@@Mr.Ambrose_Dyer_Armitage_Esq. Jean learned machinist skills while working at the textile mill, and was hired by Browne and Sharpe, a Providence, Rhode Island, toolmaking company in 1909. Later, he found employment with a New York toolmaking firm in 1916, and resumed rifle practice at the shooting galleries along Broadway. Garand became a naturalized United States citizen in 1920.
@@johnplaid648 I know; I just like shitting on Canadians and Frogs (not literally, of course, I'm no fetishist). I said that because I found it funny and thought of it as a joke though...clearly it wasn't taken as such. In any case, Melvin Johnson's 1941 rifle should've won the competition. We wouldn't've had the _PING!_ but, I thought it the better rifle.
@@Mr.Ambrose_Dyer_Armitage_Esq. He never profited from the more than six million Garand rifles eventually produced, although there was a failed movement in Congress to give him a $100,000 grant. Eugene Stoner negotiated a contract with Colt Arms and received a sum for every M-16 manufactured. He became wealthy and bought a nice home, an airplane, remodeled his home and built a drafting wing and a machine shop. Browning did the same thing. Garand was in competition with Stoner as he produced a design that the U.S. Defence Department rejected. Lesson learned. Garand should have obtained a lawyer and had a contract drawn. When it comes to your money, no more Mr. Nice Guy.
I've been running a small firearms related business for 19 years, and therefore I'm a survivor of the 2013 Gun Boom, which put a lot of firearms related companies out of business. During subsequent gun booms I had customers complain at me about lead times and these experts insisted I should invest in capacity. But anyone who survived 2013 is very reluctant to invest in capacity, because we know how gun booms can turn to bust instantly. This is a reason why ammunition shortages can be so severe: no one is going to tool up during a typical gun boom.
My dad was one of those that panicked during the ammo shortages. He didn’t want to accept that it was self inflicted and when a lot of people suddenly buy all the stock at a store it takes a while to restock since the manufacturing speed is the same. He doesn’t shoot much, and hasn’t shot 22 in years, and yet would buy as much 22 as he could find and bought several boxes of ammo for his other stuff. All on top of boxes he’s had sitting unopened for several years.
@@NBSV1 It's like a self inflicted wound, isnt it? I refused to buy at all at that time, just kept what I had stocked up all ready. Prices went through the roof because people panic. It was funny, because 6 months before that, I couldnt sell 500 rds of 223... had it up on the gun site forever before it sold. I hate the gun market... too many retarded fudds. Went to buy a parts kit the other day... these things sold new, with barrels, for $400. This guy wanted 1200 or whatever. We negotiate for 1000.... then he backs out... he thinks its worth more... keep in mind, his has no barrel or the semi auto parts you need to finish it. Then he wants more all of a sudden, cuz he just looked at it, and its 'flawless'. Yea bro, they all are, cuz they made brand new guns and stashed em away for a war that never happened. Then he realizes he is out of his mind, and wants to sell it again, but I was done bein jerked around at that point.
@@marcburns508 For sure. People get so worked up and scared they basically impulse buy. Then it really gets out of control if anything plays into the fear like something out of stock. The other part is kinda like the old car market. People see something go for $100K at an auction so they think their rusted out shell of the same car is worth a ton.
@@NBSV1haha houses work just the same as the old car market. A house on the neighborhood sells for 500+k and the delapitated shack of a house built in the 50’s that shouldn’t fetch more than 100k fetches 400k.
The OH-6 Helicopter during the Vietnam war was another infamous money sink tor the Hughes aircraft company. They drastically underbid to beat the competition, and lost millions on the deal. Then when the contract came up for more airframes, Boeing got the contract the the OH-58 instead. The only saving grace was some foreign production and morphing into the MD-500 civil copter.
The was a Cadillac that GM lost an amount of money on each car. When this was brought to the board, one of the executives said "we will make it up in volume. "
If what creates the loss are costs that don't scale up with volume of production, it's a little less dumb. Divide them by larger volume and voila, profit. Payments on new machines, for example, hurt your wallet less if those machines are working 24/7, to provide a very simple example.
I believe during our 20yrs of war in Iraq and Afghanistan Colt managed to lose all of their American contracts and the management has ridden that pony into the ground as fast as possible.
Colt threw the civilian market to the back burner, FFL's had to ask Colt for permission to stock their products which included buying several overpriced AR's every year to have the dubious privilege of selling overpriced 1911's. I can personally say I did my part to end Colt, talking 2 dozen odd people out of buying any new products from Colt. I'm hopeful for what CZ might do though
Yup. My favorite Colt f**k up was, the reintroduction of the python with a "Canadian legal barrel length" even for American market right before the Canadian handgun ban. Also their "reproduction" M16A1 that was an historically inaccurate mishmash of parts.
@@MitchFlint They placed enough contracts around such that they never ran out of rifles, they seem to have known that many contractors wouldn't deliver but were determined to get guns for the lowest possible price.
@@Matt_The_Hugenot Okay, I get it. Reckon that's why the Brits didn't fork over a deposit. Anyway, they did end up with plenty of Remington & Winchester M1917s, just thought maybe there was a delay due to the flimflam. It is pity about poor Hopkins & Allen, though. Great story, Ian!
@@Matt_The_Hugenot Might be fairer to say, rather than the lowest possible price, they were determined to make sure they got some guns for their money (rather than have an advance payment disappear into thin air)
I remember Brewster, the aviation company - they either went bankrupt or were wound up by the government during WW2. They won a contract to make a version of the F-4 Corsair, but the models they turned out were late and unreliable. They had expanded from being a small parts supplier to an aviation firm in just a few years and as with Remington they vastly oversold their ability to deliver.
Brewster was always a marginal company, with shaky management, insufficient plant, and inadequate quality control. These problems were evident even with its first major aircraft, the notorious F2A Buffalo. Brewster later built a new factory in Pennsylvania to build the SB2A Bermuda dive bomber. The factory was plagued with labor problems and the SB2A's performance was so poor that it never saw combat and was confined to training and target-tug duty.
Well, he was a Ferengi. Got to be fair here. He had no reason to research the - often quite convoluted - history of gun manufacturers on earth. If you wanted to make a list of all the gun manufacturers and arms dealers who went belly-up, you'll probably be here all week...
Haha, that was the first thing that came to my mind when I read the title of the video. "So now, Gaila owns his own moon. And I'm staring into the abyss."
During war prices for raw materials and skilled labor may skyrocket. Or they may not be available at all. Easy to go bankrupt if you are not prepared for this.
@@maxscott3349 Yeah, but if they actually knew what they were talking about they'd be in marketing. Clearly only marketers know about the labor involved in shaping a product and the state of the art in machining tools.
6:20 I would say that any serious large scale production of complicated parts in CNC machines will still require a bunch of specialized tooling and fixtures, if you want to do it in any cost efficient manner.
Plus it will require finding operators for those machines. Maybe not as much as back in WWII, as networking would allow one guy to handle a lot of machines, but there is a limit to how many machines a single guy can monitor or a single guy can do quality control inspections on their output.
@@kentvesser9484 If it is a really serious large scale production we are even talking about you are starting to look into making production lines with automation between the different CNC machines.
@@EddieBlueHalen I very much doubt that THIS is what's going to drive the "good ol' US of A" into bancruptcy... Seriously, why do some folks - I'm guessing especialy right wingers - have such a problem with this? It fits the US' geo-political strategy to a T. Expanding influence through military aid. They've been doing that for over a century now and it made the USA the geopolitial superpower it is.
