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Shouldn't you feel a little skeptical of figures that's obviously been rounded off, up or down maybe a great deal ,to come out to in exact 1000 hour increments .
To come out exactly 2/3 rds of the previous figure, and then exactly 1/3rd stretches belief.
I doubt than anyone expects it to the minute, or even 10 hour increments. But 1000 man hour increments are pretty vague.
That's about like measuring speed in 100 mph increments only.
It's just that I have worked in a production environment before, assembling Kenworths.
Those plant managers certainly how many man-hours each truck took, down to THE man-hour. There was lots of production varients, (each custom built supposedly) They knew what each variation added or took away from assemble time.
With the supposed German passion for keeping records I'm really surprised that no one can't get it down closer than a 1000 man-hour + or -.
The trouble with rounded out numbers is you have no idea which way they were rounded out.
It could be 2499 rounded down to 2000, or 1501 rounded up to 2000. Or if it was 2160 rounded down to 2000, or whatever.
Kind of unless for comparing.
And how did those "methods" differ???Lets put it this way, a good dozen or so factories were making Bf-109s and not all used the same methods
Yep, I was still thinking in terms of the OP and the possible growth of the He-112, it and the 109 were 1935 aircraft that underwent some significant (and necessary) aerodynamic modifications and improvements in order to try to reach their full development potential, the MC200 was a 1937 aircraft and the Ki-61 an even later one, both benefited from advances in the field and hence began as cleaner designs from the start.
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And how did those "methods" differ???
To get back on this for a moment.
The combat-worthy He 112B was featuring a modified wing vs. the early prototypes, with structural changes as well as decreased wing area; it is suggested by Wikipedia that this was just a part of the major redesign. So basically the He 112B was contemporary with MC.200, that shared the wing design with MC.202.
The initial big wing was probably the reason the early 112 lost the contest to the Messer - too big a wing for mere 600-something PS.
As for the Ki 61 - yes, it was a newer design, but also bigger and heavier than the 112B or Messer, eg. the fuel quantity was twice of what Spit or Emil carried, but it was still faster than the Daimlerized He 112 or Emil.
I disagree.
12501 could be rounded up to 13000. 4499 could be rounded down to 4000. That's significant enough to alter the comparison.
And when the Bf 109 man-hours are compared with itself, early to late time it is definitely significant.
The 4000 man-hours down to 2000 man hours looks like a extreme example of cutting production time.
But it looks a great deal less extreme when you realize the actual figures could have been 3501 hours verses 2499.
Organization, some plants still held to the old ways, other companies were quicker to adopt mass production methods and were thus more efficient, and then you have Junkers and its Takt Time system that could be argued was even ahead of its day.
In reference with the 109, I think you'll find that there was little difference in the way the aircraft was assembled. Each company may have been run a little differently but in the end you had the same tooling and jigs at each production facility.