re: #47 William Barnett-Lewis

it is arguable that the Ordinance Department did as much damage to the Army over the past two hundred years as our varied enemies. The cluster f**k surrounding the acceptance of a repeating rifle was only exceeded by the one foisting the M14 on the Army.

On the other hand, Gen Crozier was directly responsible for approving the M1903 rifle, the M1911 pistol, the BAR (M1918), and the M1917 machine gun. More critically he was key in convincing the powers that be that the US military needed to upgrade those (and other) weapons.

And it’s arguable that he had an indirect but critical influence on the effectiveness of systems developed in WWII. He’s the person who got the GANTT charts used by the US arsenals. Say what you will about the problems with those charts, the advantage they created over individual manager opinion and knowledge was significant.