100,000,000 CARTRIDGES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16234, 20 May 1916, Page 2 (Supplement)

100,000,000 CARTRIDGES.

HUN AMMUNITION OUTPUT.

THE _AILY CONSUMPTION.

In the early days of the war it is estimated that the daily consumption of cartridges by machine-guns represented 10 per cent, of that declared to be requisite for rifle fire, writes J. Armstrong in the World's Work. At that time the combined German and Austrian forces were using up cartridges at the rate of 36,000,000 per day on all fronts- This represented expenditure by rifle fire alone. Adding 10 per cent, for machine-gun needs to this total one gets an aggregate of approximately 40,000,000 cartridges per day.

Since then greater reliance has been-re-posed in the machine-gun. Such a weapon, with a firing capacity ranging- up to 600 shots per minute, is equivalent to twelve riflemen. It is assumed that between Nieuport and the Vosges end of the battle-line the Germans now have disposed 80,000 machine-guns. We know from published reports that the German Government had before the war paid Messrs. Vickers a royalty on 40,000 Maxims. This number has probably bee.i trebled since then.

The personnel of the Austro-GeTman armies has been maintained, and its daily expenditure of bullets by rifle remains about the same, if it hai not undergone appreciable increase owing to the extension of the whole battle-line upon .the respective fronts. But the machine-gun consumption of cartridges has risen to nearly a hundred per cent. According to the figures which the Central Powers have published their cartridge factories to-day are turning out considerably over one hundred million rounds of small-arm ammunition per 24 hours.