soc.history.war.world-war-ii

"Louis C" wrote in message
news:121942f5-ecc5-486e-ab05-e09bfdd0117c@n75g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...
> Geoffrey Sinclair wrote:
>
> (snip useful debunking of silly claims)
>
>> I have no problems the Germans in
>> the 1930's started thinking in terms of mass production of aircraft
>> before other European powers, the Ju88 is another example. The
>> reality was they were supplying a government determined to create
>> a very large military, everyone else was hoping for business as usual,
>> or at least a modest German armaments program.
>
> Are you sure that's the main reason?

Pretty much, the original contracts for the Hurricane and Spitfire
were from before things became urgent. So 600 Hurricanes and
310 Spitfires and the designs were years old before production
began. Similar for the early designs of all air forces.

Gloster produced 228 Gauntlets 1935 to 1937, almost all in
1936. Then 252 Gladiators in 1937 falling to 158 in 1938 but
jumping to 320 in 1939. So the Spitfire order was not really
out of line with normal peace time procurements, the Hurricane
was certainly a real increase, but when the original contracts
were made the idea was they would be it, apart from around 50
more as attrition replacements. New types would then be
produced. I do note apparently Hawkers were expecting a
bigger order than the one they initially received.

Then came the urgency as the bomber would always get through
and the Germans were ahead. Which mandated numbers and
second or more sources of supply.

As the main powers rearmed so export orders were generated
as other countries felt the need for more aircraft.

> As far as I can tell, the British tried to set up for mass production
> though the aircraft types that they were producing did not lend
> themselves well to being mass-produced.

Ah, I see, what I need to do is separate out the orders for mass
production and the efforts built into the designs to make them
easy to produce. Since of course different designs had different
levels of production difficulties and judgements had to be made
about whether the complexity was worth it.

The Hurricane was rated as easy to produce, much more so than
the Spitfire. The point being given the production numbers expected
there seemed little need to design the types for mass production.
For a start there is the question of whether the firms understood
what they needed to do after a decade or more of 100 aircraft
being a major order, Hawkers were the best given their successes
as far as the British were concerned.

After all the Hurricane would be replaced by the Typhoon and the
Spitfire by something else, assuming the usual peace time evolution.
(Gauntlet to Gladiator sort of arrangement). After their initial
production runs.

Thousand horsepower engines were made reliable in the mid to
late 1930's and it seemed 2,000 HP class engines would be
around in "a few" years, maybe "a few" months if all this new
money being allocated bore fruit.

Then of course the reality of how long it took to set up production
lines etc. cut in, plus the clear understanding any winner was going
to have WWI or bigger production orders.

For the British the culmination was the MB5, see the mechanics
and as far as I know the production engineers reports on the
aircraft, the design made things that much easier for them.

The P-51 designed knowing the RAF was at war and in the
market for hundreds of the right aircraft. The Mosquito also
assumed a large (compared with the 1930's) production run.

> Ditto the French. The latter
> were initially aiming for shorter production series than the British
> (in 1937-38, the air force wrote that batches of 1,000 were too large,
> 500 was just the right balance between economies of scale and the need
> to introduce upgrades) though that soon changed.

Sounds about right, similar sorts of production batches. The
way good, even new types were becoming obsolete to quickly
was a real problem.

Given the rapid evolution of aircraft between say 1935 and 1942,
when fighter top speeds near doubled it makes sense to assume
there will be a series of new designs, each better than the last. Also
it was sensible to assume as more money was poured into the
industry development cycles would be cut and even better designs
would be available "soon". The idea the one design could be pushed
the way the Spitfire was pushed was not considered.

> Both countries, as far as I'm aware, tried to rationalize production
> and by 1939 were doing their best.

Yes. Playing catch up, especially to inflated figures of Luftwaffe
strength, had them caught in the quality versus quantity debate.
Then there was the fact just add money did not eliminate the need
for thorough testing of new designs, the money could shorten the
development cycle but the increasing complexity was blowing things
the other way.

So it took time to put the easier to build designs into production
and things like the Stirling wing being water tight, a legacy of
the flying boat designs, continued.

The Germans seem to have been unable to switch to good enough
arrangements, instead completing parts etc. to tolerances that
were not needed.

> The problem was that they were late
> starters compared to German projects like the Bf 109 and Ju 88 (though
> note that a lot of the German aircraft were no easier to produce than
> their Allied counterparts), and that aircraft designers weren't
> thinking at all in terms of ease to produce. So the governments went
> for the more promising design and tried to cope with the production
> problems.

There is little doubt the Ju88 was an outstanding example of a
design meant to be mass produced from the start. The He111
lost its elliptical wing to simplify manufacture, so improvements
were made there. Not sure about the Bf109 in terms of ease of
production, it was better than the Spitfire but that should be the
case for just about every single engined fighter.

As far as I can tell in the late 1930's Germany was ahead in
terms of "knowing" there would be large orders for aircraft
coupled with the fact it was ahead in terms of production from
earlier orders. This meant more mass production experience
and more attention to the problem as the next generation of
aircraft were prepared for production.

After all first came the Ju86 and Do17, then slightly later the
He111 then the Ju88 to simplify the time line, with the Ju88
meant to at least replace most of the Do17 and probably the
He111 force, along with the Do217.

It should be remembered how much of the WWII aircraft park
was around, in terms of at least prototype flown, before
September 1939 with their designs even earlier.

I have seen comments the DC-3 was not so easy to build which
caused problems in WWII. That the B-24 was supposed to have
had more attention paid to production requirements versus the B-17
and so on.

I suppose the best way to describe it was there was a trend
to make the aircraft easier to produce as problems with
earlier designs became apparent and the size of the potential
orders increased. With the Germans in the lead. However
given the limited numbers of designs involved and the time it
took to produce them there are clear examples either way
of easier to build early designs and hard to build later designs.

The Wellington is an early design which was supposed to be
easy to build for example. The Spitfire became harder to
build as things like the engine bearers needed to be stronger.

> The above AFAIK of course.

I should have been more precise which would have meant making
the ambiguities clearer. :-)

In the 1920's and early 1930's no one assumed the effort involved in
making a design ready for mass production (WWI or WWII numbers)
was worth it. Even if the firm had expertise. Yes there were incentives
to make a design cheaper to build (though the need to keep an industry
in being pushed government make work schemes rather than efficiency)
but the idea a firm could afford to put together a proper production line
as opposed to lots of small machine tools and hand work was not there.

Setting up a mass production line costs and you need a long production
run to recover the money invested.

Even now as I read this back it is not coming out exactly the way I
want it to, partly because ease of manufacture is usually an adjective
rather than something easy to pin down and the overlap of the
various aircraft's design, prototype and production phases in the 1930's.

Could some French examples be supplied?

I note all through WWII it cost more to build a B-17 than a B-24,
that a B-25 cost about 75% of a B-26, the P-39 and P-51 ended
up costing around $50,000 each but the P-40 around $45,000.
The C-47 cost $85,000 in 1945, versus the $117,000 for a B-25
and $83,000 or a P-47. A 1944 P-38 came in at $97,000. The
monetary costs of the late war production should be a reasonable
indicator of "production ease" but of course then there are the
trade offs between better performance and cost of manufacture.

Geoffrey Sinclair
Remove the nb for email.