swampyankee
Chief Master Sergeant
- 4,022
- Jun 25, 2013
Brewster may well be unique in being a defense contractor that lost money in wartime. Of course, hiring two felons convicted of illegal arms tradings and fraud probably didn't help
Ad: This forum contains affiliate links to products on Amazon and eBay. More information in Terms and rules
Okay, here is a counterpoint. Ford made 8600 total B24s at something like 1 an hour eventually. Inflexible Ford may have been, but well learned at mass production he was. Invaluable is another word I would use as well. Why was his company so inflexible, why did it take so long to get set up? I thought that an entire community was built up from scratch around the plant, and all the work force had to be completely trained? Also, was this agreed upon in the contract with the USAAC? More info please.
In a word, arrogance. Ford didn't bother to investigate the actual requirements for aircraft and assumed that the design would be frozen and churned out just like Model As. They failed to realize that the requirements for a warplane are vastly different than for a car. When you trundle down to the local general store to pick up some supplies, chances are no one is trying to kill you (at least in most parts of the States). A combat aircraft frozen in time is useless.
The other issue that Ford totally failed to understand is that aluminum doesn't behave in the same manner as steel when it is being stamped, punched and pierced. In addition the dies scarred the surface of the aluminum, rendering the pieces unusable.
According to the book "Buying Aircraft" (which I posted earlier): "As a consequence of these discoveries , Ford engineers ended up making 29,000 dies, although not more than 15,000 were actually used. Moreover, about 2,400 of these had to be reworked, some of the repeatedly, before they were satisfactory.
To compensate for the failure to produce combat ready aircraft the US introduced the modification centers where the products of mass production were disassembled and rebuilt into useful products This was an incredibly inefficient and wasteful system.
The Harvard University Study "Problems of Accelerating Aircraft Production during World War II" is treasure trove of statistics as well as an excellent discussion of what really occurred in the aircraft and engine factories in WWII.
From "Table 1. Summary of Months to produce 1000 Aircraft"
B-17 Boeing - Seattle 14 27
B-24 Consolidated - San Diego 19 29
B-17 Douglas - Long Beach 14 31
B-17 Lockheed - Burbank A 14 32
B-24 North American - Dallas 18 34
B-24 Ford - Willow Run 23 35
B-24 Consolidated - Fort Worth 18 36
B-24 Douglas - Tulsa 23 43
The first column is the time taken in months to produce the 5th aircraft with the second column showing to months taken to reach the thousandth
Note how much quicker Boeing and its two licensees were to get into production.
One of the excuses Ford used was that they had to redraw everything. The irony of this is that when North American was given Fords drawings for the Dallas plant they claimed the Ford drawings were unacceptable and proceeded to redraw them.
Americans tend to measure success by numbers but as Ely Devons noted "…. nobody was really interested in the weight of aircraft produced, but in its fighting powers." That being said, I will now quote from Table 4 of the same Harvard study "Pounds of Airframes Accepted…1940-1944". The study only gives numbers to the end of 1944, but any B-24 built in late 1944 or 1945 was unlikely to see service. Something like 2,500 B-24 when straight from the production line to the desert to be stored until scrapped. According to this article Consolidated B-24 Liberator: "On January 1, 1945, there was a pool of over 900 aircraft in storage waiting for modifications at mod centers. By VJ-Day, this was reduced, but still over 400 aircraft were awaiting modifications when the war ended. Many of these aircraft were flown straight from the factory to the dessert and eventually wound up on the scrap heap without ever seeing service."
The top plants in order of thousand of pounds are:
Consolidated - San Diego 180,702
Boeing - Seattle 166,355
Douglas - Long Beach 123,989
Ford - Willow Run 123,076
Note that only Ford was one trick pony the other plants produced more than one type of aircraft.
The one aircraft an hour is an exaggeration as it implies that this was occurring 24/7, which was not the case. The peak acceptance for Willow Run B-24's was August 1944 with 428 which equates to 0.6 per hour. You can debate how the knock down kits supplied to Consolidated Fort Worth and Douglas Tulsa should be accounted for, but assembling a knock down B-24 is not the same as buying a dresser from Ikea. The numbers I have come up with from various sources indicate that Consolidated San Diego produced 7034 B-24s with 313 knocked down kits, while Willow Run produced 6784 with 1893 knocked down kits. Note that Consolidated San Diego also produced 2661 PBYs and 793 PB2Ys which explains its much greater total airframe weight.
As I noted earlier Willow Run did not produce a useful aircraft until July 1943. In terms of monthly production of heavy bombers Willow Run did not exceed the output of either San Diego or Seattle until March 1944, by which time the demand for B-24s had dropped considerably.
Cheers,
Biff
It took a long time before Willow Run exceeded San Diego in productivity.
From what little I've read about them the 210 had alot of issues but the 410 was actually a good design.The Me210 and Me 410 were supposed to be improved aircraft over the Me110.
But have not seen any history or data that suggest they performed better or were more reliable !
In fact from what I read there were issues with the them.
It took until Jan 1944 to roughly equal San Diego. The really low numbers that Willow Run proponents like to quote didn't occur until July or maybe JuneLooks like it took from January 1943 to January 1944.
How long was San Diego producing B-24s and how long Willow Run ?
It takes time to get all the processes run-in + to fix some organizational problems that Ford surely had there
Consolidated was given the go ahead to start producing the B-24 in large volumes in July 1940. France had placed an order in June 1940. Ford was given its go ahead in December 1940. In June 1940 only the prototype XB-24 had been built with 7 YB-24s on the way . It not as if Consolidated had a huge factory waiting to fill with orders and it certainly didn't have the massive number of workers necessary. It was starting from scratch just like Ford and didn't have the industrial might of the Ford empire behind it.
The difference was that Consolidated started producing fully combat capable B-24Ds in January 1942 whereas the first combat capable Ford B-24 didn't roll out until July 1943 a year and a half later. Even accounting for the 6 month head start Consolidated head start, Ford had wasted a full year and spent far more money.
I cannot empathize enough that the first 800 Ford B-24s were useless for combat. What a tremendous waste of resources and more importantly time.
No Me210s exist, although there are some parts recovered from various crash-sites and there's only two complete Me410s that remain and I believe that neither is air-worthy.Any left in museums?
Oh yes got my planes crossed. I will dig on Wake. Seems they would have them there but what I have read so far concurs with you, Wildcats only.SB2A-4 Brewster Buccaneer.
View attachment 537599
F2A Brewster Buffalo
View attachment 537600
Do you have any sources that say the SB2A 2 seat dive bomber was used in Finland? or at Singapore? Or the Dutch East Indies?
Most accounts say that the defenders at Wake Island used Grumman F4F-3s with no Brewster products of any type being stationed there.