubes were connected to each other with two knit circular cloth rings. The Wayne Coloney Company, a small engineering company in Tallahassee, Florida won the development contract and perfected the design.

After the development of the A-10 gun, ammunition, ammunition handling system, and loading system was complete, the aircraft went on to be one of the most effective in history. On the second week of the first Gulf War, two A-10s and one C130 were deployed against a 71-vehicle convoy. Together they destroyed 58 of them in short order. Later in the war, two A-10s on a single engagement, were credited with killing 23 tanks with the GAU-8A cannon in just the kind of scenario the system was designed for. Some of the Air Force top brass even changed their opinion of the system. Take for example the reaction of Lt. Gen. Charles Horner who was Air Commander during the first Gulf war: “I take back all the bad things I said about the A-10’s. I love them. They are saving our asses.”

It was possibly the first time an airplane was designed around a gun system. Development of the gun, the ammunition, the feed storage system, and even the loading system were all well thought out and well-executed. The aircraft design was beautifully conceived and tailored for the mission. When used in combat in the first Gulf War and Kosovo, its loss rate of 1 per 3,100 sorties was far better than the 1 per 1,300 loss rate developed by the highly touted F-117 stealth aircraft. In spite of this, many A-10’s have been sent to the bone yard in New Mexico, while most of the rest have been shuffled off to air national guards. Two of its major proponents, Pierre Sprey and Col. Bob Dilger are still in the game, now desperately trying to draw attention to a future aircraft with similar characteristics. From all indications, USAF top brass is showing little interest, with the new multi-purpose F35 aircraft with its 25mm cannon designated to takes its place. We can only hope these leaders are making the right decision.

It was hot and unusually humid in Springfield, Massachusetts during the summer of 1953. Yet, it was not nearly as sweltering as most of the summers he had endured back in his home state of Alabama. Weather aside, LTC Roy E. Rayle took an early liking to his new assignment. His wife and two young sons were in love with the beautiful on-post housing supplied by the Army, and his new job was challenging, exciting, and important. He was to direct 350 people in the Research and Development of small arms at the Springfield Arsenal. He had leadership training from the Army and a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Tech. He felt well prepared for any challenge.

In his first job briefing, the Colonel in charge updated him on the status of the programs now under his control. It was a glowing report, with no major challenges on the horizon. Two Springfield Armory-designed guns in trials at Ft Benning were reportedly doing very well. The T161 machine gun and the T44 rifle were both undergoing user tests there. These two would later be designated the M60 machine gun, and the M14 rifle, respectively. Assuming successful trials, these would become the first small arms in U.S. history chambered for the new 7.62mm NATO round. Rayle’s predecessor had decided not to send a representative to the test site for technical support and feedback. As a result, not much had been heard from Ft. Benning since the testing began. Everyone assumed that the tests were going well. Going so well, in fact, that his new boss spent most of their meeting time reviewing the other developmental weapons now under Rayle’s direction.

LTC Rayle enjoyed a blissful honeymoon that lasted a full two days. Suddenly, the Armory received an urgent and most disturbing phone call from U.S. Army Ordnance’s Chief of Small Arms Research and Development, Colonel René Studler. TheT44 was performing poorly in testing. A Pentagon representative was already on his way to the test site and Springfield Armory was to immediately dispatch a representative to Ft. Benning. Who would they send? The new guy, of course, LTC Roy Rayle.

Once at Ft. Benning, it didn’t take Rayle long to figure out the major problem. The T44 was having cartridge feeding issues that stemmed from too much friction in the magazine. Rayle asked them, “How much time do we have to fix the problem.” He didn’t like the answer. Only eleven days of testing remained. Results had to be tallied and submitted to Army Field Forces headquarters at Ft. Monroe, VA. Ft. Benning had been directed to follow a rigid timeline.

