soc.history.war.world-war-ii

"Bruce Burden" wrote in message
news:fq5ckn01pp0@enews2.newsguy.com...

> I will take your word that pre-war Germany was a machine tool exporter,
> but they never had enough machine tools for their own needs as the war
> progressed,

Germany was exporting machine tools for most of the war. Plus it
had lots of looted machine tools, mainly from France, that sat in
storage for the war. The latter caused problems when the decision
was taken to try and use more of the French industry, since "key
parts" of the industry were no longer present, having being shipped
to Germany.

The way the Germans were able to use single shift factories shows
how well the machine tool situation was. The British Bombing
Survey Unit notes in Britain there were 5.7 workers per tool,
in Germany it was around 2.3 to 2.4. The ball bearings industry for
example had only 19% of its workers on a second shift, not a sign
of lack of machine tools.

German annual machine tool production was about 10% of the
country's stock of such tools. The concentrated attacks on ball
bearings damaged or destroyed about 12% of their machine tools,
the aviation industry lost 8% and overall the cost seems to have
been 6.5% according to the USSBS.

The British survey says machine tool exports continued well into 1942
and I believe it was much later than that before they were stopped,
after all Germany had to pay for imports from allies. The Survey
notes production was in excess of home requirements until 1945.

According to the British Survey in 1938 the Germans had 1,327,000
machine tools, in 1940 it was 1,664,000 and 1942 2,007,000 and in
1943 2,150,000. British estimates of the population were usually
less than half the real one.

> hence the use of the straight cut gear, when the designers
> were well aware that a helical or double helical set up was much more
> desirable. The lack of helical gear cutting capacity was apparently a
> major reason the Panther II was cancelled - it was to share the Tiger
> steering gear.

Interesting. On the information I have this is not a machine tools problem,
in terms of overall supply anyway. Could it be a more specialist supply
problem? I mean it is not a case of a machine tool is a machine tool, the
various types have their differences.

I have no problems with the way some of the allied designs I
mentioned had problems, nothing is perfect, it was just fun to note
the way these designs debunked the unbuilt Panther as leader claim.

Thanks for the details on Panther engineering.

Geoffrey Sinclair
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