ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW
Stuvie C. Wallen
May 17, 1988
by Richard A. Schreiber

0:00:00	Grew up in Oklahoma and took a civil service exam in 1940 then went to work for the Armory.
0:00:12	Worked in the plant equipment division.
0:00:21	Division divided into two sections one to procure the machine tools and the other to procure plant equipment to support the tools.
0:00:44	Worked with Owen Duffey for Carl Rich.
0:01:06	Talk about Ivan Swidlo and his dept.
0:01:32	First went to the Accounting dept. and worked with Fred Whitham and Aldie Bissette.
0:02:18	They were supposed to study the procurement laws.
0:02:31	Later Saul Langstein joined them.
0:02:51	Near the end of 1940 money came in to begin buying the plating tanks and other equipment.
0:03:25	Talks about Bill Ancrum who was one of the black supervisors.
0:03:54	A goal of 5000 Ml rifles per day was set sometime in 1941.
0:004:30	He had to automate the cleaning process after the proof firing so that one man could clean 100 barrels per hour.
0:05:40	Tried to patent the process.
0:06:10	The barrels were proofed naked as a component.
0:06:45	Had the run of the Armory being in the plant equipment dept.
0:07:04	Talks about the water power use to make barrels originally.
0:07:41	Building 104 was completed by the end of 1941.
0:08:02	Charles Schoenenberger headed up the group that supported the engineers.
0:08:30	Talks about new tanks and exhaust fans that were procured to chrome plate the bore of the longer 45 inch barrels.
0:09:06	Worked on .50 cal. .60 cal. and 20mm machine guns.
0:09:37	.60 cal. may have been a little later.
0:10:06	Talks about reclaiming filings and scrap.
0:10:40	Used a hammer mill to break up the bulky scraps and bail them in a manageable shape.
0:11:00	By the end of 1942 all the machines and support equipment were on order or ready to put in.
0:11:24	By the middle of 1942 their work was winding down.
0:11:43	Carl Rich his boss got in trouble with Col. Woody and when woody became C.O. Rich was fired for lack of work.
0:12:03	Charles Shoenenberger took over the dept. and they were farmed out to different depts.
0:12:17	He went to work in production engineering converting the Brown-Lipe-Chapin drawings of the .30 cal. machine guns into government paper.
0:13:01	Tried to go back in the service in 1944.
0:13:22	He was called into the office and told he was more valuable as an engineer than in the service.
0:13:58	Resigned his commission then in early 1944 tried to get his commission back because he felt copying drawings was not productive but the Armory said no.
0:14:34	Went to the draft board and got classified as a 1A got a 30 day deferment and then went into the service.
0:14:47	Col. Stewart was the commanding officer when in 1940 President Roosevelt came to the Armory.
0:15:26	Was an engineer in a colored battalion before desegregation.
0:15:42	At the end of the war they got sent to Marseille to report to the Pacific but he got sent to Paris two days before his battalion got shipped to the Pacific.
0:16:20	Went into military government in Germany.
0:16:46	Worked on allocation of government owned munitions to industry.
0:17:30	Went to Frankfort and heard Eisenhower's farewell to the troops then went to Munich for a year. Came back to the Armory in 1946 and got a job in research and development.
0:18:10	Worked on procurement after the decentralizing procurement by mission, the Armory was small arms.
0:18:39	Luke Voittoluukkonen, Seymoure and he were assigned project control.
0:18:59	Luke and he were on aircraft weapons and Seymoure was on small arms.
0:19:12	The three of them would D.C. and Springfield for
0:19:40	Got copies and histories of all the weapons assigned to the Armory.
0:20:13	Most of the work was the M3 .50 cal. machine gun and the .60 cal. being done primarily at Rock Island.
0:21:00	Talks about the T45, the Gatling Gun, and the T130 or M38.
0:21:25	The T130 was based on a German revolver gun and was a way of getting 1600 shots per minute through a single barrel.
0:22:03	T130 ended up being approved for production for the Korean War and Rock Island got an order for 10,000 but they ran out of money after making 20.
0:23:27	The T130s were tested in Korea but the barrels would not last.
0:24:12	The Gatling Gun had only 1000 shots per barrel so that the barrels lasted.
0:24:44	The money for the aircraft weapons was coming from the air force.
0:25:01	There was a Col. who was convinced that the cal. .60 incendiary aircraft weapon was the way of the future.
