Picatinny Arsenal is tops in weaponry innovation but had some hiccups too
Picatinny Arsenal is known for innovation.
Known as the U.S. military's Joint Center of Excellence for Guns and Ammunition, the arsenal has been at the forefront of warfare technology for about a century. In its Morris County facilities, the arsenal has developed illuminating grenades and the widely adopted Picatinny rail mounting system for automatic assault rifles. It has also helped develop bazookas and missiles.
Though the compound regularly gains the lion's share of the U.S. Army's annual innovation awards, there have been some hiccups in its history.
Among the earliest was the arsenal's maximite depot.
Completed on July 23, 1903, the depot was created to fill armor-piercing shells with Issac Hudson Maxim's innovative explosive.
A writer and publisher born in Maine 50 years prior, Maxim started inventing and experimenting with explosives in 1888. Within three years, he had built a dynamite and smokeless powder mill in Maxim, part of Howell Township. There, he and R.C. Schupphaus developed the Maxim-Schupphaus smokeless powder. It was the first smokeless powder developed in the states. It was also the first adopted by the U.S. government.
In 1897, three years after losing a hand in an explosives mishap, Maxim sold the plant and his patents to the E. I. duPont de Nemours Powder Company. Still, Maxim saved some ammunition. In 1901, the federal government paid $50,000 for his secret formula for maximite, a high-explosive powder 50% more powerful than dynamite. That same year, Maxim bought a sprawling lakefront stretch on the west side of Lake Hopatcong. Today, the area is called Maxim Park.
In the March 1901 edition of Popular Science Monthly, Maxim wrote that his powder posed no danger of explosion when exposed to fire. Still, it could cleanly push a 45-pound projectile through a four-inch nickel steel plate and leave it to be later fragmented through delayed detonation via a bespoke fuse of Maxim's design.
"Nothing like it, to my knowledge, has ever before been produced," he wrote. "Its production is based upon an entirely novel theory of detonation, which, together with the formula for the material itself, is kept a government secret."
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Maximite was 90% picric acid, wrote Patrick Owens in his 2018 book "Picatinny: The First Century." That posed as much of a problem as the other 10% to Picatinny workers in 1903. It took U.S. Army officials three weeks to find five men willing to stuff it in shells.
"Employees found picric acid produced serious skin discoloration and feared worse dangers," Owens wrote. "One man chose a discharge rather than work with it."
Military officials selected maximite over other options - namely an ammonium picrate-based powder called explosive D - because it permitted quick loading, U.S. Army records show. The rapid loading process nonetheless proved ineffective.
Cavities remaining within the loaded powder allowed for premature detonation, according to Owens. Maxim recommended rigorous tamping to eliminate cavities, but the maximite depot closed within two years of opening, records show. Army officials subsequently brought in new equipment to coax loaded maximite from thousands of armor-piercing shells.
Maxim, who later tweaked his smokeless powder recipe and developed a torpedo propellant, would nonetheless remain in the military's good graces. During World War I, he served as chairman of the committee on ordnance and explosives of the naval consulting board. He also donated several inventions to the government to aid the war effort, according to his May 1927 obituary in Time Magazine.
David Zimmer is a local reporter for NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access to the most important news from your local community, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.
Email: zimmer@northjersey.comTwitter: @dzimmernews
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Picatinny Arsenal tops in innovation, but had some hiccups
