Production rate versus type effectiveness

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

all i know is the average to make f6fs in a day is about 20

Yes but that does not mean that they were started the same day that they were finished. You do realize that an aircraft takes more than 24 hours to build from start to finish correct?

By the way to everyone involved in this thread, you might want to check out this book:

America's Hundred Thousand - US Production Fighters of World War 2 by Francis H. Dean

ISBN: 0-7643-0072-5

It covers the production of all US production fighters during WW2. It even has tables broken breaking down monthly production for each aircraft per year.

If anyone needs information on a specific aircraft including production, number built by factory, and accepted, etc., just let me know.

 

[KrazyKraut]

A usual number you will find is that the Spitfire took about 2.5 to 3 times the man-hours to construct than the Bf 109 and surprisingly the latter was about as cheap as a Hurricane. I think it was Holmes' Spit vs 109 book where I got these numbers from (from memory): Bf 109E and Hurricane ~5000 man-hours, Spitfire ~13.000 man-hours.

 

[renrich]

Chris, glad to see you are an advocate for Dean's "America's Hundred Thousand" also. Since I bought it a number of years ago, I have worn it out referring to it. IMO, the best book on that subject ever. This may not have relevance but it is my understanding that German fighter production was sort of a "cottage industry" where sub assemblies were built in many scattered small shops and then brought together for the finished product. One of the reasons that fighter production was not too badly hampered by strtegic bombing. Am I wrong?

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Chris, glad to see you are an advocate for Dean's "America's Hundred Thousand" also. Since I bought it a number of years ago, I have worn it out referring to it. IMO, the best book on that subject ever.

I have not actually read it yet. I have only skimmed through it and used certain parts of it. I bought it because of a term paper I had to right in a History of Aviation in the United States class I was taking.

I am planning on actually reading it soon though. I know it is a big book, but I love reading.

This may not have relevance but it is my understanding that German fighter production was sort of a "cottage industry" where sub assemblies were built in many scattered small shops and then brought together for the finished product. One of the reasons that fighter production was not too badly hampered by strtegic bombing. Am I wrong?

I am not sure on that either.

 

[drgondog]

Chris, glad to see you are an advocate for Dean's "America's Hundred Thousand" also. Since I bought it a number of years ago, I have worn it out referring to it. IMO, the best book on that subject ever. This may not have relevance but it is my understanding that German fighter production was sort of a "cottage industry" where sub assemblies were built in many scattered small shops and then brought together for the finished product. One of the reasons that fighter production was not too badly hampered by strtegic bombing. Am I wrong?

I'm pretty sure Speer ordered and planned decentralization of the existing airframe manufacturing plants in 1943 and all new key plants were to be built underground.

It had the effect of diminishing concentrated attacks on sigle end to end plants but also rendered assemly time to slower deliveries for those that did become distributed.

One of the effects of attacking rail and barge and road traffic by deep penetrating fighters such as Mustang and Lightnings was to disrupt transportation of sub assemblies to plants and return of damaged aircraft to central repair facilities.

 

[renrich]

I have Speer's book but it is packed and I have not read it in a long time but that may be where I got the idea. It seems like I read somewhere that the transportation system being disrupted was a flaw in the strategy as Bill mentioned. I have read Dean's book cover to cover, but there is so much info in it, one can always find a new tidbit to add to the mixture and some of it is quite technical.

 

[HoHun]

Hi Juha,

>Source is Hannu Valtonen's Messerschmitt Bf 109 ja Saksan sotatalous, p. 274. And his source has been Groehler, p. 496, and Valtonen notes that the table is a rough approximation. Is the table from Olaf Groehler's Geschichte des Luftkrieges 1910 bis 1980 or his Bombenkrieg gegen Deutschland isn't clear.

I think it must be from "Geschichte des Luftkrieges", though it does not list all of the data in the table posted by Burmesebandit.

I specifically checked all references to Me 109 and Spitfire via the index, and there is no mention of similar production data or man-hours anywhere else.

Attached page 496 from Groehler ... I think we have enough German-speaking forum members here that anything I might have missed on that page will be found

Unfortunately, I don't have his "Bombenkrieg gegen Deutschland", but I think the page number identity makes it highly probable that Valtonen relied on "Luftkrieg".

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

 

[Burmese Bandit]

Now that we have a (rough) picture of how fast some of the fighters and bombers of WWII could be produced ... I posit the following arguments:

(1) The proponents of the 190 who say that the production of the 190 should have been made a priority over the 109 to the point of completely phasing out the 109 from service, are wrong. From 1942 onwards the 109 could be produced at the rate of roughly three 109s for every two 190s. Stopping production in 1942 January would have led to a shortage of fighters up to 1942 june or thereabouts...and that just wouldn't be realistic. Ditto 1943 and 1944.

