Qualities that made for a great aircraft that don't show up in performance stats.

[Shortround6]

I am not sure the idea of peasant woodworkers really holds up. The Lagg's were constructed in large part with some pretty heavy duty "wood" components. From Wiki so usual disclaimer.
"Its airframe was partially made of wood delta-veneer (a resin-wood multi-ply veneer composed of very thin, 0.35 to 0.55 mm, wood veneer and phenol formaldehyde resin, baked at high temperature and pressure) used for the crucial parts."

I bolded the crucial parts. I am sure there were a number of not so crucial parts that were made out of ordinary wood.
Much like with the Mosquito the idea that WW II 350mph aircraft made of "wood" were closely related to the wooden aircraft of WW I needs to be thrown in the rubbish bin.

 

[Ivan1GFP]

The rudder lacked trim in all variants, and made for tired right legs in the Bf 109 pilot community after a mission. The cockpit was narrow and there was no good way to get decent leverage on the stick sideways. Hence, Bf 109 pilots usually had good arm muscles.
.......
The above flight characteristics, true for ALL variants of the Bf 109 are why the Bf 109K was not really a danger if it was going fast. if it was at 450 mph, it was going TO or FROM a fight, but it wasn't dogfighting. At 450 mph, it was at a speed where the airframe was VERY stable in a straight line and greatly reluctant to be coaxed from that line to any great degree. To dogfight, it needed to be slower, which usually meant in a steep climb. They tended to be firing at bombers going down through the formation and then maybe dogfight with fighters, if required, when going back up at slower speeds for another pounce. If not, they did the next pounce from the high perch.

Some versions of the Me 109K series appear to have a movable rudder tab along with a couple fixed ground adjustable tabs.
I suppose this would really be a balance tab rather than a trim tab?

Regarding dogfights all being at low speeds, there is also the possibility of vertical maneuvers which might take the speed up to 400 or 450 MPH pretty quickly..

I am not sure the idea of peasant woodworkers really holds up. The Lagg's were constructed in large part with some pretty heavy duty "wood" components. From Wiki so usual disclaimer.
"Its airframe was partially made of wood delta-veneer (a resin-wood multi-ply veneer composed of very thin, 0.35 to 0.55 mm, wood veneer and phenol formaldehyde resin, baked at high temperature and pressure) used for the crucial parts."

I bolded the crucial parts. I am sure there were a number of not so crucial parts that were made out of ordinary wood.
Much like with the Mosquito the idea that WW II 350mph aircraft made of "wood" were closely related to the wooden aircraft of WW I needs to be thrown in the rubbish bin.

There is no question that the wooden aircraft were built of something more than just rough wooden planks, but sometimes the material did not quite live up to its intended design. There were plenty of quality problems which resulted in the Delta wood material delaminating or otherwise failing. Also, just because the material was high tech does not mean that the labour doing the manufacturing was up to the same standard.
There were plenty of quality control problems there as well.
Lastly, the wooden structures were not nearly as strong as comparable weight all-metal structures but their strength degraded with time so that by end of the war, early aircraft that had miraculously survived for that long may not have been safe to fly. At the time of manufacture, this was not a great concern since the life span of the aircraft in service was averaged no more than a few weeks.

- Ivan.

 

[Schweik]

"Its airframe was partially made of wood delta-veneer (a resin-wood multi-ply veneer composed of very thin, 0.35 to 0.55 mm, wood veneer and phenol formaldehyde resin, baked at high temperature and pressure) used for the crucial parts."

Phenol-formaldyhide resin is a standard component of a lot of types of plywood, which us usually made under pressure and heat. In fact what you are describing is just a pretty standard way of making plywood though they had their own methods.

https://www3.epa.gov/ttn/chief/ap42/ch10/final/c10s05.pdf

When the veneers have been dried to their specified moisture content, they are conveyed to a
layup operation, where a thermosetting resin is spread on the veneers. The two main types of resins are
phenol-formaldehyde, which is used for softwood plywood and exterior grades of hardwood plywood, and
urea-formaldehyde, which is used to glue interior grades of hardwood plywood. The resins are applied by
glue spreaders, curtain coaters, or spray systems. Spreaders have a series of rubber-covered grooved
application rolls that apply the resin to the sheet of veneer. Generally, resin is spread on two sides of one
ply of veneer, which is then placed between two plies of veneer that are not coated with resin.

