This page will provide guides and material dealing with the weapons and equipment of the period.
The US Army Ordnance Department maintained huge files on US and foreign weapons and equipment. These have been preserved at the National Archives at College Park, Maryland. Unfortunately, the finding aids for this treasure trove of material are poor. In my younger days, when (I thought) I had all the time in the world I used the “brute force” approach to these files. That is, “give me boxes 1-24”, then “boxes 25-48” etc, working my way through over a thousand boxes that way. I kept notes on what I found in each box. Inevitably, there are some gaps, where I ran into what was obviously a range of boxes that did not interest me, mostly related to aircraft and industrial processes.
One set of files is referred to as the “OKD files”, for reasons lost to time. My notes on the 700-odd boxes of notes, manuals, reports and photos of equipment 1917-1945 (but mostly inter-war) is at OKD files.
A finding aid to later reports will be posted later.