It wasn’t only the gun that was having a problem. Since his arrival there, Rayle sensed a certain animosity from the test crew. It wasn’t toward him necessarily, but rather it was directed toward Springfield Arsenal. After he examined the T44 test weapons more closely, he understood why. The rifle was far from production ready. T44 receivers had been made from an earlier prototype, the T20E2 that used the longer M1 round (.30-06). To reduce the bolt travel in the rifle for the shorter 7.62mm NATO round (.308 Winchester,) filler blocks had been placed inside the receiver. The fix worked well enough. That is, right up to the point where the blocks loosened and caused malfunctions. This was only the beginning. Designers at the Armory had taken other shortcuts that made it blatantly obvious the T44 was little more than a cobbled-up prototype. In stark contrast was the rifle submitted by the competitor. The entry from Fabrique Nationale (FN) of Belgium was a well-made and well-thought out design. FN’s rifle was designed for in line firing that directed the recoil load straight into the shoulder. This greatly aided the shooter in controlling the weapon’s hefty recoil. The rifle we know today as the FAL was then designated by the Army as the T48. It featured smooth feeding, and a simple operating mechanism that was easy to field strip and service. The general consensus at Ft. Benning was that the Belgian design was far more mature than the T44 and better prepared for user tests at Ft. Benning. The test crew welcomed the amiable on-site FN representative and viewed his presence as part of FN’s commitment to winning the competition.

The Belgians had spent their own money on the development of the T48, making numerous design changes in answer to every whim of the American military. They converted their original design from the .280 British round and developed a simple top loading magazine charging clip that the Americans demanded. FN spared no expense in producing test prototypes for the Army and arranged for their top designer, Mr. Ernst Vervier, to be on standby at the test site to oversee weapon repair and to answer questions.

American regulations made the testing unfair to FN. As the Belgian company was foreign owned, the company was not allowed to obtain any of the information from the classified test results. FN was allowed to know how their own T48 was doing, but no information was provided as to how the T44 was faring. In spite of this, FN’s Managing Director, Mr. René Laloux, somehow knew a great deal about how the testing was going, stating at the end of this sequence of testing, “….between the two rifles, T44 and T48 FN, the final conclusions were in favour of the F.N. rifle.”

Before Rayle left Ft. Benning, the Colonel in charge pulled him aside to receive one more embarrassing admonishment. This time it was for the shabby performance by Springfield Armory on the T161 machine gun prototypes. Like the T44’s, these were failing miserably, too. There were failures to feed, broken firing pins, and ruptured cartridges that spewed debris all over the test cell. The weapon was not only performing poorly, but engineering support was lacking. What about that tripod Springfield sent for the machine gun tests, the Colonel demanded? His test crew was expecting a new design but received a cobbled up tripod instead. What was the Armory doing with all of its time and money? Rayle had no answers and none of it was his fault, of course, but now he was in charge of R&D and he now owned all the blame. Rayle was not even three weeks on the job and his two major programs were already in big trouble. It was an embarrassment; for him, and for the Springfield Armory.

LTC Rayle returned to Springfield on 20 July, anxious to get his team working on solutions to the T44’s problems. He began with a briefing on the history of the weapon. It was not a happy tale. The original design intent was to develop a .30 caliber rifle weighing no more than 7 pounds that offered semi and full automatic fire. Design goals included: reduce coil, accommodation of a new short round, and firing from a detachable box magazine. The purpose of the new rifle was to replace the M1 Rifle, the BAR, the M2 Carbine, and the M3A1 .45 caliber submachine gun. Four weapons and three different calibers replaced by a single weapon. This would greatly improve logistic support in the field. Since the end of World War II, numerous rifle designs had been developed and trialed until only the T44 remained.

“Who is the engineer in charge of the T44?” Rayle demanded. There was no single answer. The project started and stopped so often and priorities shifted so much that there really wasn’t one individual who followed the program from the beginning to now. John Garand had been responsible for some of the early designs, and Earl Harvey for some of the others. Garand had retired only a couple of weeks before Rayle came to Springfield, and was no longer available to the team.

The rifle’s status was a confusing mess that was compounded by the military’s “big picture.” How was the war with Japan brought to an end? It was with the atomic bomb, of course. There was a new thinking and general consensus by the military’s top brass. Wars would now be fought and won with nuclear weapons. Small arms would only be needed for a short cleanup with rifle wielding soldiers. What rifle did they need? For a totally demoralized enemy, almost any firearm would do.

As Rayle planned the direction forward, more bad news arrived. Classified Ft. Benning test results had been leaked to Newsweek magazine. The 20 July 1953 issue featured an article claiming that the Belgian T48 was far ahead of the American T44, and predicted it would soon be announced that FN was the winner. Those at the Armory doubted the veracity of the report. Long afterwards, they learned that the Newsweek article was totally accurate. Ft. Monroe had secretly decided the FN T48 was the winner. They also decided to allow the T44 to continue with the next scheduled round of testing in Arctic conditions, only to serve as a yardstick to gage how much better the T48 would perform in cold weather conditions.

