WWII quality....the manufacturers.

[plan_D]

That would be a quality of design; it's was designed as a simpleton's tank. All it took was a log to prop up the thing, and everything is open for you to fiddle.

Ease of maintenance wouldn't be brought into the equation when talking about build quality.

[Njaco]

Thanks. I was just thinking that the ease of repair might mistakenly translate into quality. Sometimes something might seem good when the problems are minimized. You may not remember the 6 seconds it took to fix a broken bolt as opposed to something far more labor intensive.

[plan_D]

That's exactly why everyone thinks that T-34s were reliable. T-34s were getting iced up and fires had to be lit under their bellies to get them started, their engines broke down many times over ... but because the T-34 was so simple, it'd be fixed within a hour or two and it's gone down in history as being reliable .. .it's just easy to fix and the problem forgotten.

[FLYBOYJ]

During the war years the US adopted 2 processes to control quality at all military contractors and they were known as Mil-I-45208 and Mil-Q-9858. They provided to the basis for modern quality control and were the forerunners of ISO 9001/ 2000 which is so commonly used today throughout industry. To be honest, the old "Mil-I" and "Mil-Q" were in many ways to the current ISO standards as they focused on only the quality of the product. ISO took quality a step further to ensure that there was "quality" at all levels of company function and management.

[drgondog]

Joe brought out the Quality Standards for US during WWII as well as current ISO 9001 and Sigma Six.

A note, Definitions of Quality during WWII included many terms ranging from

Meets Design, meets Specification
Zero Defects/Failures within Design and Specification parameters

Today it must achieve yet another more subjective standard - Customer Delighted which generally implies Value across four primary dimensions - Quality, Service, Cost and Time.

To increase value today to maintain "delighted" one generally has to focus on methods and process and match market hype to Customer Sat.

Back to WWII. Good stuff was designed by all the combatants. Customer Sat was more or less defined by cost, time to battlefield, mean time between service/failures, and Service/Logistics behind the maintenance and Repair and last but not least "did it achieve the result I was looking for?"

From USSR point of view and US POV, the T-34 and Sherman met most expectations in 1943 from tactical point because we strove for mobility and speed in our armor - but woe to the Tanker when he encountered Panthers and Tigers in numbers in 1944... so "Customer Sat" waned and T-26 was next design and spec for US because the expectations changed.

Njaco- give to Sovs great credit for building production facilities out of harm's way (BTW Speer's decentralization efforts were under even tougher conditions because there was no such thing as 'out of range') and the amount of war material produced...

Having said that, the production quality in context of fit and appearance at least through comparison of MiG21 to say F-4 or MiG 15 to F-86 was sub par to US standards. Same for M-4 vs T-34 or Mustang vs Yak-3 or IL-2

My first walk around on a MiG21 captured by Israelis in 1967 and brought to Nellis for initial Red Flag showed really huge gaps in just plain old sheet metal to sheet metal butt joints.. but it was one hell of an airplane so it definitely achieved design and spec and Customer Sat and Value prop from a quality standpoint. Ditto MiG 15 vs F-86

[Glider]

I cannot comment on all the nations but it did vary. The USA tended to have the highest quality of finish in the weapons produced. Certainly my Grandfather was astonished when he picked up his Liberty ship. It even had an Ice Cream machine which he had never seen before and it AA guns would shame a typical british escort.

As for the UK it did vary. Aircraft were as well built as anyones, ships were simple but reliable but our tanks were awfull, not just design but in quality of Production.

[Downwind.Maddl-Land]

Off my knowledge of tank production; the Soviet Union was poor. It was all quantity.

Don't forget Uncle Joe Stalin's famous phrase:

"QUANTITY has a QUALITY all of its own!"

It served the USSR well for many years, well into the WARPAC scenario. It doesn't matter how good/fast/agile/beautifully finished your $XXm Typhoon/F-22 is, when the 1 serviceable one comes up against 25+ MiG 29s, there's only one result.

[FLYBOYJ]

Originally Posted by Downwind.Maddl-Land

Don't forget Uncle Joe Stalin's famous phrase:

"QUANTITY has a QUALITY all of its own!"

It served the USSR well for many years, well into the WARPAC scenario. It doesn't matter how good/fast/agile/beautifully finished your $XXm Typhoon/F-22 is, when the 1 serviceable one comes up against 25+ MiG 29s, there's only one result.

