What if there was a Japan to USA version of Operation Paperclip?

[riggerrob]

What if Japanese engineers moved to the USA under a variation of the Operation Paperclip that brought hundreds of German engineers and scientists to the USA.

Considering how well Japan was able to produce facsimilies of Argus pulse-jet engines, Messerschmitt 163 rocket-powered interceptor and Me.262 twin-jet fighter, in a short time with incomplete drawings from Germany. If those same Japanese engineers were assigned to American airframe and engine manufacturers (e.g. General Electric's jet engine division), would they have been able to quickly develop more reliable and efficient jet engines and jet-powered airplanes?
I am trying to emphasis Japanese expertise in "quickly developing" new technologies with limited resources. WI an American manufacturer got a contract to develop an X Plane, but under a tight schedule and only a tiny budget?

This "What If?" was inspired by a thread on Secret Early Aircraft Projects, Japanese "Special Attack" Projects of WW2..

 

[Antonio]

Japan lacked the technologies of interest to develop a japanese dedicated Project Paperclip

 

[Orionblamblam]

Japan lacked the technologies of interest to develop a japanese dedicated Project Paperclip

In aeronautics and nuclear power, sure. But biological warfare... well, Ishii and his ilk weren't exactly Americas crowning achievement in the field of justice.

 

[Dilandu]

The problem was, that while Japanese technology have some interesting points, there weren't advanced enough to validate further research. For example, Japanese IR-guided "Ke-Go" bomb; it was much more advanced that anything Germans fielded, but significantly less advanced than American own IR-guided "Felix" and "Dove" bomb. Japanese bomb used fixed sensor with a blind spot directly ahead, which basically means that the whole bomb turned toward the received infrared radiation source, until it disappeared in the blind spot (or get completely lost - Japanese bomb could not discriminate between "no signal because target is directly forward" and "no signal, because target is lost)". On the contrary, US bombs used independently moved seeker, which compared signal from different parts of the view area; much more advanced design.

 

[pathology_doc]

I am trying to emphasis Japanese expertise in "quickly developing" new technologies with limited resources.

They weren't actually good at developing anything. They were good at implementing someone else's technology on a shoestring budget with next to no resources, which is possibly worthwhile if you're a smaller company trying to compete with the majors in bringing something to market, or much more worthwhile if you're a smaller nation trying to get a leg up on the new tech in a timely fashion without breaking your budget.

 

[Michel Van]

There was transfer of Japanese Scientist to USA after WW2
but only the People were from UNIT 731 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731
How ever US military figure out soon,
UNIT 731 Data was antiquated and rudimentarily, compare to US effort in Chemical and Bioweapons during WW2.
they send them home...

on modern Japanese combat Aircraft they found mostly German Hardware in it.
What US had sufficient found in ruins of Third Reich

 

[publiusr]

That was called "Operation Whitecoat" where Seventh Day Adventists took the bug, as it were.

One interviewee called Japanese research "garbage" and what was done instead--was to have volunteers spread out in a ringed target...each concentric ring so far apart. I forgot the name of the TV program.

Cabin pressurization data came from the Axis powers.

The only thing Unit 731 did was inspire horror movies like "Man Behind the Sun."

 

[Nicknick]

The language barrier might have been an additional reason, many well educated German scientist might have had already some English skills and translations between English and German was surly far easier than translations between Japanese and English.

 

[Pioneer]

The Japanese made excellent torpedoes and large aircraft carrying submarines, which the USN was extremely interested in.....

Regards
Pioneer

 

[EwenS]

The USN Technical Mission to Japan produced a number of reports on Japanese technology. The Observation and Comments section of the Summary Report makes some interesting comments about the relevance of the Mission's work. One line in particular:-

"The Japanese may be especially adept at copying but evidence of their originality and ingenuity is not lacking."

https://www.fischer-tropsch.org/primary_documents/gvt_reports/USNAVY/USNTMJ%20Reports/USNTMJ-200A-0072-0559%20Summary%20Report.pdf

All the reports on individual topics can be found here.

