How ridiculous was American production in World War 2? [images at link]

We can just put up a bunch of numbers, but I don’t think that gives a full appreciation of scale. So first let’s hit some specific examples.

This is Willow Run. It was a B-24 plant built by Ford to mass produce the bomber. It ran its line 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and produced a complete B-24 every 63 minutes on average. At peak, it produced 100 bombers in just two days.

That is just one plant, producing one type of aircraft. We had literally had thousand of plants like this, producing everything from tanks to field dressings.

This is a Liberty Ship. It was a 14,000 ton cargo ship used for carrying essential war materials from the US to our allies and troops during WW2.

America had 18 dry docks building Liberty Ships during WW2. Whereas typically riveted ships of the day took months to build, the Liberty Ships went from nothing to ready to launch in an average of 42 days in those dry docks. They were welded instead of riveted, and only built for a 5-year life span.

Forty-two days doesn’t seem very fast? Well I did say that was an average. The first Liberty ship took 230 days to complete. The fastest built ship took less than five days. That is a 14,000 ton ship from laying the keel to launch in less than five days.

Here we have the M4 Sherman Tank. This was a medium tank, and the primary tank of the US Army during the war. It has received a lot of criticism both then and now as being too light for the competition, having an undersized gun and the liability of a gas burning (instead of diesel) engine. For all that, it was still a very successful tank. One of its best features… it lent itself to mass production.

Above is the Detroit Arsenal Tank Plant. This plant was built by Chrysler for the US Army and was the country's first government-owned, contractor-operated tank plant. Shown in the picture is the assembly of the M4A4 Sherman tanks.

This 113-acre plant built Lee, Sherman and Pershing tanks during the war and was only one of nine plants that built the Sherman. Between the nine plants, 49,234 Sherman tanks were built during the war, accounting for about half of the tanks the US produced during the war. Yeah, half again.

While we were building Liberty Ships as if we were breeding rabbits, we had to also build some fighting ships. To this end we built a whole bunch of shipyards.

Here we have a portion of the Boston Naval Yard in 1943. In the large slipway on the left you can see a monster of a ship. That would be the USS Iowa, a big-ass Battleship. We built eight battleships during WW2, and repaired several more that got a rough start at Pearl Harbor. But what I want to point out is the long flat guy in the center top. That is the USS Bunker Hill, an Essex Class Aircraft Carrier.

The Essex Class Carriers were a mainstay of the American Carrier Fleet. They were the Navy’s new wonder weapons, and the Navy could not possibly have enough of them. The Essex could carry 90–100 aircraft, had a crew of about 2600 and could take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’.

Here is the Bunker Hill right after being launched on December 7th 1942, exactly one year after the attack on Pearl Harbor. It joined the fleet as one new carrier out of the 141 Aircraft Carriers we would build during the war. No, that number is not a typo. The United States built and launched 141 Aircraft Carriers of all classes during the war. To protect them we built 498 escort ships (Corvettes and Frigates)

(Above: Buckley Class Destroyer Escort, 148 built) As well as 349 destroyers (Above: Fletcher Class Destroyer, 175 Built).

We can go on and on, but the fact of the matter is the US was one giant, war-material-producing machine during WW2. We easily out-produced every other participant in the conflict, and at the same time created an entire NEW industry which produced the first nuclear chain reaction, uranium enrichment infrastructure, plutonium production plants and atomic reactors and weapons. We literally invented a new industry while building all this other stuff, creating massive industrial plants for the various type of chemical and physical uranium enrichment processes, as well as testing and production facilities for the weapons themselves.

It is honestly hard to fully grasp the magnitude of the industrial might that was leveraged during the conflict. But hopefully this has given you some appreciation for the monumental effort put forth by American industry and the American people.

Willow Run documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2zukteYbGQ

Thanks. What a contrast. It seems like today we must rely on China just for protective clothing. And more:

Trump Wants Chinese Parts Out of American Weapons ...The report says China is the only producer of various chemicals needed in missiles and bombs, Japan and European nations are the only suppliers of certain carbon fibers used in missiles, satellites, and space rockets; Germany is the prime supplier of special vacuum tubes for night vision goggles, it says...

