French airforce from 1935 to 1940-41?

[elbmc1969]

In a 1930s-or-before US factory, production of a complex assembly...an engine or airframe...might have been organized on a team-cell basis. A small group of workers, each with multiple skills approaching the level of craftsman, would build that assembly from beginning to completion. Then they'd build another one. There might be multiple cells in parallel, each turning out a slow series of completed assemblies.

I think quite possibly French aircraft-industry manufacturing mostly was organized on that basis in the late 1930s.

The métallos definitely considered themselves skilled workers, which is part of why unionization didn't get very far in the factories.

 

[elbmc1969]

my intention is to provide unusual but authentic information to help make their stories more credible.

I think that's rather the point here. Arjun and I are both curious about the sourcing of information that you're providing.

I am saddened that you don't consider my contributions "significant." I have tried to present specific information that corrects errors earlier in the topic, or that expands on previousinformation. Does anyone benefit from simply leaving errors in place, so that search engines and later reader come up with the wrong information?

However, if you find asking specific questions to be "overly critical," the only way to ensure that information is authentic is to examine sources. When the sources do not support the information that was given, the information cannot be considered "authentic."

 

[Archibald]

I've been reading sam40.fr for a long time. There's an article about French aeronautical production methods (http://sam40.fr/1935-1940-la-constr...ancaise-au-defi-dune-revolution-industrielle/) that discusses the French engineer, and exile, Henry Guerin. Guerin developed methods for literally stamping out airplanes at Douglas, which was used here in El Segundo to build the SBDs that destroyed all of the Japanese carriers at Midway. (I live within walking distance of where the DB-7 carrying the French observer crashed during a demonstration flight, causing a national scandal.)

Earlier this year, I discovered that my father's first job after moving to California was working for Henry Guerin! Guerin had left Douglas several years before and he was the person who interviewed and hired my father to work on the first aerospace honeycomb structures. My father, who was 18 or 19, was simply told to get on with it, with almost no direction. It was a small company, so Guerin was his direct boss.

Learning this was pretty shocking!

That's awesome ! Are you french by any way ?

Sam40.fr is, indeed, very good. That blog has information seldom seen elsewhere. Drix too, but he is biased, with too many axes to grin.

Truly was an uphill battle to fix 1930's France...I'm still not sure if even a victory of the Tardieu faction in the early 30s would materially improve things.

That's an understatement ! I have very mixed feelings about the whole thing. Sometimes I think May 1940 was a "necessary evil" to burn and raze to the ground that deeply rotten 3rd Republic France. Alas, only thinking that brings the shame of Vichy and their death warrant of 80 000 french jews, Vel' d'Hiv included.
1940 cataclysm - maybe.
Vichy byproduct - NO WAY.
That's probably how I ended at the FTL forum 15 years ago, although it is not a Teletubbies best case by any mean. WWII carnage and nazi horrors still happen.

 

[Elan Vital]

The commitment to machining methods of the "Birkigt method" of manufacturing (the term used by Hispano-Suiza) blocked the rapid expansion of engine production. It required exceptional skill from the machine tool operator, and that's not something that can be trained up in 6 months. Birkigt was also wedded to unique tools for every part, which required a lot of time to produce.

Of course, anything that bottlenecks engine production bottlenecks aircraft production.

Interestingly, in 1936 the union demands included massive investments in new machine tools (apparently many dated from the Great War) and having the plant open for a half day on Saturdays so that the workers could come in and perform maintenance on their tools--without pay.

Quite interesting when people now mainly remember the late 30's aero unions for allegedly obstructing proper production. One wonders how many such constructive proposals were made both in 1936 and more generally before and after, but were not taken (at least not straight away).

 

[elbmc1969]

That's awesome ! Are you french by any way ?

Not a bit. I never even took a French course in school, so my ability to read French slowly and painfully is self-taught. My sister did marry a Swiss French watchmaker, so she learned some and my nephews are fully bilingual.

Drix too, but he is biased, with too many axes to grin.

I do wish Drix would give sources.

That's an understatement ! I have very mixed feelings about the whole thing. Sometimes I think May 1940 was a "necessary evil" to burn and raze to the ground that deeply rotten 3rd Republic France.

I suspect that the "deep rot" has been overstated. Petain's government had a strong inventive to excoriate the 3rd Republic, the PCF and others on the left were happy to critique the right-wing's activities (such as the attempted coup), and the post-war government had the incentive to buttress its legitimacy by pointing out the problems of the 3rd Republic and how it was better.

