Greatest ever blunder in the history of the UK aircraft industry?
The balance of the airwar at night always fluctuated, even as late as Jan 1945; after Big Week it was all over for the Luftwaffe day fighters.
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Not procuring more Mossies.....
The biggest blunder I think was not to MASS produce the Mosquito as a bomber.
In terms of materials it cost much less than an 4-engined bomber, it carried only a crew of two and could carry a 4,000 lb bomb load (the same as a B17) all the way to Berlin.
Its survival depended on its ability to fly higher and much faster than the other allied bombers were able to and it could have operated by day or night. Any losses would have been much more sustainable as (not that this is to diminish the sacrifice made by the crews of the "big" bombers) as "only" two crew would be potentially lost with each aircraft.
Imagine what a force of 1,000 Mossies would represent. Better still, being faster in the long nights of winter they (with a new crew) could even have done two sorties per night. How's that for force multiplication?
Just my 2c - but I even suspect that they would have been a popular choice for the aircrew faced with the alternative of a Wimpy, Manchester, Stirling, Halifax or Lanc.
MB
In terms of materials it cost much less than an 4-engined bomber, it carried only a crew of two and could carry a 4,000 lb bomb load (the same as a B17) all the way to Berlin.
Its survival depended on its ability to fly higher and much faster than the other allied bombers were able to and it could have operated by day or night. Any losses would have been much more sustainable as (not that this is to diminish the sacrifice made by the crews of the "big" bombers) as "only" two crew would be potentially lost with each aircraft.
Imagine what a force of 1,000 Mossies would represent. Better still, being faster in the long nights of winter they (with a new crew) could even have done two sorties per night. How's that for force multiplication?
Just my 2c - but I even suspect that they would have been a popular choice for the aircrew faced with the alternative of a Wimpy, Manchester, Stirling, Halifax or Lanc.
MB
Giving the Americans and the Soviets jet engines 'on a plate'
the gift to the Russians was during the Cold War
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"Gift" Derwent/Nene: US: 11 March,1941 Lend/Lease deal was to suspend patent/IPR protection in the greater interest, and to roll up who-owes-who what till Victory. When that was done in July,1946 (by Maynard Keynes on UK side) "Reverse Lend/Lease" was computed with $800K for all-things-Whittle, to arrive at a net number. The 1947 licence, RR:P&W for Nene, "the needle engine", and the 1948 one for Tay, as J42 and J48, were done on negotiated commercial terms.
USSR: in October,1946 Uncle Joe was not yet seen in the colours he later displayed. UK had a $ bridging Reconstruction Loan, but needed ongoing $-sparing sources of food and other material. GIs were onway home, all planned to be gone by November,1948 Presidential Elections. It seemed a good idea to be on good terms with our near-neighbour. 10 (later,30) Derwent (to be RD-500), and 10 (later,25) Nene (to be RD-45 & VK-1) were bartered (not a gift) for Ukraine grain. This is, clearly, an oops blunder in hindsight, given the subsequent Berlin Blockade and Cold (Korea, Nene/MiG-15: Hot) War...but a legitimate alternative history What-If has the whole East:West confrontation as avoided if US/UK had not tried to encircle/contain Joe. Why, for example, did B-36/(B-29D) B-50 and Avro Lincoln continue in production after VJ Day?
USSR: in October,1946 Uncle Joe was not yet seen in the colours he later displayed. UK had a $ bridging Reconstruction Loan, but needed ongoing $-sparing sources of food and other material. GIs were onway home, all planned to be gone by November,1948 Presidential Elections. It seemed a good idea to be on good terms with our near-neighbour. 10 (later,30) Derwent (to be RD-500), and 10 (later,25) Nene (to be RD-45 & VK-1) were bartered (not a gift) for Ukraine grain. This is, clearly, an oops blunder in hindsight, given the subsequent Berlin Blockade and Cold (Korea, Nene/MiG-15: Hot) War...but a legitimate alternative history What-If has the whole East:West confrontation as avoided if US/UK had not tried to encircle/contain Joe. Why, for example, did B-36/(B-29D) B-50 and Avro Lincoln continue in production after VJ Day?
Why, for example, did B-36/(B-29D) B-50 and Avro Lincoln continue in production after VJ Day?
You have to remember the attitude of the Atlee government to the Soviet Union. The Labour members of Parliament were singing 'The Red Flag' in the House of Commons.
