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.

Freedom's Forge:: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II
Arthur Herman

As under SecNav during WWI, FDR knew that American production of war materiel didn’t amount to bupkis before the war was over. And he knew that that was not an option if America entered WWII.

“Everyone knew” that if France and Germany went to war, it would last a long time. When Hitler conquered France in about a month, everyone was shocked. It was at that point that FDR went all unconstitutional (IMHO) and arranged for military mobilization of American industry. And FDR also shipped as much military materiel to Britain as he could scrounge up.

Britain for its part, in addition to its prosecution of the war, shipped a fork truck pallet of top secret military technology to the US. Including the blueprints for the Merlin engine. And microwave radar.

The point is that American production of war materiel gradually ramped up between the Fall of France in May 1940 and Pearl Harbor. The first thing that entailed was building the buildings and making the machine tools required for the military production. The reason the US had a sparse inventory of military materiel was simply that FDR was shipping the stuff over to Britain - and later to the USSR - as fast as it was produced.

Hitler knew that the US was shipping war materiel to Britain, and so did his submariners. So even tho the Tripartite Pact was defensive in nature, and did not obligate him to declare war on the US after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Hitler was motivated to declare war on the US. Not doing so allowed too-easy passage of US aid to Britain and the USSR.

I've been studying the history of early aircraft engines since I visited the National Air & Space Museum a month ago. It really is astonishing how fast new tech was designed, prototyped, and put into production.

In 1903, the Wright Brothers needed a lightweight gasoline engine. They calculated that they needed an engine that produced at least 8 horsepower and weighed no more than 200 pounds.. A quick survey of the automotive market showed there was no such engine available and they would have to make their own. They had the block cast in Dayton and their mechanic Charlie Taylor machined the parts and assembled the engine. He later described his work: "We didn’t make any drawings. One of us would sketch out the part we were talking about on a piece of scratch paper, and I’d spike the sketch over my bench. It took me six weeks to make that engine. The only metal-working machines we had were a lathe and a drill press, run by belts from the stationary gas engine."

Just 14 years later near the end of WW I, more powerful and higher altitude was needed.

As WW I unfolded in Europe, Packard Company president Henry B. Joy grew ever more concerned and realized that the fledgling and largely disorganized American aircraft industry would need a more powerful engine for its aircraft fleet. In December 1914, Jesse Vincent, the Packard Company's chief engine designer, got the inspiration to combine two sixes into a V-12 configuration. Initial prototypes were limited to 289 cu. in. (4.7 liters) to permit testing in a race car that was restricted by automobile racing regulations to a maximum 300 cu. in. displacement engine. This prototype engine worked well, and soon its displacement was eventually boosted up to 905 cu. in. That effort came to fruition in 1915 when the design ofthe "Twin Six" engine was complete. This experimental engine weighed 817 lbs and produced 110 HP, and went on to set several automotive race track records. The second iteration of this engine was known as the "905", referring to its cubic inch displacement. It weighed 979 lbs. and developed 275 HP at 1600 rpm. The "905" was perfected and marketed as the automotive "Twin Six", and installed in an unprecedented 10,000 production automobiles in 1916.
America entered the war on 6 April 1917, following the attack and sinking o f the civilian transport ship Lusitania. At this time, Packard had the third version o f the "905" engine under development and had already invested nearly two years and $400,000 ofcompanyresources into the latest automobile engine. Feeling the need to aid the war effort, company president Alvan Macauley (Hemy Joy's successor) offered his company's resources, knowledge and facilities to the government. Although it makes perfect business sense, perhaps it would be pure speculation to suggest that they might have been thinking, " If the government is about to buy a lot of aircraft engines for the Army planes it surely will build and send across the Atlantic, then those engines may as well be Packards!"
The company representative Macauley had sent to Washington DC was Vincent, their chief engine designer. Vincent met with Aircraft Production Board members Edward Deeds and S. Waldon (a former sales manager ofPackard) and proposed that a standardized Army aircraft engine be procured for all Army aircraft, and that it be Packard's "905" design. Vincent reinforced his proposal with the statistic that, at the time, the British and French had developed 83 different types o f aircraft engines and likely warned his audience of the logistics nightmare of trying to maintain an American and Allied aircraft engine fleet of that composition. He also added that the Germans, in comparison, were flying only eight engine types. They, in turn, asked Vincent to confer with E. J. Hall, another engine expert from the San Francisco, California based Hall-Scott Motor Car Company who, coincidentally, also happened to be in Washington DC with a similar proposal. Vincent and Hall conferred for three days and nights, along with Dr. Samuel W. Stratton of the Bureau of Standards. They were given the task of designing as rapidly as possible an aircraft engine that would rival if not surpass those of Great Britain, France, and Germany. The Board specified that the engine would have a high power-to-weight ratio and be adaptable to mass production.
On 21 May 1917, it was decided that an engine combining the features of the Packard V-12 "905" engine and the Hall-Scott V-12 "A-8" engine was to be the Army's new standard aircraft engine. Knowing that several companies would be building it under contract for the government, they felt a more "neutral" name was desirable. Thus, the "Liberty'' engine was born.
The Board brought Vincent and Hall together on 29 May 1917 at the Willard Hotel in Washington, where the two were asked to stay until they produced a set of basic drawings. After just five days, Vincent and Hall left the Willard with a completed design for the new engine, which had adopted, almost unchanged, the single overhead camshaft and rocker arm valvetrain design of the later Mercedes D.IIIa engines of 1917–18.
In July 1917, an eight-cylinder prototype assembled by Packard's Detroit plant arrived in Washington for testing, and in August, the 12-cylinder version was tested and approved. The Liberty engine was formally announced on 4 July 1917.
In the fall of 1917, the War Department placed an order for 22,500 Liberty engines, dividing the contract among the automobile and engine manufacturers Buick, Ford, Cadillac, Lincoln, Marmon, and Packard.

From a joint design in May to a prototype in July and a production order for 22,500 in the fall -- less than six months!

So the great American development and production ramp-up of new technologies that occurred in WW II ALSO occurred in WW I.

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