The US Civil War seemed to be a time where it was very easy to go broke making guns simply because the guns desired were revolvers and repeating rifles….both new technologies with lots of patents blocking the easiest ways to make something like a revolver or a repeating rifle work well. Ian covers tons of these which is why I love this channel 😁
The troops got repeaters themselves where they could. But the big juicy contracts, for manufacturing of general-issue infantry rifles, were simpler single-shot designs.
6:25 while yes, it is comparatively easier to upscale with CNC, it's still hundreds of thousands, if not millions when all the machine costs and toolings for upscaling are factored in
6:20 Machining - be it CNC or conventional - small parts for mass production - "décoltage" as it's called where I live and work - is incredibly expensive. You use it only when you have no alternative. Casting, forging, stamping, deep drawing are the ways to go. Per-unit price is very low, but tooling is incedibly expensive. For a - relatively - simple tool for stamping and deep drawing - those two techniques are often used together - you're looking at a price - depending on the complexity and required tollerances - off between 50k and a quarter million dollars. For ONE part. Plus several months, if not a year for designing, prototyping and SOP (start of production) and this is with modern tools like Computer Aided Disaster...erm Computer Aided Design... and computer simulations. So yea, those guys were quite thuroughly screwed then and today...
Ian, another company that hit the wall in World War 1 was the Ross Rifle Company. I have seen a couple of your presentations on the Ross Mark 3/ M10 and the ?Claquoit? machine gun derivative, which I found to be quite informative. People might enjoy hearing that story told too. The early involvement of the Frank Mossberg Company of Hartford, CT (pre ww1) is a grey area to me, which I would like to hear addressed too.
The moral of the story is. If you are taking on a contract to make, anything. Make sure that you calculate the production costs so that you at least break even and not hand away your products for a net loss.
There is a whole field of accounting called cost accounting that specializes in just that, figuring out all the costs associated with making a product or providing a service, so you can accurately price it or know where you might find some savings to make a bid more competitive. It's easy for people to overlook indirect costs or even some direct costs especially in a dynamic scarcity driven market where prices change often. As a result you can go from a comfortable profit margin to a loss quite easily.
So obvious questions.. How were the Mausers made by H&A in the US marked, how many are still out there? Are they quality builds or mediocre like the Chinese Mausers?
They are good guns, but pretty scarce today. Most of them were overhauled by Belgium in the 30s. Here's a video on an original: th-cam.com/video/w2T91StdP0s/w-d-xo.html
@@dave_riots I've never had a rifle want to break my cheek bone as much as a Chinese Mauser. Something about the stock maybe, but I can't pinpoint the exact cause, as the LOP is the same as my m48 or my Danzigs. I could shoot my m48 all day without stop, but after 15 rounds from the Chinese left hooks I'm looking for an ice-pack. In fact, after a lifetime of shooting everything up to heavy stompers like the .577 nitro and lightweight .458 Lott, I've never had a rifle want to actually kill me like this. I may simply never know. Bad cupcake.
In the days before CAD/CAM, machining was the most expensive part of the process. When I ran my 80% Lowers through my buddies CAD/CAM, it took 30 minutes to machine the lower, from setup to end of program. Comparing that to the 12 hours I spent milling out my first build on the old mill I own, it was night and day difference. In 2 hours, I had 4 lowers milled, and ready to degrease and Cerakote. It would have taken me 4 or 5 days to mill them by hand.
Underbidding on a contract and losing your shorts in the process? Why that never, EVER happens to this day. Cough, cough, looking at certain aerospace companies. Great vid as always Ian.
@@jason200912 Well the newest AK is cheap, but holy hell that thing isn't close to efficient. The M91/30 was neither cheap nor efficient. Also, picking two of the firsts of a new genre and calling them neither cheap nor efficient is just obvious. Yes, they're the first....so they're not going to be the best. That's like arguing that the Model T lacks all amenities in a modern vehicle. Yeah and?
That happened to a guy who built the add-on to our old homestead that my parents currently live in. The guy was a decent mason but had no experience in undertaking such projects. And let's just say, he did just about everything wrong he could have, both in execution and attitude-- the experience was a nightmare which took at least three times as long as it should have, before he was finally fired. Someone else finished and did what damage control they could on his shoddy work... some of which literally made him weep at the thought of a contractor giving it to their client. I'm honestly embarrassed my parents live in that addition. It's built like prison labor that was in a bad mood was used.
Of course, the choose of the Springfield name is because the great success The Simpsons got in the summer of 1914 in the UK. King George V was a huge fan.
There are a couple of additional factors here. Hopkins and Allen were doing alright turning out a range of "pocket" pistols. Bigger, higher-pressure hardware, made at "wartime" production rates is a bit different, especially "mil-spec" gear, and especially for a "foreign" government contract. Then, there was the problem of tooling. The SMLE was a design ultimately dating back to the late 1880s AND it was full of components with Enfield-standard threads, which are "different", to say the least. So, they head to make or buy all of the truckload of gauges and tooling to make the rifle, BEFORE they could finish a single sample. As was discovered with the Lithgow rifle production, there was a slight difference between the "Enfield" inch and the "Pratt and Whitney" inch. It mattered because much of the machinery in the US was running with the Pratt and Whitney inch. As they say in the classics: "The great thing about industry standards is there are so many to choose from". The story had a parallel in the P-14 caper. A design full of Enfield threads, using the Enfield inch going into mass production by THREE different plants while they were still fiddling with the design mods to make the thing work with the rimmed .303 cartridge. (Hence the P-14 "star" version with a lot of internal differences and bolt mods.) And all of this was done using hand-drawn blueprints, transmitted by steamer and horse, and to be made on specialized machines (One process, ONE machine) that were driven by overhead shafts powered by a big steam engine or two. None of this;" I'll email the product package to you. Just fire up the Mazaks, load the files and the pallets, push the button and stand back" caper.
At the moment i am sitting in my studio. It's an older building and I am not sure when this part was built, but the attached part was build after the Civil War. The owner of the building started out working for Joseph Brown of Brown and Sharpe. By the Civil War, he started making parts for Springfield rifles. With the money he made he founded his own company based on a patented system of making files (file the tool) and the company survived until 1959. At one point it manufactured files under 50 different company names and the whole complex of buildings here is quite extensive and included it's own power plant. The danger with government contracts, particularly during a war, is that governments will revert to centrally managed economies because during a war they can't afford all the wastage and graft that comes with normal capitalism. If the government decides it can't afford to pay off the contract but needs the guns, they will renegotiate and just stiff the manufacturer after the goods are delivered. One can sue, but this has to be done in the government's court system. so good luck with that one. During WWI, Russia was the one country that didn't centralized their economy and just relied on capitalists and got totally screwed. The problem for Russia was that most of the major contractors were in other countries, so they couldn't just send in the troops to take control of the companies involved. Plus, that Russian government was any more honest than the current one, so that was that for the Russian war effort .
Hey. A company went bankrupt, but the Belgians were thankful for the "charitable donation". So the company got a "thank you card" and a box of cookies.
"Have we considered just making some guns and selling them?" "No, this complex scheme to skim off major government contracts is way easier than selling rifles during the largest war in human history."
Haha. Totally loved the subtle swipe at the latest iteration of "Springfield" Armory. I'm not surprised that it wasn't even an original idea of the current one, actually, quite appropriate in All measures.😆
Without watching the video before commenting I’m pretty sure almost every video Ian has done on obscure, low run Civil War revolvers or carbines ends with the company going out of business.
