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
You're missing the point. In the video I posted above, watch it from about 4:45 for the next several minutes. In adapting the Bofors gun to US production, major changes were made to how things were done. Some of this machinery was available in German in limited quantity, and that's part of Germany's problem. They couldn't produce the production machinery (due to lack of capacity), so they were forced to use less efficient means of production.
Im not in a free country and don't have access to youtube right.now. If you are talking about the 8.8 which was developed by Krupp engieers at Bofor, Germany has produced over 10 000 of them.....
It is totally normal, that you do adaptations (like going from mm to inches) when you copy a design.
The Americans also copied the German fuel canisters (Jerry cans) but were unable to provide the same more functional closing mechanism as the German counterpart. The American counterpart isnt well suited for fast filling of tanks and opening/closing by scewing takes much longer as well....
It's worth bearing in mind that these aren't actually the same measurement. It's not that a B-24 only took an hour to build (and I'm sure you're not claiming that), and it might actually have taken the same one to two weeks that it took Junkers to build a Ju 290. But the American factories, and American manufactured goods, were designed in a way that allowed things to be produced at a scale that other countries hadn't quite mastered yet.
A simple example, and one that doesn't actually come from the United States. A flush access panel as fitted to a German tank, bolted down in four corners, required (IIRC) seventeen precise measurements and machining to a fairly high tolerance. An equivalent panel on a Soviet tank was fitted over the top of the hull, meaning only five precise measurements were required and machining tolerances could be relaxed elsewhere. The result, when multiplied by the number of parts on a tank, was that the Soviet tank could be built far more quickly and cheaply than the equivalent German one.
Another one, within the same country. British Railways started producing standardised steam locomotives in the 1950s, which were manufactured in different locomotive works. As part of manufacturing a steam locomotive, the frame has to be first cast, and then machined to its final size. The accountants noticed that casting was very cheap at one works, but that its machining was expensive. At another works, it was the other way around. So, the experiment was proposed of casting a frame at the first works and sending it to the second for machining.
The result? A locomotive that took more labour and cost more than either works would have done on their own. It turned out that the first works cast frames cheaply to broad tolerances, then put in a lot of effort to machine them to size. The second works took great efforts to cast them precisely, so the machine shop had very little to do. The experiment led to both works doing the part of the job that they were least skilled in. And this was a design that was supposedly standardised.
The Americans examined the T-34 after the war and came to the conclusion, that it wasnt a cheap tank if built in a proper way. The later T-34 had a terrible quality, even much worse than the late German ones. The driveres were almost blind because of the poor periscope and used to drive on the ridges in the terain to get a climpse of orientation. These made them easy targets and Sowiet losses were incredible high. This was combined with a lacking radio and a turret which tend to amputate arms from the gunner.
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.
That isn't a mass production _technology_ difference, it's a mass production _scale_ difference. In shipbuilding, where we have figures, UK workers were more productive than US workers on an individual basis, but the US built more by throwing more people at the problem.
If we bring some actual facts into the discussion, then the Avro factory at Chadderton was producing 7 Lancasters a day, never mind that it had to send them disassembled to Woodford for assembly and flight testing. Take out that 20 mile road trip and production would have been better still.
Adding to the disparity, a lot of UK production was dispersed to harden it against bombing and bring in non-aero companies. Consider the London Aircraft Production Group, which built 710 Halifaxes; that was scattered across five different transport companies and multiple sites: forward fuselage and centre-section from Duple Motor Bodies, rear fuselages from Chrysler, tailplane and mid-wings from Express Motor and Body Works, outer wings and engine cowlings from Park Royal Coachworks, and everything else from London Transport, with final assembly at de Havilland's Leavesden site. No matter how efficient you make it, that simply can't compete with production on a single site in a location safe from air raid alerts.
Another one, within the same country. British Railways started producing standardised steam locomotives in the 1950s, which were manufactured in different locomotive works.
It's a good anecdote, but, for complete understanding, I think people need to understand that the two different locomotive works will have originated in different railway companies in the Victorian era and have spent probably at least 50 years doing things their own way until Grouping in 1923, and potentially as late as nationalisation in 1948. And the different BR Regions that replaced the Big Four from 1948 were often resistant to changing their ways. Equally, depending on which of the Standard classes the anecdote relates to, some of them (Class 2, Class 4) were very much a minor evolution of pre-nationalisation LMS engines, designed to be built their way, and the others primarily drew on LMS practises, foreign to 4 of the 7 BR locomotive works. By pure coincidence, all of the men responsible had spent their entire careers with the LMS.
In US context it's a bit like smooshing Baldwin and Alco, or GE and EMD, together and expecting them to have evolved to do things the same way.
