Well, actually, he didnt utter it he wrote it.
Weve all heard Pattons praise of the M1 Garand rifle.
The first production M1 rifle was successfully proofed, function-checked, and accurized on July 21, 1937.
The Army accepted the first run of guns in 1938.
By January 1940, Springfield Armory was producing 100 rifles per day.
(Remember, this was still peacetime in the U.S.).
Production peaked in January 1944 with 122,001 M1s produced in 31 days.
Thats just under 4,000 rifles per day, or around 165 rifles per hour!
The Garand semi-automatic rifle wasnt Pattons only object of adoration in the letter.
He went on to say that his admiration for Ordnance products does not stop with the M-1 Rifle.
An Amazing Source
High praise from Patton was not to be taken lightly.
He was just as feared and revered during his lifetime as his legacy is today.
The man knew his way around a rifle.
No doubt he knew the pros and cons of each advancement and adoption.
He had served in many capacities at ordnance facilities throughout the country since 1918.
Clearly, the War Department had the right man for the job.
During World War II, all the aspects of Army Ordnance boomed, becoming a $30 billion-a-year industry.
Campbell retired in 1946, but he didnt sit idle.
He took a job as the Executive Vice President for International Harvester, a well-known producer of farm equipment.
Interestingly enough, International Harvester went on to produce 337,623 M1 Garand rifles between 1952 and 1956.
Today, International Harvester-marked M1s are highly prized by collectors because of their overall low production quantity.
Records indicate Winchester produced a total of 513,880 M1 rifles between December 1940 and June 1945.
Between the two of them, their combined World War II production totaled 4,040,802 rifles.
Thats a lot of battle implements!
