WW II Snafu - guns refinished w/out diassembly and degreasing

[4V50 Gary]

I took bluing/parkerizing at both Lassen College (Susanville, CA) and Trinidad State. At both schools, we were to detail strip the firearm, clean it and degrease it before boiling it in the bluing tanks. Well, at the Army's Atlanta arsenal (WW II the major in charge didn't do it that way. He got things done quick! Too bad all the guns that went through his men's hands were SNAFU'd. This excerpt is from the interview of Justus Rathbone Belfield

JB: I forgot to tell you. I got down to Gordon and I was told I had to go to Atlanta where they were bluing weapons, and they needed three people to go there and check. So three of us got the job. We got over there and oh my gosh, I couldn’t believe it. They were doing it all wrong. I asked for the officer in charge and they said Major So-and-So. I don’t know his name and I don’t want to know. He came out and I said, “You’re doing this all wrong, Major.” He says “What are we doing wrong?” “Well first off, you’re not breaking down the weapons properly—to do this job, you’ve got take them all apart, you can’t just take the wood off them and dunk them.” That’s what they were doing, just taking the wood off and dunking them, a gas-operated weapon. They were carburizing all the springs. The process carburized the springs, take the spring and pull it down and it would stay down. So I told him. He said, “Well, who are you?” I told him who I was and he said, “How do you know about bluing?” I said, “I worked for Savage Arms for several years before I came into the service. I’ve been acquainted with almost every operation, I was an inspector on weapons.” He says, “You mind your business and I’ll mind mine” and he turned around and walked back to his office. So I made out my report and we went back. We were there for I think four days and three days were wasted after seeing that. They were going on, doing M1 rifles. They weren’t plugging the barrel, they were bluing the inside of the barrel, they were carburizing all the springs. The rear site had the spring cover; all you had to do was hit the rifle and the sides would fall off. The cover had no spring. I thought if he wants to do it his way, that’s his problem. It’ll catch up with him for sure. Little did I think that it would be me. So I go on and they say the 10th Armored is going to go over to Europe and we’ve got to get all the weapons checked quick. My men were trained by me so what I did, they did. It wasn’t ten minutes and one of my men came up to me and said, “Sergeant”—I was a Sergeant First Class by the way.

He came up to me and said, “All these weapons are no good.” I asked what was wrong with them and he showed it to me and said “I know, I know all about them.” We checked every single weapon and put a red tag on every bunch. Went from the first supply room to the second supply room, same thing. We got through three supply rooms and we were on our fourth one. I had a lieutenant with me—no matter where you go, you have to have one of them with you—he came running over to me and said, “Sergeant, come with me quick.” I went over to the door and there was a two-star general standing there. He says, “Who’s in charge of this operation?” I said “I am, sir.” He said, “What are you finding?” I said “Every one of your weapons won’t work, even your machine guns won’t work. They’ve all been blued and they were not taken down properly. Every one of them is junk. The inside of the barrel is blued, I don’t know about the firing pin but it’s probably blued.” He asked for my name and I told him. He asked for my unit and I said 923d Ordnance.” He said, “I’m going to make out a report and if you’re wrong, you’re in trouble.” I said, “Sir, I’m not wrong but you’re in trouble—you don’t have any weapons.” [laughs] I went back to my company, we didn’t have anything else to do, he didn’t want us to go any further. He said he wanted his ordnance unit check it out. Sure enough, they were all bad. They had all been sent to Atlanta for re-bluing. I don’t know what happened to him.

Source:

https://dmna.ny.gov/historic/veteran...s_Rathbone.pdf

[FrankenMauser]

Just dunk it! ™

[4V50 Gary]

The two-star was probably Maj. Gen. Paul Newgarden. I just checked in my copy of Lester Nichols' Impact: The battle story of the Tenth Armored Division

[Kreyzhorse]

Interesting story Gary.