Spitfire V ME109. I have found these links on the net.

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What I find strange is that Americans use the decimal system for their currency, yet use an antiquated system for weights and measures (almost as bad as the old British currency system).
 

Pences ? Wars have started over less. Pence.
Thruppence, monkeys, Bunse (Nice little earner) abbreviated from Bunsen Burner,ton,30 bob, tanners,quid,oner,wedge,pony...the list is almost endless.
We love American tourists...
Cheers
John
 
From Wikipedia.
"The guinea is a coin that was minted in the Kingdom of England and later in the Kingdom of Great Britain and the United Kingdom between 1663 and 1813.[1] It was the first English machine-struck gold coin, originally worth one English Pound sterling, equal to twenty shillings; but rises in the price of gold caused the value of the guinea to increase, at times to as high as thirty shillings; from 1717 till 1816, its value was officially fixed at twenty-one shillings. Following that, Great Britain adopted the gold standard and guinea became a colloquial term."

So that was a coin whose value varied,at least until 1717,not at all confusing. I think horses are still traded in guineas at posh auctions.
Steve
 
stona said:
So that was a coin whose value varied,at least until 1717,not at all confusing. I think horses are still traded in guineas at posh auctions.
Steve
Click to expand...

I think the guinea is still used at auctions because the auctioneers mark up is 5%
If you sell for 1000 guineas you receive £1000.

Alan Turing explained to his American colleagues working on Enigma that with the British system based on 12 pennies divided into 4 farthings almost any group of people in a resteraint can divide the bill exactly. Trouble is you need Turings brain to do it.

The factors of 10 are 1,2,5 and 10
The factors of 24 are 1,2,3,4,6,8,12 and 24

Im glad we use metric but who wants a baby born weighing 2.85 kilos
 
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Mustang nut said:
Spitfire Mk V airframe 13,000 man hours
Bf 109G airframe 4,000 man hours

A big plus for the Bf109
Click to expand...

Yes,but in that crucial period when Britain "stood alone" she out produced Germany in numbers of single engined fighters. Admittedly that says more about the war footings of the two economies than the aircraft. The Bf109 was better suited to mass production and this was probably a result of the different design philosophies mentioned by someone much earlier in the thread.
I love a Spitfire but what really saved our bacon in 1940 was 20 odd miles of water!
Cheers
Steve
 
I am always a bit wary when people start quoting man hours and costs. What did those 4,000 or 13,000 hours mean was the 109G airframe a barebones unpainted fuselage, was the Spit V a fully fitted and painted fuselage. Was the 4,000 hours just the time it took on the production line did the 13,000 hours count in the time spent by sub contractors.

I am not claiming by the way that a Spit was quicker to build than a 109 too many people more expert than me have said the Spit was a more complicated construction job. What I am suspicous of is people who claim that a certain figure is gospel without any background information. The problem with using German costs and man hours figures is the unpleasant fact that German factories operated on different principles to western allied factories.
 
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I am always suspicious of statistics from totalitarian governments. The people submitting the statistics know they may be severely punished (shot) if the statistics do not meet the expectations of their masters.

Was the ME-109 really constructed in less than a third of the time of a Spitfire? My BS warning light is blinking red. Could this be another case of lack of impartial critical analysis similar to the controversy about whether one third of ME-109s were lost because of situations that the landing gear design adversely affected?
 

Spot on and well said Steve.
Good old English Channel.
There was a 1930's weather report saying that there was fog in the Channel and that the continent was cut off from England...
Sometimes I wish they were.
I have yet to forgive the EU from messing about with the Great British banger.
Well bad
Cheers
John
 
A German report estimated the Spitfire would cost less to build than the 109 if built in German factories.

It's not hard to see why, either. People hold up the elliptical wing as complex to build, but it wasn't once the jigs were ready. On the other hand, the 109 had leading edge slats to build and fit, a far more complex flap system, more complex radiator system and was flush riveted throughout, most Spitfires only used flush riveting in high drag areas like the wing.
 
Are those build man/hours for a completed a/c or just for the airframe shell? Or a mix, one is for a completes a/c while the other is for the shell.

Is the engine, and other such like components man/hours include in one and not the other?
 
The spit had a more complex wing, which did cause production problems early on, but these were ironed out pre-war and by the ntime of the battle, were being churned out in great effciciency.

It is very difficult to make comparisos with those man hours numbers. Partly for the reasons already given though in the context of 1940, there were no or very few slave laboureres employed in Bf 109 production came later. I also suspect that the time frames of these quoted times may also be different. What if we are comparing the build times of a Spit built prewar, when the wing was giving problems to 109 production in 1944, when output by the Germans had been completely optimised. Facts are that both sides got increasingly efficient at builoding aircraft. For the same amount of factory space, and the same amount of workers, outputs doubled or even tripled. This occurred for both sides.

I do know this. In 1940, and assuming prewar exchange rates, Germany was spending roughly twice as much as Britain on aircraft procurement. For this they got 50% less aircraft. Now, these figures are rough, and just posted for illustrative purposes, but they have to be a long way out to try and argue the German aero industry in 1940 was more efficient than the British in 1940. They simply werent, and this is nowhere better reflected in the delivery rates of Me 109s to the LW compared to the delivery rates of Spits to the RAF
 
But are those productions rates fighter to fighter? Germany I would assume was producing more bombers than the UK at the time. Will check my data book but I think Germany's production included a heavy emphasis on bombers as well as fighters which, in my mind would not produce as many fighters.
 
Britain was still churning out Battles, Blenheims, Hampdens, Whitleys and tooling up for Sterlings, Halifaxes and at least Manchesters while Wellingtons continued production. Without a direct comparison of numbers it would be hard to tell but the British had over double the number of bomber programs the Germans had in 1940.
 
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