The broad mission of the Ordnance Corps is to supply Army combat units with weapons and ammunition, including at times, their procurements and maintenance.

By the end of the American Revolution, every brigade had ordnance personnel, usually civilian, providing munitions support to the soldiers in the field.

His responsibility was to recruit and train artificers, establish ordnance facilities, and to distribute arms and ammunition to the army in the field.

[3] In the early years of the 19th century, the ordnance profession played a key role in the burgeoning industrial revolution in America.

Inventors such as Thomas Blanchard, Simeon North, John Hall, and Eli Whitney would perfect the methods and means for mass production.

Colonel Decius Wadsworth, former Superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, was chosen as the Commissary General of Ordnance.

These new ordnance officers were usually detailed to the Springfield or Harpers Ferry Armory, or to one of the various arsenals across the growing country, to conduct scientific and industrial experiments in metallurgy, chemistry, or one of the allied engineering fields.

For those few ordnance officers who had been part of the pre-war Army, several of them accepted line positions, such as Major Generals Oliver O. Howard and Jesse Reno.

By 1872, the Ordnance Department reflected the Army's return to a small peacetime status with 50 officers, 475 enlisted soldiers, and 1,738 civilian workers.

To offset industry's reluctance to build new plants, the U.S. Government established a system of constructing the factories but contracting out their operation.

[2] During World War II, the Ordnance Department was responsible for roughly half of all Army procurement, $34 billion.

Ordnance soldiers and civilians worked across the globe, in places as diverse as Iceland, Iran, the Pacific Islands, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East.

[2] Beginning in 1942, with the authorization of the Chief of Ordnance, a computing branch at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering was established as a substation of Aberdeen Proving Ground under the code name "Project PX".

ENIAC was designed to calculate artillery firing tables for the United States Army Ballistic Research Laboratory.

[6][7][8] In August 1945, Colonel Holger Toftoy, head of the Rocket Branch of the Research and Development Division of the US Army's Ordnance Department, offered initial one-year contracts to German rocket scientists as part of Operation Paperclip, a program used to recruit the scientists from Nazi Germany for employment by the United States; 127 of them accepted.

It reactivated the various schools and units at Aberdeen Proving Ground, which had been dis-established following the end of World War II, to serve the Korea effort.

In Vietnam, the capabilities of Explosive Ordnance Disposal became increasingly important due to the nature of a war with no front lines.

EOD and other ordnance units work under the auspices of the 1st Logistical Command, which divided the country into four support zones.

Army Materiel Command assumed responsibility for Ordnance's historical tasks of research and development; procurement, production, and storage; and technical intelligence.

As an Ordnance Soldier, I fully understand my duty to perform under adverse conditions and I will continually strive to perfect my craft.

In my support mission in the field, I will use every available skill to maintain superiority; I will always be tactically and technically proficient As an Ordnance soldier, I have no greater task.

[citation needed]The words and music to Arms for the Love of America were originally composed by Irving Berlin and published by the Army Ordnance Association in 1941.

And for the love of every mother's cherished one Who's depending on the work that must be done By the force behind the force behind the gun The purpose of the Ordnance Order of Samuel Sharpe is to recognize those individuals who have served the United States Army Ordnance Corps with demonstrated integrity, moral character and professional competence over a sustained period of time.

And whose selfless contributions to the Corps stand out in the eyes of their seniors, peers and subordinates alike.On 26 February 1628 the Court of Assistants in London, England directed that "five pieces of ordnance and a great quantity of other arms and great shot" belonging to a settlement near modern-day Salem, Massachusetts be placed under the control of Mr. Samuel Sharpe, making him the first European "Master Gunner of our Ordnance" on the American continent.