Worn Out '03 Barrels in 1942

[firstflabn]

View image: springfield barrels 4th infdiv 12 28 42 001

Found this in the minutes of a high level War Department staff meeting from December, 1942. No quantities are listed, but I presume this division was still using the '03 as its primary rifle (if it was just rifle grenadiers and misc. troops, it wouldn't have been worth it to raise the issue to this level).

The 4th Infantry Division assaulted Utah Beach on June 6, 1944 in its first action, so they had lots of time to get this corrected. Shows what bad shape our supply situation was until the Garand and carbine programs got really rolling and how the '03 (and later the 03A3) were not necessarily limited to secondary usage.

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[John Beard]

The presence of unserviceable barrels is not the least bit surprising. Springfield was tasked to make hundreds of thousands of replacement barrels in 1942. And Remington made some too.

Hope this helps.

J.B.

[firstflabn]

They weren't making them as spares, that's for sure. Problem is, the 4th Division was a RA unit that had been mobilized 2-1/2 YEARS earlier. At the time this report was written the US had only 16 divisions overseas. If those 16 divisions and their division slice had been completely armed with the Springfield and variants, it would have only amounted to a half million rifles or so. That's what surprised me a little on this tidbit.

Had there been a reversal in North Africa, they could easily have been on a boat headed east. I think everybody appreciates the amazing story of the ramping up of production, but it's easy to overlook just how hairy it was at this point in the war - and the production miracle was in the making, but not yet in the field. There was no guarantee at this moment that the Garand and carbine programs were going to succeed - either in terms of numbers or quality.

In the four months after this report only three more army divisions shipped out. That's when they started to get caught up. In December 1942 units were shipping out with less than half of their equipment - including in many cases, shoulder arms. Many had to pass weapons around to qualify - in the embarkation camps, not in basic. Thankfully, the Japanese had been nearly halted and Hitler had his hands full with the Russians, so we had bought enough time to set the stage for the production miracle to affect the war.

Many comments were made over the 1st Marine Division using 03s on Guadalcanal. Frequently tied to these comments is how sad it was that the Marines got the old gear and the army always got the new stuff. Well, this shows that the army was squeezed too.