USSR: in October,1946 Uncle Joe was not yet seen in the colours he later displayed
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I would wager that the 8th AF crews who experienced the Sturmgruppe attacks in summer/autumn 1944 might beg to differ! Not to mention the (admittedly limited) contribution of JG7 and the other jet units in the last few months of the war. It's true that by the end of 1944, the day Jagdwaffe was incapable of offering effective opposition to USAAF raids, but this came about well after Big Week; it resulted from the horrendous losses sustained over the Invasion Front and the USAAF's success in disrupting the German oil industry, and the transfer of many day fighter units to the Eastern Front to counter the last Soviet offensives.
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Originally Posted by Mike7777777
Jets were a waste of resource for the Germans (hindsight!).
And if they'd have know how the war was going to turn out they wouldn't have started it.
Crews wouldn't see the bigger picture
some idiot deciding to invade the Soviet Union of course
I don't own this space under my name. I should have leased it while I still could
Not really. the Tripartite Pact was a defensive treaty. There was nothing written into it that one had to join in with another's adventures. Should that have been the case Japan would have overrun Indo China and the Dutch East Indies a lot earlier than they did.
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"Germany (and Italy) declared war on the USA on 11 Dec 1941"
And by doing so avoided the risk that the USA could have been at War with Japan but not the Axis Powers in Europe. In 1941 it was still not a certainty that the majority of the US population was convinced another War in Europe was of real concern to them. Hitler solved the problem no doubt to the relief of FDR and Churchill.
And by doing so avoided the risk that the USA could have been at War with Japan but not the Axis Powers in Europe. In 1941 it was still not a certainty that the majority of the US population was convinced another War in Europe was of real concern to them. Hitler solved the problem no doubt to the relief of FDR and Churchill.
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Hello to all,
my first post.
I must say since discovering this site I have been absolutely blown away by the stories, explanations, theories, etc. you have provided on many topics. Thank you so very much for your contributions to enhancing my knowledge but also for showing me how little I really do know.
Now, on the topic of the British aircraft industry, the American aircraft industry has been through similar problems in the past as well. This from an article on Eastern Aircraft found in a US Navy magazine:
General Motors was contracted to assume production of Wildcats and Avengers so that Grumman could focus on designing and manufacturing newer types of aircraft.
To get started, Eastern Aircraft, as the new division was known, had to first tear down some highly productive automotive assembly and parts lines - ironically, the types of facilities that had attracted the US Navy in the first place.
All the plants had to undergo procedural and work-force transformations as well as physical ones. Eastern needed to form a new supplier network of more than 3,000 sub-contractors to obtain aircraft materials and parts.
The division's 9,000 employees required re-training by plane manufacturers, colleges and vocational schools. And because plane manufacturing was still a more manual process than auto-making, the work force had to be more than doubled and staffed mainly with unskilled people who required basic tools instruction.
The General Manager of Eastern said, "Let me confess at the outset that I am a 'Johnny-come-lately' to aircraft production. My entire career has been devoted to problems of automotive manufacture . . .in the field of aircraft manufacture, I don't pretend to know all the answers."
GM staff had come to their new business steeped in the principles of standardised mass production.....their re-orientation began soon after Eastern Aircraft was formed when they asked Grumman for complete parts lists and engineering data.....in the automotive process, designers had normally directed suppliers and manufacturers through fully detailed requisitions and drawings. At aircraft firms, as Eastern discovered, extensive use was made of hand tailoring by highly skilled mechanics guided by discussions with engineers and sketches.
Eastern unhappily learned, many of the specifications it needed were in the worker's heads....
Grumman itself, became Eastern's first supplier. Because the US Navy insisted that the two manufacturers produce planes with interchangeable parts, it was decided that one more step should be taken to guide Eastern. Grumman shipped finished Wildcats and Avengers for study and copying. Unfortunately the reverse-engineering tactic only proved how undefined aircraft standards were. Many of the components did not conform to the specifications of the drawings provided.
The engineers then adopted ship-builders techniques. They laid out full-scale outlines of aircraft and over a period of months (while hand-building aircraft in the meantime) produced drawings of the exact dimensions required of the thousands of parts needed. Thus, purchasing and tooling standards were finally set and documented.
Regards
Pete A.
my first post.
I must say since discovering this site I have been absolutely blown away by the stories, explanations, theories, etc. you have provided on many topics. Thank you so very much for your contributions to enhancing my knowledge but also for showing me how little I really do know.
Now, on the topic of the British aircraft industry, the American aircraft industry has been through similar problems in the past as well. This from an article on Eastern Aircraft found in a US Navy magazine:
General Motors was contracted to assume production of Wildcats and Avengers so that Grumman could focus on designing and manufacturing newer types of aircraft.
To get started, Eastern Aircraft, as the new division was known, had to first tear down some highly productive automotive assembly and parts lines - ironically, the types of facilities that had attracted the US Navy in the first place.
