![]() 07/25/2017 at 14:27 • Filed to: Planelopnik | ![]() | ![]() |
Listening to !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! about the P-51 at Oshkosh right now and Roush was talking about building Merlin V-12s at the Packard plant. They would test run each engine that came off the line before they sent it out. Six hours on a test stand, followed by a tear down, inspection and rebuild, then another five hours before being shipped out.
The plant went through 80,000 gallons of fuel per day during the Merlin’s production run in Detroit.
![]() 07/25/2017 at 14:31 |
|
Damn.
That’s all I’ve got.
![]() 07/25/2017 at 14:39 |
|
At least one section of the Rousch engine shop makes something not terrible
![]() 07/25/2017 at 14:42 |
|
Driver still sucks, though.
![]() 07/25/2017 at 14:49 |
|
Just another Ford leaving Cars & Coffee
07/25/2017 at 14:53 |
|
I can’t even imagine the sound.
![]() 07/25/2017 at 14:56 |
|
Literally deafening.
![]() 07/25/2017 at 15:08 |
|
And that, in a nutshell, tells you why the Axis did not stand a chance in hell, long-term.
The Allies (or rather, the US) were churning out matériel at a much faster rate than them, with hardly any scarcity of raw materials.
![]() 07/25/2017 at 15:09 |
|
Yep, arsenal of democracy in full swing.
![]() 07/25/2017 at 15:15 |
|
Yeah the Geeermans pulled a lot of stuff around with horses. I heard a BF109 flyover and it makes a meraculous sound too.
![]() 07/25/2017 at 15:22 |
|
Very cool. I got to see one of those engines up close in about 1973. It was in the Miss Budweiser , they had the hydroplane making test runs on the Pasquotank River in Elizabeth City NC before heading up the coast to a series of races. One of my friends dad was recruited to make sure the river was clear of logs and other debris. I had just turned 18 and was on one of the boats checking out the river so they let us give Miss Budweiser a close inspection when it came back in. She was shooting awesome rooster tails. You could see rainbows behind the boat from the mist. Such a powerful and LOUD engine. I was into building WWII model aircraft so it was big thrill for me.
![]() 07/25/2017 at 15:41 |
|
When I was around the hydroplane it was insane even from a couple of hundred feet away. Found a cut-away I thought you’d like.
![]() 07/25/2017 at 16:20 |
|
Sounds like Freedom. Carbureted, leaded gas burning, nazi stomping freedom.
![]() 07/25/2017 at 16:29 |
|
Nearly the entire (existing) US private manufacturing base was conscripted to produce war time goods. Not to mention the factories built just for war.
Also don’t discount the fact the Allies carpet bombed the ish out of Germany while never having US shores touched (minus Pearl Harbor).
07/25/2017 at 16:31 |
|
![]() 07/25/2017 at 16:43 |
|
Exactly.
![]() 07/25/2017 at 17:01 |
|
And now it’s mostly gone, or at least changed. It’s the Chinese that can knock out tens of thousands of anything out of dozens of factories built in months.
I wonder what modern American industry could do if completely focused on war production. We don’t have the capacity of years past, but the sophistication and efficiency is much higher.
![]() 07/25/2017 at 18:34 |
|
That is a great story!
![]() 07/25/2017 at 18:35 |
|
Daaaaaang! That’s a lot of AV gas!
![]() 07/25/2017 at 20:37 |
|
http://cafehayek.com/2015/02/american-industrial-production-1919-2015.html
I have to disagree. Industrial output continues to increase. Just we don’t have as many mega factories (with 10k worker) as we used to. industry has spread out and is now highly automated.
In terms of output I beleive a lot of those old plants would be put to shame. The hours it would take to machine a lot of those parts could be completely automated.
what comes as weird thought is how to compute one plane during ww2 to one today. yes the old one could be produced much faster, and cheaper but a f-16 would be impervious to all aircraft then.
![]() 07/25/2017 at 20:49 |
|
“From 1942 onward, America averaged 170 planes lost a day.
Almost 1,000 Army planes disappeared en route from the U.S. to foreign war theaters. But an eye-watering 43,581 aircraft were lost overseas including 22,948 on combat missions (18,418 against the Western Axis) and 20,633 attributed to non-combat causes overseas.
The losses were huge—-but so were production totals. From 1941 through 1945, American industry delivered more than 276,000 military aircraft. That number was enough not only for US Army, Navy and Marine Corps, but for allies as diverse as Britain , Australia , China and Russia . In fact, from 1943 onward, America produced more planes than Britain and Russia combined. And more than Germany and Japan together 1941-45.
A high-time P-51 pilot had 30 hours in type. Many had fewer than five hours.Some had one hour
www.shortwingpipers.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=2719&d...
the US Army Air Forces lost 14,903 pilots, aircrew and assorted personnel plus 13,873 airplanes —- inside the continental United States .”
Flight Journal had a great article on the atrocious loss rates of cadets and instructors in the rush to train bodies to fly.