At the end of August, Rayle gathered his group together and offered them three options: The first one was to build up some repair parts to refurbish the guns after testing and submit the guns for trial in the same configuration. The second was to address the gun’s major problems so the rifle would not be a total embarrassment to Springfield Armory. The third option was to use the remaining three months to fix everything that was broken. This included testing in both ambient and Arctic conditions with the objective to beat out the FN candidate.

Much was at stake. First and foremost was the avoidance of a huge loss of face for the United States, should a foreign weapon win the competition. Chief of Ordnance, General Ford, was already taking hits from the recent episodes of poor performance of Springfield designs. The decision of Rayle’s team was unanimous. They would pull out all the stops in order to win the Arctic competition. From what he knew of the two designs, Rayle recognized this would not be an easy task. The T44 had to overcome major design problems while the major issues with the FN gun were mostly metallurgical problems. From his engineering background he knew these could easily be solved by material or process changes.

Rayle was no stranger to solving difficult technical problems on a tight schedule. He once undertook a wartime assignment where his job was to discover the cause of mid air bomb collisions. The subsequent detonations, which occurred soon after release, were responsible for downing the very aircraft that dropped them. Rayle worked around the clock, conducting analysis, as well as filming and retrieving dropped bombs. He expeditiously determined the cause and verified the solution. Many bomb crews owe their lives to his timely solution.

To solve T44’s problems he decided on a direct approach, so he listed all of the technical problems in accordance with their severity. Once identified, they would be addressed one by one. Right away it became evident that he would need personnel and manufacturing capacity. Even though he had 300 people working for him, redirecting some of them to the T44 improvement would be detrimental to the schedule for the project they were working on. It wasn’t just warm bodies he needed either. He required top notch design talent – someone with expertise at the level of John Garand. Garand had earlier been approached, but refused after he learned that returning to work at the Armory would require him to give up his retirement pay. Getting Garand back this way was out of the question.

Rayle found a solution that solved both problems at once. A nearby machine shop, Mathewson Tool Company, was well known to the firearms industry for its excellent manufacturing capability. Their reputation was due, to a large extent, to the manufacturing prowess of its owner, Dave Mathewson. Rayle’s solution was simple. Mathewson would get a contract to produce any new T44 components that were needed and John Garand would work for him as a consultant. Garand could still collect his Army retirement along with a paycheck from Mathewson.

The T44’s number one problem was feeding cartridges from the magazine. They all knew that proper feeding is the primary key to the development of a reliable semi or full automatic weapon. Examining the test records, the Springfield team realized that rounds fed poorly from new magazines and much better from ones that were worn in. Their magazine improvement program included some spring and configuration design changes, but the major improvement was the application of what was then a relatively new development; a dry film lubricant called molybdenum disulphide. The new coating provided lubrication while the magazine was new and wore off at the same rate as the magazine wore in. Problem solved!

The buttstock was reinforced to improve it for grenade launching. For the Arctic testing, an enlarged trigger guard was developed to accept a gloved trigger finger. New designs were verified by testing in ambient, dusty, and cold conditions, until acceptable function was achieved. More than once, they found that parts that worked in ambient conditions were totally unreliable at low temperature. Rayle was impressed by the technical expertise of his team. Engineering technicians carefully conducted each test, taking careful notes and changing one thing at a time, so they knew if each individual fix was effective or not. By mid December the much-improved T44’s were sent to Alaska, meeting up with the T48’s that had been sent from the FN plant in Liege, Belgium. This time, Rayle decided, the Springfield team would send technical representatives to support the testing, replacing them every two weeks so that a new pair of eyes were available for a fresh look to address every problem that occurred. Rayle had recalled previous mistakes, and was determined not to repeat them.

As testing got underway, the T44’s were not problem free, but worked much better in the cold conditions than the T48’s, which suffered from a loss of power. These problems were reported to FN who once again dispatched their design expert, Ernst Vervier to witness the problem and hopefully provide a solution. Unfortunately, Mr. Vervier could only come up with one on-site solution to cure the sluggish operation. His only option was to enlarge the gas port to give the weapon more power. Determining the proper gas port diameter on any weapon is a very tricky undertaking, usually requiring extensive testing. Mr. Vervier was well aware of the risk associated with changing it, and knew it was a sword that cut both ways. It solved the immediate power problem but the higher bolt velocity worked all of the components harder causing an increased number of broken parts. Vervier tried to explain them away as normal parts life issues, but the malfunctions stood, counting against the T48 on the competition scorecard.