I forget which company. But before or at the very beginning of WW2 when designs were being floated for what would become the M1 Carbine. They US government gave a designer thousands of rounds of ammunition. The company then designed and submitted a rifle. Which promptly failed the trials. Turns out the ammunition specs had been changed and the Government failed to let them know. Whoopsie! Similar to what happened with the S&W 9mm rifle.
It's always worth sending at least one engineer to a potential vendor's manufacturing facility to see operations in person. Salesmen can tell you anything, and some will.
It'd be the other way around. I mean these guys did nothing more than unethically but completely legally take advantage of a country in need. They still meant to deliver. And they were worth of half a million at max based on the contract with Brits. Holmes, on the other hand, was not only unethical but also illegal, and succeeded spreading pseudoscientific bullshit in this day and age when anyone can do fact checking and have scientific knowledge so much that managed to raise her worth to 10 billion. And there is absolutely no doubt she knew what she did was bullshit. Thus, she didn't even intent to deliver what she promised. This Imperial Contracting Company doesn't come even close to Holmes in either of their maliciousness, attempt to deliver, success or worth.
The Holmes family weapon company, Thanatos, lasted from 1915-1923, at which point Elizabeth Sr was revealed to be a con artist when it was discovered none of her rifles worked.
Thanks Ian' I've alway's wondered what happened to H/A. They made alot of Revolvers pre WW1 but then H&R & Iver Johnson kind of took over on the Saturday Night .32 & .38 S&W short & long top break's also .22 s/l like the young American Revolvers.
While they didn't go bankrupt during the war, the Winchester Repeating Arms company got overleveraged and took a big hit because they'd just built a much larger factory to meet their US Army 1919 production contracts; which were all summarily canceled come the Armistice. Then the Great Depression delivered another body blow to their attempts to sell enough to service that debt; and they were eventually forced into receivership in 1931. So while it might be hard to go bankrupt making guns during a war; but be careful about having a financial exit strategy in case of an unexpectedly abrupt end of that war!
Thank you Sir I definitely found this video intriguing and interesting, I have sometimes wondered if a company went under during World War 1 or 2, so your video today actually did help me and was very informative Sir. Thanks again Sir
I looked it up and found, between june 1st and jan 1st of the next year. Even if they had Saturday’s, and tooling. They would have to make 2,010 rifles a day excluding shipping. If they had like 3 months to tool up, which is 72 working days. (Optimistic af, considering including building, back orders, spares. install and delivery) And idk. 4 days shipping 400,000 rifles across America via rail ( (optimistic) to a port to be inspected. They’d have to had made something like 3,810 rifles a day on average or 430 rifles an hour for 10 hr working day w only an hour for breaks. No break downs. no loss of time incidents. So it’d prolly have to be more like 480 or so rifles an hour. lmao Rofl even
This is exactly the kind of story that I think about when I consider entrepreneurship. "Oh I don't know quite enough about this topic myself" and then there's also the practical side of putting the manufacturing and company system together if you can design the product to begin with. Basically these guys were the classic idea guys. They had a very general idea on what could work, then they did everything backwards. Founded a company, got any contract available, started thinking about having any skill to make their product, started thinking about any facilities to make their product, started thinking about the money to make their product and started thinking about manufacturing time. They just had an idea and sold it before acquiring any means to execute it.
Wow, I always assumed "Fake it till you make it" was a 100% fool-proof business model. Apparently I was wrong. ...I guess the less is to never stop faking it, even if you don't make it ;P
For the P14 contract , the Britsh paid up front for machinery and stock. Figure qouted is about $21,000,000 at the time. The production lines were later sold to US for P17 production for about $9,000,000 A quick internet check, I million dollars then = just under $3 million today
Multiple points of failure including the British not desperate enough for the SMLE’s and you can’t sell for less than the cost of building. But it is indeed an interesting tale. William Gibson has a novel with a theme about military (or tactical) clothing that notes that many business pass through a phase where shadiness gives way to the need to legitimize if it will be long term viable. Your story kind of reminds me of that.
Thanks! Is it possible to share the bibliography for this story ? I'd be grateful for anything about production methods in gun factories, machinery, labour relations ...
Brewster Aircraft went from beating Grumman in supplying the Navy with a new Frontline fighter aircraft to complete collapse within 4 years. I also believe the original manufacturer of the Jeep went bankrupt when it turned out their factories were too small to supply the immense needs of the US Army so the Army gave the contract to Ford and GM instead.
Ian starts by saying that the US had enormous manufacturing capacity in 1914. I am not sure that is true, I think that a lot of that capacity grew between 1915 & 1918!
Good video on a well researched case. Overall businesses from job shops to major manufacturing concerns took on debt to massively increase production capacity for a war on a scale no one imagined. This led to some guesswork as to debt versus proffit versus war duration. Due to excess debt incurred by many there was a massive financial restructuring with companies being broken up and reformed. This led to a new plan as WWII approached and the US government took on the financial liability of building factories for war production which were then run by contractors. Twin Cities is a famous example from the government owned contractor operated (GOCO) war materials production program.
5:56..... as stated.....10 sample examples and all the notes, technical details ,specifications to mill, lathe/turn out the product.... no elaborate casting molds,,, no elaborate stamping molds.. just instructions, basic machine tools and raw materials..... easy to set up and produce with 10 reference items for standardization and reference ...with that in mind ramping up production shouldn't be AS BIG OF AN ISSUE obviously it still is a major concern
At first I thought this might be a video about Oskar Schindler. He in part went broke building a factory making shells in Nazi Germany that purposely never worked and bought shells from other factories to pass off as his own. Always enjoy your videos!
6:50 something that people still forget in the CNC world now. Especially in my workplace.. "why has it taken X amount of works hours to get this job started?!" "Fixturing, tooling etc" "But why?!" "How else are we supposed to hold it? "
Maybe I'm just being defensive because I'm British, but it doesn't sound like the British were fooled. "We'll happily buy rifles off you once you've got them in hand" is a far cry from "Here's a pile of cash which we think is buying rifles but which you're actually going to use to build a factory."
Modern-day companies include Lockheed, Martin-Marrietta, Raytheon, Northrup, and Grumman. Each has gone through various forms of bankruptcy from the space shuttle complex at Vandenberg Air Force base to several X-plane developments. An example was the Grumman X-29. I know that it is not guns, but examples of how weapons of war sometimes do not pay. Thank you for your information. Very educational. I will forward this to some friends of mine who make and refurbish guns from the Civil War to World War 2.
The moral of the story is that you can be good at something, but if your financial management is for crap (or even malicious) you can easily go bankrupt.
People like to accuse paper-pushing managerial types of being a useless drain on an organization (and sometimes they are), but they do have an essential function.
@@ForgottenWeapons there's such a thing as too many middle-men, but aside from the rare inventor/industrialist who can also talk "business", middle-men lubricate the gears of the economy so that buyers and manufacturers have a chance to know each other's needs.
@@ForgottenWeapons I feel like the USA armor review in WW2 got accused of being the exact sort of group of people that, gets judged excessively. That said, there are a lot of their decisions that were genuinely right. The American Wunderweapons, at least as far as heavy tanks were concerned, were not great.