Other democracies have overcome rot through reform. In the British case, the reform of the "rotten boroughs" comes to mind. While the 3rd Republic had multiple problems that it needed to resolve, electoral reform and some changes to the way the parliament functioned could have gone a long way. For example, forcing an election when a government fell would have stabilized governments and ministries by removing the incentive for constant intriguing and changing alliances.

 

[elbmc1969]

Quite interesting when people now mainly remember the late 30's aero unions for allegedly obstructing proper production. One wonders how many such constructive proposals were made both in 1936 and more generally before and after, but were not taken (at least not straight away).

There are some very nice histories of the French labor movement leading up to the Popular Front, during it, and after, but only one extensive work in English (available online, fortunately). Reading through the demands, almost all of them are things we take for granted today. I mean, paid vacation?

That's not to say that strikes never hurt production or that there was no obstructionism.

Of course, in the aftermath of the collapse, Petain's government (which was very anti-union and saw communists around every corner) and the industrialists had an overwhelming incentive to blame everything on unions, communists, and sabotage. And they got the first crack at writing the history. Later, DeGaulle was struggling with the PCF for dominance in liberated France and post-war. These domestic political contests created more incentives to escape blame and direct it onto others. Participants in this thread have pointed out some of the problems that the manufacturers caused. SAM40.fr has some good work on the rapid expansion of the aviation sector and the number of new workers coming in. This always causes quality problems. Along with pressure to produce aircraft as quickly as possible! So much of what was attributed to sabotage was certainly haste, accidents, corner-cutting, and inexperience.

By the way, I've been going very easy in the PCF. While I think that they've received blame out of proportion to their real influence, I have great criticisms of them as well, not least of which is their lack of policy independecen, taking direction from the Comintern. I am personally deeply disdainful of communism as a political and economic system in practice. Marxism is occasionally a useful framework for analysis, but not as a guide to policy.

 

[Elan Vital]

There are some very nice histories of the French labor movement leading up to the Popular Front, during it, and after, but only one extensive work in English (available online, fortunately). Reading through the demands, almost all of them are things we take for granted today. I mean, paid vacation?

That's not to say that strikes never hurt production or that there was no obstructionism.

Of course, in the aftermath of the collapse, Petain's government (which was very anti-union and saw communists around every corner) and the industrialists had an overwhelming incentive to blame everything on unions, communists, and sabotage. And they got the first crack at writing the history. Later, DeGaulle was struggling with the PCF for dominance in liberated France and post-war. These domestic political contests created more incentives to escape blame and direct it onto others. Participants in this thread have pointed out some of the problems that the manufacturers caused. SAM40.fr has some good work on the rapid expansion of the aviation sector and the number of new workers coming in. This always causes quality problems. Along with pressure to produce aircraft as quickly as possible! So much of what was attributed to sabotage was certainly haste, accidents, corner-cutting, and inexperience.

By the way, I've been going very easy in the PCF. While I think that they've received blame out of proportion to their real influence, I have great criticisms of them as well, not least of which is their lack of policy independecen, taking direction from the Comintern. I am personally deeply disdainful of communism as a political and economic system in practice. Marxism is occasionally a useful framework for analysis, but not as a guide to policy.

Do you have a link to that English work?

Anyway, I'd certainly agree that the demands made sense. It's hard to not want to maximise working hours when you look at WW2 production needs, but I've seen many contemporary cases where too many hours only degraded performance due to the workers being tired. Plus I have no doubt that some of the "free time" in case of lower hours would actually be spent on maintenance and organisation to improve overall productivity without being as hard physically and mentally as the main work.

I'm really curious though as to what other proposals the workers made to improve productivity without degrading their condition, it's logical that skilled workers would know what organisational or technical changes would be needed to work produce more aircrafts.

 

[Archibald]

I suspect that the "deep rot" has been overstated. Petain's government had a strong inventive to excoriate the 3rd Republic, the PCF and others on the left were happy to critique the right-wing's activities (such as the attempted coup), and the post-war government had the incentive to buttress its legitimacy by pointing out the problems of the 3rd Republic and how it was better.

I don't think so. I've seen "neutral" point of views that pointed how hopeless the 3rd Republic was, in its last decade at least. The 1930's were politically ugly at every level.

...as for Pétain and Laval, the Riom trial (1942) was to be their triumph against both the late 3rd Republic and french military... except the accused had no problem pointing the Vichysts had been and still were part of the quagmire. And the trial had to be stopped in a hurry and in shame.