Fischer-Tropsch Archive

Go to Primary Documents then Govt Reports.

 

[T. A. Gardner]

The Japanese made excellent torpedoes and large aircraft carrying submarines, which the USN was extremely interested in.....

Regards
Pioneer

The US also had interest in their version of a high underwater speed submarine.

Several were brought back to Hawaii for examination and then later sunk in deep water off Oahu.

 

[Yellow Palace]

The US also had interest in their version of a high underwater speed submarine.

Several were brought back to Hawaii for examination and then later sunk in deep water off Oahu.

Supposedly much more advanced than the German Type XXI U-boat as well.

 

[Wowness]

The US also had interest in their version of a high underwater speed submarine.

Several were brought back to Hawaii for examination and then later sunk in deep water off Oahu.

Certainly makes a point about how advance they were...if there was nothing special about Japanese technology, why sink them to keep them out of the hands of a Soviets?
On a side note, I think another reason no 'Paperclip' was done for Japan was that the Soviets didn't get to be such an occupying force in Japan compared to in Europe. There was no need for a mad-dash to whisk away scientists and engineers to keep them from Soviet hands.

 

[Dilandu]

Supposedly much more advanced than the German Type XXI U-boat as well.

At very least, build much better - the Type XXI were notoriously poorly constructed.

 

[Nicknick]

I doubt, that late war Japanese submarines had a much better buult quality, they were desperatly throwing ewerything to the front just like the Germans... The Germans had to built their subs out of relativly small segments which could be produced far away from the warf, thus minimizing the chances that they will be destroyed by bombing. The welding had to be done hastely, novwonder that the quality suffered.

 

[DWG]

if there was nothing special about Japanese technology, why sink them

Because that was a common way of disposing of unwanted wartime equipment, and munitions, and even chemical weapons.

Some of which we've since had to go back and clean up.

 

[DWG]

The Germans had to built their subs out of relativly small segments which could be produced far away from the warf, thus minimizing the chances that they will be destroyed by bombing.

We call that mass production when we do it, and it's exactly the way we were building frigates and parts of subs by mid to late war. Completely mobilizing your industrial potential means getting the bridge-builders and civil engineering companies involved, and they don't tend to be in the same place as dockyards, meaning weldments needed to be small enough to be transported and lifted by crane. DNC sent a team over to evaluate German mass production of U-boats after VE Day, and the consensus was we were doing a better job of it.

 

[Nicknick]

No wonder, the welders in Germany had to use the time between the frequent bombardments. Of course, many of them might have been forced labourer with little motivation to do a perfect job.

The American welding of the Liberty ships wasn't that great either...

 

[Dilandu]

The American welding of the Liberty ships wasn't that great either...

But cargo ships hulls aren't subjected to same kind of stresses as submarine hulls.

 

[Nicknick]

Whats the point?

Many Liberty ships broke into pieces....

 

[Justo Miranda]

Japan had good scientists, but industry could not materialize their projects. One of the main causes of this inefficiency was the excessive recruitment that sent thousands of specialized workers and radio technicians to the battlefronts. In 1945 turbojet blades were built manually by girls using small files. The fighter’s radio transmitters worked so badly that pilots preferred to disassemble them and sawed the radio masts to save weight.

I remember reading something about experiments with a death ray... does anyone know anything about this?

 

[T. A. Gardner]

No wonder, the welders in Germany had to use the time between the frequent bombardments. Of course, many of them might have been forced labourer with little motivation to do a perfect job.

The American welding of the Liberty ships wasn't that great either...

That was due almost entirely to two causes:

1. The ships were originally designed to be riveted together. The switch to welding required changes to the design the engineers were at first unaware of like, for instance, going from right angle corners on hatches to a curved design. With rivets, the squared off hatches and combings worked with welding they cracked. These were sorted out during production and usually retrofitted to earlier production ships as could be managed.

