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Old 29th Sep 2012, 11:27
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Yamagata ken
 
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Are you sure, absolutely certain that UK Merlins were all individually hand built by skilled fitters?

"Ford's factory, which was completed in May 1941, was built in two distinct sections to limit potential bomb damage.[nb 10] At first, the factory had difficulty in attracting suitable labour, such that large numbers of women, youths and untrained men had to be taken on. Despite this the first Merlin engine came off the production line one month after the factory's completion, and the production rate was 200 Merlins per week by 1943.[27][67][nb 11] Ford's investment in machinery and the redesign resulted in the 10,000 man-hours needed to produce a Merlin dropping to 2,727 man-hours three years later, while unit cost fell from £6,540 in June 1941 to £1,180 by the war's end. In his autobiography Not much of an Engineer, Sir Stanley Hooker states: "... once the great Ford factory at Manchester started production, Merlins came out like shelling peas. The percentage of engines rejected by the Air Ministry was zero. Not one engine of the 30,400 produced was rejected ...""

Rolls-Royce Merlin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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