what weapon could $16,000 bought in 1944?

[Windward]

hey guys, I'm reading a book "LIBERTY: The Ships that Won the War", and notice an interesting story. On the Christmas day of 1944, in Brunswick, Georgia, workers in a ship yard decided to work for free on that day, to build an extra Liberty Ship. According to US laws, it's illegal for factory owners to let their workers work for free, so they donated their daily pay. Finally 16,080 dollars were sent to US Treasury together with a matching donation from the company itself.

So I wonder what weapon could $16,080 bought in 1944? Maybe a M4 Sherman? Or an interceptor? And what if $ 32,160?

(AFAIK workers of Hanford, a plutonium separation and process factory, which belong to Manhattan Project, donated their daily pay and bought a Boeing B-17 for USAAF, which was named "Day's Pay")

thanks in advance!

[LWD]

I think P-51s were around $50K. $32K may be in the ball park for a tank. Probably a fair amount left over from a half track, truck, or artillery piece. Cost in general get a bit fuzzy depending on whether or not you are counting GFE or what type of cost (cost to manufacture, amount payed to manufacturer, are facilities costs included, etc)

There is some info here:
http://www.geocities.com/mark_willey/lend.html
But I don't know exactly what the cost represent (what we charged the Soviets I guess but not how they were developed)

also note that their are some probable type'os. For instance I saw a 99mm AA gun referanced and it's price is for 45. Prices seam to be totals for that type so you will have to divide by the quantity to get a per piece price.

[Windward]

It's very interesting information. Thank you very much dear LWD!

[Jon G.]

In 1940 prices, 16,080$ would have bought you 1,609 75 mm howitzer shells according to an article about the 105 mm howitzer which I recently read. Alternatively, the same sum would have bought you 502 105 mm shells at 32$ a piece.

I seem to recall that a deuce-and-a-half truck cost about 8,500$ but I don't remember where I read that.

In all cases, item price would probably decrease strongly with mass production - so assuming no inflation etc. 16,080$ would probably have bought you more shells/trucks/aircraft/etc. in 1944 than it would have bought you in the 1940 prices which I quote above.

[Windward]

thank you gentleman!

according to my resource (an article wrote by a Chinese manager of Carlowitz & Co, major munition supplier for Chinese army in the 1930s), China imported a great deal of weapons between 1936 and 1937, the price were listed: a 75mm Borfus mountain gun costs $ 16,000 in 1936, while a Borfus 75mm AA gun for $ 30,000. 105mm Krupp gun for $35,000. Krupp steam locomotive for $35,000, AEG searchlight (with generator) $18,000 per set.


regards

[LWD]

Were those delivered prices? or was delivery extra? Also were those government to government sales or purchases from the respective countries. In the latter case the price can be signficantly more than the same item would run if bought by the home country military.

[nebelwerferXXX]

A 1936-37 overpriced Chinese weapons:
$16,000...75mm Borfus mountain gun
$30,000...75mm Borfus AA gun
$35,000...105mm Krupp gun
$35,000...Krupp steam locomotive
$18,000...AEG search light with generator

[nebelwerferXXX]

A 1936-37 overpriced Chinese weapons:
$16,000...75mm Borfus mountain gun
$30,000...75mm Borfus AA gun
$35,000...105mm Krupp gun
$35,000...Krupp steam locomotive
$18,000...AEG search light with generator

It can also buy many items, such as...I cannot say what's in my mind because this forum, they say needs 'Hard Facts'.

[Hanny]

A spifire, more or less, $19,000, or £12,600.

[Guaporense]

£12,600 was much more than $19,000. More like $60,000. (the average american fighter cost 40,000 to 50,000 dollars). The average german fighter cost 80,000 RM.

[Hanny]

Depends what you think i wrote, Uk spent £12,600 to manufacture a Spitfire in the UK, the same asset in the USA would run to $19,000, or what you did was to convert the £ to $ and get 4.8 times £ = $ cost, thats not how it worked btw.


If you read M Harriosn works, he compares nations asets built compared to international prices of resources, to geta base cost and compares what each nation actualy spent to get the same aset.

If you search the net, you find http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_was_the_ ... _2_dollars which is derived from Harriosns working out.

This prior thread has some intresting costs, by intresting i mean the Garand $83, if you work out what a squad/company cost to arm, it gets intresting real quick.
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 6&t=149803

About 10 years ago i was follwing a topic on this and still have some of the thread, it may be of use to someone.
All-in price for a Panther was $129,000 RM, or about US$32,000. Price for a Sherm was $40-$60,000 depending on the model.
Final assembly of a Panther took 2,000 man hours. All-in including subcomponents 55,000 man hours. The 'cheap' Sherm? 48,000 man hours.
Perfect example, the Tiger weighed about 25% more than a Panther, but cost 100%+ to build - raw materials represents only a fraction of the cost. The Tiger contained almost 100% more parts than a Panther.
//
I think it would be more useful to break out the "cost" of a tank into two parts.

1) The type and quantity of raw materials used to construct the tank. Larger quantities of certain strategic materials were used in Tiger tanks for example. This makes Tiger tanks far more "expensive" than the Panther, but is are these materials reflected in the costs cited above?

2) The man-hours necessary to construct the tank. This is a more acurate reflection of the actual "cost" involved in building the tank.

I've got some data on the materials used in the construction of German tanks. Does anybody have any man-hour figures?
//
Consider the following info:

On 1 March 1945, a total of 9,968 workers were employed in the Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nurnberg (MAN) AG works, of which 5,448 were involved in tank construction. these were broken down as follows:

- in administration: 124
- in tank machining department: 841
- in tank manufacturing: 3,985
- in tank assembly: 500

5,023 of these were men, 425 were women. 2,719 of the men were foreigners*; among the women 230 were non-German. Two shifts were run within a 24 hour period, each shift comprising 12 hours.

