Finkenwerder fuselages & wings?
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Finkenwerder fuselages & wings?
On Google Earth, there appear to be about 60 fuselages and a handful of wings stored densely together in the open air - from the preserved Guppy, two buildings south, painted light green or a reddish-brown. https://earth.google.com/web/@53.541...ign=vine&hl=en
Are they really fuselages, and why should there be so many at what I suppose to be an efficient manufacturing operation?
Are they really fuselages, and why should there be so many at what I suppose to be an efficient manufacturing operation?
I think that it's simply a ready stockpile of inventory (if one can refer to such large bits and bobs thus). As there's space to store things, at least when the photo was taken, it would be easier to have ready fuselage and wing components delivered to the assembly site ahead of time, rather than lingering at the foreign manufacture factories in storage. Although AB are no-doubt an integrated enterprise with just in time deliveries of smaller components, the complexities of aircraft assembly can lead to hiccups that might derail the smooth running of the line at times. Better to have the frames there and not 'there'.
By the way, they are not just random components. The fuselage sections, as built, each have the MSN painted on them, so presumably they can/should only be mated with the other major components intended for that particular aircraft.