The Russians did have a very long history of using certain types of wood for sophisticated purposes going back centuries. Birch in particular. To this day they specialize in their own distinct types of birch plywood. One thing you have in Siberia is a lot of trees.

If you want to get into something slightly more exotic they were incorporating bakelite into the bodies of Yak-9s by late 1943...

 

[parsifal]

This line of thinking doesn't take into account the unique and dangerous situation the soviets faced. Far from the comfortable perception that the Soviets outgunned the german economy and was a modern economy with a good supply of skilled workers and ample factory space, virtually every aspect of these assumptions about Soviet industry in 1940-45 was nothing like the reality they faced.

Soviet war industries even before the war broke out were hard pressed to meet even peacetime demands. According to "The Industrialization of Soviet Russia in the First Half Century"; John P. Hardt & Carl Modig ((http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/698197.pdf), as an index of world out put and using 1913 as the reference point, soviet steel production fell from a baseline index of 100 in 1913, to 88.4 in 1940. Relative to its world position, despite the hype of the vaunted 5 year plans, soviet industrial self sufficiency in that period was sharply falling, and in 1913 it was insufficient. . I do not have figures for aluminium, but it would seem reasonable to assume a similar extrapolation

Factory spaces were similarly falling. Using 1913 as the baseline index, we now know that factory capacity had fallen to 89.4% of that figure in 1940. Sure, the 5 year plans had seen great steps forward, but only from the perspective that soviet industry in 1928 had come to a virtual standstill. It was recovering, but nowhere was soviet industry sufficient to meet wartime output requirements. The german invasion of 1941 made things even worse, reducing available factory spaces by more than 35% compared to the 1938 levels.

The numbers of skilled workers is a direct correlation to the available factory spaces. Hardt and Modig point this aspect out, and repeatedly mention the wartime reliance on unskilled labour. So the comfortable assumption that soviet industry was somehow akin to western methods just does not stand up to any level of even cursory examination

A later, more defence specific article "The Soviet Defense Industry Complex in World War II*, Mark Harrison (university Of Warwick); https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/mharrison/public/dfc1994postprint.pdf reinforces this position

At the core of the prewar defense industry lay the big assembly plants permanently specialized in producing finished tanks, guns, aircraft, and ammunition. But hundreds of smaller factories were also part-time or occasional producers of final defense products they were being drawn from civilian industry into the defense industry by the pace of prewar rearmament, which far exceeded the capacity of the big permanent defense producers. Surrounding the assembly plants lay the
subcontracting system.
This paper points out that the specialised skilled workforce working in the defence sector amounted to 1.4 million people (in 1940), however at that time the total numbers working in defence related industries included a further 9 million unskilled workers and peasants 9it had increased to over 14 million in 1942). The proportions of workers to peasants is not shown, but neither is it critical. With only 1 in 6 workers with any skill, soviet aircraft were indeed relying on WWI style production methods and skills, and that meant using guys versed in building wagons and such in the production of aircraft frames.

Recruitment into the defence industry was a problem, but nowhere was it more pronounced than in the aircraft construction sector. According to Harrison, of the nearly 2 million workers employed in the sector all but 215000 were unskilled or semi skilled in 1941. Since more than 60% of workers were press ganged peasants, it becomes unassailable that the majority of the workforce were ex-peasants. Later in the war, this massive imbalance between skilled and unskilled was partially redressed, with Gosplan reporting 1 in 5 of the annual intake of 800000 workers being in the skilled category.

 

[fliger747]

As I write this I happen to be in Siberia. In a local newspaper handout, the cover was a Babushka (old woman) dressed in factory overalls adjusting a heavy duty lathe. From her age I would guess a "Rosie the machinist". My Mom graduated from HS at 15 and was a "Rosie the spot welder" building cowlings for B-24 and B-17's. One can be trained to do a specific task, it's how the military functions and always has functioned in wartime with it's plethora of teenagers. In the South Pacific Captain Gatch, standing on South Dakota's bridge, surveying the scene below remarked to another officer about his mostly teen age crew.