And then the 4th republic got 25 governments in 12 years, a remarquable once-every-six-month record.

France learned the art of viable Republics the hard way, for sure. It is a bit like the legendary swamp castle, of Monty Pythons fame.

 

[elbmc1969]

Chapman, Herrick. State Capitalism and Working-Class Radicalism in the French Aircraft Industry. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1991 1990. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft9m3nb6g1/

Alternative URL: https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft9m3nb6g1;brand=ucpress

I also recommend Le PCF et la défense nationale à l'époque du Front populaire (1934-1939) by Georges Vidal. Not so concerned with union demands, but worth reading for more general background.

The funniest incident in that article is when a study commission of Popular Front deputies, including some from the PCF, go on an inspection tour of the Maginot Line. I imagine that the generals must have been apoplectic at the idea of communists getting information on the Maginot Line ...

In any case, the PCF deputies are appalled by what they find. The artillery armament of the forts is wildly insufficient, both in number and in caliber, and they call for a great increase! (I believe that the guns were restricted to 75mm at the same, possibly with a handful of heavier guns.)

https://www.cairn.info/revue-guerres-mondiales-et-conflits-contemporains-2004-3-page-47.htm#xd_co_f=N2ExYjZlZmUtMTdiMy00YmIwLTk3YjQtYmJmMGI4MDRlZTFk~

 

[A Tentative Fleet Plan]

The funniest incident in that article is when a study commission of Popular Front deputies, including some from the PCF, go on an inspection tour of the Maginot Line. I imagine that the generals must have been apoplectic at the idea of communists getting information on the Maginot Line ...

In any case, the PCF deputies are appalled by what they find. The artillery armament of the forts is wildly insufficient, both in number and in caliber, and they call for a great increase! (I believe that the guns were restricted to 75mm at the same, possibly with a handful of heavier guns.)

https://www.cairn.info/revue-guerres-mondiales-et-conflits-contemporains-2004-3-page-47.htm#xd_co_f=N2ExYjZlZmUtMTdiMy00YmIwLTk3YjQtYmJmMGI4MDRlZTFk~

Every fort built or heavily modernised since the 1885 torpedo shell crisis have had a minimal safety armament, intended only to protect the fort and intervals between it and the next fort in line, and to prevent the enemy from encircling them, and forcing them to set up their seige batteries at range. In the Séré de Rivières system heavier artillery would be in the intervals, protected by turrets and traditore batteries of the forts, and by infantry works with minimal armament (although they later began to grow in size and armament, becoming very similar to forts, with machine gun turrets, 75mm guns in retracting turrets and traditore batteries, and potentially ditches flanked by counterscarp casemates).

The Maginot line was essentially a further development of this system, with the forts and infantry works being broken up into multiple blocks potentially with a ditch flanked by counterscarp casemates (although this was dropped fairly early on due to cost, only a couple of works receiving partially complete ditches).

The Maginot Line was intended to receive 155mm Howitzers and long-range 145mm guns for counter-battery fire, but given the fact that they would be supported by heavier artillery from other formations, including the heavy railway guns of the ALVF, these were hardly necessary, especially since the Old Fronts with the Artillery works didn't actually fall until they were convinced to surrender after the armistice.

The New Fronts were a different story, not being armed with anything larger than infantry weapons.

 

[Archibald]

The Maginot line by itself was very well done and thought. It is kind of vibrant proof that not everything was deeply rotten in the 1930's 3rd Republic & French military era. I give this to them.
The mistake of course was betting way too much on Belgium neutrality and the Ardennes. The weak links were Huntziger and Corap armies there.
Last fort on the northern tip of the Maginot line was La Ferté: at the crossroads of Luxembourg, France and Belgium borders. As a matter of fact, when imagining the Sickle Cut, Manstein and his goons picked that exact place for their breakthrough. They just added a 15 km safety margin, corresponding to La Ferté larger guns maximum range. German ruthless efficiency, as its best - unfortunately.

They also knew that Corap and Hunziger armies stretched over the next 100 km (up to Blanchard and Billote much more formidable armies) were weak: underarmed. The other point they picked for their breakthrough was the junction of Corap and Huntziger armies.

The Sickle cut was a masterpiece just for that. A 100 km wide corridor for 7 panzers: one flank just outside the Maginot line, the other flank right into Corap & Huntziger.