Nuo artileristo iki ginklininko: ginklavimo karininkų korpusas lietuvos kariuomenėje 1919–1940 m

ENDuring the interwar period, a certain distribution of military specialties dominated in the Lithuanian army. Only a few main types of arms and services were known in the early development stage of the army (infantry, artillery, cavalry, engineering, aviation, sanitation, and veterinary) where soldiers and civilians of various specialties served. In the long run, the developing and modernization of the Lithuanian army began with the focus on other areas as well. At the beginning of the 1940s, this resulted in soldiers being reclassified according to newly introduced military specialities into 18 separate corps. Completely new services emerged and some different gunner types were divided into smaller military corps. However, due to their specificity and tasks carried out, they were equally important and necessary to the army. In today’s historiography, there is a tendency to explore the history of the main types of military weapons when at the same time little is known about other services and military specialties. One of them is the armament officer’s specialty, which among other specialties, seems quite exotic. The officers of this corps were directly responsible for arming the army and other important functions. The article aims to provide more information about the armament officer specialty of the interwar Lithuanian army and to reveal the necessity for armament specialists, the importance of strengthening the army, and to analyse their military training system. The main source base of the article consisted of the documents of the Lithuanian Central State Archive (LCGA). The survey revealed that the armament officer corps and specialty were officially established only in 1931, after separation from the type of artillery weapons.For a long time it was widely accepted that an artillery officer was sufficiently well educated to be a military weapons specialist and to be able to maintain such weapons, and not much attention was given to individual training. Soon, however, the growing role and demand for armament specialists resulted in the establishment of a new soldier corps and creation of a separate training system of cavalry. Armament specialty officers began to be trained separately from other types of weapons officers in specialised short-term (a few weeks) and long-term (several years) training. During the latter, until 1940, 70 active service officers and 103 reserve officers were prepared in the Lithuanian Military School. Altogether 25 officers and civilians studied this specialty in foreign military schools. Relying on archival documents, this number was deemed to be sufficient so that fulltime positions of armament officer were occupied in the case of successful mobilisation.