How interchangeable were aircraft spares and consumables?

[MikeMeech]

Thank you Mike - that is definitely worth bacon.

Your conclusion may well be the answer but as I read the additional material you provided, which infers that both services used NC, I wondered if this was an inter-service thing with the Navy going NC early and the Army sticking with Cordite because of India, Malaya, etc, as long as possible. Given the large volumes of ammunition imported from the US in ww2 I would expect that the Army and RAF did, in reality, use far more NC ammo than Mr Wallace indicates.

This also suggests a major difference in the way the Army and Navy stored powder or one would expect the navy to have had the same problems in hot climates. Maybe it was a simple as the stuff deteriorated in a very confined space but not in bags like used on large guns. Just a wild guess

I was also very surprised to see that they were able to recondition damaged NC powder

Hi
American supplies of ammunition during WW2 was much better than WW1 when US production had a very poor reputation, as indicated in some of the extracts from Volume XI of the OH:

The US manufacturing industry during WW1 was not what it was during the second half of WW2.

Mike

 

[MiTasol]

Hi Mike - you obviously study weapons and I fount this earlier in the week and though you might be interested given it is an oddball one.

 

[MikeMeech]

Hi Mike - you obviously study weapons and I fount this earlier in the week and though you might be interested given it is an oddball one.

Hi

Thanks for that, there is a bit on the internet on the designer and the weapon concept. However, like many projects, it ended after the end of the war due mainly to lack of finance and huge war surplus of current weapons.

Mike

 

[soulezoo]

Figure in the 60's, vintage (for that day) cars would have been 50 years old at best.
In the early days of American automobiles, there were several dozen car makers over the years and there wasn't really much of a manufacturing standard like there was post-war.

So you could encounter just about anything between the teens and thirties as far as hardware was concerned.

I don't recall the exact number, but something like 130 auto manufacturers went out of business during the Great Depression. Names like Cord, Maxwell and Rickenbacker (yes, that one).

To your point, many manufacturing differences.

 

[Acheron]

Just read to day on wiki that the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy air services used different 20mm ammunition. Not surprising with these two.

 

[Tom Graham]

Packard had to make their own fasteners for the Merlin because their were no suppliers for the British spec fasteners. They would have also needed different wrenches. I don't know if that meant that two sets of wrenches were/are needed to work on a Mustang. I suspect it does.

This is a widely believed "fact", but may not be true.
See here for comments from people who were there.

A View From the Flight Line - Being a P-51 Crew Chief - Bud Anderson: To Fly and Fight

A typical flight line crew at work: the armorer is deep in the gun bay, and the crew chief appears to be washing down the engine compartment with gasoline and...

toflyandfight.com

Also here for an astonishing claim from Packard in 1952

 

[Tom Graham]

This is a widely believed "fact", but may not be true.
See here for comments from people who were there.

A View From the Flight Line - Being a P-51 Crew Chief - Bud Anderson: To Fly and Fight

A typical flight line crew at work: the armorer is deep in the gun bay, and the crew chief appears to be washing down the engine compartment with gasoline and...

toflyandfight.com

Also here for an astonishing claim from Packard in 1952

 

[pbehn]

In an astonishingly short time, the USA switched from P-40s and P-39s to P-38s, P-47s A-36s, P-51s, and radically changed all of these planes. They changed the engines completely in the P-40 and P-51, and upgraded those engines. Within a few short years they then binned the whole lot for jet engines., the number of wrenches required for this was never a consideration. HOWEVER all was not lost, I am reliably informed that the wrenches needed to change the nose armour and fuel tanks on a P-39 remained the same throughout the war and are still be the same today, that is the advantage of a winning design.

 

[Admiral Beez]

They changed the engines completely in the P-40 and P-50

You mean the Grumman XP-50?

 

[pbehn]

You mean the Grumman XP-50?

Typo thanks, I was half way to the jet age with the P-80 lol

 

[special ed]

This is a widely believed "fact", but may not be true.
See here for comments from people who were there.

A View From the Flight Line - Being a P-51 Crew Chief - Bud Anderson: To Fly and Fight

A typical flight line crew at work: the armorer is deep in the gun bay, and the crew chief appears to be washing down the engine compartment with gasoline and...

toflyandfight.com

Also here for an astonishing claim from Packard in 1952

The article is well worth the complete read. For instance, the syncronisation of P-37 nose guns was more difficult that other aircraft with muzzles closer to the prop. Many training P-39s had outer wing guns removed, sometimes referred to as an improvement by a certain "expert". When a P-39 blade was holed, there was also a bulge at the tip, which I assume meant the round did not go all the way through and wound up at the tip due to centrifugal force. The four P-39 wing guns, which could be recharged from the cockpit, had handles mounted on the floor. An excellent place to fumble around during combat. The armorers assigned to P-51Bs found that the star wheel from Martin B-26 turrets would augment the feeding of ammo to the .50s during combat.
The things one learns here.

 

[GrauGeist]

Typo thanks, I was half way to the jet age with the P-80 lol

Add P-30 and a P-50 and you will get a P-80

Warbird math!

 

[Admiral Beez]

Add P-30 and a P-50 and you will get a P-80

Warbird math!

It's funny that a postwar jet fighter is still given the "pursuit" title. They'd come a long way from the Curtiss P-1 Hawk.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

It's funny that a postwar jet fighter is still given the "pursuit" title.

Because it entered service under the USAAF. All that changed in 1947

 

[pbehn]

Because it entered service under the USAAF. All that changed in 1947

And it wasnt post war, it may not have seen combat but it was in squadron service in Europe before the war ended.

 

[GrauGeist]

It's funny that a postwar jet fighter is still given the "pursuit" title. They'd come a long way from the Curtiss P-1 Hawk.

After the USAF became an independent branch of the service, they made changes to aircraft designations.

The P prefix was changed to F and WWII aircraft still in USAF inventory were redesignated, like the F-51, F-82, etc.

They also redesignated Photographic types from F (like the F-5, F-15, etc.) to R.