(2) Perhaps the two most overrated aircraft of WWII were the Spitfire and the P-47. With mass production getting into gear two hurricanes could have been produced for one spit. In fact, with 20/20 hindsight perhaps it would have been better for Britain to have abandoned the Spit in 1943 and gone all out to build the Tempest. Or..see below...

(3) On the American side, the P-47 now comes into my thinking (reluctantly: I am a great Jug fan, but truth is truth) as one of the most overrated planes of WWII. About 16,000 models of all types were built. You could build and buy two Ponies for time and cost it took to build one Jug. If ponies had been built instead of jugs, you would get at least 30,000 ponies. Even taking into account the increased losses of the more vulnerable ponies, you would still have an excess of 3-4000 ponies left over.

So! Here's a war-winning strategy, if only the leaders in Washington and London had the political courage to do it. Scrap the beautiful but too darn expensive and slow building Spitfire. Scrap the big, powerful, pilot-saving but in the end too much money and time for too little performance Jug. BUILD PONIES INSTEAD. Let Washington get the licence free from NA by promising them humongous 30-40,000 production runs in return. Let Washington give that same licence free to the Brits. Let the Brits build the Pony with this free licence. Huge economies of scale and spare parts commonality result.

Ah, but the lobbyists for Republic and the national pride of Britain would never let that happen...

 

[Kurfürst]

Now that we have a (rough) picture of how fast some of the fighters and bombers of WWII could be produced ... I posit the following arguments:

(1) The proponents of the 190 who say that the production of the 190 should have been made a priority over the 109 to the point of completely phasing out the 109 from service, are wrong. From 1942 onwards the 109 could be produced at the rate of roughly three 109s for every two 190s. Stopping production in 1942 January would have led to a shortage of fighters up to 1942 june or thereabouts...and that just wouldn't be realistic. Ditto 1943 and 1944.

Also the FW 190 had rather serious problems with it engine at the time, which took until about mid/late 1942 to fix:

http://www.kurfurst.org/stuff/FW190A_Rechlin.jpg
http://www.kurfurst.org/stuff/FW190A_Rechlin2.jpg

(note there is a typo in the date, the report was made in the end of 1941, so the date at the bottom of the second page should read January 1942.)

 

[renrich]

The P47 was being developed and was ordered by the AAF in September, 1940, and was always intended to have good altitude performance. It went into action in April, 1943. The first prelim study of using the Merlin in the Mustang, to make it have better high altitude performance did not happen until July, 1942, and the first Merlin Mustangs did not reach Britain until December, 1943. Perhaps a better plan and this has been sliced and diced in other threads, was to build only two fighters for the US, the Corsair, which could have been ready for deployment by the AAF in late 1942 and had more range than the P47 and was suitable for the USN and the Merlin Mustang to supplant the Corsair in the escort role in late 1943-44.

 

[Burmese Bandit]

"...Perhaps a better plan and this has been sliced and diced in other threads, was to build only two fighters for the US, the Corsair, which could have been ready for deployment by the AAF in late 1942 and had more range than the P47 and was suitable for the USN and the Merlin Mustang to supplant the Corsair in the escort role in late 1943-44.."

100% agree! I know Jug lovers will hate this...but it's the best possible solution given the timeline of development.

 

[drgondog]

"...Perhaps a better plan and this has been sliced and diced in other threads, was to build only two fighters for the US, the Corsair, which could have been ready for deployment by the AAF in late 1942 and had more range than the P47 and was suitable for the USN and the Merlin Mustang to supplant the Corsair in the escort role in late 1943-44.."

100% agree! I know Jug lovers will hate this...but it's the best possible solution given the timeline of development.

While it has been sliced several times in the past - with hindsight an immediate contract to install a Merlin in the 51 for high altitude performance tests; immediate selection of Corsair as standard joint services low to medium altitude fighter; immediate selection of B-24 as second series Heavy Bomber would have been key performance and production decisions for the US

The existing P-40 and F4F and B-17 production starts winding down when the the production of the 51, F4U and B-24 reach 1000+ and deployed in multiple wing force to PTO and ETO/MTO. Sub license the Mustang and F4U to RAF and RAAF and RCAF so they may make their own decisions regarding integration.

US sublicenses Mossie and focuses development as Night Fighter, Recon and low level Strike bomber, replacing the P-38 for recon and A-20 and maybe even B-25/B-26. F4U initially performs Carrier Night Fighter defense role until F7F comes on stream.

