Most Cost Effective Fighter

[renrich]

I believe that cost effectiveness has to take into account the impact of that particular AC on the war. The Hellcat may or may not have been decisive in the Pacific. The USN could have soldiered on with the FM2 or the Corsair. It seems to me that the P51 may have had a more decisive impact on the war, since in January 1944, there was no other Allied fighter which could do the job the P51B could do.

 

[Colin1]

Wasn't the cost effectiveness of the P-40 a major reason it stayed in production so long?

The Truman Committee criticised both Curtiss-Wright AND the Army for continued production of the P-40 at a time when more advanced types such as the P-47 and P-51 were emerging. The Army were condemned for failing to recognise the importance of the new designs and not ordering them into production sooner. Curtiss-Wright, for their part, were actually credited with making 'a number of modifications' to improve the P-40's combat performance.

What the Truman Committee failed to recognise was that the P-47 and P-51 production facilities were not yet adequate to maintain a substantial enough flow of fighters to USAAF combat units. The only way to augment that flow was to keep the P-40 in production.

This latter problem was compounded by the need for fighters on the North African and Russian fronts.

Curtiss-Wright did have a pop at manufacturing P-47s. It didn't work. They rolled about 350 off their production lines before closing the lines down to return to an accelerated P-40 production program for North Africa and Russia. The P-47 lines were torn up and discontinued as being too 'time-consuming'. A similar fate awaited the S2BC which, off the Curtiss-Wright lines, were no better than the Dauntlesses they were supposed to be replacing.

Curtiss-Wright slowly strangled themselves to death. Homage to Wall Street, rather than defence procurement and engineering expertise spread too thinly over too many contracts. Programs like the accelerated P-40 production were the artificial respiration that gave them the appearance of being alive and kicking for longer than was the case - they couldn't come up with a new fighter of their own (XP-60) and they couldn't even build someone else's (P-47).

 

[Shortround6]

And you have an example of that, then and now?!?!?!?

Sometimes it is congress that has shady accounting practices, or just stupid ones.

I believe there is a story about buying EA-6A Intruders. Something about Grumann wanting 24 million a plane for 48 planes in one year. Congress thought it was too much money in one year and want to split the buy over two years, 24 planes per year. Grumann thought producing 2 planes month was stupid and said that at that production rate the price would be 42 million dollars a plane.
2 planes a month or 4, the electric and heating bills would be the same, the property taxes would be the same, you probably can't lay off 1/2 of the workers,etc.
Congress went with 24 planes a year because it was cheaper per year

At least thats the way I remember reading the story.

I wonder what the cost effectiveness of those planes was

I know I brought the subject up but I don't think you can get real number on this.

A generality maybe.

 

[Shortround6]

I believe that cost effectiveness has to take into account the impact of that particular AC on the war. The Hellcay may or may not have been decisive in the Pacific. The USN could have soldiered on with the FM2 or the Corsair. It seems to me that the P51 may have had a more decisive impact on the war, since in January 1944, there was no other Allied fighter which could do the job the P51B could do.

that seems to be a slippery slope. Some aircraft, by being in the right place at the right time, may have been able to make an impact on the war out of proportion to either their numbers or to their actual capabilities.

Consider the Blackburn Skua and the Dauntless. Almost 31 times as many Dauntlesses were built, they had a tremendous impact on the war. THe Skua sank one cruiser (and made history doing it) but to equel it the Duantless has to sink 31 times as many Ships? 31 times as many warships? 31 times the tonnage?

Or do you look at the "cost" of the planes and figure that with a 1200hp engine and 6404lb of empty weight the Dauntless didn't cost that much mroe than the Skua's 890hp engine and 5,490lb empty weight, but could easily carry twice the bomb load (or more) or carry the same bomb load a lot further.
This is rather simplistic but I hope the general point comes across.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Sometimes it is congress that has shady accounting practices, or just stupid ones.

I believe there is a story about buying EA-6A Intruders. Something about Grumann wanting 24 million a plane for 48 planes in one year. Congress thought it was too much money in one year and want to split the buy over two years, 24 planes per year. Grumann thought producing 2 planes month was stupid and said that at that production rate the price would be 42 million dollars a plane.
2 planes a month or 4, the electric and heating bills would be the same, the property taxes would be the same, you probably can't lay off 1/2 of the workers,etc.
Congress went with 24 planes a year because it was cheaper per year

At least thats the way I remember reading the story.

