Lancaster Vs. B-24

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Originally Posted by FLYBOYJ

Yep - when major design changes are implemented during aircraft production, the busiest people in the plant are the tooling folks. Engineers design the thing, manufacturing engineers have to figure out how to build it, tooling engineers have to figure to pull both of their efforts together so the thing will be built right. Like putting 10 pounds of sh#t in a 5 pound bag...

Are you Serious! I thought it was so easy to buld a plane. I thought they just got together and folded pieces of paper and cardboard and then just went out and flew it! Man am I shocked!

[FLYBOYJ]

Originally Posted by DerAdlerIstGelandet

Are you Serious! I thought it was so easy to buld a plane. I thought they just got together and folded pieces of paper and cardboard and then just went out and flew it! Man am I shocked!

[Glider]

Originally Posted by syscom3

Switching the tooling from one aircraft to another would take a couple of months at the top. If it was done in the US witha ll the inneficiencies and wastage we inccured, it could be done in Britain under their more efficient resource allocation
.

What total rot. If it was that easy to switch production we would have stopped building Sterlings and switched to Lancs way back in 1942. Hurricanes would also have stopped being produced in 1942. Germany would have stopped the 109 in around 1943 and gone to the 190. He111 would have been switched to something say a Ju188. P40's would have been converted to say a P51. Dare I say B17 to B24, C47 to C46, Ju52 to almost any other transport, the examples are endless

Syscom. You are big on statements but light on facts. Can I ask for ANY example of a Major factory switching from one type to another in two months.

And as for this
quote If a british commander in the field wanted a Beaufighter, then he would be told none are available. Tough luck to him. He can have a Typhoon, Mosquito or a B25.
I didn't realise it was so easy to convert from one plane to another. Crew training, spares, maintanence, pity if your on Anti Shipping patrol and want to drop a torpedo, never mind I am sure the Germans/Japs will not mind.

You also seem to think that we had an excess of machine tools, you are so so wrong. Did you know that at the start of the war we had One machine making Merlin crakshafts.
When I was training in the Fleet Air Arm we were using Lathes marked Wartime Tolerances Only. When I asked, was told these were only to be used for training and non critical parts because they had failed the QA test but rather than throw them away were used for other roles.

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Good info there Glider and I agree.

[the lancaster kicks ass]

and sys, a single 4 engined bomber is not the same as 4 single engined fighters, the empty weight of a spit Mk.IX was about 5,634lbs, the empty weight of a lanc? 36,811lbs, so, is the empty lanc the equivilant of 4 empty spits? NO!

and you say you work at this company making stalites? have you ever actually put anything together in your life? i'm a farmer's son, what does that mean? it means i've worked around machinery, now i'm not saying i know as much about machinery about many of the other members, but i'm 15 and i can tell you that when making anything with machinery you HAVE to be precise, even working on farm machines, if you make a mistake, it aint gonna go, so don't say that standards were lower during the war, because you can't skimp...........

[syscom3]

and you say you work at this company making stalites?

you mean satellites?

have you ever actually put anything together in your life?

Ummmm..... actually I have. In factoroies, customer sites and labs, for almost twice the number of years as you have been alive

i'm a farmer's son, what does that mean? it means i've worked around machinery, now i'm not saying i know as much about machinery about many of the other members, but i'm 15 and i can tell you that when making anything with machinery you HAVE to be precise, even working on farm machines, if you make a mistake, it aint gonna go, so don't say that standards were lower during the war, because you can't skimp...........

As in any manufactored product, some parts are precision built to high tolerances, some to wide tolerances. If youve ever bothered to look at a blueprint you will see the classic symbol next to a measurement "+/- .00x"
In WW2, production was paramount, and those designs that had a minimum of pecision built componants usually got built en mass.

[FLYBOYJ]

Good points there guys! It's a lot easier to build single engine fighters under conventional assembly methods as opposed to multi engine aircraft. Speaking in WW2 standards, larger multi engine aircraft were a lot more complicated than single engine fighters. Besides your normal engine and flight controls multiplied by 4, you had tons of electrical wiring and hydraulic lines for gun turrets, electronic provisions, and other items like Syncrophasers (someone ask what this is and I'll tell you). Saying that building 4 single engine fighters is like building one 4 engine bomber is ridiculous, it's like saying 4 motorcycles make a car!!!

[FLYBOYJ]

Originally Posted by syscom3

As in any manufactored product, some parts are precision built to high tolerances, some to wide tolerances. If youve ever bothered to look at a blueprint you will see the classic symbol next to a measurement "+/- .00x"
In WW2, production was paramount, and those designs that had a minimum of pecision built componants usually got built en mass.

Actually the "classic" tolerance was and is as follows....