Coincidentally, yesterday I purchased a Hopkins & Allen solid frame .32 'Range Model' revolver - possibly one of the last civilian guns H&A made before they stopped production! 🙂
Isn't quite the same, as the economy wasn't fully committed to war production, but Remington still went bankrupt during the GWoT despite making some M4s and being the supplier of the M24.
I still own a Remington Berthier, bayonet and likely 80+ year old ammo that my dad bought in the 1940's. Unfortunately it was "sporterized", but I wonder if that was done by Remington after the war in order to unload them on the U.S. sporting market. My dad also managed to get hold of what appears to be ancient surplus military ammo. I've certainly never shot it, nor do I think my dad did. I'd love to hear a segment on that problematic contract, and I wonder where the bayonet was made.
Not really a firearms guy, but I found this video fascinating. It was really interesting to see how the financial and political components interacted in this situation. Definitely interested in picking up that book at some point. Thanks for sharing your knowledge on this topic
@@supermemeposting8216 I suspect he meant a little bit of shade thrown at Springfield Armory and their Croatian partner (their manufacturer) HS Produkt
Interestingly, I just inherited my great grandfather's Hopkins and Allen 16 gauge shotgun. That was the first time I'd ever heard of H&A, and I read about how they went out of business, but this was far more detailed information. Thanks!
After many years of watching the channel I finally ordered my first shirt (utility long sleeve) and mug! Thanks gun Jesus for years of informative information for the inquisitive gun nut mind!
The most amazing thing about this video is that there is an actual book (and apparently a good read according to Ian) called “Allied Rifle Contracts in America”.
Another perfect example of how business and Industry are two separate things. Industry is factories. Workers. Raw materials. The things that actually DO and MAKE something. Business is a legal fanfiction. It exists solely in tax forms and bank ledgers. Industry can hum along just fine without the bean counters and sleazy investors. But business? Without the people who actually do the productive work, business is absolutely *boned.*
do you think little joe bob making 50 grand a year can just go out and buy a few CNC machines at 180k a pop, pay rent, utilities and source the materials and consumers? do people do it? sure do, with the help of tax forms, bank ledgers, bean counters and sleazy investors
The desperation of the British to secure arms and ammunition (especially for artillery) in 1915 is a big and little-known sub-story of the First World War. Large amounts of ammunition used in the disastrous Battle of the Somme (July 1916) was faulty. Interestingly, the British Government expected to be bankrupt by late 1916 (and indeed pretty much ran out of gold and foreign exchange). Loans were organised, against Congressional resistance. This is a reason- one reason- the anti-war United States ended up joining the Allied side in 1917. A German victory would have been a disaster for JP Morgan and other financiers.
"They were essentially 8 guys in an office"
*Accuracy international takes notes*
They made decent guns, however.
No, that was two guys in a garage. But, as @Skorpychan said, they actually made good rifles.
@@blackshirtsrule4ever Indeed, that was the joke. :) lol
@@SitriusGaming I know, and I appreciated it.
@@blackshirtsrule4ever Two blokes in a shed is the origin of so many successful UK businesses. Most recently, Brewdog.
Ask John Garand. He designed the Garand rifle M-1. The government told him that he would be compensated after the war and he never received any money.
He was a Canadian and a _Quebecois_ at that so, the government's justified.
@@Mr.Ambrose_Dyer_Armitage_Esq. Jean learned machinist skills while working at the textile mill, and was hired by Browne and Sharpe, a Providence, Rhode Island, toolmaking company in 1909. Later, he found employment with a New York toolmaking firm in 1916, and resumed rifle practice at the shooting galleries along Broadway. Garand became a naturalized United States citizen in 1920.
@@johnplaid648
I know; I just like shitting on Canadians and Frogs (not literally, of course, I'm no fetishist). I said that because I found it funny and thought of it as a joke though...clearly it wasn't taken as such.
In any case, Melvin Johnson's 1941 rifle should've won the competition. We wouldn't've had the _PING!_ but, I thought it the better rifle.
@@Mr.Ambrose_Dyer_Armitage_Esq. He never profited from the more than six million Garand rifles eventually produced, although there was a failed movement in Congress to give him a $100,000 grant. Eugene Stoner negotiated a contract with Colt Arms and received a sum for every M-16 manufactured. He became wealthy and bought a nice home, an airplane, remodeled his home and built a drafting wing and a machine shop. Browning did the same thing. Garand was in competition with Stoner as he produced a design that the U.S. Defence Department rejected. Lesson learned. Garand should have obtained a lawyer and had a contract drawn. When it comes to your money, no more Mr. Nice Guy.
@@johnplaid648
You just had to get that out of your system, eh? 😏
Im no Smedley Butler but Im sure outdoor sock manufacturers are the ones who do the best during war.
Socks for the hands, feet, balls and all. 🤣
Smedley Butler-the Marine General who wanted to assassinate President Truman?
@@jacobmasters438 Spare socks warm 'em all 🤣 Glad I'm not the only one who knows that.
I don't know. A common trope of wartime collections for the troops is national monuments out of home knit socks
@@jacobmasters438 Sticky bombs for taking out Tigers too according to Saving Private Ryan
It is interesting that over leverage and lack of transparency is a theme that is still running strong.
Over leverage the company, and if it goes sideways, just ask your buddies in Congress to write a bailout in the next omnibus bill
Yep
That is also called stealing and lying
@@Dyson_Fan_Boy I see You've played your Fallouts.
@Schrödinger's Cat Playing With A Tesseract. I just re-started Fallout 4. Lots of great mods to make it fun!
Loved this question and the answer, cheers Ian.
Are you not disappointed due to the lack of slides in Ian's presentation?
@@wegotas*snort*
What's Perun doing here? Are Emutopians even allowed to have guns?
I've been running a small firearms related business for 19 years, and therefore I'm a survivor of the 2013 Gun Boom, which put a lot of firearms related companies out of business. During subsequent gun booms I had customers complain at me about lead times and these experts insisted I should invest in capacity. But anyone who survived 2013 is very reluctant to invest in capacity, because we know how gun booms can turn to bust instantly. This is a reason why ammunition shortages can be so severe: no one is going to tool up during a typical gun boom.
My dad was one of those that panicked during the ammo shortages. He didn’t want to accept that it was self inflicted and when a lot of people suddenly buy all the stock at a store it takes a while to restock since the manufacturing speed is the same. He doesn’t shoot much, and hasn’t shot 22 in years, and yet would buy as much 22 as he could find and bought several boxes of ammo for his other stuff. All on top of boxes he’s had sitting unopened for several years.
@@NBSV1 It's like a self inflicted wound, isnt it? I refused to buy at all at that time, just kept what I had stocked up all ready. Prices went through the roof because people panic. It was funny, because 6 months before that, I couldnt sell 500 rds of 223... had it up on the gun site forever before it sold.
I hate the gun market... too many retarded fudds. Went to buy a parts kit the other day... these things sold new, with barrels, for $400. This guy wanted 1200 or whatever. We negotiate for 1000.... then he backs out... he thinks its worth more... keep in mind, his has no barrel or the semi auto parts you need to finish it. Then he wants more all of a sudden, cuz he just looked at it, and its 'flawless'. Yea bro, they all are, cuz they made brand new guns and stashed em away for a war that never happened. Then he realizes he is out of his mind, and wants to sell it again, but I was done bein jerked around at that point.
@@marcburns508 For sure. People get so worked up and scared they basically impulse buy. Then it really gets out of control if anything plays into the fear like something out of stock.