Yes, the plywood wonders didn't hold up well and weren't expected to. Even the lightweight alloys used in some Japanese aircraft have crystallized over the years and a considerable headache for museum preservation types.

When one looks at the fine workmanship of USA made aircraft, it was apparent this was still a luxury operation.

I am a few blocks from the amazing Opera House her sin Novosibirsk, the Russians do this sort of thing very well, The most amazing part about it? Finished in April 1945, as if they weren't otherwise busy?

 

[Dimlee]

Added to that, the skilled labour needed to work this ,etal was in acute short supply in wartime Russia. Not so their skilled workers in woodworking. There were plenty of peasants able to work in wood that could not work in light alloys like Duralumin

This is interesting idea. But I don't find the evidence.
Skills were in deficit in USSR (not Russia) across all industries and problem of "brak" (defect) was common and persistent everywhere. Aircraft of wooden/mixed construction were not better built then all metal ones. Yak-1s were "famous" for numerous defects as well as Il-2s.
And no, peasants were not employed at aircraft factories. They remained in collective/state farms until being conscripted.

 

[XBe02Drvr]

Skills were in deficit in USSR (not Russia) across all industries and problem of "brak" (defect) was common and persistent everywhere.

There must have been tremendous competition for bodies between conscription and production.

 

[swampyankee]

There must have been tremendous competition for bodies between conscription and production.

That was a problem in other countries, too, and was a problem in several countries in WWI, including Germany, where conscription caused shortages of factory and agricultural labor, the latter contributing to poor harvests and food shortages, and France, where it adversely affected defense production.

 

[Dimlee]

According to Harrison, of the nearly 2 million workers employed in the sector all but 215000 were unskilled or semi skilled in 1941. Since more than 60% of workers were press ganged peasants, it becomes unassailable that the majority of the workforce were ex-peasants. Later in the war, this massive imbalance between skilled and unskilled was partially redressed, with Gosplan reporting 1 in 5 of the annual intake of 800000 workers being in the skilled category.

"...and statistics".

According to Gennady Kostyrchenko who has assisted Mark Harrison:
Jan 01, 1941- total workforce in aviation industry 466400, including 174361 workers at aircraft and engine building factories.
Jan 01 1942 - total 610300.
Jan 01 1944 - total 640213 and 435385 workers overall (factories and elsewhere).
Jan 01 1945 - total n/a (presumably about 620000), 273100 workers at aircraft and engine building factories.
Above numbers are taken from the works of Kostyrchenko published in various years, for example:
http://www.airpages.ru/dc/ww2_1.shtml

"60% of workers were press ganged peasants" - sorry, but this is not about aviation industry certainly. And I doubt this is about USSR military industry in 1940s at all.

 

[Dimlee]

There must have been tremendous competition for bodies between conscription and production.

There have been this competition indeed, especially in 1941-1942 after territories/population loss and evacuation and redeployment of hundreds of factories. Still, some sectors of economy and some factories were better protected than others. A lot of internal politics, quarrels between military and civilian top brass, etc.

 

[Kevin J]

"...and statistics".

According to Gennady Kostyrchenko who has assisted Mark Harrison:
Jan 01, 1941- total workforce in aviation industry 466400, including 174361 workers at aircraft and engine building factories.
Jan 01 1942 - total 610300.
Jan 01 1944 - total 640213 and 435385 workers overall (factories and elsewhere).
Jan 01 1945 - total n/a (presumably about 620000), 273100 workers at aircraft and engine building factories.
Above numbers are taken from the works of Kostyrchenko published in various years, for example:
Авиационная промышленность СССР накануне и в годы ВОВ. 1939-1941 гг. Г.В. Костырченко

"60% of workers were press ganged peasants" - sorry, but this is not about aviation industry certainly. And I doubt this is about USSR military industry in 1940s at all.

I think you'll find there were a lot of early teens working maybe even younger. When someone's trying to exterminate you all, you're not going to need pressure to go and help wherever you can. Every family in the USSR lost someone in that war.