2. The majority of welders building them received just a few weeks of training before starting on production. As they gained skill, the problems with poor welds mostly ended. The other thing that helped was shipyards went to automated welding machines in many cases eliminating poor manual welding.

 

[T. A. Gardner]

We call that mass production when we do it, and it's exactly the way we were building frigates and parts of subs by mid to late war. Completely mobilizing your industrial potential means getting the bridge-builders and civil engineering companies involved, and they don't tend to be in the same place as dockyards, meaning weldments needed to be small enough to be transported and lifted by crane. DNC sent a team over to evaluate German mass production of U-boats after VE Day, and the consensus was we were doing a better job of it.

The problem for the Germans was they didn't do mass production of that sort. This was an entirely new thing to their industry where craftsmen and hand fitting were the norm. The US found the reverse problem when they started manufacturing foreign designed equipment like the 6 pdr antitank gun or 40mm Bofors. Even the US manufactured universal carrier required considerable redesign.

With hand fitting methods using craftsmen, you can get away with looser tolerances that are made up for during the assembly process by the skills of the fitter. In mass production, that isn't the case. Everything has to fit together every time without need for lots of adjustment of parts.

 

[Nicknick]

So the problems were the same, unexpierienced workes welded steel plates hasteley together when welding was still quite new. the Americans were just lacking the bombardments in the meantime...

Germany has had a lot of expueriences with mass production before, the Opel Laubfrosch run from a convoyer belt in the 20th and at that time (late war) ten thousands of Me108 had allready been built....

You write totally nonsense

 

[DWG]

The problem for the Germans was they didn't do mass production of that sort.

We'd been doing mass production of Lee-Enfield and its predecessors in the UK since the Victorian era (not to mention screws from 1800, naval pulley blocks from 1805), I doubt that Germany was much different - in fact I know they'd standardized railway wagon production from 1909, never mind that covered multiple different companies from multiple German states (very similar to standardization under the UK's Railways Clearing House), and by the 20s they'd standardized at the parts level (austauschbauart).

The US experience of mass-production wasn't flawless, overall productivity in ship-building (tons per man) was actually less than the UK's, the US just had more men to throw at it, and some conversions to US production methods were seriously flawed (the 20mm Hispano, the post-war conversion of the FG-42 action for the M-60).

The Bofors always comes up in mass production discussion, it's important to remember it's a Swedish design (and a 1930 design at that) and doesn't necessarily represent contemporary British or German practice.

 

[T. A. Gardner]

We'd been doing mass production of Lee-Enfield and its predecessors in the UK since the Victorian era (not to mention screws from 1800, naval pulley blocks from 1805), I doubt that Germany was much different - in fact I know they'd standardized railway wagon production from 1909, never mind that covered multiple different companies from multiple German states (very similar to standardization under the UK's Railways Clearing House), and by the 20s they'd standardized at the parts level (austauschbauart).

The US experience of mass-production wasn't flawless, overall productivity in ship-building (tons per man) was actually less than the UK's, the US just had more men to throw at it, and some conversions to US production methods were seriously flawed (the 20mm Hispano, the post-war conversion of the FG-42 action for the M-60).

The Bofors always comes up in mass production discussion, it's important to remember it's a Swedish design (and a 1930 design at that) and doesn't necessarily represent contemporary British or German practice.

Mass production isn't all the same thing. The US could produce a ship in about three-quarters to half the time Britian could build a similar one. That's what mattered in war.

German mass production was far different from US methods. That's why the US could and did produce more even on the same scale as Germany did. It wasn't as if the British or Germans, or Japanese for that matter, didn't have areas where they excelled, they did.

 

[DWG]

The US could produce a ship in about three-quarters to half the time Britian could build a similar one. That's what mattered in war.

What mattered varied by country, the US could afford to throw men at ship production, the UK was manpower limited so needed to work smarter within the available workforce.

