GUNS AND SHELLS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17688, 28 July 1919, Page 8

GUNS AND SHELLS

SOME STARTLING FIGURES. At a luncheon held to celebrate tho demobilisation of the East Anglian Munitions Committee, Sir James Stevenson (Director of Area Organisation of the Ministry of Munitions) said tho magnitude of the "work of the Ministry of Munitions would be realised when he stated that from first to last it turned out 256,000,000 shells. He had seen machine guns worked up from 125 to 4000 a week, and small arms ammunition to 10,000,003 rounds a day. Aeroplanes and engines were worked ur> to 4000 a month. As many as 4,000,000 shells were fired on the western front in a day, and the troops never moved a yard. Whatever might be said against the Ministry ofMunitions no one could say: "You did not deliver the goods." At the opening meeting-of the Technical Inspection Association, -which consists at its inauguration of members of the inspection branch of the department, and has been formed to facilitate mutual assistance between the members and to standardise methods of inspection in the engineering, chemical, and allied industries, with, it is hoped, benefit both to the State and to Labour, the foflowngr fijrures were given to show the output of munitions required by our armies and the amount of inspection work involved between August 4-, 1914, and November 11, 1918:— . ■ Field guns and howitzers (complete equipment) ... .„ » 85,000 Trench howitzers or mortars 19,200 Machine jruns ... „ 186,000 Rifles 5,050[000 Steel helmets 7,500,000 Trench mortar ammunition (rounds) '.. 13,000,000 Small arms ammunition (rounds) 11,141,000,000 Hand grenades 89,000 Aerial bombs „. 4,175,000 High explosives (tons) 730,000