AviationBanter - View Single Post - F-35's Costs Climb Along With Concerns

Harry Andreas

In article ,
wrote:

(Harry Andreas) wrote:

:In article , "Keith W"
wrote:
:
: "Harry Andreas" wrote in message
: ...
: In article ,
: wrote:
:
: Note that this is sort of the same approach that lost Germany the war.
: Everything was hand-finished to very high standards, while us sloppy
: folks cranked out ten times as many tanks as they could because we let
: the tolerances be looser and eliminated a lot of the skilled
: 'touch-labor' in the finishing stages.
:
: Hmmm. I wouldn't ride that horse too far.
:
: Ever see a 1944 built Walther P-38, or Waffenfabrik Mauser?
: They didn't spend nearly any time finishing them as compared to
: the early war versions.
:
:
: The German record was very mixed
:
:Keith, I hear ya, and the other posters who have said similar things,
:but I still object to Mr McCall's statement that, in Germany,
:"Everything was hand-finished to very high standards".
:That's just not true. As you point out, it was very selective,

Yes. The big ticket items (which was what I meant by "everything",
since that is what wars are actually fought and won with) got all the
hand finishing. Small stuff and aircraft designed specifically to be
cheap and 'throw away' generally weren't.

So object and be damned to you.

Dude, you can't say "Everything" and then get mad when someone
disagrees with you. Everything means everything, not some things...
And I'll bet the Wehrmacht infantry would disagree with you about
big ticket items winning the war. As we know so well, boots on the
ground win the war, and boots on the ground are armed with rifles
and other "small" arms, the quality of which, as I pointed out in my
initial post, degraded substantially as the war progressed.
But I'm just an engineer who builds military equipment; what do I know.

--
Harry Andreas
Engineering raconteur