Army and Navy Munitions Board

In 1943, Calco produced around 97% of the US consumption of sulfadiazine (79), and was the sole American producer of sulfaguanidine (78), both supplied to the Army and Navy Munitions Board. The armed forces also demanded sulfathiazole (77), which cured several common diseases caused by streptococcus, staphylococcus, pneumonococcus and gonococcus, as well as preventing and curing wounds and burns115. In Britain, ICI stepped up manufacture of aniline and A,A-dimethylaniline for explosives, as well as for antimalarials and other pharmaceutical products116,117. 

Army and Navy Munitions Board was established in 1922 and an Army Industrial College in 1924. ... 

The Assistant Secretary then listed a number of actions which his office or the Army and Navy Munitions Board would initiate in each of the... 

Mr. Allen, who was also the civilian chief of the New York Chemical Procurement District, had suggested that the district advisory committee be designated the Chemical Advisory Committee to the Army and Navy Munitions Board. This suggestion was adopted and from early 1939 until after the close of World War II the committee, whose members were leading representatives of the chemical industry, met monthly in Washington or New York. Liaison officers from the Army and Navy Munitions Board, the Ordnance Department, and the CWS attended the meetings. A representative from the Advisory Commission to the Council of National Defense and, later, one from the War Production Board, were often in attendance. ... 

Among the subcommittees of the Advisory Committee to the Army and Navy Munitions Board was one on alkali-chlorine. Set up in the fall of... 

To supervise its priority and allocation activities, the CWS set up a separate section in the Procurement Planning Division, OC CWS, early in 1941. This section had responsibility for estimating the amounts of critical materials needed and recommending priorities to be assigned to end items. The Chief, CWS, submitted these recommendations to the Army and Navy Munitions Board for assignment of certification of priorities. They were then passed on to the Office of Production Management for final approval. 

Likewise, there is a host of government specifications promulgated by the military agencies for plastic materials and products. These can be located by consulting the semiannual indexes issued by the Departments of the Army 37), Navy 30), and Air Force 20), and the Munitions Board 35). 

These same files, supplemented by other source material, were consulted for the emergency and war periods. The author found valuable information on the Chemical Advisory Committee to the Army-Navy Munitions Board in the files of the Chlorine Institute and the Manufacturing Chemists Association. He also searched the retired files of the Army-Navy Munitions Board, some of which were in the National Archives and others in the Pentagon. He obtained data on various aspects of CWS procurement and distribution from retired files of the Assistant Secretary of War (ASW), the Under Secretary of War (USW), the Army Service Forces (ASF), the Operations Division (OPD) of the War Department General Staff, the War Production Board (WPD), and the War Department Manpower Board (WDMB), all in the National Archives. 

A detailed discussion of specifications is also outside the scope of this paper. Briefly, there are approximately 15,000 to 20,000 specifications available in two main categories, federal and military. An Index to Federal Specifications and Standards (5S) is issued annually. The index to military specifications, issued semiannually, was published in four volumes II, Army (36)] III, Navy (51)] and IV, Air Force (35). Volume I, Munitions Board, was discontinued as of October 1952 in the interest of economy and to avoid unnecessary duplication. 

The development of incendiary rockets for the Army proceeded slowly until the autumn of 1944, because none of the theaters or branches of the armed services set up a military requirement for the munition. Then a joint Army-Navy testing and experimental board asked for one hundred 7.2-inch incendiary rockets for trial. This became a joint project of the Ordnance Department and CWS, with the latter filling the rocket with incendiary fuel and fitting it for bursting and ignition. The rocket head held about twenty pounds of PT fuel, a quantity shown by test to be adequate for starting fires. This rocket was never standardized, but the CWS would have considered it satisfactory for use as a standard munition if the need for such a rocket had arisen. ... 

---