All the plants had to undergo procedural and work-force transformations as well as physical ones. Eastern needed to form a new supplier network of more than 3,000 sub-contractors to obtain aircraft materials and parts.
The division's 9,000 employees required re-training by plane manufacturers, colleges and vocational schools. And because plane manufacturing was still a more manual process than auto-making, the work force had to be more than doubled and staffed mainly with unskilled people who required basic tools instruction.
The General Manager of Eastern said, "Let me confess at the outset that I am a 'Johnny-come-lately' to aircraft production. My entire career has been devoted to problems of automotive manufacture . . .in the field of aircraft manufacture, I don't pretend to know all the answers."
GM staff had come to their new business steeped in the principles of standardised mass production.....their re-orientation began soon after Eastern Aircraft was formed when they asked Grumman for complete parts lists and engineering data.....in the automotive process, designers had normally directed suppliers and manufacturers through fully detailed requisitions and drawings. At aircraft firms, as Eastern discovered, extensive use was made of hand tailoring by highly skilled mechanics guided by discussions with engineers and sketches.
Eastern unhappily learned, many of the specifications it needed were in the worker's heads....
Grumman itself, became Eastern's first supplier. Because the US Navy insisted that the two manufacturers produce planes with interchangeable parts, it was decided that one more step should be taken to guide Eastern. Grumman shipped finished Wildcats and Avengers for study and copying. Unfortunately the reverse-engineering tactic only proved how undefined aircraft standards were. Many of the components did not conform to the specifications of the drawings provided.
The engineers then adopted ship-builders techniques. They laid out full-scale outlines of aircraft and over a period of months (while hand-building aircraft in the meantime) produced drawings of the exact dimensions required of the thousands of parts needed. Thus, purchasing and tooling standards were finally set and documented.
Regards
Pete A.
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Pete A.
This is an interesting post and reveals some new information that I've not seen elsewhere.
That at least some of the American aircraft industry learned lessons from the volume manufacturers is instructive. What is interesting, and cuts to the original question posed by this thread, is that UK industry had, at the same time, the opportunity to learn the same lesson. The UK too had its shadow plants, car and other volume manufacturers, who had to go to lengths to get the engineering out of the heads of the craftsman and down onto the drawings.
The difference being that by the 1960s the American aircraft industry were building as separate components the various spacecraft of Project Apollo which all came together, and fitted, for the first time in the assembly building at Cape Kennedy. While back in the UK those first Nimrod airframes, the ones that would eventually furnish the legacy components of the MRA4, were being manufactured with as much as 4" difference between copies of the 'same' unit.
The UK caught on eventually but what a pity it didn't learn sooner from the expensive lesson it paid for in WW2.
This is an interesting post and reveals some new information that I've not seen elsewhere.
That at least some of the American aircraft industry learned lessons from the volume manufacturers is instructive. What is interesting, and cuts to the original question posed by this thread, is that UK industry had, at the same time, the opportunity to learn the same lesson. The UK too had its shadow plants, car and other volume manufacturers, who had to go to lengths to get the engineering out of the heads of the craftsman and down onto the drawings.
The difference being that by the 1960s the American aircraft industry were building as separate components the various spacecraft of Project Apollo which all came together, and fitted, for the first time in the assembly building at Cape Kennedy. While back in the UK those first Nimrod airframes, the ones that would eventually furnish the legacy components of the MRA4, were being manufactured with as much as 4" difference between copies of the 'same' unit.
The UK caught on eventually but what a pity it didn't learn sooner from the expensive lesson it paid for in WW2.
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An interesting last few posts. It reminded me of something I read recently in Sir Stanley Hooker's book 'Not Much of An Engineer'. In it he talks about when RR wanted to get Ford's in Manchester to produce the Merlin.
Ford went down to Derby to have a look at the blueprints and announced they couldn't manufacture engine to these drawings. RR assumed they meant that the tolerances were too fine, but Ford said it was quite the reverse, they were too course! Ford explained that they produced many thousands of car engines where all the parts had to be interchangeable between engines and RR standards were not good enough to achieve this interchangeability.
In the end Ford's took away copies of the blueprints and re-drew them to their standards.
Ford went down to Derby to have a look at the blueprints and announced they couldn't manufacture engine to these drawings. RR assumed they meant that the tolerances were too fine, but Ford said it was quite the reverse, they were too course! Ford explained that they produced many thousands of car engines where all the parts had to be interchangeable between engines and RR standards were not good enough to achieve this interchangeability.
In the end Ford's took away copies of the blueprints and re-drew them to their standards.
Ford explained that they produced many thousands of car engines where all the parts had to be interchangeable between engines and RR standards were not good enough to achieve this interchangeability.
