Lowell Ordnance Plant

Last updated

The Lowell Ordnance Plant was a small arms plant located on the border of Lowell, Billerica, and Tewksbury, Massachusetts that operated under contract from the Remington Arms Company between 1942 and 1943. It mostly produced .50 caliber machine gun ammo. A small run of .30 caliber machine gun ammo was also manufactured for less than a year.

Contents

The site has been identified as contaminated and has been undergoing remediation since the mid-1980s. [1] [2] It is currently being used as an industrial park. [3]

The largest building in the industrial park was demolished during Summer 2020, to facilitate construction of a proposed Home Depot e-commerce warehouse. [4]

See also

Related Research Articles

Middlesex County, Massachusetts County in Massachusetts

Middlesex County is a county in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, in the United States. As of 2019, the estimated population was 1,611,699, making it the 22nd most populous county in the United States, and the most populous county in both Massachusetts and New England. Middlesex County is one of two U.S. counties to be amongst the top 25 counties with the highest household income and the 25 most populated counties. As part of the 2010 national census, the Commonwealth's mean center of population for that year was geo-centered in Middlesex County, in the town of Natick at. Middlesex County is included in the Census Bureau's Boston–Cambridge–Newton, MA–NH Metropolitan Statistical Area.

Lowell, Massachusetts City in Massachusetts, United States

Lowell is a city in the U.S. Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Located in Middlesex County, Lowell was a county seat until Massachusetts disbanded county government in 1999. With an estimated population of 110,997 in 2019, it was the fourth-largest city in Massachusetts as of the last census and is estimated to be the fifth-largest as of 2018, and the second-largest in the Boston metropolitan statistical area. The city is also part of a smaller Massachusetts statistical area called Greater Lowell, as well as New England's Merrimack Valley region.

.50 BMG Rifle cartridge designed by John Moses Browning

The .50 Browning Machine Gun is a cartridge developed for the Browning .50 caliber machine gun in the late 1910s, entering official service in 1921. Under STANAG 4383, it is a standard cartridge for NATO forces as well as many non-NATO countries. The cartridge itself has been made in many variants: multiple generations of regular ball, tracer, armor-piercing (AP), incendiary, and saboted sub-caliber rounds. The rounds intended for machine guns are made into a continuous belt using metallic links.

Savage Arms is a gunmaker based in Westfield, Massachusetts, with operations in Canada. Savage makes a variety of rimfire and centerfire rifles, as well as Stevens single-shot rifles and shotguns. The company is best known for the Model 99 lever-action rifle, no longer in production, and the .300 Savage. Savage was a subsidiary of Vista Outdoor until 2019 when it was spun off.

Headstamp

A headstamp is the markings on the bottom of a cartridge case designed for a firearm. It usually tells who manufactured the case. If it is a civilian case it often also tells the caliber: if it is military, the year of manufacture is often added.

NSV machine gun Type of Heavy machine gun

The NSV, also known as the «Utyos», is a 12.7mm caliber heavy machine gun of Soviet origin, named after the designers, G. I. Nikitin, Y. S. Sokolov and V. I. Volkov. It was designed to replace the DShK machine gun and was adopted by the Soviet Army in 1971. It is no longer being produced in Russia; the manufacturing license for the NSV ended up in Kazakhstan after the break-up of the Soviet Union. The NSV has been manufactured in Bulgaria, India, Poland and Yugoslavia under license.

Massachusettss 5th congressional district U.S. House district in eastern Massachusetts

Massachusetts's 5th congressional district is a congressional district in eastern Massachusetts. The district is represented by Katherine Clark. Massachusetts congressional redistricting after the 2010 census has changed the borders of the district starting with the elections of 2012, with the new 3rd district largely taking the place of the old 5th. The 5th district covers many of the communities represented in the old 7th district. As of 2010, the population of the 5th congressional district was 727,515. On July 15, 2013, Ed Markey resigned from the seat to become the junior Senator from Massachusetts. On December 10, 2013, Democrat Katherine Clark won a special election to fill the seat for the remainder of the 113th Congress. She was sworn into office on December 12, 2013.

Kahr Arms American firearms manufacturer

Kahr Arms is an American small arms manufacturer specializing in compact and mid-size semi-automatic pistols chambered for popular cartridges, including .380 ACP, 9mm Luger, .40 S&W and .45 ACP. Kahr pistols feature polymer or stainless steel frames, single-stack magazines, and double-action-only striker firing actions. Kahr Arms is part of the Kahr Firearms Group, a US-based firearms manufacturer, which also includes Thompson Auto-Ordnance and Magnum Research. The Kahr Firearms Group company headquarters is in Greeley, Pennsylvania, with a manufacturing facility in Worcester, Massachusetts.