0:26:00	He was injured in an airplane accident and left the service.
0:26:10	Air force changed their tune from having incendiary to high explosive and converting the aircraft weapons to 20 mm.
0:26:41	The M38 was abandoned the T160 revolver gun became the M39 the T45 was never standardized and the T17l became the M6l.
0:28:37	M6l is still the life's blood of the Army and Navy.
0:28:55	Talks about the Congress being upset by the duplication of effort with the different cartridges.
0:29:34	Went into land surveying for a year and a half in 1948.
0:29:47	When he came back he came back in the exact same job.
0:30:44	Congress had pressed the service to get together.
0:31:05	Would go to meetings involving the different services to try to get cooperative agreements but everyone left the meetings and went their separate ways.
Side B
0:32:00	Became a senior member of the committee.
0:32:05	Talks about the feeding of the machine gun.
0:32:30	Thinks the most reliable machine gun was the Browning M3.
0:32:47	Allowed three stoppages in 10,000 rounds.
0:33:10	Project on linkless feeds.
0:33:22	Talks about Frigidaire and General Motors working on the linkless feed project.
0:33:42	Roy S. Sanford and Company was the most successful link maker.
0:34:24	Sanford came up with using the natural taper of the round to spiral them.
0:35:00	G.E. wanted to use the conveyor belt.
0:35:30	Talks about the problems with links such as what to do with the used ones on an airplane.
0:35:55	The spent case in the motor driven round were stored in the rear end of the gun.
0:36:32	The linkless gun never reached the potential of the link gun in reliability.
0:36:52	Talks about the linkless mechanism being standard in the services.
0:37:42	About 1950 he became Chief of the heavy weapons group of project control.
0:38:20	In 1955 the head quarters weapons command was formed and gave him a position with 2 promotions.
0:38:50	Worked in the same building with John Garand and went to lunch with him several times.
0:39:04	Talks about Peter Marshall and Bob Henry who were friends of Garand.
0:41:00	Roy Raile was a real pusher in R&D.
0:41:21	The most interesting job he had was in R&D.
0:41:39	The first part before the war was more like going to school.
0:42:12	They did not place much work at Springfield only a few components were made at Springfield.
0:42:29	Worked a little and the .50 cal. 30 inch barrel for the M3 machine gun converting it to the Stelite lined barrel.
0:42:50	The Stelite liner was developed by Crane Co. to stand the super heated steam.
0:43:17	A Stelite liner doubled and tripled the life of the barrel.
0:43:28	Talks about how the liner would come out of alignment.
0:45:00	The liner would expand faster than the barrel.
0:45:55	Talks about the problems caused by the expansion of the liner.
0:46:36	Was sent from Springfield to by plane to work on the problem.
0:47:35	During W.W.II they were producing 4,400 rifles a day.
0:48:00	At the very end of the war Winchester started making M1s.
0:49:30	Was a belief that a man should be able to kill accurately at 600 yards.
0:50:45	Army argued that most of he shooting was done within 100 to 50 yards.
0:51:35	Talks about the differences in shooting the .30 cal. and the AR15.
0:52:36	Talks about going to Vietnam for 31 days.
0:53:10	Went to Vietnam as the only passenger on a C130 loaded with high explosives.
0:53:36	In Vietnam he went to see if the old ANM3 would be useful.
0:53:58	Army decided they did not nee the ANM3 because it was not a good field weapon it was more of a Navy weapon.
0:54:42	Went to Korea for Aberdeen to do a reliability study.
0:55:22	Stayed in the Army Reserve after the war and did ordnance training in Aberdeen.
0:55:37	Discuss the Aberdeen museum.
0:56:56	Wanted to go to Vietnam to say he had been there.
0:57:40	Talks about going out on firefly mission going up and down the lagoons.
0:57:57	Was a not an open fire zone had targets of people out fishing at 2 or 3 in the morning called for permission to fire but could not raise anyone.
0:58:49	Talks about Lt. Franklin Allin and the .60 cal.
0:59:40	Talks about Bill Smith and the formation of the Weapons Command and the working party for guns.
1:00:13	Could not see where the working party for guns worked.
1:00:54	When they started out they were all under the Army because there was no air force.
01:01:23	Talks about the tri-service procurement through the Army being unsuccessful.
1:02:00	Talks about going to industry to develop weapons.
1:03:00	When he went to Frigidaire had lunch with the service manager almost every trip.