Hindsight starts allocating huge R&D to the US development of the jet engine and still selecting Lockheed as initial prime even though P-38 didn't make the cut. Sub License the Whittle earlier and the Meteor to General Electric and Bell respectively while Lockheed proceeds on P-80

P-51B/C introduced a year earlier and has 20mm variants for sale to USSR, as well as replacement for A-36, P-40, P-39 and P-63.

Douglas builds SBD and DC-3 and TBD for deployment prior to WWII, then builds DC-4 and A-20 until Mossie or A-26 replace all A-20s. Curtis sells SB2C rights to Douglas and concentrates solely on engine production for both its own engines as well as subcontract to P&W.

B-26 never built and B-25 never built because USAAF has blinding insight that with Mustangs and Corsairs to escort Mossie in daylight, defensive armament probably not required (or efffective) for current daylight medium altitude strikes.

Engines in inventory reduce to dominant Packard Merlin/P&W R2800 and Wasp/Twin Wasps.. There are others but these (P&W1830)are key powerplanst for C-47, C-54, B-24.

Boeing focused entirely (engineering and manufacturing) on B-29. Consolidated on B-32 plus PBY and PB4Y.

Grumman focused on next Gen Fleet Fighters for advanced R&D (F7F and F8F) as well as TBF.

I've left a bunch out but I could see the Spit on license to US for Interceptor role across all theatres until replaced (maybe). I suspect that US manufacturing may trim man hours away from production costs.

 

[Parmigiano]

Apart from business opportunity and political considerations (that always drove this kind of decisions) there is one more variable to deal with at the moment one decide to invest in a complex machine like a top-end fighter: you don't know how the final product will behave.

As over-simplified example when the prototype of F4U was tested, there was no proof that the machine would had performed better than the parallel P47: why take the decision to sack one of the 2 if you can afford to develop both?
You spend more money but you are insured if one of the 2 will be a 'lemon' (or, more politely, will reveal too small development potential)

same can be said for P51, Fw190 etc.

Once you have a history of combat, logistics, maintenence etc. you can eventually decide what to prefer, but at that point the wheels are already turning and would be probably more expensive to abruptly stop a production system and convert it in a totally different one, at least in short time.
Keep in mind that this type of production was 'biggest possible mass for short time' : the machines were obsolete in few years, everybody knew that a model would not last for long.

 

[drgondog]

Apart from business opportunity and political considerations (that always drove this kind of decisions) there is one more variable to deal with at the moment one decide to invest in a complex machine like a top-end fighter: you don't know how the final product will behave.

As over-simplified example when the prototype of F4U was tested, there was no proof that the machine would had performed better than the parallel P47: why take the decision to sack one of the 2 if you can afford to develop both?
You spend more money but you are insured if one of the 2 will be a 'lemon' (or, more politely, will reveal too small development potential)

same can be said for P51, Fw190 etc.

Once you have a history of combat, logistics, maintenence etc. you can eventually decide what to prefer, but at that point the wheels are already turning and would be probably more expensive to abruptly stop a production system and convert it in a totally different one, at least in short time.
Keep in mind that this type of production was 'biggest possible mass for short time' : the machines were obsolete in few years, everybody knew that a model would not last for long.

All true - which is why I prefaced 'with hindsight'..

Having said that all the aircraft I postulated had a very useful life, some well past WWII. It is all fantasy

 

[renrich]

The interesting facts about the P47 are that the AC was ordered, 600 or 700, in Sept. 1940. The prototype finally flew on May 6, 1941. I believe the main impediment to getting the F4U to replace all fighters for AAF except P51 was the belief at that time that no shipboard fighter could compete performance wise with a land based fighter. Another interesting point is that Germany fought the whole war with models of only two piston engined fighter, both inspired designs and one of them which first flew in 1935. The US fought with many more designs, two of which were inspired designs, IMO, Corsair and Mustang. Of course, a number of the US designs were a specialised shipbord fighter which Germany did not have to design for.

 

[delcyros]

Not just the german, I believe that any nation in the war could use just two basic airframe designs, one beeing designed around an inline engine with a clean aerodynamic finish and good altitude performance, the other build around a more powerful radial one:
The french had the MS406 -to be replaced with the D-520 inlines and Bloch 150 series radial fighters.
The soviets had the La-series radial driven fighters and the Yak-series inline ones.
The japanese had the Ki-61 and Ki-84.
The UK had Spit Tempest.
The US appears to have missed this opportunity to concentrate on single designs but to their defense one has to stress that some very good designs turned out at about the same time and it would have been problematic to judge them on paper, only.

