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

Robert

"Jack Love" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 28 Apr 2006 15:04:23 -0700, (Harry
Andreas) wrote:

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.

And we kept a good handle on when 'good enough' was in fact good
enough.

One of the extreme examples of this was the engine cooling fan on
tigers(?) - it was machined out of a single piece of aluminum. - Took lots
of precision machining.

US tanks had a standard car fan - stamped steel blades riveted to the
pulley. - Took 5 stamps, 10 rivets, and mumble mumble machining on the
pulley assembly. MUCH cheaper and easier.