I wonder what the cost effectiveness of those planes was

I know I brought the subject up but I don't think you can get real number on this.

A generality maybe.

I'd like to see the specifics on that but Grumman was probably correct in 4 planes a month would have been cost effective. It's not the physcial overhead that makes it cost effective to build more aircraft a month, its the set up time for running machines, moving raw material in bulk rather than several shipments and running three shifts to support the schedule.

You also have to consider the way DoD money is allocated. There may be only so much money in the budget for a given year so the buy will have to be sprerad out. It may cost more in the end but its the only way the DoD could pay for certain items.

But there is nothing "shady" there and this has nothing to do with "accounting" either by Grumman or the DoD

 

[Shortround6]

I'd like to see the specifics on that but Grumman was probably correct in 4 planes a month would have been cost effective. It's not the physcial overhead that makes it cost effective to build more aircraft a month, its the set up time for running machines, moving raw material in bulk rather than several shipments and running three shifts to support the schedule.

You also have to consider the way DoD money is allocated. There may be only so much money in the budget for a given year so the buy will have to be sprerad out. It may cost more in the end but its the only way the DoD could pay for certain items.

But there is nothing "shady" there and this has nothing to do with "accounting" either by Grumman or the DoD

The way I read the story was that Grumann didn't do anything wrong, there was nothing "shady" about either Grumann or the DoD. Congress was given a choice so they have nobody to blame but themselves.

I did not mean for this story to be proof of shady account pracitices, except maybe to point out that some of the peaple doing the finger pointing at times should be pointing the fingers at themselves

 

[vikingBerserker]

I would think based on Quantity produced and the use of Slave Labor, the Me 109 has to rank up there.

 

[Messy1]

Agree. The Me 109 would most likely be the most cost effective of the war.

 

[renrich]

All I am saying SR is that no matter how inexpensive an airplane is, if it can't do the job or does not do it as well as a more expensive one, then it may not be cost effective. For instance, let us say that Hellcats were $35K each and P51Bs were $50K each. If I am flying a B17 trying to bomb Berlin from bases in England, I want the AAF to buy P51s. If the fact that the combat radius of the Hellcat gets more B17s shot down then the P51 is probably more cost effective. If the $50K P51 shortens the war by 3 months then it is a lot more cost effective than a less expensive and more damage resistant airplane that can't be in the fight over Berlin.

 

[Colin1]

Cost effectiveness has already been covered well in a tactical sense, if it takes two (or more) cheaper fighters to do what a more expensive fighter does, then the cost-effectiveness of the cheaper plane is brought into question.

In a strategic sense, the Fw190s and Bf109s were better, more expensive planes than the majority of cheaper, easier-to-manufacture Soviet planes that they were facing on the Eastern Front and several of these Soviet planes were shot down for every Luftwaffe plane lost. However, it is more difficult to question the cost-effectiveness of the Soviet planes in this instance as the Luftwaffe were losing the war of attrition against them.

There would seem to be external forces at play that are able to influence how cost-effectiveness is both affected and measured. These would be:-

- industrial capacity; if you can crank them out then 'quantity has a quality all of its own' has a logical truth to it.
- doctrine; let's face it, if you have no qualms about throwing young mens lives into a meat grinder without pause for their safety because you know that such a strategy will wear the enemy down before you run out of young men, then your hardware does take on an (albeit very cynical) cost-effectiveness.

Though on a par for industrial capacity, this isn't comparable with the US cost-effectiveness question for the obvious reasons of doctrine and the fact that US fighters were generally comparable in terms of expense and quality with their Luftwaffe counterparts.

So is cost-effectiveness a function of tactical performance over build costs or simply a strategic 'we won'?

 

[riacrato]

The later Russian planes surely rank among the most cost effective. But you got to remember that designing, introducing and producing a number of fighters until you finally reach a point where you are competitive with the 'rest of the world' isn't exactly cost effective as w whole.

A word about US cost ineffectiveness. You have to remember: Cost effectiveness only comes when someone cares. German and I would imagine British manufacturers were well aware of the resource situation both material and manpower. For the US this simply never really became an issue to worry about.