 

[GregP]

Hi KevinJ,

About post #128, I show 350 Bf 109Bs produced by the end of 1937, 400 Bf 109C's by the end of 1938, 750 Bf 109Ds by the end of 1939, and 2,700 Bf 109Es by the end of 1940. I show the Bf 109F starting in 1939 and, by the end of 1940, I show 4,1280 Bf 109Fs produced by the end of 1941, with F production total being 5,460, all delivered by the end of 1942. The Bf 109G started in 1942 and, by war's end, 24,931 were delivered. There were 8 Bf 109Hs built along with 1,593 Bf 109Ks, 70 Bf 109Ts, and 1 Bf 109Z. Total was 36,263 from 20 years of searching.

Wartime total estimates range from 26,210 (Wiki, sorry) to 29,155 (Baumbach), with the balance being built post-WWII, exclusive of the Ha-1112.

I have also seen the Bf 109E with totals as low as 3,497 and the Bf 109F with totals as low as 3,448, but it is generally agreed that the Bf 109F-1 and F-2 were in service in the first half of 1941 with either the DB 601N (1,159 hp) or the BD 601E (1,332 hp). Those numbers are horsepower, not ps or cv.

Whatever the source (except I don't use Kurfurst), the DB 601N was definitely in quantity service by mid-1941. By then, the DB 603 and 605 were looming over the DB 601 engine, and it's production run was to be very short after mid-1941, goinf mainly to DB 605s.

 

[Shortround6]

There is no question that the wooden aircraft were built of something more than just rough wooden planks, but sometimes the material did not quite live up to its intended design. There were plenty of quality problems which resulted in the Delta wood material delaminating or otherwise failing. Also, just because the material was high tech does not mean that the labour doing the manufacturing was up to the same standard.
There were plenty of quality control problems there as well.
Lastly, the wooden structures were not nearly as strong as comparable weight all-metal structures but their strength degraded with time so that by end of the war, early aircraft that had miraculously survived for that long may not have been safe to fly. At the time of manufacture, this was not a great concern since the life span of the aircraft in service was averaged no more than a few weeks.

- Ivan.

Phenol-formaldyhide resin is a standard component of a lot of types of plywood, which us usually made under pressure and heat. In fact what you are describing is just a pretty standard way of making plywood though they had their own methods.

The Russians did have a very long history of using certain types of wood for sophisticated purposes going back centuries. Birch in particular. To this day they specialize in their own distinct types of birch plywood. One thing you have in Siberia is a lot of trees.

If you want to get into something slightly more exotic they were incorporating bakelite into the bodies of Yak-9s by late 1943...

There is a lot of difference between house construction grade plywood and aircraft plywood, one being the thickness of the plies. The Russian delta-veneer used very thin sheets of wood. Think 4-6 typing paper thin. Yes furniture factories used veneers that thin but factories using veneered finishes are not found in rural peasant villages even if said village has a saw mill.

Some of those peasants could be very skilled wood carvers or skilled at fitting together small solid pieces of wood into small objects or pieces of furniture but that is not venner work or high production aircraft work.

Phenol-formaldehyde is closely related to bakelite if not component of bakelite.
By using very thin layers you wind up with a material in which the resin has soaked into the wood more (a higher percentage of the wood has been impregnated with resin) than when using thicker sheets.

The Russians did have a lot of trouble with quality control, and yes, the delta-veneer did not stand up to weather as well as initial testing suggested (US was building some training planes using similar methods and had problems too). But part of that may be due to fit/finish quality control. If joints are not sealed well (or surface well sealed) moisture can get in an degrade either the glue or the wood.

Some Russian fighters were carrying several scores of pounds of extra weight due to excess glue at the joints of some components.

Point is that planes that had to fly at 350mph could NOT use the same wood working techniques as planes that fly at 100-150mph and suggestions that certain countries (or companies) selected wooden construction instead of metal in order to use untrained labor is highly suspect.

 

[Schweik]

Hi KevinJ,

. I show the Bf 109F starting in 1939 and, by the end of 1940, I show 4,1280 Bf 109Fs produced by the end of 1941, with F production total being 5,460, all delivered by the end of 1942. .

