Munitions in WW1

[LWD]

In WW1 production of ammunition and explosives was the most important sector of the munitions economy.

What makes you say so?

Knowledge of history.

In other words it's an unsupported opinion.

In WW2 the most important sector of the munitions economy was the production of aircraft.

Was it? Again I'm not sure at all you are correct.

It was the largest sector for US, Britain, Germany and Japan. For the USSR, in the other hand, I don't know.

Again largest does not necessarily mean "most important".

Also, in WW2 ammunition was produced in smaller calibers.

Really? or do you mean the distribution was different among calibers.

Sorry, I meant that the distribution in ww2 production favored lighter calibers.

Are you sure your stats cover naval ordinance?

... During WW1 Britain produced about 200 million rounds of filled shells of heavy rounds (i.e.: over 75 mm),

by choosing that defintion you essentially exclude WWII tank ammo at least from Britain and the US from the catagory of heavy rounds. There's also the question of how strict you are being ie is 76mm over 75mm and thus a "heavy round"?

I think that data for Britain includes all ground ammo over 75mm. The data for the US that I have is rather vage concerning the use of ammo, but I suspect that includes the use by tanks (with, btw, was only a very small fraction of ammo consumption).

So it wouldn't include 75mm guns but would include the 17lber?
Also brings to question exactly what you are calling "Britain" both for WWI and WWII.

[Guaporense]

From Race to the Front: Material Foundations for Coalition Strategy, this is a table of ammunition production in WW2, 75mm shells and up:



I should correct myself there, in WW1, more shells were produced than in WW2 actually (1.2 billion in WW1 to ca. 750-800 million in WW2). Although the average weight and firepower of shells was higher in WW2. Germany itself produced fewer shells in WW2 (312 million).

[Guaporense]

British ammunition delivered to the Western front 08-1914-05-1920:

5,269,302 tons (source: Race to the Front: Material Foundations for Coalition Strategy, page 329). Which means the British in WW1 fired about 6 times the tonnage of ammunition on the Germans compared to the tons of bombs they dropped over Germany in WW2.

It's a comparable figure to the German ammunition consumption Eastern front 1941-1944:

1941 ---- 571,663
1942 ---- 1,160,182
1943 ---- 1,838,750
1944 ---- 2,132,463

total: 5,703,058 tons

From Art's post http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 3#p1408813, Russian shell production in projectile weight appears to be about 800,300 tons over the war or 12.3 kg per projectile.

While British ammunition production appears to have been 218 million and projectile weight about 4,160,000 tons (using: 8.4 kg for "light", 16 kg for "medium", 45 kg for "heavy" and 106 kg for "very heavy"), an average of 19.2 kg per projectile.

I suspect French and German production to be of smaller average weight per projectile than British in WW1. In WW2 German average projectile weight was about 15.3 kg.

[Guaporense]

Explosive production (tons) and number of shells (thousands):

Germany ----- shells -------- explosives
1915 ---------- 40,000 -------- 72,000
1916 ---------- 72,000 ------- 120,000
1917 ---------- 108,000 ------ 144,000
1918 ---------- 121,000 ------ 198,000
total ----------341,000 ------- 534,000

UK ----------- shells -------- explosives
1915 --------- 10,900 ------- 24,000
1916 --------- 57,900 ------- 76,000
1917 --------- 98,400 ------- 186,000
total --------- 167,200 ------ 286,000

Where the 198,000 tons figure comes from a references in "Germany and the Second World War" and Overy's War and the third Reich where it's stated explosives production was 18,000 tons a month. Anyway, the German average is 1.53 kg per shell in 1915-1917 and 1.64 kg per shell in 1918. UK average 1915-1917 (including empty shells imported from Canada, which were about 10-15% of British final shell output) is 1.71 kg per shell.

So if we trust these figures it appears German shells had about 5-10% less explosives on average than British shells, which means they probably weighted slightly less. So while German output was 343 million versus British output of 218 million shells, the average weight of German shells was slightly lower, so relatively German output was equivalent to ca. 320 million British shells. Although, according to Bender apparently a fraction of British explosive production was exported to France who produced more shells than the UK (about 282 million shells).

By the way, German and Japanese explosive production in WW2 was:

----------- Germany ----- Japan
1940 ---- 168,500 ------- 26,328
1941 ---- 230,453 ------- 36,756
1942 ---- 290,783 ------- 43,656
1943 ---- 410,400 ------- 44,880
1944 ---- 494,900 ------- 44,473

Source: USSBS reports on the German and Japanese war economies.

However, German output of finished shells was only 312 million in WW2 over 343 million in WW1, I believe that's because a lot of explosive was consumed in making bombs (German output of 1.25 million tons of bombs probably consumed about 700,000 tons of explosives) and higher quantities of small arm ammunition.

[Guaporense]

This image might be interesting: