German versus US aircraft production in ww2

[MiTasol]

I found this while looking for something totally unrelated and thought some members would be interested. The complete article is here Aircraft Industry Report Exhibits

 

[SaparotRob]

Very informative.

 

[Milosh]

Get a 404 Error when trying to access the links in the link.

 

[MiTasol]

Works fine on the Australian snail paced internet from two different browsers but here is the link with spaces so you can cut and paste and edit. That may help unless you are in Canada where so many sites produce 404 errors.
https:// www.angelfire.com /super/ ussbs/exhibit.html

If you cannot link to it let me know and I will post a pdf of the full webpage here.

 

[MiTasol]

The problem may be that the Australian internet is so slow it has yet not realized that the site has died

Here is the linked page as a PDF. I tried the links from the main page and most are dead with no wayback page so I checked the lot and post those that are still alive (in Aus anyway).

After following the link at the base of the page (U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey Aircraft Division Industry Report) it appears to me that someone has retyped the whole of one of the USSBS reports like they do over on Hyperwar rather than just posting a pdf of the original document.

IF anyone who wants these pages cannot link to this let me know and I will pdf every working page and upload it here.

 

[MiTasol]

Okay

Now I have downloaded as a PDF the main report which has most of the charts in it. It is small so I am posting it as it has some good stuff in it. I did not realize how little effort was put in to bombing German aircraft factories. I think George Kenney had the right idea here in the Pacific where he concentrated on destroying the IJA and IJN aircraft and airfields so that the 5th AF had minimal airborne resistance to deal with. In Europe it now seems to have been almost the lowest priority that the RAF and USAAF planners had.

The site was an offshoot of another site U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey: European Theater of Operations: A Table of Contents which in turn was an offshoot of Sinews of War which appears dead to my computer except for the one webpage attached. People outside Aus may have better luck. Or not

The people that typed this out have done a great job but I guess old age or corona or finances or a combination of those or other factors have kamakaze'd a lot of their hard work.

 

[Milosh]

Just to be clear, I have no problem accessing the Aircraft Division Industry Report. It is the Exhibits link in your 1st post that gets the 404s.

I am pretty sure many years ago I posted the 1st link here, Aircraft Industry Report Exhibits (angelfire.com)

 

[MIflyer]

I recall reading that Boeing and Douglas all by themselves built moe pounds of airplanes than the whole of Nazi Germany.

 

[Vincenzo]

Very interesting, thanks MiTasol
i just scrolled but i noticed that report only 24 S.M. 82 built for the Luftwaffe but in Italy were built hundreds of aircrafts for the LW

 

[yosimitesam]

Okay

Now I have downloaded as a PDF the main report which has most of the charts in it. It is small so I am posting it as it has some good stuff in it. I did not realize how little effort was put in to bombing German aircraft factories. I think George Kenney had the right idea here in the Pacific where he concentrated on destroying the IJA and IJN aircraft and airfields so that the 5th AF had minimal airborne resistance to deal with. In Europe it now seems to have been almost the lowest priority that the RAF and USAAF planners had.

The site was an offshoot of another site U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey: European Theater of Operations: A Table of Contents which in turn was an offshoot of Sinews of War which appears dead to my computer except for the one webpage attached. People outside Aus may have better luck. Or not

The people that typed this out have done a great job but I guess old age or corona or finances or a combination of those or other factors have kamakaze'd a lot of their hard work.

The "Bomber Cult" that had grown up within the AAC/AAF in the 1920's and 1930's became so pervasive that it morphed into something of a "disease" among the higher echelons. They were convinced that strategic bombing could "win a war by itself", and their desire to be an independent branch was, in their opinion, hanging on their ability to carry this out. (RAF's Harris was similarly disposed with regard to strategic bombing's ability to win alone.) After the first Schweinfurt raid, however, there was something approaching panic within the upper ranks of the AAF as this raid essentially proved their concepts to be dead wrong. As the spring of 1944 approached and the Luftwaffe was still a major threat to the impending invasion of France, command changes were made and the JCS gave strict orders about how the air campaign was going to run from then on. The AAF lost considerable "face" within the supreme commands and lost much of their autonomy after this point. (The USSBS reports after the war were something of an embarrassment, too.) Two things were at the root of the problem: (1) The AAF's desire to be a separate branch within the US armed forces and (2) their nebulous theories about how effective bombing an industrial country could really be. These two things reinforced each other and put "blinders" on much of the AAF upper command for some time. Note, however, that the specious "bombing theories" of the 1920's and 1930's were believed by many to be predictions of the future so the AAF's belief in this theory can't be seen as too far out in left field.

 

[MIflyer]

(1) The AAF's desire to be a separate branch within the US armed forces

When I was at the Pentagon in the late 80's and early 90's the need for the B-2 was in part justified on that basis. "We need heavy bombers because the USAF was created for that reason."

Most of the people at the Pentagon are in reality not very bright because they do not let themselves be, but I thought it absurd that we could not just say, "Airpower is the most important military weapon in the world today and we need a service that can focus on that element exclusively."

 

[MiTasol]

When I was at the Pentagon in the late 80's and early 90's .... Most of the people at the Pentagon are in reality not very bright because they do not let themselves be ."

And that Pentagon "logic" has tainted what should be the most untainted and revered of all US military units.

JPAC/DPAA is probably the best-worst possible example of military intelligence. JPAC/DPAA should be run by dedicated experts. It is not.