Wow! they were producing the 109F in 1939? How many did they produce in 1940? 1941 and 1940 seem to be mixed together in the sentance above...

 

[Schweik]

My point on the plywood is that even though yes I certainly understand that aircraft plywood is much more demanding in terms of skill and precision than household 3/8" sheet I can get at Home Depot, working with wood is still much less skill intensive (in the sense that you need fewer people with high skill) than running an aluminum smelter or crafting machines made of stressed skin sheets of duralimin, which is quite a tricky type of material requiring extreme care because it too can become corroded among other reasons.

While 'peasants' or common burghers of course lacked experience with aircraft there was a well developed ship- and boat-building industry in certain parts of what was in 1940 the Soviet Union - particularly in the Baltic states, certain towns like Veliky Novgorod, Tver and Pskov, and in Ukraine particularly down the Dnieper toward Crimea. In general around the Black Sea, Caspian Sea and Sea of Azov. This was done in a fairly sophisticated manner which went back centuries and relied on a significant level of what you might call automation (e.g. water-powered sawmills and so on) going back at least 500 years.

In fact in the Baltic region they still plant trees specially grown for ship building.

Certain traditional boat-building methods which go back several centuries in the Baltic region may be surprising in their sophistication

Sewn boat - Wikipedia

.... and there were well developed traditional industries for making both seafaring and riverine ships and boats for fishing and mercantile purposes right up to the 1920's.

Methods similar to plywood (cross hatching and gluing of very thin sheets of wood veneer or bark) were used not only for boats and ships but also for things like shields going back to Varangian times. Birch bark in particular was so cheap and common it was also famously used as a writing material quite late in Russia. This too required special processing.

Czarist Russia was incidentally one of the earliest pioneers in developing modern type plywood.

In boat building, very thin wood veneers are typically used. I happen to know if you are looking for high quality wood veneers today you get it from maritime supply companies. So I wouldn't entirely discount the traditional angle, though I am not sure if i would go so far as to say it was more suitable for unskilled labor, as others have pointed out they had at least as many production problems with wooden aircraft as with metal, but it's more closely linked to traditional skilled labor, from peasants and townfolk who are distinct from serfs. Millions of former serfs in the Soviet Union really were still unskilled in 1940, if by no means all of them. But there was also another layer of people in the Soviet Union who were what you might call either 'traditionally skilled' or 'semi-skilled' and these are the types you could tap for management or supervisory jobs in an aircraft plant or special wood production factory. In other words, they were tapping into something with some depth in terms of woodworking, and not just crude carving or making doors or roof shingles type of thing.

Most of the production processes could be done by unskilled labor (trained to do specific jobs) while a certain number of people involved had to know what they were doing.

Working with wood also requires less power and of course, uses material like birch which is ubiquitous in Russia.

 

[Shortround6]

Wow! they were producing the 109F in 1939? How many did they produce in 1940? 1941 and 1940 seem to be mixed together in the sentance above...

Design work may have started in 1939. The V 21, V 22, V 23, and V 24 don't fly until the summer of 1940? An early production schedule called for 133 109F-1s to produced from July of 1940 until Dec 1940. But plans don't always work out. In any case some sources claim the first 109F-1 showed up in Stab/JG 51 by Oct 6th 1940 when Werner Molders flew it. He did fly it on a combat sortie until Oct 25th. By the beginning of Nov 1940 several other units had gotten 1 or more F-1s, first combat loss was Nov 11th. (Oblt. Greorg Claus)

Production totals are bit confused, Mtt Reg is supposed to have built 157 aircraft in the period between 08/40 and 02/41 but that may include the V number machines and a few F-2s
WNF is supposed to have built 47 aircraft from 11/40 to 01/41.
Further confusing things is that the F-2 was built in 5 factories in 7 production blocks and one of them started in Nov 1940. AGO built 378 F-2s from Nov 1940 through June of 1941.
One doubts that the Nov/Dec production was very high.

 

[Schweik]

That is interesting thank you, I still find it amazing that they were producing 109F's in 1940, such a sophisticated design for that early on. It really is remarkable.

