American Rifle - Alexander Rose [189]
Just as McNamara seemed to be recovering from the Senate debacle, matters took a turn for the worse on August 13, 1961, the day the Soviets surprised the world by stringing miles of barbed wire between East and West Berlin. The wire was soon joined by a concrete wall and heavily armed guards at brand-new checkpoints and machine-gun towers. By happenstance a huge two-week war game (Exercise Swift Strike) had been scheduled in South Carolina three days hence. With 30,000 troops and four hundred aircraft participating, it was the greatest show since World War II. The Kennedy administration quickly turned Swift Strike into a demonstration of how, in the words of a military spokesman, American forces were “poised and ready for launching the required amount of striking power at any moment, anywhere”—like Berlin, for instance, if the Kremlin tried to move that wall a little westward. The Swift Strike exercise, while serving as a useful deterrent to Red Army adventurism, also publicly highlighted the embarrassing lack of M14s. A Wall Street Journal reporter present noticed that only members of the 101st Airborne were carrying these vaunted weapons; everyone else made do with “World War II vintage” M1s. Evidently trying to impress Khrushchev and his AK-47-armed border guards, Kennedy quickly ensured that the U.S. Berlin garrison was hurriedly issued with the scarce new rifles.89
The administration blamed Eisenhower’s emphasis on nuclear-based Massive Retaliation for the conventional-forces shortfalls. Kennedy added $6 billion to the defense budget and proposed a 150 percent rise in the number of “anti-guerrilla forces” (i.e., Special Forces), while Congress quickly approved a 225,000-man increase in army strength and accelerated procurement of the necessary equipment (trucks, tactical air power, communications gear, and much more), including the M14.90 At this point, with the Kremlin wagging Kennedy’s tail, the Senate looking over McNamara’s shoulder, and McNamara breathing down the army’s neck, Ordnance had to come through on the M14 very, very rapidly.
That fall, for the first time, the army, McNamara, and Ordnance were bullish on their prospects. Most of the production kinks with Olin and Harrington had by now been ironed out, and General Gibson’s shake-up was shaping up. By October M14 production had risen from 9,000 per month to 44,000, and the rate was still increasing.91
Lagging M14 production ceased to be a danger that month when, following an eleven-company bidding war, the third M14 maker was announced: the newly merged Thompson-Ramo-Wooldridge (today called TRW) of Cleveland, Ohio. Learning from the armory shambles over the preproduction plans, TRW gathered a special team of engineers and manufacturing experts to draw up the schematics and construct the pilot production line. It took them six months and cost $200,000. The company’s accountants precisely calculated the costs of the rifle ($85.54), and TRW rigidly stuck to that figure.
The contract stipulated that 100,000 M14s would be delivered, beginning in November 1962. Much to Ordnance’s surprise, TRW began trucking first-rate, flawless rifles in October, a month ahead of schedule. Immediately afterward the company received an order for 219,691 more.92 By the end of the year most army and Marine Corps formations had received large shipments of M14s.93
TRW’s remarkable efforts brought the company no favors. On January 23, 1963, McNamara ordered a halt to further M14 purchases, killing the project just as it was hitting its stride.94