China is mentioned 232 times in the report, which has been been in the works for more than a year by a handful of government agencies. Much of the document’s findings and recommendations are classified because they describe areas of vulnerability in America’s supply chain. https://www.defenseone.com/business/2018/10/trump-wants-chinese-parts-out-american-weapons/151821

The US is running out of bombs — and it may soon struggle to make more The annual Industrial Capabilities report, put out by the Pentagon’s Office of Manufacturing and Industrial Base Policy, has concluded that the industrial base of the munitions sector is particularly strained...

Some suppliers have dropped out entirely, leaving no option for replacing vital materials. Other key suppliers are foreign-owned, with no indigenous capability to produce vital parts and materials ― setting up the risk that a conflict with China could rely on Chinese-made parts...

As to diversity in the industrial base, well ― there isn’t any, with the authors concluding that Raytheon and Lockheed Martin account for about 97 percent of the DoD’s munitions and missile procurement funding. Four industrial areas stand out as “high risk” areas of concern: Solid rocket motors. A military-only technology, SRMs are basically split between Orbital ATK and AerojetRocketdyne. However, Orbital is set to take on a broader section of this production, essentially leaving the U.S. with only one producer of this vital equipment...

Thermal batteries. Used in all DoD missiles and guided munitions, there is one (unnamed) manufacturer of these technologies who controls about 80 percent of the market...

Fuzes.

Small turbine engines. There are currently two companies involved in this sector, but one ― Teledyne Turbine Engines ― has announced it will be leaving the business in 2018, leaving only Williams International to supply this capability.

Overall, the authors found that of the 121 second-tier suppliers for munition capabilities, 98 percent of them were single/sole source. And of the 73 third-tier suppliers, 98 percent were also single/sole source.

There are also concerns about materials used in the systems. For example, the department is facing rising costs for ammonium perchlorate, used in almost all DoD missile programs.

Another example: Dechlorane Plus 25, a component in the insulation of weapons. “There is no domestic supplier for this material;... there is now no source for Dechlorane in the world.”

And the sole producer of dimeryl diisocyanate, a key propellant ingredient used in systems like the AIM-9X and AMRAAM missiles, has informed the Pentagon it will be leaving the business shortly,.. https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2018/05/22/the-us-is-running-out-of-bombs-and-it-may-soon-struggle-to-make-more/

The Pentagon’s Seek-and-Destroy Mission for Counterfeit Electronics...

The military estimates that up to 15 percent of all spare and replacement parts for its weapons, vehicles and other equipment are counterfeit, making them vulnerable to dangerous malfunctions...

In December 2015 federal agents arrested three Chinese nationals for, among other things, selling 45 counterfeit Intel microchips to an undercover agent with the understanding the chips would be headed to the U.S. Navy for a project involving submarines. One of the men arrested—Jiang Guanghou Yan—had also asked the undercover agent to get him 22 military-grade Xilinx Corp. microchips—worth $37,00 apiece—for illegal export to China. “Military grade” means the electrical components are designed specifically to withstand prolonged exposure to extreme temperatures and radiation. When the agent advised Yan they would have to be stolen from a U.S. Navy base, Yan offered to cover up the crime by providing fakes to replace the stolen chips.

“If [those counterfeit chips had been] installed in a missile’s guidance system, such missile would either not function at all or would likely not proceed to its intended target, and would likely strike a completely unintended destination,” Keith Avery, a senior engineer at the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, testified..

Integrated circuits are especially difficult to protect from counterfeiting because they might come from an overseas manufacturer and be resold by several subcontractors before a large military supplier like Lockheed Martin or Boeing embeds them in technology that it sells to the U.S. government. The global growth of the supply chain that lets electronics manufacturers tap less-expensive suppliers in China, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan has proved very difficult to police. Electronic waste from the U.S. is another key contributor to counterfeit integrated circuits, as trashed circuit boards from computers discarded in some countries are often taken apart, refurbished, relabeled, repackaged and resold as new to electronics manufacturers. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-pentagon-rsquo-s-seek-and-destroy-mission-for-counterfeit-electronics/

On its present spiritual, moral and political trajectory, the time will come when it is lamented of the US,

How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished! (2 Samuel 1:27)

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