 

[Ivan1GFP]

As I write this I happen to be in Siberia. In a local newspaper handout, the cover was a Babushka (old woman) dressed in factory overalls adjusting a heavy duty lathe. From her age I would guess a "Rosie the machinist". My Mom graduated from HS at 15 and was a "Rosie the spot welder" building cowlings for B-24 and B-17's. One can be trained to do a specific task, it's how the military functions and always has functioned in wartime with it's plethora of teenagers. In the South Pacific Captain Gatch, standing on South Dakota's bridge, surveying the scene below remarked to another officer about his mostly teen age crew.

Yes, the plywood wonders didn't hold up well and weren't expected to. Even the lightweight alloys used in some Japanese aircraft have crystallized over the years and a considerable headache for museum preservation types.

When one looks at the fine workmanship of USA made aircraft, it was apparent this was still a luxury operation.

I am a few blocks from the amazing Opera House her sin Novosibirsk, the Russians do this sort of thing very well, The most amazing part about it? Finished in April 1945, as if they weren't otherwise busy?

Hello fliger747,
My Wife just got back from Moscow about a week ago. It was fun helping her go through her receipts to figure out what they corresponded to.
While she was over there she got kind of annoyed that when she wanted a bottle of water, what she bought was carbonated. I asked her to text me a photograph of the label which said: "чистая газированная вода".... Babushka just means "Grandmother" but I think they use it like we do here for referring to any old lady.

There is a big difference between an airframe that becomes structurally weak in a couple decades versus one that becomes unsafe in a couple years. The war may not be over in a couple years and one has to wonder how much the strength had deteriorated even during the time when the aeroplane was still considered "safe" to fly.

- Ivan.

 

[tomo pauk]

That is interesting thank you, I still find it amazing that they were producing 109F's in 1940, such a sophisticated design for that early on. It really is remarkable.

I'm not sure that Bf 109F was that sophisticated for 1940.

 

[Schweik]

Well I'd say it was miles ahead of most of the aircraft available in 1940, maybe not those designed in 1940.

Lets explore it a bit...

Bf 109F is arguably more sophisticated, if not actually better, than a Spitfire Mk I or II, (were any Mark V in combat units in 1940? I would have guessed 1941). 109F is certainly better than a Hurricane II, or a Hawk-75, or a Yak-1. Arguably better than a Ki-43 (especially the early models which still had some bugs). Let alone the older 1930's designs still in combat units like the Hurricane I, F2A Buffalo, Fairey Fulmar, Gloster Gladiator, P-11 / P-24, I-153, I-16, Cr 42, MC 200, G. 50, Ki -27, MS. 406, Bloch 152 and so on.

The leading edge slats, combat flap settings, excellent streamlining, fuel injected engine, multi speed supercharger, excellent radios, advanced gunsight, good instrumentation, pilot armor and self-sealing tanks, reliable (albeit small) cannon, electrically controlled constant-speed propeller (with a manual override), low drag thermostat regulated cooling system - all these factors make the 109F very sophisticated IMO for 1940.

I don't think P-40B / C got into combat until early 1941 (with RAF units) and that design, while still competitive, was certainly a step behind the 109F for sure, a closer match for the older 109E. F4F Wildcat may be close in some measures of sophistication, partly because it's a carrier aircraft, but is clearly a step behind as well (though again, still competitive). Same for the LaGG-3 which was maybe two steps behind, and the MiG 3 which was probably 3 steps behind. Spit V much closer to parity but surely it too was a bit ahead of it's time. And even the Spit V still has the gravity aspirated carb and doesn't have combat maneuver flaps and a few other features you see in the Franz.

Maybe the only plane I can think of which is comparable in sophistication in terms of design, other than arguably the Spitfire, would be the A6M Zero which was amazingly in production (just prototypes) in 1939, and the A6M2 in 1940. Dewoitine D.520 is in the ball park but I'd say a step or two behind.

The A6M2 may have been as effective and certainly innovative as a design, but it was not as sophisticated in terms of all of it's features since it lacked armor and in many cases, a radio, and didn't have as good of high altitude performance.