 

[Parmigiano]

I don't think that the US had a wrong approach: they had much more resources, time and possibility to test in peace their projects.
In two words, they could afford it, why not do it?
The disadvantage is cost (in money and resource dispersion) but the advantage is that you have many more chances to come up with the 'right' airplane.

 

[Jabberwocky]

Not just the german, I believe that any nation in the war could use just two basic airframe designs, one beeing designed around an inline engine with a clean aerodynamic finish and good altitude performance, the other build around a more powerful radial one:
The french had the MS406 -to be replaced with the D-520 inlines and Bloch 150 series radial fighters.
The soviets had the La-series radial driven fighters and the Yak-series inline ones.
The japanese had the Ki-61 and Ki-84.
The UK had Spit Tempest.
The US appears to have missed this opportunity to concentrate on single designs but to their defense one has to stress that some very good designs turned out at about the same time and it would have been problematic to judge them on paper, only.

Minor quibble, the Sabre, powering the Typhoon and the Tempest V, was not a radial, but a 24 cylinder liquid cooled horizontal H-type engine.

The RAF did have the Centarus radial, and it was used in the Tempest II, which entered production in October 1944. The Centarus had been proposed for several fighters as early as 1942, but was considered too unreliable (even when the Sabre's TBO was about 25 hours) and thus didn't enter into service until the entry of the ill-fated Warwick, in July 1944.

The British also had the Hercules radial, which eventually produced up to 2,050 hp, but that was not until 1944, by which time the Merlin 66 had passed its 100 hour test at 2,000 hp and was in regular squadron service. Most wartime Hercules produced between 1,300 and 1,730 hp.

The British lacked the 2,000 hp + radial that was available to the Germans and Americans, mostly due to poor planning and the typical, and rather British, lag between idea, development and production, as well as the wartime shortage of industrial capacity.

There was a British triple row radial that could of been a match for the mighty array of US radials like the R-1820/1830, 2600 and 2800, the Armstrong Siddeley Deerhound.

A/S was the only one of the four major British aero engine manufacturers that didn't have a high powered engine for fighter or bomber use in production by 1940. The soltion was the Deerhound, which began life in 1938 and could of provided a superlative fighter and bomber powerplant: a 41 L engine that was producing 1,500 hp in 1940 Mk II, and 1,800 hp in 1941 Mk III.

However, the project suffered repeated misfortune, including the destruction of its flying test bed in mid-1940, setting the project back 4-6 months, and then bombing of the Armstrong - Siddeley plant in 1941, which virtually ended the project. As a result, the planned 1,950 hp Mk IV never made it past the drawing board.

Two larger capacity (52 L and 60-61 L) developments of the basic design, the Boarhound and Wolfhound, were planned. These were expected to produce up to 2,400 hp and 2,800 hp, respectively. The Boarhound was orphaned in 1940 (more like dropped like a brick in a pond) in favour of the Wolfhound, which was then in turn chucked by Rolls Royce, after the drawings were turned over to them in late 1941, as they didn't have the manpower or machinery to make anything by Griffons and Merlins at the time.

By late 1941, the Ministry of Aircraft Production had already decided that jets were the way to go anyway, and so wasn't really interested in a new piston engine design (even one that had already undergone three years of testing, albeit in a somewhat smaller form).

The long story short is that the RAF could of had a 2,600-2,800 hp radial in serial production by (estimate here) of June/July 1943. Imagine a Typhoon re-engineered with an R-2800 and you can see the sort of thing that was possible.

 

[drgondog]

The RAF did have the Centarus radial, and it was used in the Tempest II, which entered production in October 1944. The Centarus had been proposed for several fighters as early as 1942, but was considered too unreliable (even when the Sabre's TBO was about 25 hours) and thus didn't enter into service until the entry of the ill-fated Warwick, in July 1944.


The long story short is that the RAF could of had a 2,600-2,800 hp radial in serial production by (estimate here) of June/July 1943. Imagine a Typhoon re-engineered with an R-2800 and you can see the sort of thing that was possible.

If the RAF had an airframe design and mission in mind, why not just sub license the R-2800 and its variants?

 

[Kurfürst]

Minor quibble, the Sabre, powering the Typhoon and the Tempest V, was not a radial, but a 24 cylinder liquid cooled horizontal H-type engine.

While its true that the Sabre was liquid cooled horizontal H-type, in practical terms it was very much like a radial engine. The engine as a whole was considerably larger in frontal area than existing, ordinary V-type inlines, and its weight was also akin to that of typical high-performance radial engines (perhaps on the whole even heavier, given that the it would also need radiators, piping and considerable amount of coolant to be carried around, though I have not seen yet figures for the complete Sabre "power egg").