In spite of the redesigns, there were still plenty of problems with the T44. Those miserable filler blocks that shortened the T20 receiver were continually working loose and grenade launching was still problematic. At the end of February, it was clear that the T44 had come out ahead and was announced the winner of the cold weather testing. Cautious military commanders at the Pentagon recoiled a bit from this latest development. Had they been too hasty in discounting their own American entry? To the joy of Rayle’s team, Ft. Monroe announced that the next round of testing would again include the T44. Possibly this time it might be considered as a serious contender.

Rayle’s visit to command headquarters at Ft. Monroe was a disappointment. Rather than showing any enthusiasm for the success of the American weapon, most of the discussion centered on the Americanization of the T48. It was if the recent T44 success had never happened. The entire U.S. defense industry was based on English inch-system dimensions. With no easy way to introduce a metric-designed weapon into U.S. production, it would be necessary to convert the entire T48 drawing package to the inch-system. At the same time, it was also important to convert the European format drawing into one more recognizable in the U.S. The good news was that the Canadians were interested in helping with these tasks, since they had already decided to adopt the FN design as their service rifle.

To his dismay, he learned that Springfield Armory was to assist in the metric conversion. Now his R&D department faced a huge challenge. It would be necessary for them to do a near perfect job with the conversion. Should even one component be manufactured incorrectly as a result of the conversion, the failure would likely be viewed as an effort to sabotage the competitor. And how would anyone know? Easy. Competing right alongside the U.S. made T48 would be the same metric guns made at the FN factory in Belgium to assure the American conversion was flawless.

Rayle could not let anything jeopardize the non-metric T48 design and subsequent testing. The Armory was already in trouble with Congress and some branches of the military, accused of being wasteful, inefficient, and some even said incompetent. Springfield Armory had no friends in the U.S. firearms industry either. Concerned firearms manufacturers had insisted on a meeting with him, displeased that Springfield Armory was taking work they believed could be more efficiently performed by private industry. A mediocre conversion job could sound the Armory’s death knell.

Rayle went back to Springfield prepared for the direction forward. He would farm out the metric conversion to U.S. industry. The industry would be totally unbiased and if anything, supportive. This would be an opportunity for them to tool up for U.S. production of what might become the next U.S. service rifle. Harrington and Richardson won the contract for the conversion and the production of 500 inch-system T48 rifles.

Undaunted by these new developments, the luxury of additional time and the recent miracle they pulled off with the Arctic testing gave Rayle the time he needed to beat the T48 in the next round of testing. In June of 1954, Dave Mathewson delivered the first T44E4, a rifle with a proper length receiver that had been designed with the aid of John Garand. The T44E4 looked good and was a full pound lighter than the T48.

Excited about the work done by Mathewson and Garand, Rayle took the rifle home that same night to examine it more closely. Sitting in the kitchen with the rifle in his lap, Rayle thought back on the ease at which the FN rifle could be field stripped. “The T44E4 was easy to strip too,” he thought. Or was it? He disassembled the T44E4 a couple more times to convince himself. Then a better idea came to him. Relying on her unfamiliarity with firearms, he asked his wife to leave the dishes for a moment in order to try her hand at it. She succeeded for the most part, but floundered, when trying to remove the bolt.

The next day Rayle called Dave Mathewson and recounted the previous night’s field stripping exercise. Dave agreed to look into it, and sure enough the next models delivered had extra cuts to facilitate disassembly. After thirteen each of the T48’s and T44E4’s were delivered, the guns were sent in opposite directions. Arctic testing would continue in Alaska while Ft. Benning would be supplied five of each type for user testing. By the spring of 1955, it was concluded that the weapons had an equal number of deficiencies, but the Board had a clear preference for the T44. At the conclusion of testing in November 1955 the malfunction rates were: T44–1.4%, inch-system T48–2.4%, and FN made T48-2.4 %.

Design refinements of both weapons and testing continued through most of 1956 with the final report indicating that either rifle was suitable for Army use. The lighter weight, ease of manufacture, non-adjustable gas system, fewer components, and slight edge on reliability gave the Board reasons to make their choice the T44E4. Official notification was not made until June 1957, but by then Rayle had been reassigned as the Ordnance Adviser to the First Field Army of the Republic of China, in Taiwan.

The teams led by LTC Roy E. Rayle had overcome great odds, beating out one of the finest service rifles ever developed. Without his engineering and leadership skills, the history of U.S. small arms would look quite different than it does today.