 

[thor]

also you need to look at the multi role applications of the type as it has the effect of reducing the development costs of other types ...

i'm thinking the 190As

 

[parsifal]

There are two parts to this equation in my book. The inidvidual unit cost of the fighter, and then its effectiveness. Necessarily this is a very arbitrary and disputable exercise. But i will have a shot at it

The lowest unit cost is theoretically possible to determine, but the obvious variables are there......the production run, man hours to produce each item, the cost of the raw materials needed to put the thing together. I have no idea what actual type might win this, but the contenders might be Me 109, the Russian fighters, or any one of the big run US fighters. One subtype that has been forgotten is the category of Night fighter. In terms of unit cost I would hazard a guess and say the Mosquito was probably the lowest units cost NF around.

The second part of the equation is the effectiveness of that type. And a rough way of determining that might be to measure the number of enemy fighters shot down versus the total cost of of the production run, plus the cost of the friendly pilots lost whilst flying the type. This I think is where the 109 does not win, though it was not the fault of the aircraft as such. I would say the most effective type....ie totatal production cost to toal enemy losses, is going to be an American fighter.....

 

[renrich]

Here is possibly a real example of a decision based on cost effectiveness. The Hellcat was said to have gotten as low as $35000 per copy. The Corsair was around $75000 per copy. In 1944, the Navy, after an evaluation of the two, recommended that Corsairs replace the Hellcats as soon as practicable. I feel sure that the biggest factor in that decision was that the main concern of the Navy was to protect that huge and very complicated weapon system, the flight deck. The Corsair was simply faster than the Hellcat at all altiudes but especially at the lower ones. The ability to catch and kill enemy bombers, torpedo planes and kamikazes before they could damage or even sink our carriers was the paramount issue. Even though the Corsair was a somewhat more difficult airplane to operate from carriers and may have been slightly less durable than the Hellcat, it gave the carriers a little better chance to survive the battle. If Corsairs were able to save even one CV from being disabled, the difference in cost was far outweighed.

 

[davebender]

CV based aircraft are relatively few in number even for the USN. Cost per aircraft is much more important when you plan to purchase 10,000+.

 

[proton45]

The Hurricane or P-40 must be in the mix here...somewhere. They both used some preexisting jigs bits, and they where both pressed into service at a critical time...and, especially with the Hurricane, continued to be quite useful til pretty "late in the game".

 

[Shortround6]

The Hurricane or P-40 must be in the mix here...somewhere. They both used some preexisting jigs bits, and they where both pressed into service at a critical time...and, especially with the Hurricane, continued to be quite useful til pretty "late in the game".

It might depend on when was a plane cost effective.

WHile the P-40 was certainly needed at almost any price in early 1942 and the fact it was cheap only helped things, by 1944 It could hardly be cosidered cost effective no matter how cheap it was. The US had stopped issuing the P-40 to any American units except state side training commands. Some were still being set to allies with leand lease but one wonders what they thought about being equiped with planes that the US regarded as nothing more than advanced trainers. Several thousand P-40s were manufactured after the decision to ship no more overseas to American units was made.

 

[renrich]

Around 12000 each of Hellcats and Corsairs were purchased in WW2.

 

[davebender]

That's because the USN and U.S. Army refused to work together during WWII. Otherwise all those land based Marine fighter squadrons would fly U.S. Army Air Corps aircraft like the P-40 and P-51.

 

[Shortround6]

THe Fact that the Corsair and the Hellcat could out perform the P-40 shouldn't stand in the way of standardization ,right?

Faster, better altitude performance and longer ranged, not to mention more combat duration (more ammo per gun) and a heavier bomb load.

And just when should they have started working together?

In June of 1938 when Vought wins the Navy design competition and starts work on the Corsair?

In Dec of 1941?

Engine factories had already been built from the Ground up for R-2800 production, Both Brewster and Goodyear had been signed up to produce Corsairs. Tooling and jigs were being produced, Raw matererial allocations were being made as were other production plans.

And while Packard, who had build V-12 aircraft engines in the 20s and was still building a version of this engines to power PT boats, signed the Contract to build Merlins in Sept of 1940 they managed to deliever just 45 engines in all of 1941. As far as the Two stage Merlin used the Mustang goes, Packard delievered 5 in all of 1942, and just under 2800 in all of 1943 with a fair number of them going to the British. only 1720 Mustangs being delieverd in 1943 and several hundred of them are Allison powered.

Without a time traveler to reassure them the US would have been betting just about everthing on the P-51 and the 2 stage Merlin with the Two stage Merlin stil on the test bench and the P-51 rather unproven when the desision had to be made.