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It is hard to believe at its peak in 1945, Curtis was a larger company than General Motors, and yet was not able to transition to the jet era, design jet planes, an in house jet engine, or get a piece of what would be the very lucrative pilotless aircraft (tactical and strategic missile) business.I picked 1943 for a reason. They just didn't "turn off" the production lines for the P-40 and P-39 in 1944, it took a number of months to wind things down. Perhaps if they really needed more P-51s (with engines from where?) they just would have shoved hundreds of P-40s in various stages and piles and piles of parts out the doors, followed them with the jigs and fixtures and tooled up to make P-51s. How many months where nothing is coming out of the factory?
Nov 1943 was the last time Curtiss built over 400 P-40s in one month. Dec was 200, Jan-March bounced from a high of 283 to a low of 241, April saw 203 and and Sept saw 202, several months during the summer saw numbers under 100 per month.
Bell was more sudden, they dropped from making 4947 P-39s in 1943 to 1729 in 1944, Aug saw the last 13 P-39s, of course Bell built 1725 P-63s in 1944. Curtiss was building ????? after the P-40. What do you do with the workers? The Curtiss plant was hundreds or thousands of mile from the other aircraft plants. Maybe Curtiss made B-29 ailerons as a subcontractor?
Planning was looking several years down the road, then "stuff" happens. Sometimes good (only took a few months to stuff the Merlin into the P-51) sometimes bad (Continental engine and few other US engines, Sabre engine/Vulture).
Hawker got "stuffed". They had 3 airframes flying with 3 different engines in 1940/41. NONE of them were combat ready in 1941-42. The Sabre is questionable for at least part of 1943(longer?). The Centaurus finally shows up in 1945. 3-4 years late.
Of course not only did Hawker get stuffed. So the RAF (and maybe Westland
The RAF needs something, anything, to tide them over, even if they want to build more Spitfires that is going to months (over 12) to get any real numbers and you need some sort of fighters in NA, in the Far East and to send to Uncle Joe and you need them NOW!
Meetings with Napier could have been done with wire recordings or playing phonograph records, "We are working on it and everything should be fine next month" on repeat. repeat. repeat.
The Hurricane II was never going to be in front once the 109F showed up. Then they stuck the four 20mms in (bomber interceptor?) and then it was ground attack pretty quickly.
With the Sabre (Vulture/Centaurus ) fiasco what choice did the RAF have? They were buying (begging) all the P-40s they could get.
and again, it takes months, and months, to change factories over. Even in 1941/42 (?) Curtiss had 7 parallel production lines running. 7 complete sets of tooling.
Even Germany had similar problems with 'next generation' planes. The ME-210 series had it's first examples ready in 1939
but there were so many problems it didn't enter production until April 1942. Even then production was stopped due to pilot
complaints and the BF 110 was put back into production.
Not always easy to gain a clear transition.
Just my 2 c about the overlap of obsolescent models while much more performing ones were produced.
You have the situation with the car industry.
An example as this site is full of beloved Citroën fans : the last high performance 2CV was produced in 1988 in France, and 1990 in Portugal because of the EU environmental restrictions.
It is hard to believe at its peak in 1945, Curtis was a larger company than General Motors, and yet was not able to transition to the jet era, design jet planes, an in house jet engine, or get a piece of what would be the very lucrative pilotless aircraft (tactical and strategic missile) business.
And even after having been nailed by the Truman Committee.
So in 1943, a Ki-43 or an F4F or P-40 still looks like a pretty good option, assuming the plane is still good enough, with or without special tactics, to survive in combat against the enemy aircraft it encounters.
At the same time, a P-39 or Hurricane ... or a Ki-27, doesn't seem to be cutting it any more. So it's kind of a tightrope.
I bet any car maker who made a cheap easy to fix basic car would find a ready market for them, no frills, no BS just simple cheap transport.I bet they would make a mint
Sadly the competition is from second hand modern cars with all the bells and whistles. There ly always a niche market but only niche. One only has to look at the Dacia Sandero. The basic model is the cheapest on the market, it is a perfectly sound motor car but hardly any are sold as base models. Far, far more with many added extra features bumping the price up as the public want their bells and whistles. For those spending only the price of the base model you can buy a good second hand something more impressive.I bet any car maker who made a cheap easy to fix basic car would find a ready market for them, no frills, no BS just simple cheap transport.
Versions of the P-39 as available in 1943 were very good fighters. Not slower than any Japanese or a Soviet fighter, the P-40, let alone a Hurricane or Ki-27. Yes, range/radius was short, but they were able to rank well against the German opposition in 1943-44.
Messerschmitt tried and just like Curtiss, envisioned using existing parts to "simplify" production of the new type.They never came up with a real replacement for the Bf 109 either.
I bet any car maker who made a cheap easy to fix basic car would find a ready market for them, no frills, no BS just simple cheap transport.
So a 79 series Land Cruiser without the $100,000 price tag?.View attachment 764731
Toyota Hilux CHAMP. $20,000 and up (Australian dollars I think so less in US money). Hand wound windows in base model !!!
Only 2 speakers and so on.
Tray allows other configs such as camper, delivery van etc.
Toyota is only to going to market these in Asia as they will not be sophisticated enough for the rest of us.
Probably some issues with safety rules as well which is ridiculous considering you can ride a bicycle or
motor cycle on the road anyway.