Burmese Bandit
Senior Airman
- 474
- Dec 5, 2008
Most of us, myself included, tend to forget that while WWII was a war of leadership, a war of tactics, a war of the skill and heroism of individual pilots, soldiers and sailors, it was mainly...
...an industrial war. A war of machines. And factories to produce the machines.
Being reminded of the fact after poring through several studies of the economies of WW II, I got to thinking...
What is the tradeoff between cost of warbird, speed of production of that warbird, speed of learning curve of that same warbird, and effectiveness of that warbird?
The last two metrics are mostly subjective, although some hints could be found through the Darwinian process of combat.
But for the first two, I am sure that the Forumers will have largely objective data.
Let's start with cost in WW II currencies and production in man-hours for:
Me-109 (by model and year)
Spitfire (ditto)
Hurricane (ditto)
P-40 (ditto)
P-51 (ditto)
FW-190 (ditto)
And after we have digested that...let's try to factor in the other considerations...
...an industrial war. A war of machines. And factories to produce the machines.
Being reminded of the fact after poring through several studies of the economies of WW II, I got to thinking...
What is the tradeoff between cost of warbird, speed of production of that warbird, speed of learning curve of that same warbird, and effectiveness of that warbird?
The last two metrics are mostly subjective, although some hints could be found through the Darwinian process of combat.
But for the first two, I am sure that the Forumers will have largely objective data.
Let's start with cost in WW II currencies and production in man-hours for:
Me-109 (by model and year)
Spitfire (ditto)
Hurricane (ditto)
P-40 (ditto)
P-51 (ditto)
FW-190 (ditto)
And after we have digested that...let's try to factor in the other considerations...