soc.history.war.world-war-ii

"Andrew Clark" wrote in message
news:2dKdnX-yd8u3YFbanZ2dnUVZ8sWhnZ2d@giganews.com...
> "Geoffrey Sinclair" wrote
>
>> Commercial firms making rational commercial decisions.
>>
>> In Germany what happened to Hugo Junkers was a powerful lesson
>> for the aviation industry to heed.
>>
>> The new German government wanted lots of warplanes and were
>> prepared to finance the expansions much earlier than other
>> governments.
>
> A debate about relative re-armament particulars in Britain, France and the
> UK is pointless without relating it to the relative structures and
> constraints of finance/investment, business, politics, government and law
> in these three states.

Ah a Sir Humphrey approach to something that is not wanted. Make
the problem so big, with so much involved, that absolutely nothing can
be done because the whole approach breaks down under its own weight.
Another concept is mission creep equals no mission done.

Do not forget under the above rules there will be a need for the people
involved to have a good understanding of economics at least.

Things like local versus imported raw materials, the skill set of the
workforce, the amount of unemployment and so on come into play.

> Of course, such a wider context would go beyond comfortable
> secondary-source statistics and elementary headline assumptions and
> require a deeper knowledge of real socioeconomic and political history.

Yes folks, do not read those secondary sources and do not comment
on the information in them, only primary sources will do, and of course
do not write articles for a news group. Become a full time historian
able to spend hours in archives and hours learning the constraints of the
system you are looking at. And only publish in reputable journals, with
articles taking months to years to write, review and publish.

Do not worry Andrew, your new standard has been noted, and you are
now expected to keep to that standard, primary sources only, proper
citations, no adjectives, just information, then a conclusion. Oh yes,
do not cite published articles, even from reputable journals, they are
secondary sources. Just like books.

Meantime the wonderful thing about this public forum is people
interested in the history can discuss things and bring their real life
experience as say a mechanic to bear on the discussions. A
life time of knowledge in a field usually beats an historian's
basic view of the area, just as the historian would usually be
better in pulling together source documents.

More on aircraft costs.

>From The Cost of Seapower by Philip Pugh, published in 1986.

According to Pugh a ship costs around a tenth of its construction
cost to run per year, data from ships ranging from Hood to Nimitz.
A major refit costs about the same as the original construction cost.

Aircraft annual running costs come in at 50 to 75% of the
construction cost (no indication of what aircraft types were
considered). This would explain why the up front cost of an
aircraft was not as big a factor, given a 5 to 10 year life time.

His breakdown for 20 years of operation for a 6 ship class versus a
250 aircraft production run comes in as (all figures percentages)
warship versus aircraft.

Procurement 23 vs 8
Development 2 vs 5
Fuel 4 vs 9
Operate 37 vs 23
Maintenance 21 vs 50
Update 13 vs 5.

Pugh also has a graph of aircraft unit costs but unfortunately to 1980
so all the pre 1950 aircraft are close to zero on the graph, versus the
1980 aircraft. He does note the aircraft on board a carrier cost around
5% of the total equipment cost (ship + aircraft) in the 1920's and under
15% in the 1940's, and 50% in the 1980's.

Geoffrey Sinclair
Remove the nb for email.