Yep, you're right. The American Army existed in such an magnificent vacuum that they had NO clue what anyone else was doing.
Right...
The book, "
The Ordnance Department: Planning Munitions for War" Vol 1 in the Series United States Army in World War II, the first in the series "The Ordnance Department" explicit states the first part, slightly reworded, for the period after WW1. For weapon system after weapon system, particular for tanks, artillery, and anti tank systems, the Army was quite clueless about what anyone was doing outside the shores of the US.
This is from page 208: "The Role of Technical Intelligence”
Ordnance Officers with engineering background were ideally the men to serve in this capacity and to prepare the technical reports on foreign ordnance. But the number of Ordnance officers qualified by experience who also had the necessary command of a foreign language and who had the private incomes large enough to meet the expenses of a tour of duty abroad was small: in fact, between 1920 and 1940 there were only nine, and between November 1930 and May 1940, only two- Maj Philip R Faymonville in Moscow and Capt. Rene R Studler assigned to London.
It is important to note that Army per diem was so low, that an Army Officer or Government Civilian would go bankrupt overseas unless they were personally rich enough to afford the billet!
I have no reason to assume that at any time the Army Ordnance Department has moved out of their own delusional, grandiose bubble universe.
In fact, it was such a vacuumatic organization that they didn't even know what the hell they were doing...
Since this is the way they act now, I have no reason to believe it was any different at any other time period in history. Large organizations get stove piped. You have to force people to "patrol their boundaries". The Department of Defense is particularly poor about sharing information within an agency, never mind, between agencies. A long list of reasons can be made, one of the first on the list is "need to know". Employees don't have a "need to know" what anyone else is doing and employees are required to exhibit a proper amount of disinterest for things outside of their cubicle. It is a security violation to have more than a
certain lack of curiosity about the things going on within the office or agency. Contacts I have, they find out what the people down the hall are doing by reading the newspaper!
The Department of Defense is so dysfunctional that the Packard Commission’s recommendations on Acquisition Reform were made law in the Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization of 1986.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packard_Commission Since then DoD has been forcing its workforce to get Acquisition Training and Education. DoD employees cannot be promoted unless they have taken DAU courses and have DAU certification. The primary reason for this, was, as the Packard Commission stated, there was no rational system for Defense Acquisition.
Mike, you reported seeing at NRA Headquarters a number of fired rounds of the 1921 Tin can ammunition with case necks attached. The Army blamed grease for that problem, still does, even after fielding the 20mm Oerlikon which used greased ammunition. This tiny historical event sure makes the point that the vaunted Ordnance Department did not know what they were doing then, and now.
