SAR 18#6

against actual simulated-combat data
from competing conventional weapons,
showed the SPIW as being clearly superior
to the best existing weapons in
the world. The heavily slanted nature of
these comparative standings led to the
fatal temptation to confuse potentiality
with reality.
Ed Ezell to the Rescue
While attending the U.S. Army Show
in Washington in 1984, I remember mentioning
my fascination with the SPIW to
Dan Musgrave, a very knowledgeable
and respected author with a prestigious
military career behind him. Dan shook
his head and remarked, “You will never
find out anything about the SPIW. It was
so embarrassing it has all been buried
so deeply it will never be found.” However,
thanks to the efforts of the late Edward
C. Ezell, Ph.D., then the Curator of
Military History at the Smithsonian’s Museum
of American History, the story was
indeed unearthed in voluminous detail,
and became the subject of the Collector
Grade title The SPIW - The Deadliest
Weapon that Never Was, which was
co-authored by myself and Dr. Ezell and
published in 1985. The following copyrighted
material is largely excerpted
directly from this long-out-of-print book.
Origins of the SPIW Program
As described in Chapter One of The
SPIW, the origins of the program go
back to the early postwar period, during
the dawn of the computer age.
The Hall Study
The Ballistic Research Laboratories
(BRL) had been formed at Aberdeen
Proving Ground in 1938, with an ongoing
mandate to conduct basic ballistic
research for the Army. The official reason
behind the ground-breaking BRL
study into combat rifle effectiveness
was to address the unsettling fact that,
despite the Army’s doctrinal insistence
on accurate, long-range aimed rifle fire,
an estimated 50,000 rounds of ammunition
had been expended per enemy casualty
during World War II. The results
of the study by Mr. Donald L. Hall were
released in BRL Memorandum Report
No. 593, dated March 1952, entitled An
Effectiveness Study of the Infantry Rifle.
The Hall Study was the first real,
authenticating publicity for the fledgling
small caliber, high velocity (SCHV) concept,
a new and cooperative research
effort involving Aberdeen’s Development
and Proof Services (D&PS) and
the Ballistic Research Laboratory (BRL).
Mr. Hall blended the initial SCHV results
with his own theoretical studies to produce
history’s first serious espousal of
the small caliber concept:
The theoretical consideration of a
family of rifles indicates that smaller
caliber rifles than the .30 have a greater
single-shot kill probability than the cal.
.30 M1. This is obtained by increasing
the muzzle velocity and thereby obtaining
a flatter trajectory, so that the adverse
effect of range estimation errors
is reduced.
When the combined weight of gun
and ammunition is held constant at fifteen
pounds, the overall expected number
of kills for the cal. .21 rifle is approximately
21/2 times that of the present
standard cal. .30 rifle. If the number of
rounds is fixed at 96, the total load carried
by a soldier with a cal. .21 rifle and
ammunition with 6/10 the charge in the
M2 cartridge will be 3.6 lbs. less than
that carried by a soldier with a cal. .30
rifle. This is a 25% reduction in load.
Furthermore, if it were necessary for
a soldier with the M1 to carry the rounds
required for the same expected number
of kills at 500 yards as a soldier with 15
lbs. of cal. .21 6/10 charge rifle and ammunition,
it would be necessary for him
to carry 10 lbs. more ammunition, or a
total load of 25 lbs.
The Hitchman Report
In September, 1948 the Army General
Staff created the civilian Operations
Research Office (ORO), whose initial
mandate was to supply the Army with
scientific advice about the conduct of
nuclear war.
The second important study under
discussion here complemented but
greatly expanded on the Hall Study. It
was presented by the head of ORO’s
Infantry Division, Norman A. Hitchman,
on June 19, 1952. Originally
classified SECRET, ORO’s Technical
Memorandum ORO-T-160 was entitled
Operational Requirements for an
Infantry Hand Weapon.
The Hitchman Report began where
the Hall Study had left off, taking as its
gospel that “it is desirable to increase
in both number and rate the hits which
may be inflicted on the enemy by aimed
small arms in the hands of the infantry.”
ORO summed up these opening
remarks by stressing that the “severity
of weapons as measured by their
lethality has not changed, at least in
the past century.”
There was stubborn Army opposition,
especially among Ordnance officials,
to this ORO attempt to quantify
certain parameters as they truly existed,
as opposed to how they had traditionally
been perceived, regarding the infantry
rifle and its effectiveness in combat.
Out of all the combined British and
American research available, 80% of
the effective rifle and LMG fire had been
reported at ranges under 200 yards,
with a full 90% under 300 yards. This
substantiated the Hall Study, wherein
hit probability from small arms fire
at ranges exceeding 300 yards rapidly
descended into the “negligible.”
SAR Vol. 18, No. 6 92 Nov., Dec. 2014