Nonskimmer said:
WeObvious exceptions being the Lancasters and Cansos (Canadian built Catalina PBY).
Ah! Forgot the ole Canso!
wmaxt said:
FLYBOYJ,
Often Production lines raise quality because of the consistency required to repeat an operation hundreds of times in a row. Many/all aircraft manufacturers had "MOD" centers, not only did they correct deficiencies, often they were used as final finishing, and even more often they were used to upgrade the production to the newest or desired version. Today's auto plants use a two week window at Christmas and the 4th of July to do running model changovers, things like grills and trim, more extensive changes may take several months these downtimes were not acceptable in war time except for extream cases. Durring the war they used the "MOD" centers for this. Do know how many were dedicated to quality problems?
wmaxt
I could tell you that not being able to incorporate a "MOD" be it manufacturing, engineering or by customer request today AND during WW2 during aircraft production is the biggest cardinal sin any aircraft manufacturer can make, I've confirmed that with folks I worked with at Lockheed who were on the B-17 (Vega) and P-38 production lines and I've had this discussion before with WW2 era employees from Douglas and Northrop. When I worked the P-3 assembly line I was told by my then supervisor that the paperwork format being used was almost identical to the format used in the later part of WW2. While true some mods were done at MOD Centers, this action was usually to install GFE (Government Furnished Equipment) or to incorporate customer driven modifications NEGOTIATED to be accomplished outside the origin of manufacture. There were and still are contract clauses that mandate full completion of product at time of delivery and if this wasn't met you either had payments with held until the mod was complete or you had to give money back to the government, something that even during WW2 I know any aircraft manufacturer didn't want to do. The case with Consolidated on the B-24 was due to a rapidly moving assembly line (like you see at an auto plant) which resulted in mods not being able to be accomplished. It was a matter of "damned the torpedoes, keep moving." Even today aircraft manufacturers can be placed in that situation, but if the mod incorporation process is not completed at the factory, all you're doing is buying time for a non-completion penalty....
You cannot compare automotive production to aircraft in as much you don't have a continual movement of the "line" and when mods are incorporated, many facets of the production environment are involved (engineering, manufacturing, QA and finally the customer in the form of a government representative, either a civilian employee or an actual member of the branch of the military procuring the aircraft). Sometimes a simple mod that might change an electrical junction box may take weeks to do because of the paperwork and the approval process involved in building an airplane. If cars were built under the same stringent "manufacturing bureaucracy" as aircraft (especially military aircraft), the cheapest cars would cost $50,000 and take 3x as long to build....
I do know that the biggest dedicated quality problems found on aircraft during WW2 were fuel tank leaks, various electrical problems (which can always happen) and interchangeability problems (which is more of a manufacturing engineering problem than a quality problem).
In my opinion the only way you could crank out aircraft in an "automotive style" type of production environment is to build an aircraft with a "frozen" design so no mods need to be incorporated, have a highly skilled workforce available so minimal production line deficiencies are encountered or minimizing the deficiency risk by designing the aircraft to be "manufacturing" friendly or a combination of all of the above - something that Consolidated might of accomplished by war's end....