In the case I am involved with, the USAAF records show airman X was alive and arrived in location X on a certain day and that he died 8 days later on the return segment of a courier flight. His headstone at Arlington has him dying the day before he arrived at location X. JPAC have him arriving at location X when in fact the unit at location X that he was on temporary assignment was still in the USA. They have him leaving location X on a courier mission five days before his USAAF records show he arrived. His previous unit roster shows he was still in Bataan two days after JPAC say he left location X. They also have his mustering wrong.

For more, though not on this particular case, go to Stripes - Independent U.S. military news from Iraq, Afghanistan and bases worldwide and search JPAC or DPAA.

[START RANT]
The Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) was finally disbanded after an avalanche of scandals were exposed by NBC, CBS, Fox News, NPR, the AP, and Stars and Stripes. Multiple military and government investigations then found gross mismanagement and a total lack of leadership. The American public and families of our lost heroes channeled their anger, frustration, humiliation, and feelings of betrayal to demand the immediate removal of those responsible for what the the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, testified was "Disgraceful".

Sadly, the Pentagon's idea of the massive reform necessary was a superficial name change of the organization (to Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency - DPAA) and re-shuffling the same poor executives and laboratory managers to new desks and titles in a brand new $85 million dollar building in Hawaii.

The Pentagon/DPAA management planning and construction for the new building was so inept that it's original design contained no phone or computer lines and was finally completed without the proper fire suppression system for JPAC's antiquated paper records system, forcing the their own researchers to travel offsite to do their job. Disgraceful!

A "new" DPAA was created to replace the scandal plagued JPAC. The "new" director of DPAA was reportedly involved in selecting himself. Ethically, does this inbred selection pass the smell test with any tax paying citizen or does it just plain stink? Disgraceful!

The "new director" simply reassigned the previous JPAC Scientific Director to be in charge of "partnering with private groups", which was announced as vitally important "to help reinvigorate a troubled POW-MIA accounting mission". There are many truly dedicated private groups who refuse to deal with DPAA because of the past arrogance and abuse by this same old group of poor leaders and managers who continue to remain in functional control of the "new" organization. Disgraceful!

JPAC had many dedicated men and women in non-management roles who believed in the mission: researchers, military recovery specialists, and field investigators who hacked through jungles, climbed mountains, and waded rivers only to be sabotaged in their work by a completely dysfunctional command. Those few essential workers that remain at DPAA are dismayed, disillusioned, disheartened, and disgusted by what they experienced at JPAC, and what they now see mirrored at DPAA, in holding those responsible accountable for the abysmal failures of their leadership. Disgraceful!

The "new" director continues to leave unaddressed a long pattern of dysfunction, inefficient practices, wasteful and poor management, lack of leadership, more than 40 pending complaints of sexual harassment by command personnel, EEO violations, criminal investigations, lawsuits, and complaints of managerial reprisal that were detailed in scathing official reports by the Inspector General's Office and the Government Accountability Office. Even more complaints have been added since JPAC was disbanded. Disgraceful!

The same group of serial offenders responsible for this ineptitude remain in the "new" DPAA. The same group that brought us multiple outrageous scandals including phony "arrival home" ceremonies and the fraud, waste and abuse of government funds that produces only five or six dozen identifications a year with an annual budget that exceeds $130 million. Disgraceful!

In 2015, DPAA produced a grand total of 70 identifications at a gross cost of almost $2 million per identification! This was a whooping one more identification than JPAC's proven dysfunctional system produced the previous year! Five identifications in 2015 were from remains discovered by a private group at a construction site. Another identification was the result of a family filing a Federal lawsuit to force DPAA's management to act after JPAC's own investigation matched the missing serviceman's identity with a precise burial location! But half of the 70 identifications were from remains turned over by North Korea in 1991 that had been sitting on the JPAC/DPAA Laboratory shelves for 24 YEARS! Disgraceful!

In another 2015 management disaster, DPAA exhumed over 300 bodies from the USS Oklahoma dead buried at Pearl Harbor, promising the families prompt identifications. DPAA then shipped the remains to another DPAA Laboratory in Nebraska after separating the heads from the bodies, keeping the skulls in storage at the DPAA Laboratory in Hawaii. Most families found out about this dismemberment of their loved ones from reading the Washington Post newspaper. Disgraceful!

Meanwhile the JPAC/DPAA management mantra of "Delay, Deny, and wait for the families to Die" continues. The current response time for basic information to families and researchers under the Freedom of Information Act is over ONE YEAR and ran over four years in the case I am involved in! Federal law requires this information to be provided within 20 days, which DPAA routinely violates without consequences. Disgraceful!

The JPAC/DPAA Laboratory's antiquated methods and dysfunctional management take years to accomplish identifications of recovered remains. if ever. There is a backlog of over 1,400 sets of remains of American service men and women sitting in cardboard boxes at DPAA awaiting identification right now. The AVERAGE time for identification after remains are received in the DPAA/JPAC laboratory is ELEVEN YEARS! Disgraceful!

Anyone with any management experience knows that the entire operation that was JPAC should have been deconstructed, brick by brick.

Such needed massive reform simply did not happen. Just when families of our missing servicemen and women thought things could not get worse, it did. The same infectious disease of JPAC arrogance and lies to the families of American heroes took root all over again at DPAA. This incredibly dysfunctional organization continues along with its mis-identification debacles. Disgraceful

[\END RANT]

For more go to Stripes - Independent U.S. military news from Iraq, Afghanistan and bases worldwide and search JPAC or DPAA.

 

[SaparotRob]

Disgraceful.