Does anyone seriously believe that Rolls Royce manufactured nearly 84,000 Merlins by hand? That by the way matches the number that Ford and Packard produced together.
For the first half of WWII Roll Royce manufactured more large aircraft engines than any other manufacturer in the world. They had produced over 23,000 Merlins by the end of 1941. By aircraft engine standards this is mass production. At this point it one of the most widely produced engines of all time, exceeded only by the Hispano V-8 of WWI. In fact, this is a greater number than that marvel of mass production, the Liberty. By the of 1941 Packard had manged to produce 45. Rolls Royce reached it peak capacity the next year and produce ~ 18,000 in each of 1942,1943 and 1944. The idea that Packard taught Roll Royce how to build Merlins is obviously nonsense. As a point of reference Merlin production exceeded the combined production of Pratt & Whitney's R-1830 and Wright's R-1820 up until the end of 1941.
The Rolls Royce Merlin annual production totals had increased by a factor of ten within 4 years. There is no way that such a massive increase could be accomplished by so called" file and fit" methods. In addition, the new factories at Crew and Glasgow were located in areas that were not populated with a supply of skilled craftsman.
The following is from the book Rolls Royce Hillington Portrait of a Shadow Factory
Personnel Employed at Rolls Royce Aero Engine Factories
1935 7,835
1939 12,500
1941 38,600
1943 55,640
1944 57,067
Obviously, they could not possibly be training enough skilled workers to meet those numbers
Its interesting to note that almost ½ of them worked at Hillington. Hillington produced virtually every component (98%) in house and provided components to the other factories including Ford.
"Of the 25,000 Rolls Royce employees, 37% were female, and only 7% were manually skilled tradesmen, and including supervision and management the total skilled constituent never exceeded 12%."
It should also be noted Packard was not a mass producer of automobiles akin to Chevrolet or Ford. In fact, they were more comparable to Rolls Royce. Both started out as manufacturers of the world's finest automobiles. Like Rolls Royce, Packard expanded into aircraft engines, unfortunately, they failed in this endeavor. When sales of luxury cars declined after WWI, Rolls Royce introduced a lower priced car to boost production, but more importantly began to concentrate on aircraft engines such that by the time of the great depression they had become an aircraft engine manufacturer with a side line in luxury automobiles.
Packard did not have that option so in 1935 they introduced a downmarket 8-cylinder car. They had a fair bit of success with that and decided to go further downmarket in 1937 with a 6-cylinder car. They were going into the upper middle-class segment dominated by Buick. 1937 was the peak of Packard production with 123,000 units produced that year. I have always wondered about that number because it is double that of the preceding year as well as the succeeding year. Suffice to say that 123,000 units a year is no where near the 942,000 Fords, the 815,000 Chevrolets and 566,000 Plymouths produced in 1937.
Packard continued to make small numbers of hand built automobiles. Supposedly they employed as many workers in the luxury section as they did in the lower price lines. Packard still had a very large force of skilled workers.