German mass production was far different from US methods. That's why the US could and did produce more even on the same scale as Germany did.

The limits on German production weren't to do with mass-production methods, but that they didn't shift to a full wartime economy until mid-1943 (and of course that wouldn't be an instantaneous shift). Add on top of that the empire-building among the Nazi leaders which saw, amongst other idiocy, Goering running a major tank plant.

 

[Nicknick]

Krupp has been the largest manufacturer of cannons since the late 19th century, so there was a long history of mass production of weapons in Germany. Besides the more than 30.000 Me109 which have been built, Germany also produced 7000 war locomotives of the type BR52. Production wise, steam locomotives are closer to submarines than airplanes. These locomotives had a simplified design with all welded boilers (a novelty back than), which cut production cost and reduced weight. Despite its highly succsessfull design, it should not be forgotten, that these locomotives also played their part in a even more sinister undertaking than the war...

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCJC6mvRBYU


If Germany would have had a single major tank plant, it would have been destroyed within days. All the production had to be done in decentralised manner or even in caves to protect it against bombardment.

 

[Yellow Palace]

Mass production isn't all the same thing.

IIRC, there's three levels of 'mass production'. What the US mastered before anyone else was mass production of interchangeable parts - which is what allows you to remove the dependence on a small number of highly trained artisans, and thereby rapidly increase production.

Hand-fitting mass produced parts is still better than hand-making individual parts. To take the RCH wagon, for example, the bearings might all have been manufactured to the same drawings in the same foundry, but you couldn't take one off a wagon in Newcastle and expect to be able to put it straight onto one in Cardiff. They'd have been 'filed to fit' in slightly different ways.
If those wagons had come out of a US factory in the 1940s, the bearings would be identical, and wouldn't need any local adjustments whatsoever. Which eliminates the need for someone who knows how to make the adjustment, and the need for them to take the time to do it.

 

[Nicknick]

IIRC, there's three levels of 'mass production'. What the US mastered before anyone else was mass production of interchangeable parts - which is what allows you to remove the dependence on a small number of highly trained artisans, and thereby rapidly increase production.

Hand-fitting mass produced parts is still better than hand-making individual parts. To take the RCH wagon, for example, the bearings might all have been manufactured to the same drawings in the same foundry, but you couldn't take one off a wagon in Newcastle and expect to be able to put it straight onto one in Cardiff. They'd have been 'filed to fit' in slightly different ways.
If those wagons had come out of a US factory in the 1940s, the bearings would be identical, and wouldn't need any local adjustments whatsoever. Which eliminates the need for someone who knows how to make the adjustment, and the need for them to take the time to do it.

Interchangable parts for weapons were allready the norm in the 19 th centutry. Keep in mind, that central Europe has been industrialist long before WW2 and mass production of cars with a convoyer belt started in Germany 1924. Henry Ford builded a gigantic factory in Cologne, which also mass produced for the war. Germany also exported many mass prouced products, like sewing mashines, motorbikes, pianos, weapons, locomotives all over the globe, even without having many colonies.


I dont know, how anyone could believe the German Reich builded more than 30.000 Me 109 in handcraft fasion....

 

[lordroel]

Japan lacked the technologies of interest to develop a japanese dedicated Project Paperclip

Unless the Americans are interested in Japanese Kamikaze rockets.

 

[T. A. Gardner]

What mattered varied by country, the US could afford to throw men at ship production, the UK was manpower limited so needed to work smarter within the available workforce.


The limits on German production weren't to do with mass-production methods, but that they didn't shift to a full wartime economy until mid-1943 (and of course that wouldn't be an instantaneous shift). Add on top of that the empire-building among the Nazi leaders which saw, amongst other idiocy, Goering running a major tank plant.

The US didn't start around the clock production until 1942 for the most part. There were some industries where they were already on shiftwork because of foreign orders for materials, but most of US industry was running one or two shifts, at the most.