5mm Remington Rimfire Magnum

The 5mm Remington Rimfire Magnum or 5mm RFM is a bottlenecked rimfire cartridge introduced by Remington Arms Company in 1969. Remington chambered it in a pair of bolt-action rifles, the Model 591 and Model 592, but the round never became very popular, and the rifles were discontinued in 1974. About 52,000 rifles and 30,000 barrels for the T/C Contender pistol were sold during its brief production run. Remington discontinued the cartridge itself in 1982, leaving owners with no source of ammunition.

Bay Circuit Trail Long-distance hiking trail in the United States

The Bay Circuit Trail and Greenway or Bay Circuit is a Massachusetts recreational trail and greenway connecting the outlying suburbs of Boston from Plum Island in Newburyport to Kingston Bay in Duxbury, a distance of 200 miles (320 km).

O.F. Mossberg & Sons company

O.F. Mossberg & Sons is an American firearms manufacturer, specializing in shotguns, rifles, scopes, and pistol accessories.

Boott Mills Cotton mill of Lowell, Massachusetts, built in 1835

The Boott Mills in Lowell, Massachusetts were a part of an extensive group of cotton mills, built in 1835 alongside a power canal system in this important cotton town. Their founder was Kirk Boott, one of the early mill owners in Lowell. Today, the Boott Mills complex is the most intact in Lowell and is part of Lowell National Historical Park. It houses the Boott Cotton Mills Museum.

Lake City Army Ammunition Plant U.S. government-owned faciility in Independence, MO to manufacture and test small caliber ammunition for the U.S. Army.

Lake City Army Ammunition Plant (LCAAP) is a 3,935-acre (15.92 km2) U.S. government-owned, contractor-operated facility in northeastern Independence, Missouri, that was established by Remington Arms in 1941 to manufacture and test small caliber ammunition for the U.S. Army. The facility has remained in continuous operation except for one 5-year period following World War II. As of July 2007, the plant produced nearly 1.4 billion rounds of ammunition per year. In addition, Lake City performs small caliber ammunition stockpile reliability testing and has ammunition and weapon testing responsibilities as the NATO National and Regional Test Center. LCAAP is the single largest producer of small arms ammunition for the United States Armed Forces.

Type 80 machine gun Type of General-purpose machine gun

The Type 80 is a general-purpose machine gun manufactured by Norinco in China, based on the Soviet PKM. The machine gun was certified for design finalisation in 1980 and entered the PLA service in the mid-1980s, specifically in 1983. The Type 80 was intended as a successor to the Chinese independently developed Type 67, doing well in tests conducted in the Chengdu Military Region before it was dropped and instead, opted to keep the Type 67 GPMG in use.

Fábrica de Armas Halcón was an Argentinian defense company founded in 1941 and located in Buenos Aires.

M1919 Browning machine gun American medium machine gun

The M1919 Browning is a .30 caliber medium machine gun that was widely used during the 20th century, especially during World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. The M1919 saw service as a light infantry, coaxial, mounted, aircraft, and anti-aircraft machine gun by the U.S. and many other countries.

Ordnance Factory Tiruchirappalli Defence Production Company of India

Ordnance Factory Tiruchirappalli (OFT), also called Ordnance Factory Trichy, is a defence company based in Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, functioning under the Ordnance Factory Board of the Ministry of Defence, Government of India. The company is headed only by an IOFS officer called General Manager who is the Chief Executive Officer, responsible for the overall management of the company. OFT is the largest small arms manufacturing company of India and has the most varied range.

United States Cartridge Company

The United States Cartridge Company was an early manufacturer of cartridge ammunition for small arms. The company was founded in 1869 by American Civil War general Benjamin Butler. Company startup was during the most rapid evolution of cartridge design to date. Lowell, Massachusetts emerged as one of the most successful cartridge producers in the United States while Butler served as a congressman from Massachusetts from 1867 to 1879 and as governor from 1883 to 1884. After supplying 65 percent of American small arms ammunition production for World War I, the company was acquired by the owner of Winchester Repeating Arms; and the Lowell factory closed as manufacturing shifted to New Haven, Connecticut.

Iron Horse Park

Iron Horse Park is the name of the former repair facilities of the Boston and Maine Railroad repair facilities in North Billerica, Massachusetts.

References

  1. "Raytheon Company (Former Lowell Ordnance Plant)". Tewksbury Public Library. Archived from the original on 2013-03-04. Retrieved 2014-09-15.
  2. "RCRIS: Former Lowell Ordnance Plant". The Right-to-Know Network.
  3. Laidler, John (June 27, 2013). "Technology park off I-495 hopes to lure tenants with upgrade". The Boston Globe. Retrieved September 15, 2014.
  4. Impink, Rosalyn (April 18, 2020). "Planning Board approves fire station permit". Tewksbury Town Crier. Retrieved September 6, 2020.

Coordinates: 42°36′42.67″N71°17′29.67″W / 42.6118528°N 71.2915750°W / 42.6118528; -71.2915750