.XXX - +/- .003
.XX - +/- .010

For highly precision parts you'll see tolernce four places.

[syscom3]

A Syncrophaser ensures the props spin at the same RPM. Besides making them sound better, it might also have something to do with minimizing low frequency resonance that might be coupled to the airframe. Perhaps it also slightly increases aircraft performance by eliminating asynmetric thrust angles?

For production purposes, one heavy bomber = four fighters.

[FLYBOYJ]

Originally Posted by syscom3

A Syncrophaser ensures the props spin at the same RPM. Besides making them sound better, it might also have something to do with minimizing low frequency resonance that might be coupled to the airframe. Perhaps it also slightly increases aircraft performance by eliminating asynmetric thrust angles?

Very good, perhaps striaght from a Ham Standard site...
The amount of wiring for those probably could wire 8 single seat fighters.

Originally Posted by syscom3

For production purposes, one heavy bomber = four fighters.

You're on drugs! OK - 4 P-38s make a B-36?!?!?

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Hes not on drugs, he just lives in a world of illusions and has no clue about aircraft production.

[the lancaster kicks ass]

sys go back to my example, one bog standarn single engined fighter, in this case a standard Spitfire Mk.IX, empty weight 5,634lbs, that means there's 5,634lbs of materials going into a single plane, so the engine, all the wiring and skins, tanks, everything...........

so, if a single four engined bomber is the equivilant of 4 single engined fighters, logically it should weigh four times as much, as there will be four times the ammount of material gone into it? correct? no, an empty lanc weighed about 6.5 times more than an empty spit, thats 14,275lbs of extra material gone into the lanc, that extra weight isn't going to produce itself, it takes more time to produce and install that extra material!

[syscom3]

There were no definitions of synchrophasers I could find, so I deduced what it was from some bits of information from synchrophasers that were for sale.

Besides, the root words indicate that it has something to do with "same phase".

Lanc, just for you, one spit = 6.5 bombers. In a macro economic sense, its irrelevant.

[FLYBOYJ]

There's a great movie clip that shows P-51 production at NAs old LAX facility. It shows one guy "mating" wing halves on an assembly line, actually bolting them together. Later in the clip it shows much of the final assembly which looked more like an automotive production. Little production tooling was utilized at this stage of production, it seems all the components that were jig built were completed as large sub assemblies that needed little or no special tooling for assembly. Most WW2 fighters I've seen up close and personal seem to be assembled this way.

Now let’s talk big planes (Listen Up Syscom). From your B-17 to B-24 through your B-52 and modern airliners, putting the wings on was done at an assembly "segment" or "station" called "Wingmate," pretty much common through-out the aircraft industry. At that point the wings were joined to the fuselage using tooling that usually set the wing into splice plates that were already installed on the aircraft fuselages. This had to be done with care and precision to ensure things weren't going together crooked. On the B-17 there also was a large fitting that incorporated 2 high strength bolts (upper and lower)

Here’s a photo of a B-17 fuselage on a crane, the lower and upper portions of the wing rib profile is where the splice plate would be.


Here a B-17 Right wing (upside down)


Here's the wing mate station, if you look closely you could see the special dollies supporting the wings as they go together....


Once at wing mate dozens of high tolerance holes were drilled through the splice plates for close tolerance "Hi Locs" or "Hi Shear" pins cold be installed. These are close tolerance steel pins that are installed similar to a rivet but they have a threaded stem. A nut is screwed on and when seated an upper portion "snaps" off ensuring proper torque and semi-permanent installation (these could be removed but it could be real tough.)

The complexity of this assembly is ten fold when compared to a single engine fighter. The B-24 employed a similar installation but the wings were first joined to a "Stub Wing" and then assembled to the rest of the fuselage.



Here’s a crashed B-24 wing. The blue and red things that look like nuts are hi-loc or hi-shear collars


This one tore away inboard from its splice plane, note the sheared wing spar.

Here's the P-51 wingmate - notice no jigs or platforms needed for this operation.

[FLYBOYJ]

Part 2....



There you have it - there's a lot more involved, systems, assembly, operationally, and maintainability-wise when comparing a WW2 bomber to a fighter, and I just scratched the surface, I didn't go into radios, radar, bombsights etc. To say 4 fighters equal one 4 engine bomber is a simplistic way of looking at the picture based on size, it reminds me of the old skit when a boss question his workers - "How long does it take to get that thing built." The worker answers "It takes 3 guys 4 days to complete the job." Then the boss tells his worker, "Get 12 guys on it and complete it in a day."

I actually saw that kind of mentality at McDonnell Douglas and on the L1011 production line while at Lockheed, McDonnell Douglas drifted into oblivion and then was swallowed up by the competition (Boeing) and the L1011 was a financial disaster...

So tell me Sys, are you a Boss?!?!