The other part is kinda like the old car market. People see something go for $100K at an auction so they think their rusted out shell of the same car is worth a ton.
@@NBSV1haha houses work just the same as the old car market. A house on the neighborhood sells for 500+k and the delapitated shack of a house built in the 50’s that shouldn’t fetch more than 100k fetches 400k.
The OH-6 Helicopter during the Vietnam war was another infamous money sink tor the Hughes aircraft company. They drastically underbid to beat the competition, and lost millions on the deal. Then when the contract came up for more airframes, Boeing got the contract the the OH-58 instead. The only saving grace was some foreign production and morphing into the MD-500 civil copter.
The OH-58 was a Bell product, not Boeing.
@@redcat9436 Ahh so you're right. I keep thinking of the Bell-Boeing Osprey, but at the time they were I think Bell was part of Textron.
The was a Cadillac that GM lost an amount of money on each car. When this was brought to the board, one of the executives said "we will make it up in volume. "
Got to love it when your executive doesn't understand basic math.
If what creates the loss are costs that don't scale up with volume of production, it's a little less dumb. Divide them by larger volume and voila, profit. Payments on new machines, for example, hurt your wallet less if those machines are working 24/7, to provide a very simple example.
That is called a ponzi scheme
I believe during our 20yrs of war in Iraq and Afghanistan Colt managed to lose all of their American contracts and the management has ridden that pony into the ground as fast as possible.
Surefire did the same thing
Colt threw the civilian market to the back burner, FFL's had to ask Colt for permission to stock their products which included buying several overpriced AR's every year to have the dubious privilege of selling overpriced 1911's.
I can personally say I did my part to end Colt, talking 2 dozen odd people out of buying any new products from Colt.
I'm hopeful for what CZ might do though
Maybe Colt is cursed and just by acquiring the company will cause CZ to fail too.
Colt going bankrupt isn't an unprecedented or unusual occurrence.
Yup. My favorite Colt f**k up was, the reintroduction of the python with a "Canadian legal barrel length" even for American market right before the Canadian handgun ban. Also their "reproduction" M16A1 that was an historically inaccurate mishmash of parts.
Whoever negotiated the contract for the British deserves a medal, they walked away losing nothing.
Yeah, there had to be an attorney or two involved in those shenanigans
They lost something most valuable - time.
@@MitchFlint They placed enough contracts around such that they never ran out of rifles, they seem to have known that many contractors wouldn't deliver but were determined to get guns for the lowest possible price.
@@Matt_The_Hugenot Okay, I get it. Reckon that's why the Brits didn't fork over a deposit. Anyway, they did end up with plenty of Remington & Winchester M1917s, just thought maybe there was a delay due to the flimflam. It is pity about poor Hopkins & Allen, though. Great story, Ian!
@@Matt_The_Hugenot Might be fairer to say, rather than the lowest possible price, they were determined to make sure they got some guns for their money (rather than have an advance payment disappear into thin air)
I remember Brewster, the aviation company - they either went bankrupt or were wound up by the government during WW2. They won a contract to make a version of the F-4 Corsair, but the models they turned out were late and unreliable. They had expanded from being a small parts supplier to an aviation firm in just a few years and as with Remington they vastly oversold their ability to deliver.
Vought F4U Corsair
I was thinking of Brewster too!
@@rapter229 And were only used for stateside training.
Brewster was always a marginal company, with shaky management, insufficient plant, and inadequate quality control. These problems were evident even with its first major aircraft, the notorious F2A Buffalo. Brewster later built a new factory in Pennsylvania to build the SB2A Bermuda dive bomber. The factory was plagued with labor problems and the SB2A's performance was so poor that it never saw combat and was confined to training and target-tug duty.
@@TerryDownethe Bermuda is considered to be one of the worst planes of the war, with the Truman committee making a scathing report.
Gaila: 'Quark, I've got one word for you: Weapons.' No one ever went broke selling weapons.
Well, he was a Ferengi.
Got to be fair here. He had no reason to research the - often quite convoluted - history of gun manufacturers on earth.
If you wanted to make a list of all the gun manufacturers and arms dealers who went belly-up, you'll probably be here all week...
The key word is "selling" not "making".
Haha, that was the first thing that came to my mind when I read the title of the video. "So now, Gaila owns his own moon. And I'm staring into the abyss."
@@bigpoppa1234 LOL It's a good show.
rule of acqusition 35: war is good for buisiness. No, wait. Thats 34. I always mix them up.
During war prices for raw materials and skilled labor may skyrocket. Or they may not be available at all. Easy to go bankrupt if you are not prepared for this.
Poor management is the most destructive weapon known to date.
Before you commit to making anything, ASK THE MACHINIST. Cardinal rule.
F' that. Sales people never ask no matter what is being made. Over extend, over promise, never ask.
@@1982rrose Machinists always have to put our money where Sales' mouth is. "YOU PROMISED WHAT?!"
@@justforever96 I know a shop full of patternmakers that would disagree with you on the extent of their knowledge
@@maxscott3349 Yeah, but if they actually knew what they were talking about they'd be in marketing. Clearly only marketers know about the labor involved in shaping a product and the state of the art in machining tools.
The number of times I've seen a sales team agree something with a client and only then ask IT how long it will take...
6:20 I would say that any serious large scale production of complicated parts in CNC machines will still require a bunch of specialized tooling and fixtures, if you want to do it in any cost efficient manner.
Plus it will require finding operators for those machines. Maybe not as much as back in WWII, as networking would allow one guy to handle a lot of machines, but there is a limit to how many machines a single guy can monitor or a single guy can do quality control inspections on their output.
@@kentvesser9484 If it is a really serious large scale production we are even talking about you are starting to look into making production lines with automation between the different CNC machines.
If you can go bankrupt making weapons of war during a war that's honestly a special talent
Yea, no kidding. If those guy owned the Sahara desert, 3 years down the road they'd had to import sand...
America is going bankrupt giving weapons to Ukraine. Same thing, much bigger scale. 😂
@@Bird_Dog00 funny how desert countries do import sand because desert sand is unsuitable for for example construction, they use beach sand instead.
@@EddieBlueHalen not individual companies. Huge difference
@@EddieBlueHalen I very much doubt that THIS is what's going to drive the "good ol' US of A" into bancruptcy...
Seriously, why do some folks - I'm guessing especialy right wingers - have such a problem with this?
It fits the US' geo-political strategy to a T.
Expanding influence through military aid. They've been doing that for over a century now and it made the USA the geopolitial superpower it is.
The US Civil War seemed to be a time where it was very easy to go broke making guns simply because the guns desired were revolvers and repeating rifles….both new technologies with lots of patents blocking the easiest ways to make something like a revolver or a repeating rifle work well. Ian covers tons of these which is why I love this channel 😁
The troops got repeaters themselves where they could. But the big juicy contracts, for manufacturing of general-issue infantry rifles, were simpler single-shot designs.
6:25 while yes, it is comparatively easier to upscale with CNC, it's still hundreds of thousands, if not millions when all the machine costs and toolings for upscaling are factored in
Their problem was time, not money as they still had a contract
The factory which made the Owen Gun went broke, they did everything for cost-price and expected to be rewarded after the war; they weren't.
😞
Yet more evidence, a large organised government exists only to exploit people.
it makes me think on the "war materials drives" where poor people gave their pots and pans to be made into weapons by large corporations for profit.
@@ravenof1985 they didnt even use the cheap alloys in cookware for that, it was sold off as scrap
@@ravenof1985 Everyone who invested in War Bonds also lost tons of money, their yield was far less than post-war inflation.