The limits also came from both the techniques and tools employed. Kaiser built liberty and victory ships in a manner totally foreign to British or German production methods for example. Ford turned out a B-24 an hour when Junkers was taking about one to two weeks to turn out a Ju 290 and Henkel was manufacturing maybe 2, possibly 3, He 177 a day at the height of their production run.

IIRC, there's three levels of 'mass production'. What the US mastered before anyone else was mass production of interchangeable parts - which is what allows you to remove the dependence on a small number of highly trained artisans, and thereby rapidly increase production.

Hand-fitting mass produced parts is still better than hand-making individual parts. To take the RCH wagon, for example, the bearings might all have been manufactured to the same drawings in the same foundry, but you couldn't take one off a wagon in Newcastle and expect to be able to put it straight onto one in Cardiff. They'd have been 'filed to fit' in slightly different ways.
If those wagons had come out of a US factory in the 1940s, the bearings would be identical, and wouldn't need any local adjustments whatsoever. Which eliminates the need for someone who knows how to make the adjustment, and the need for them to take the time to do it.

Interchangeable parts also greatly shortens production time by eliminating hand-fitting that's time consuming. For the US, they found those European standards to be unworkable in their factories, just as Europeans found they couldn't match US tolerances on drawings consistently. Both had to adapt things to what they were used to doing.

 

[DWG]

Kaiser built liberty and victory ships in a manner totally foreign to British or German production methods

The Liberty Ship was a slightly modified (oil-fired boilers) version of the British-ordered, US-built Ocean Class freighter, itself a welded, simplified version of the British North East Coast Open Shelter Deck Steamer.

When it comes to the use of pre-fabricated elements, the UK was doing exactly the same, but with more complicated weldments, such as completely pre-wired radio and radar offices, for the Castle class Corvettes and the River class frigates. The Loch class frigates that followed the Rivers were designed to incorporate significant structural pre-frabrication. Production of these classes was spread across any yard with a long enough slip, but once launched they flowed to centralized fitting-out yards (which weren't trouble free, but the principal problem was accessing the trained personnel needed, rather than technical). Similar arrangements were made for the production of the LCT and its derivatives.

Mass-production of the US version of the River, the Tacoma class PF, under Kaiser management, was something of a disaster. The Kaiser-built Tacoma took 8 months to build, but needed 10 months of rework post-commissioning and wasn't alone in this. Kaiser even managed to specify weldments too large for the cranes at the Great Lakes yards building them.

 

[T. A. Gardner]

The Liberty Ship was a slightly modified (oil-fired boilers) version of the British-ordered, US-built Ocean Class freighter, itself a welded, simplified version of the British North East Coast Open Shelter Deck Steamer.

When it comes to the use of pre-fabricated elements, the UK was doing exactly the same, but with more complicated weldments, such as completely pre-wired radio and radar offices, for the Castle class Corvettes and the River class frigates. The Loch class frigates that followed the Rivers were designed to incorporate significant structural pre-frabrication. Production of these classes was spread across any yard with a long enough slip, but once launched they flowed to centralized fitting-out yards (which weren't trouble free, but the principal problem was accessing the trained personnel needed, rather than technical). Similar arrangements were made for the production of the LCT and its derivatives.

Mass-production of the US version of the River, the Tacoma class PF, under Kaiser management, was something of a disaster. The Kaiser-built Tacoma took 8 months to build, but needed 10 months of rework post-commissioning and wasn't alone in this. Kaiser even managed to specify weldments too large for the cranes at the Great Lakes yards building them.

The Tacoma class was an oddity. The design was to use as much in the way of commercial parts as possible and be built in commercial yards that had never built naval combatants before. The learning curve for the yards on the Great Lakes building them was pretty steep and the early ships had a lot of issues as a result.

By the time everything was worked out, the Tacoma's weren't needed and were mostly handed off to other, allied, navies simply because the USN had better. It's pretty amazing that the whole DE / PF program built somewhere close to 600 ships in a matter of about 2 1/2 years.