Now lets go through the following exercise, lets say every one of the foreigners were slave labor, and all of them were employed in machining, assembly or manufacturing (no admin jobs), that would comprise almost exactly 51% of labor. My SWAG is that 25% of the cost of manufacturing a tank is labor (in line with Komatsu & Caterpillar products), that would mean that the cost of a Panther is artificially understated by about 13% - nah, lets just double it, to be safe - The cost of a Panther would come up to say US$39,000**. Still a bargain compared to the Sherm.

Bear in mind that all German tanks were procured at a profit to the manufacturer by the German state, same as their US counterparts.

That the US built more copies of a certain weapon type does not mean they were 'cheaper', the US procured expensive weapons, for example the Garand M1 was four times as expensive as the Kar 98, half again as expensive as an STG44. Tank prices are in line with those of the Soviet Union, the average price of a T-34/76 ('41-'44) was US$34,000 and that of a T-34/85 US$29,597 (yes, that's right, it was cheaper - a deflationary effect of munitions production in wartime Russia).

On a side note, the detail on the Panther assembly man hours, they are broken down as follows:

- Hull production: 55 hours
- Turret production: 38 hours
- Chassis assembly: 485 hours
- Turret assembly: 150 hours
- Final assembly: 85 hours

All info Walter J. Spielberger's "Panther & its Variants" and Mark Harrison's "Accounting for War"

* In this timeframe, 1.8 million Italian workers were working under contract in Germany, and were definitely NOT slave labor. Undetermined numbers of guest workers of other nationalities were also working in German factories. For purposes of this analisys, I am assuming ALL foreign laborers were slave labor because I want to maintain a conservative bias.

** Exchange rate is derived from international commodity price normalization, based on actual RM transactions. Not quite bread , but pretty indicative.
//
I am late coming to this thread.
I admit I know little of the costs and man-hours to produce various tanks - thanks for the info, by the way, very useful - but I think the reason the USA and the USSR out produced Germany is because they could. Or in the case of the USSR had to. Both countries had the man/woman power and the space to build huge tank factories, long assembly lines and so on. The USA had spare capacity in its economy, it was the only economy that grew druring the war, everyone else had to cut back. And both had the funds to burn. It matters not if the Panther is cheaper or not, or whether it takes longer to make; if you can throw money into the pot, hire people, ensure there are no hold ups in supply, have people who come to work and then go home to a safe, warm bed, if you want to, you are going to make more tanks.

I think it comes down to economic power not cost per unit. The USA had, the USSR developed it, the UK never had it and did not got it.

A question for the experts on tank production: were German factories working at maximum production in the period we are talking about? Could they divert production to build more/expand the factories they had? If yes and no, then that's why the USA and the USSR made more tanks.

Side issues: Neither the USA or the USSR had labour problems or 'guild' problems - that is over coming established practices that were counter-efficent. The USA because they were paying good money and the economy was booming, the USSR because they shot anyone who tired to cause problems

Also, how efficent were those 'guest' workers? Slaves are difficult to use for precision engineering; you have to station an engineer over nearly every on of them to be sure they are doing what they are told, so why not use the engineer to do the work? Even the ones who volenteered like the Italians were in a strange country - thier own had just surrendered if we are talking production of Panthers - how hard were they really working?

There is a cliche that WWII was won in the factories. Who had the most? who was able to buid more? who was able to keep them running 24 hours a day, with no fear of bombing - and I know that allied bombing had little effect until close to the end. The Allies, hence more tanks.

///////////////////////////////////Summary//////////////////////////////////////////////////////
cost of a tank, ok, but you wont like the answer.

Panther between US$32,000. US$39,000
Tiger US$64,000.
Sherman was $40-$60,000 depending on the model.
T-34/76 ('41-'44) was US$34,000 and that of a T-34/85 US$29,597

[Sid Guttridge]

Double post. See below.

[Sid Guttridge]

The British Fund-raising organisation in Latin America had a sliding scale for single engined, twin engined and four engined types. The lowest was a Spitfire or Hurricane at $5,000. But these prices were subsidized in order to encourage donations and were below actual costs.

In the USA the P-35A fighter was marketed at US$22,000 in 1939-40. This was also slightly subsidized to get the Seversky/Republic company a foot in the door of the lucrative fighter market.

Later in the war unit prices presumably fell massively due to mass production.

[LWD]

... (the average american fighter cost 40,000 to 50,000 dollars). The ...

Where did you get this number? On the surface it seems a bit low. From what I recall P-51s ran around $50K but P-47s were around $75K and P-38s around $100K. I would assume that the latter carreir fighters also tended to be a bit more than the P-51 but could be wrong. The earlier fighters such as the P-39 and P-40 may have lowered the average but ...

[LWD]

... That the US built more copies of a certain weapon type does not mean they were 'cheaper', the US procured expensive weapons, for example the Garand M1 was four times as expensive as the Kar 98, half again as expensive as an STG44. Tank prices are in line with those of the Soviet Union, ....

You have to be careful with statments like that to make sure it's really an "apples to apples" comparison. For instance the price of a lot of US systems in WWII included the cost of the factory to make them. US labor was also better paid than that in most other countries certainly better than Germanys and that's without considering forced labor. Indeed it's been pointed out in a couple of recent threads that a German POW in the US was actually making considerably more than he would have made as a worker in Germany.