@@doingstuffdownunder8208 You forgot about what the income tax rates were for the workers during that time period.
6:20
Machining - be it CNC or conventional - small parts for mass production - "décoltage" as it's called where I live and work - is incredibly expensive. You use it only when you have no alternative.
Casting, forging, stamping, deep drawing are the ways to go.
Per-unit price is very low, but tooling is incedibly expensive. For a - relatively - simple tool for stamping and deep drawing - those two techniques are often used together - you're looking at a price - depending on the complexity and required tollerances - off between 50k and a quarter million dollars. For ONE part. Plus several months, if not a year for designing, prototyping and SOP (start of production) and this is with modern tools like Computer Aided Disaster...erm Computer Aided Design... and computer simulations.
So yea, those guys were quite thuroughly screwed then and today...
There is a reason why skilled machinists still make incredible bank even today.
Ian, another company that hit the wall in World War 1 was the Ross Rifle Company. I have seen a couple of your presentations on the Ross Mark 3/ M10 and the ?Claquoit? machine gun derivative, which I found to be quite informative. People might enjoy hearing that story told too. The early involvement of the Frank Mossberg Company of Hartford, CT (pre ww1) is a grey area to me, which I would like to hear addressed too.
The moral of the story is. If you are taking on a contract to make, anything. Make sure that you calculate the production costs so that you at least break even and not hand away your products for a net loss.
Damn, that's a good idea
@@jugo1944 Yes. it is a shame that too many do not consider it before jumping into something that may be beyond them.
There is a whole field of accounting called cost accounting that specializes in just that, figuring out all the costs associated with making a product or providing a service, so you can accurately price it or know where you might find some savings to make a bid more competitive. It's easy for people to overlook indirect costs or even some direct costs especially in a dynamic scarcity driven market where prices change often. As a result you can go from a comfortable profit margin to a loss quite easily.
And, don’t lowball the bid hoping to make it up later. You may get held to that contract and no more.
Calculating the cost of a product is difficult. Especially in an unstabble market.
So obvious questions.. How were the Mausers made by H&A in the US marked, how many are still out there? Are they quality builds or mediocre like the Chinese Mausers?
Chinese Mausers are like a batch of cupcakes, some are good, some are not.
They are good guns, but pretty scarce today. Most of them were overhauled by Belgium in the 30s. Here's a video on an original: th-cam.com/video/w2T91StdP0s/w-d-xo.html
"M-USA-ER" marked, probably, like the Wauser C96.
@@kmech3rd Woah woah woah, Wauser Wauser Wauser is it's own camp.
@@dave_riots I've never had a rifle want to break my cheek bone as much as a Chinese Mauser. Something about the stock maybe, but I can't pinpoint the exact cause, as the LOP is the same as my m48 or my Danzigs. I could shoot my m48 all day without stop, but after 15 rounds from the Chinese left hooks I'm looking for an ice-pack. In fact, after a lifetime of shooting everything up to heavy stompers like the .577 nitro and lightweight .458 Lott, I've never had a rifle want to actually kill me like this. I may simply never know. Bad cupcake.
In the days before CAD/CAM, machining was the most expensive part of the process.
When I ran my 80% Lowers through my buddies CAD/CAM, it took 30 minutes to machine the lower, from setup to end of program. Comparing that to the 12 hours I spent milling out my first build on the old mill I own, it was night and day difference. In 2 hours, I had 4 lowers milled, and ready to degrease and Cerakote. It would have taken me 4 or 5 days to mill them by hand.
Underbidding on a contract and losing your shorts in the process? Why that never, EVER happens to this day. Cough, cough, looking at certain aerospace companies. Great vid as always Ian.
That's the Western way. The Eastern way is overbidding the contract and losing most of the money due to corruption.
@@jason200912 Well the newest AK is cheap, but holy hell that thing isn't close to efficient.
The M91/30 was neither cheap nor efficient.
Also, picking two of the firsts of a new genre and calling them neither cheap nor efficient is just obvious. Yes, they're the first....so they're not going to be the best. That's like arguing that the Model T lacks all amenities in a modern vehicle. Yeah and?
That happened to a guy who built the add-on to our old homestead that my parents currently live in.
The guy was a decent mason but had no experience in undertaking such projects. And let's just say, he did just about everything wrong he could have, both in execution and attitude-- the experience was a nightmare which took at least three times as long as it should have, before he was finally fired. Someone else finished and did what damage control they could on his shoddy work... some of which literally made him weep at the thought of a contractor giving it to their client.
I'm honestly embarrassed my parents live in that addition. It's built like prison labor that was in a bad mood was used.
What aerospace company did that ? Boeing?
This is the kind of historical gun drama I love learning about. Thank you!
Of course, the choose of the Springfield name is because the great success The Simpsons got in the summer of 1914 in the UK. King George V was a huge fan.
@@rogersmith7396 Mr. Snrub, from someplace far away, said the same thing.
Did you know that SIr Patrick Stewart is a huge fan of Beavis and Butthead?
No, I'm serious-- *he is.*
There are a couple of additional factors here.
Hopkins and Allen were doing alright turning out a range of "pocket" pistols.
Bigger, higher-pressure hardware, made at "wartime" production rates is a bit different, especially "mil-spec" gear, and especially for a "foreign" government contract.
Then, there was the problem of tooling.
The SMLE was a design ultimately dating back to the late 1880s AND it was full of components with Enfield-standard threads, which are "different", to say the least. So, they head to make or buy all of the truckload of gauges and tooling to make the rifle, BEFORE they could finish a single sample.
As was discovered with the Lithgow rifle production, there was a slight difference between the "Enfield" inch and the "Pratt and Whitney" inch.
It mattered because much of the machinery in the US was running with the Pratt and Whitney inch. As they say in the classics: "The great thing about industry standards is there are so many to choose from".
The story had a parallel in the P-14 caper. A design full of Enfield threads, using the Enfield inch going into mass production by THREE different plants while they were still fiddling with the design mods to make the thing work with the rimmed .303 cartridge. (Hence the P-14 "star" version with a lot of internal differences and bolt mods.)
And all of this was done using hand-drawn blueprints, transmitted by steamer and horse, and to be made on specialized machines (One process, ONE machine) that were driven by overhead shafts powered by a big steam engine or two.
None of this;" I'll email the product package to you. Just fire up the Mazaks, load the files and the pallets, push the button and stand back" caper.
At the moment i am sitting in my studio. It's an older building and I am not sure when this part was built, but the attached part was build after the Civil War. The owner of the building started out working for Joseph Brown of Brown and Sharpe. By the Civil War, he started making parts for Springfield rifles. With the money he made he founded his own company based on a patented system of making files (file the tool) and the company survived until 1959. At one point it manufactured files under 50 different company names and the whole complex of buildings here is quite extensive and included it's own power plant.
The danger with government contracts, particularly during a war, is that governments will revert to centrally managed economies because during a war they can't afford all the wastage and graft that comes with normal capitalism. If the government decides it can't afford to pay off the contract but needs the guns, they will renegotiate and just stiff the manufacturer after the goods are delivered. One can sue, but this has to be done in the government's court system. so good luck with that one. During WWI, Russia was the one country that didn't centralized their economy and just relied on capitalists and got totally screwed. The problem for Russia was that most of the major contractors were in other countries, so they couldn't just send in the troops to take control of the companies involved. Plus, that Russian government was any more honest than the current one, so that was that for the Russian war effort .