A lot of Mig 29 parts!

[Downwind.Maddl-Land]

Nice riposte! Are you a closet Brit?!

[drgondog]

Originally Posted by Downwind.Maddl-Land

Don't forget Uncle Joe Stalin's famous phrase:

"QUANTITY has a QUALITY all of its own!"

It served the USSR well for many years, well into the WARPAC scenario. It doesn't matter how good/fast/agile/beautifully finished your $XXm Typhoon/F-22 is, when the 1 serviceable one comes up against 25+ MiG 29s, there's only one result.

Maybe not.. so far the ratio of kills to losses for the F-15 and F-16 are more than 100+ to zero in air to air against soviet fighters

[FLYBOYJ]

Originally Posted by Downwind.Maddl-Land

Nice riposte! Are you a closet Brit?!

You never could know!

[ppopsie]

Interesting discussions. Following is my view;

>Zero Defects/Failures
That is very thing we mocked, albeit after the war. My opinion is that Japanese had been so good at making what the eye can see. There were good examples like A6M Zero-sen, G4M bombers and even battleship Yamato. All these were fruits of superb engineering and technology but manufacturing of them largely depended on craftsmanship or individual skill of the workers. Operating of the equipment in the fields also depended on skills and techniques or guts, rather than systematized standards or procedures.


Before WW2 airplanes and ships were manufactured, or crafted, in limited numbers under contracts from military and ALL of the civilian mechanical industries were exclusively geared up with military contracts. There had been almost no industry like automobiles, appliances existed for the people's life. It is evident that there had been no such items exported to foreign countries. There possibly be the case that cheaper Japanese made civil airplanes sold in US before the war but it was not.

As can be imagined, the quality of the products went down drastcally later in the war when the aircraft industry inflated so much suffered a lack of skilled wokers or craftsmen. This reflected in the numbers of planes lost other than in combat which is almost the same or exceeding the number of the lost in combat, as reported in post-war US survey documents. Quality of other supplies including fuels and oils accounted for that too.

After the storm gone, the reccuring of the Japanese industry confronted another competition or war in civilian market and to win it, it was needed to introduce, or mock maybe at first, the QC. This was led by the indstrial leaders who mostly had been in military before and/or during the war and who well aware of the value of it.

[renrich]

I have part of a copy of the report of the comparison between US fighters and the Kiska A6M. The Zeke had been repaired by American technicians but during the tests the US Army fighters had a number of realiability issues while the A6M just kept soldiering on. Having had a large number of German cars, I have found them to be somewhat overengineered. I wonder if their AC suffered from that characteristic. I believe some of their AFVs did. Having dealt with the fuel systems and electrical systems of British cars, I also wonder about the realiability of their WW2 AC. Based on books about the Pacific War, I would guess that early on the Japanese may have had the best quality AC as far as realiabilty is concerned but their advantage there dwindled as the war went along.

[FLYBOYJ]

Originally Posted by ppopsie

After the storm gone, the reccuring of the Japanese industry confronted another competition or war in civilian market and to win it, it was needed to introduce, or mock maybe at first, the QC. This was led by the indstrial leaders who mostly had been in military before and/or during the war and who well aware of the value of it.

There is no doubt that the Japanese had a problem with quality especially parts that were supposed to be interchangeable. After the war William Edwards Deming tried to sell Quality Control sciences to US industry and he was laughed at - he went to Japan and his concepts were totally embraced and it eventually showed in the improvement of Japanese goods over the years.

[ppopsie]

Originally Posted by renrich

...of German cars, I have found them to be somewhat overengineered. I wonder if their AC suffered from that characteristic.

I believe so too, after doing maintenances on many of German gliders which are all very well engineered and still remained features of the good old days. For example control linkages in some of the top racing types have interconnected aileron and flap which can set them to each flying conditions.
All the gliders can be de-rigged to be stored and transported and in that all the controls are connected automatically. And the retractable power plants. I owed German aircraft technologies and its designers so much.

There seems to be a limitless flow of new ideas still. That should be okay for hobby flying in peacetime to make it more interesting. But suppose if that happened during the war? It seems it did.

I heard that pre-WW2 Japanese military aircraft were very well crafted. If we had learned the QC before making Zero, we would have fought better a lot.