There's an interesting booklet here that covers the WWII history of Westwoods, a smallish UK engineering company that was asked to move into artillery sub-contracting, and pretty much the first thing they did on getting a job was ask "Can we jig this? Or can we simplify it so we can jig this?" Even the smaller engineering companies understood they could improve productivity by driving hand-crafting out of production.
It's worth bearing in mind that these aren't actually the same measurement. It's not that a B-24 only took an hour to build (and I'm sure you're not claiming that), and it might actually have taken the same one to two weeks that it took Junkers to build a Ju 290. But the American factories, and American manufactured goods, were designed in a way that allowed things to be produced at a scale that other countries hadn't quite mastered yet.
And, that's what mattered. Building a bomber an hour meant the US could supply sufficient quantities for a sustained bomber campaign, even expand it and cover losses. This was one reason the Luftwaffe failed in the BoB. They couldn't sustain the losses they were taking and keep the campaign up.
But even the total time involved was likely less with the US because of maximizing efficiencies. If Overly in How the Allies Won, the US was producing about a third the scrap material per plane the Germans were. The Bofors video I posted on page 1 emphasizes this about its production too. By reducing scrap and having to do less machining that results in it, they saved time and materials.
A simple example, and one that doesn't actually come from the United States. A flush access panel as fitted to a German tank, bolted down in four corners, required (IIRC) seventeen precise measurements and machining to a fairly high tolerance. An equivalent panel on a Soviet tank was fitted over the top of the hull, meaning only five precise measurements were required and machining tolerances could be relaxed elsewhere. The result, when multiplied by the number of parts on a tank, was that the Soviet tank could be built far more quickly and cheaply than the equivalent German one.
There are all sorts of examples like that. Another thing that hurt the Germans was the Nazis allowed proprietary monopolies to exist. Hartzmetallzentral, a subsidiary of Krupp, was the sole company in Germany supplying tungsten carbide products in just three grades during the war. No company outside of Krupp could source more than one grade for use.
This meant that there was virtually no use of TC machine tooling in Germany outside of Krupp. Instead, high-speed tool steel was used. This in turn reduced the cutting speed while shortening the time between tool sharpenings or change out. That meant it took longer to machine a part. In the US there were dozens of suppliers of TC for industrial purposes and the government and military standardized production using the Buick grading system with 15 grades available. At the time, the standard was usually to braze a small TC cutting tip on a high-speed steel tool:
Another one, within the same country. British Railways started producing standardised steam locomotives in the 1950s, which were manufactured in different locomotive works. As part of manufacturing a steam locomotive, the frame has to be first cast, and then machined to its final size. The accountants noticed that casting was very cheap at one works, but that its machining was expensive. At another works, it was the other way around. So, the experiment was proposed of casting a frame at the first works and sending it to the second for machining.
The result? A locomotive that took more labour and cost more than either works would have done on their own. It turned out that the first works cast frames cheaply to broad tolerances, then put in a lot of effort to machine them to size. The second works took great efforts to cast them precisely, so the machine shop had very little to do. The experiment led to both works doing the part of the job that they were least skilled in. And this was a design that was supposedly standardised.
Exactly. Consolidated in WW 2 found it was faster and cheaper to build a B-24 at their plant without bothering to fit most of the combat equipment like radios, bomb sights, turrets, etc. Instead, they subcontracted Goodyear to do this outside of Phoenix AZ where a plant was built next to an existing USAAF airfield. The planes were flown from San Diego--doing their test flight on the way--landing in Goodyear and were then fitted with combat equipment. Since crew training was being done in Arizona too, the crew could simply drive to the plant to pick up their plane.
That freed up space in the Consolidated plant to turn out more airframes while Goodyear had the capacity to do all the fitting out and their plant location made it easier to pick up their plane and transfer it to a training airfield nearby.
With the Tiger I, there was only one company (Krupp) in Germany capable of bending that horseshoe turret side.
Henschel had just one jig and machine to bore all the holes in the hull for the suspension.
You can imagine how all those bottlenecks impeded mass production of the tank.
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."
A decentralized production will naturally produce more scrap than a centralized production. Thd production of the Model-T is a good example for that, even pachage materials like wood were used somewere in the process. So more processes you have at one single side, so more use you can make of side products. Neither the Germans nor the British could use a centralized Production and so it is natural that they produced more scrapp (which was surly collected and reused somewhere else).
Germany was short off material supply, especually rare metals, so there is a simple reason vehind not using tungsten..
Here is an intredting video about the T-34 (my VPN is working...):
Not to forgett, Germany had the largest presses in the world and was the only nation which could press an entire bulkhead of a plane as one piece. These presses enabled high efficient mass productions in a way which couldnt be done in the USA or Russia. After the war, Russia and the US took them (I think 7 presses) and used then for decates, I think one is even used until now.
The heavy press program in the USA was based on the German developments and their highly efficient production methods.
This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