Hey. A company went bankrupt, but the Belgians were thankful for the "charitable donation". So the company got a "thank you card" and a box of cookies.
Thanks to C&Rsenal, I *knew* immediately that you were going to take about Hopkins & Allen.
"Have we considered just making some guns and selling them?"
"No, this complex scheme to skim off major government contracts is way easier than selling rifles during the largest war in human history."
Every time Ian says "No money down" I think of Lionel Hutz: "Works on contingency? No, money down!"
Haha. Totally loved the subtle swipe at the latest iteration of "Springfield" Armory.
I'm not surprised that it wasn't even an original idea of the current one, actually, quite appropriate in All measures.😆
I've been following you since before you got on youtube. It's a pleasure to see you become a historian presenting information to others.
hopkins and alans inability to accurately scrutinize contracts is probably what got them involved with the scammers in the first place.
Bless you and yours Ian. Keep doing what you're doing.
This was a great episode. Wish we had more of these types on TH-cam.
Without watching the video before commenting I’m pretty sure almost every video Ian has done on obscure, low run Civil War revolvers or carbines ends with the company going out of business.
Oh sure, but I don't think those are usually intended for war applications.
@jubuttib during the civil war the rifles governments wanted were locked behind patents and not easily copied
I forget which company. But before or at the very beginning of WW2 when designs were being floated for what would become the M1 Carbine. They US government gave a designer thousands of rounds of ammunition. The company then designed and submitted a rifle. Which promptly failed the trials. Turns out the ammunition specs had been changed and the Government failed to let them know. Whoopsie! Similar to what happened with the S&W 9mm rifle.
"They got uncareful." I love it! Such a way with words.
I absolutely love these production-logistics videos. It’s nice to see both the chieftain and Ian making these types. A join video would be cool .
I’ve gone bankrupt buying too many guns 😂
Hear him
Same.
You are not alone.
Right behind you for that lol
Ditto🤣🤣
It's always worth sending at least one engineer to a potential vendor's manufacturing facility to see operations in person. Salesmen can tell you anything, and some will.
8:20 when the helium kicks in
If Elizabeth Holmes was alive in 1915 running Theranos, she'd probably be taking notes.
It'd be the other way around. I mean these guys did nothing more than unethically but completely legally take advantage of a country in need. They still meant to deliver. And they were worth of half a million at max based on the contract with Brits. Holmes, on the other hand, was not only unethical but also illegal, and succeeded spreading pseudoscientific bullshit in this day and age when anyone can do fact checking and have scientific knowledge so much that managed to raise her worth to 10 billion. And there is absolutely no doubt she knew what she did was bullshit. Thus, she didn't even intent to deliver what she promised.
This Imperial Contracting Company doesn't come even close to Holmes in either of their maliciousness, attempt to deliver, success or worth.
👍😜👍
The Holmes family weapon company, Thanatos, lasted from 1915-1923, at which point Elizabeth Sr was revealed to be a con artist when it was discovered none of her rifles worked.
I think she did learn some thing from the history, so she managed to scam a lot more.
@@pcarrierorange WORSE: Their rifles KILLED the users!
Thanks Ian' I've alway's wondered what happened to H/A. They made alot of Revolvers pre WW1 but then H&R & Iver Johnson kind of took over on the Saturday Night .32 & .38 S&W short & long top break's also .22 s/l like the young American Revolvers.
I like watching your videos on odd weapons that most people would have not ever heard of if not for you. Thank you so very much.
Merry Christmas everyone! Thank you Ian for a great year of output. I toast you with a small glass of Laphroaig!
While they didn't go bankrupt during the war, the Winchester Repeating Arms company got overleveraged and took a big hit because they'd just built a much larger factory to meet their US Army 1919 production contracts; which were all summarily canceled come the Armistice. Then the Great Depression delivered another body blow to their attempts to sell enough to service that debt; and they were eventually forced into receivership in 1931.
So while it might be hard to go bankrupt making guns during a war; but be careful about having a financial exit strategy in case of an unexpectedly abrupt end of that war!
Thank you Sir I definitely found this video intriguing and interesting, I have sometimes wondered if a company went under during World War 1 or 2, so your video today actually did help me and was very informative Sir. Thanks again Sir
I looked it up and found, between june 1st and jan 1st of the next year. Even if they had Saturday’s, and tooling. They would have to make 2,010 rifles a day excluding shipping.
If they had like 3 months to tool up, which is 72 working days. (Optimistic af, considering including building, back orders, spares. install and delivery) And idk. 4 days shipping 400,000 rifles across America via rail ( (optimistic) to a port to be inspected. They’d have to had made something like 3,810 rifles a day on average or 430 rifles an hour for 10 hr working day w only an hour for breaks. No break downs. no loss of time incidents. So it’d prolly have to be more like 480 or so rifles an hour.
lmao
Rofl even
This is exactly the kind of story that I think about when I consider entrepreneurship. "Oh I don't know quite enough about this topic myself" and then there's also the practical side of putting the manufacturing and company system together if you can design the product to begin with.
Basically these guys were the classic idea guys. They had a very general idea on what could work, then they did everything backwards. Founded a company, got any contract available, started thinking about having any skill to make their product, started thinking about any facilities to make their product, started thinking about the money to make their product and started thinking about manufacturing time. They just had an idea and sold it before acquiring any means to execute it.
The guy who wrote the contract forgot the comma. "No, money down!"
My favourite law talking guy
Wow, I always assumed "Fake it till you make it" was a 100% fool-proof business model.
Apparently I was wrong.
...I guess the less is to never stop faking it, even if you don't make it ;P
I think that is called 'FRAUD' LOL.
@@jm9371 lol
@@jm9371 it's only fraud when you get caught 😀
fake it til you make it is indeed 100% successful. fake it til you don't make it is what you get when you don't succeed.
You mean Theranos and FTX?
7:13 "...can we push the time-frame back?"
But they want it pushed forward in time, not back!
Whence does this bizarre temporal phrase originate?
For the P14 contract , the Britsh paid up front for machinery and stock. Figure qouted is about $21,000,000 at the time. The production lines were later sold to US for P17 production for about $9,000,000 A quick internet check, I million dollars then = just under $3 million today
Multiple points of failure including the British not desperate enough for the SMLE’s and you can’t sell for less than the cost of building. But it is indeed an interesting tale. William Gibson has a novel with a theme about military (or tactical) clothing that notes that many business pass through a phase where shadiness gives way to the need to legitimize if it will be long term viable. Your story kind of reminds me of that.
Thanks!
Is it possible to share the bibliography for this story ? I'd be grateful for anything about production methods in gun factories, machinery, labour relations ...
Great storytelling Ian, Thx!
Brewster Aircraft went from beating Grumman in supplying the Navy with a new Frontline fighter aircraft to complete collapse within 4 years. I also believe the original manufacturer of the Jeep went bankrupt when it turned out their factories were too small to supply the immense needs of the US Army so the Army gave the contract to Ford and GM instead.
Ian starts by saying that the US had enormous manufacturing capacity in 1914.
I am not sure that is true, I think that a lot of that capacity grew between 1915 & 1918!
