Lieutenant General
Levin Hicks Campbell Jr.

Lieutenant General Levin Hicks Campbell, Jr., was born in Washington, D.C., on November 23, 1886 and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1909.

He began his remarkable Army career in the field of Ordnance in 1911, when he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Coast Guard Artillery Corps.

Considered by many to be World War II’s greatest weapons designer and producer, he gained fame by heading the Ordnance Department through the days when the Industry-Ordnance Team began producing overwhelming firepower for World War II.

He inaugurated manufacturing techniques in the production of gun carriages and self-propelled fighting vehicles; he revolutionized the art of artillery ammunition production in the areas of machining of shells, manufacturing of cartridge cases, and production of mechanical time fuzes; and he directed the vast program of building Ordnance plants throughout the country for the production of chemicals and explosives and the loading of ammunition.

He was the Manufacturing Officer at Frankford Arsenal, from June 1935 to October 1940, and the Assistant Chief of Industrial Service at the Office Chief of Ordnance from November 1940 to June 1942.

He was Chief of Ordnance from July 1942 until his retirement in May 1946. He was advanced to the grade of Lieutenant General on the AUS retired list on June 4, 1948. General Campbell died in Annapolis, Maryland on November 17, 1976.