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Show Ordnance Officers Urge Motor Artillery Designing HESF, is lit tie. "1 r any. question that Teven In the complete sense motorized mo-torized field artillery is here. That Is. this Important event In automotive development has come to pass and Is not In any way a matter of futurity. There are. of course, those who still advocate the retention of horse artillery equipment haulage under certain conditions, and ooinion which deserves consideration is divided to this extent The merits of tiie horse will naturally be advanced as unique for some time. As was said by :tfa:lor General C. C. Williams Wil-liams chief of ordnance, D. S. A., at the last meeting of the Society of Automotive Engineers, the military mind is a rigid mind. , ; ,A , . Aside from any douot as to complete artiilery motorization being here or feasible feasi-ble it is obvious that a vast amount of work is at hand in connection with the design and production of tanks, tractors, mobile repair Shops, and the like, for use of the ordnance department. It Is well known that our ordnance department depart-ment not only towk as early steps as were taken in amy country toward held artillery artil-lery motorization, but used and developed devel-oped during the war a great amount, of automotive equipment of commercial and government design produced in this country, coun-try, i The policy of the ordnance department in Its development and production work is to secure the advice and assistance of the Industry to the greatest extent possible. Individuals and companies are asked to submit designs and will in turn be askd to submit bids for the production, produc-tion, at first, of sample models of approved ap-proved designs. This wise and liberal method will. U is believed, be of great and increasing effectiveness. The orndance department deserves great credit for inaugurating the policy, which in one of its most important phases contemplates con-templates the avafllblllty and use of the best automotive engineering talent in the country for the common good. The reliability re-liability of the mechanical equipment must be equal to that of the horse. Given this reliability, there is no doubt that the mechanical equipment would be more effective ef-fective than the horse; not forgetting that on account of the frailty of the horse and the various difficulties of maintaining maintain-ing him in acnte war operations the mechanical me-chanical equipment is now in many respects re-spects more reliable than the horse. The ordnance department will have the full cooperation of the Society of Automotive Auto-motive Engineers, many of whose members mem-bers worked with the ordnance department depart-ment in a remarkably helpful way during the war. The committee of the society is now at work with the ordnance department de-partment and will hold meetings regularly regu-larly for the purpose of formulating advisory ad-visory recommendations and considering engineering questions submitted to il by the ordnance department. At recent sessions of the committee held in Washington there were present Major General C. C. Williams, chief of ordnance; Brigadier General S. D. Rock-enback. Rock-enback. chief of Ue tank corps; Colonel C. L. H. Ruggles. chief of the technical staff of the ordnance department; Colonel L. B. Moody, Colonel James B. Dlllard, and tiie following members of the Society of Automotive Engineers' committee: Herbert YV. Alden, chairman; W. G. wall. Dent Barrett, O. W. Dunham and Coker F. Clarkson. President Charles M. Manly and Past president C. F. Kettering or the society are members of the committee. The ordnance department lias established estab-lished designing offices at Syracuse. Cleveland-, Detroit and Peoria to bring about closer relations between automotive automo-tive engineers and the war department. A permanent exhibit of ordnance material is to he maintained at Aberdeen proving ground, where automotive engineers may inspect samples of motorized apparatus used by the ordnance department at the present lime. |