Good video on a well researched case. Overall businesses from job shops to major manufacturing concerns took on debt to massively increase production capacity for a war on a scale no one imagined. This led to some guesswork as to debt versus proffit versus war duration. Due to excess debt incurred by many there was a massive financial restructuring with companies being broken up and reformed. This led to a new plan as WWII approached and the US government took on the financial liability of building factories for war production which were then run by contractors. Twin Cities is a famous example from the government owned contractor operated (GOCO) war materials production program.
It’s fairly easy. The government decides it wants the guns but doesn’t want to pay, get nationalized.
"Who are essentially eight guys in an office" has a similar energy to "who is really two kids in a trenchcoat." :)
5:56..... as stated.....10 sample examples and all the notes, technical details ,specifications to mill, lathe/turn out the product.... no elaborate casting molds,,, no elaborate stamping molds.. just instructions, basic machine tools and raw materials..... easy to set up and produce with 10 reference items for standardization and reference ...with that in mind ramping up production shouldn't be AS BIG OF AN ISSUE obviously it still is a major concern
stamping dies*****
which history has shown noe of this matters.................it doesnt'r mater ,none of this matters. -Carl Brutananadilewski
At first I thought this might be a video about Oskar Schindler. He in part went broke building a factory making shells in Nazi Germany that purposely never worked and bought shells from other factories to pass off as his own. Always enjoy your videos!
"Listen, Spielbergo, Schindler and I are like peas in a pod; we're both factory owners, we both made shells for the Nazis, but mine worked, dammit!"
@@bigpoppa1234 I literally read that in Mr. Burn’s voice
Well, that was overtly intentional. Also, i didn't think the factory was in Germany?
'Schindler's Ark', the novel, and the Hollywood film 'Schindler's List' are both works of fiction.
You are aware of that?
@@davebarrowcliffe1289 I did not mention the book or movie. I am referring to the real life Schindler
3:30: Ouch, take that Springfield Armory!
(BTW, same deal with "Rock Island"...)
More about these American 98s? Maybe a video on one? Good job, sir!
th-cam.com/video/w2T91StdP0s/w-d-xo.html
Not dumb, some were greedy. Thank you for the backstory. Those are always interesting. Happy New Year.
When the sales team fails to consult the labor force. Tale as old as time.
Not quite the same thing, possibly more impressive though, was Remington going bankrupt during the peak firearms buying period in U.S. history.
6:50 something that people still forget in the CNC world now. Especially in my workplace..
"why has it taken X amount of works hours to get this job started?!"
"Fixturing, tooling etc"
"But why?!"
"How else are we supposed to hold it? "
Guess I'll have to start using the saying: "You can't go broke selling shovels in a gold rush"
If it hadn't been for the victory model Smith & Wesson would have definitely gone under during WWII
Maybe I'm just being defensive because I'm British, but it doesn't sound like the British were fooled. "We'll happily buy rifles off you once you've got them in hand" is a far cry from "Here's a pile of cash which we think is buying rifles but which you're actually going to use to build a factory."
Modern-day companies include Lockheed, Martin-Marrietta, Raytheon, Northrup, and Grumman. Each has gone through various forms of bankruptcy from the space shuttle complex at Vandenberg Air Force base to several X-plane developments. An example was the Grumman X-29. I know that it is not guns, but examples of how weapons of war sometimes do not pay. Thank you for your information. Very educational. I will forward this to some friends of mine who make and refurbish guns from the Civil War to World War 2.
The moral of the story is that you can be good at something, but if your financial management is for crap (or even malicious) you can easily go bankrupt.
People like to accuse paper-pushing managerial types of being a useless drain on an organization (and sometimes they are), but they do have an essential function.
@@ForgottenWeapons there's such a thing as too many middle-men, but aside from the rare inventor/industrialist who can also talk "business", middle-men lubricate the gears of the economy so that buyers and manufacturers have a chance to know each other's needs.
@@ForgottenWeapons I feel like the USA armor review in WW2 got accused of being the exact sort of group of people that, gets judged excessively. That said, there are a lot of their decisions that were genuinely right. The American Wunderweapons, at least as far as heavy tanks were concerned, were not great.
Coincidentally, yesterday I purchased a Hopkins & Allen solid frame .32 'Range Model' revolver - possibly one of the last civilian guns H&A made before they stopped production! 🙂
The hustle in early 1900's and before were on quite the high level
"We have no idea what we're doing. What's the worst that can go wrong?"
Isn't quite the same, as the economy wasn't fully committed to war production, but Remington still went bankrupt during the GWoT despite making some M4s and being the supplier of the M24.
I still own a Remington Berthier, bayonet and likely 80+ year old ammo that my dad bought in the 1940's. Unfortunately it was "sporterized", but I wonder if that was done by Remington after the war in order to unload them on the U.S. sporting market. My dad also managed to get hold of what appears to be ancient surplus military ammo. I've certainly never shot it, nor do I think my dad did. I'd love to hear a segment on that problematic contract, and I wonder where the bayonet was made.
There is also the Brewster Aeronautical Corporation in WW2, although that was an aircraft manufacturer.
Somethings never change... like that stache and goatee. Oh, and the lightly out of focus camera.
Not really a firearms guy, but I found this video fascinating. It was really interesting to see how the financial and political components interacted in this situation. Definitely interested in picking up that book at some point. Thanks for sharing your knowledge on this topic
WOW! I had no idea of this history. Thanks for a great video.
Real interesting manufacturing story, Ian
I'm at 13:35 ... I'm pretty sure that I just saw an excellent bit of shade thrown at a certain Czech firearm manufacturer.
where?
@@supermemeposting8216 I suspect he meant a little bit of shade thrown at Springfield Armory and their Croatian partner (their manufacturer) HS Produkt
Interestingly, I just inherited my great grandfather's Hopkins and Allen 16 gauge shotgun. That was the first time I'd ever heard of H&A, and I read about how they went out of business, but this was far more detailed information. Thanks!
After many years of watching the channel I finally ordered my first shirt (utility long sleeve) and mug! Thanks gun Jesus for years of informative information for the inquisitive gun nut mind!
So they literally lost money on every sale and hoped to make it up in volume, outstanding.
The most amazing thing about this video is that there is an actual book (and apparently a good read according to Ian) called “Allied Rifle Contracts in America”.
amzn.to/3PZgdnW
Another perfect example of how business and Industry are two separate things. Industry is factories. Workers. Raw materials. The things that actually DO and MAKE something. Business is a legal fanfiction. It exists solely in tax forms and bank ledgers. Industry can hum along just fine without the bean counters and sleazy investors. But business? Without the people who actually do the productive work, business is absolutely *boned.*
do you think little joe bob making 50 grand a year can just go out and buy a few CNC machines at 180k a pop, pay rent, utilities and source the materials and consumers?
do people do it? sure do, with the help of tax forms, bank ledgers, bean counters and sleazy investors
This reminds me a little of the Elio car. They got a bunch of funding, an old factory, etc, but never delivered a product.
The desperation of the British to secure arms and ammunition (especially for artillery) in 1915 is a big and little-known sub-story of the First World War. Large amounts of ammunition used in the disastrous Battle of the Somme (July 1916) was faulty.
Interestingly, the British Government expected to be bankrupt by late 1916 (and indeed pretty much ran out of gold and foreign exchange). Loans were organised, against Congressional resistance. This is a reason- one reason- the anti-war United States ended up joining the Allied side in 1917. A German victory would have been a disaster for JP Morgan and other financiers.
This is what you get when your company is 8 guys and every single one is "the idea guy".
Ah yes, the old we are losing money on each unit, but we'll make it up it volume.
Excellent question, excellent answer!