 

[apparition13]

This is why the Nimrod MRA4 got cancelled. Everything had been shimmed to fit; the parts (like wings) weren't interchangeable, and upgrading them would have required building parts for each aircraft designed to fit that and only that aircraft.

 

[DWG]

This is why the Nimrod MRA4 got cancelled. Everything had been shimmed to fit; the parts (like wings) weren't interchangeable, and upgrading them would have required building parts for each aircraft designed to fit that and only that aircraft.

See Zoo Tycoon's posting here, and expanded on in various other places, for why no, Nimrod did not have the problems claimed.

For a more recent example on the use of shims, see the Boeing 787, and the controversy on whether the rear fuselage had been properly shimmed with the fuselage pressure barrel. (The controversy isn't that shims were used, but that the wrong-sized ones may have been used).

The actual reason MRA.4 was cancelled was the Tory party's Austerity policies.

 

[Nicknick]

Interchangeable parts were the common industrial standart long before WW2. For car production, it was a novelty before WW1 when Ford introduced the model T, but progress has been fast in the 20th century an it is redicously to bevieve that the Americans were the only ones who could built interchangable parts! I don't know, were this idea comes from...

 

[T. A. Gardner]

Interchangeable parts were the common industrial standart long before WW2. For car production, it was a novelty before WW1 when Ford introduced the model T, but progress has been fast in the 20th century an it is redicously to bevieve that the Americans were the only ones who could built interchangable parts! I don't know, were this idea comes from...

The tolerances of "interchangeable" parts vary. Here's a video on Chrystler making the Bofors gun, a Swedish design.

How you do something is critical. As a personal anecdote, I was assigned the manufacture of the first block of 400 AN/ADU-801E SLAM ER adapter brackets for use on the Aero 58 trailer. That's a wobbly aluminum thing that the missile sits on when it is towed out the plane for loading or for service.

One part the original drawings called for was a rubber pad potted onto a machined piece of aluminum. The spec called for a PRC two-part urethane. Casting one of these using that material would take me (well, my shop) about 6 hours to mix, deaerate, mold, and cure the product. This was going to be a costly and time-consuming method.

So, I recommended a different spec and method that would get a better result faster and cheaper. My method using a batch produced raw buna rubber product resulted in a better product that took just 10 minutes start to finish to produce. The cost went from about $5,000 a part (mostly because of the cost of the molds, heat curing equipment, etc.) to about $25 a part.

I did get a letter of commendation from an admiral and a Navy commendation medal for it, but that doesn't buy much...

The point I'm making is mass production isn't always equal. That's why the US could turn out a 4-engine bomber in an hour when it was taking the better part of a day for Britian or Germany to do the same thing.

 

[Justo Miranda]

When the Axis industries were nearly destroyed in 1945, some parts were not interchangeable because they were manually built and adjusted. For example, the cockpits hoods of the Heinkel He 162 aircraft. There were also large differences in quality in synthetic rubber components that varied from week to week depending on the availability of raw materials in the chemical industry. Another example was the low quality of Japanese fuel mixed with oil extracted from pine roots that damaged even the American Jeeps of the occupying forces.

 

[Nicknick]

When the Axis industries were nearly destroyed in 1945, some parts were not interchangeable because they were manually built and adjusted. For example, the cockpits hoods of the Heinkel He 162 aircraft. There were also large differences in quality in synthetic rubber components that varied from week to week depending on the availability of raw materials in the chemical industry. Another example was the low quality of Japanese fuel mixed with oil extracted from pine roots that damaged even the American Jeeps of the occupying forces.

Thats whats Im saying, interchangable parts and mass production wasnt something new or something only the Americans could do. It became increasingly difficult.for countries on the loosing side, which had to improvisze to keep production going.

Despite that, even the USA struggelt with welding ships in mass production. T