German Armament Production

Discussions on the economic history of the nations taking part in WW2, from the recovery after the depression until the economy at war.
nebelwerferXXX
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Re: German Armament Production

#46

Post by nebelwerferXXX » 30 Apr 2011, 02:05

800th post:

About the Z-Plan? I just only posted the core of the Z-Plan and that's why the listing is incomplete...you can easily locate the complete list of ships in this topic Plan Z.

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Panzerkampfwagen
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Re: German Armament Production

#47

Post by Panzerkampfwagen » 30 Apr 2011, 09:40

I have had this doubt for quite a while. It was known that normally German armament was of good quality, but badly lacked the numbers to make a difference against the allies. I have also observed one thing in the axis that most of the difference making weapons like Tanks and aircraft were german. Most of the tanks the axis got (other than German) really didnt match the standards required at the front, and were soon turning obsolete as the war progressed. So, why couldnt the Germans persuade the other powers to replicate the same German equipment, by sharing their designs? It may still not have matched the numbers made by the Allies, but atleast, there would have been a little more of the high quality weapons that the Germans made like heavy tanks and Jet aircraft.


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Re: German Armament Production

#48

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 09 May 2011, 06:03

ksugeeth wrote:.... So, why couldnt the Germans persuade the other powers to replicate the same German equipment, by sharing their designs? It may still not have matched the numbers made by the Allies, but atleast, there would have been a little more of the high quality weapons that the Germans made like heavy tanks and Jet aircraft.
Perhaps their manufactoring did not have the ability to build critical parts of these weapons? Casting or rolling some type of steel or sizes may not have been possible in a Hungarian or Italian steel works. Other technical difference may have exosted as well.

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Bronsky
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Re: German Armament Production

#49

Post by Bronsky » 09 May 2011, 11:06

Production is difficult. You need specialist tools, you need to set up your production lines which means obtaining blueprints and calibrating everything. You need to set up the supply chains between the various producers: just because tanks were produced in a certain place doesn't mean that the plant was making everything, it relied on a network of suppliers for a lot of subcomponents.

That's one of the reasons why each country stayed with its own designs: adopting and putting in production a different design just takes too long and is too expensive (exception: some US factories were set up to produced British equipment, but again that was only done when the investment was deemed worth the cost, as with the Melin engines).

So converting Axis countries to German production wouldn't be easy. And given these countries' small industrial bases, it's doubtful that it would have made much of a difference anyway.

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Re: German Armament Production

#50

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 09 May 2011, 13:09

Bronsky wrote:
That's one of the reasons why each country stayed with its own designs: adopting and putting in production a different design just takes too long and is too expensive (exception: some US factories were set up to produced British equipment, but again that was only done when the investment was deemed worth the cost, as with the Melin engines).
The example of the Merlin engine rings a bell. Back in 1971 one of my teachers had the engineering drawings for the production of the Merlin engine in a US factory. The graphics showed every important detail converted to US engineering stnadards & process. A translation involving literally thousands of details on the pages, accomplished by a room full of draftsmen & engineers working way to many late nights. A routine task like that was actually a large technical accomplishment. It is not hard to imagine the difficulty added when language diverges even farther in the case of German to Italian, Hungarian, or French manufactoring

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Re: German Armament Production

#51

Post by phylo_roadking » 09 May 2011, 19:38

Yep, SO involved a project that they were able to take the opportunity right down at the nuts-and-bolts level to in effect re-engineer the Merlin, to both simplify it - a range of shims and spacers were eliminated from the design - and improve the design; in the RR item, the cylinders/cylnder head was a monobloc - on the Packard version these were separated, allowing much easier top-end servicing/stripdowns and fewer hours of handfinishing of components by skilled, timeserved employees during construction.
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Re: German Armament Production

#52

Post by Bronsky » 09 May 2011, 20:55

That kind of improvement isn't particularly unexpected when setting up a brand new production line. The British wouldn't want to disrupt production, whereas the Americans were taking a fresh look at the thing and could afford to redesign a bit without losing output.

That was some very interesting information, but I don't think it detract's from the point that tooling up for production of a foreign design is a major venture. And, let's not forget that the USA was a rich country which could procure all the resources that British plants were used to having. Definitely not the case for some Balkan countries.

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Panzerkampfwagen
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Re: German Armament Production

#53

Post by Panzerkampfwagen » 10 May 2011, 05:38

I think language is the main problem here. The Americans have the advantage of understanding the Brits, which probably Germany's allies couldn't.

However, i find some small instances where this has happened: The hungarians manufacturing the Luftwaffe designs of the failed Me 210: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_210

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Re: German Armament Production

#54

Post by amcl » 11 May 2011, 01:37

Bronsky wrote:That kind of improvement isn't particularly unexpected when setting up a brand new production line. The British wouldn't want to disrupt production, whereas the Americans were taking a fresh look at the thing and could afford to redesign a bit without losing output.
They also didn't want to lose the flexibility that the Rolls Royce works in Crewe and Derby offered. Ford UK in Manchester, Packard and the new Rolls Royce works at Hillington near Glasgow produced engines at lower cost, but they produced only a few different models. Ford were the cheapest source of engines, 30% less than the average of cost of all other engines, but they only built five different models of Merlin in four years.

Sebastian Ritchie's 'Industry and Airpower' (Frank Cass, 1997) covers this rather well.

Cheers,

Angus McLellan

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Re: German Armament Production

#55

Post by nebelwerferXXX » 11 May 2011, 02:10

Jabberwocky wrote:Nebelwerfer, you seem to conveniently omit several critical facts related to the Z-plan.
The Z-plan was never fully implemented, so most of the estimated RM 33-billion was never spent.
Your outline of the Z-plan omits a large number of units that the plan envisioned but were canceled:

3 x 35,000-tonne battle-cruisers
6 x 5,700-tonne large destroyers
4 x 8,500-tonne light cruisers
2 x 9,300-tonne light cruisers
1 x 15,700-tonne heavy cruiser (last of the Hipper class)
12 x 23,000-tonne heavy cruisers
could not resist...

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Re: German Armament Production

#56

Post by Hop » 11 May 2011, 20:23

phylo_roadking wrote:Yep, SO involved a project that they were able to take the opportunity right down at the nuts-and-bolts level to in effect re-engineer the Merlin, to both simplify it - a range of shims and spacers were eliminated from the design - and improve the design; in the RR item, the cylinders/cylnder head was a monobloc - on the Packard version these were separated, allowing much easier top-end servicing/stripdowns and fewer hours of handfinishing of components by skilled, timeserved employees during construction.
Most of the design had already been done before Packard signed up. For example, RR started work on the 2 piece block when they anticipated coolant leakage problems with the Merlin II. In the end the 2 piece block wasn't rushed in to production, but it was scheduled for the Merlin 60 series. Packard started production before the 60 series, so they got the new design first.

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Re: German Armament Production

#57

Post by amcl » 11 May 2011, 21:31

Hop wrote:
phylo_roadking wrote:Yep, SO involved a project that they were able to take the opportunity right down at the nuts-and-bolts level to in effect re-engineer the Merlin, to both simplify it - a range of shims and spacers were eliminated from the design - and improve the design; in the RR item, the cylinders/cylnder head was a monobloc - on the Packard version these were separated, allowing much easier top-end servicing/stripdowns and fewer hours of handfinishing of components by skilled, timeserved employees during construction.
Most of the design had already been done before Packard signed up. For example, RR started work on the 2 piece block when they anticipated coolant leakage problems with the Merlin II. In the end the 2 piece block wasn't rushed in to production, but it was scheduled for the Merlin 60 series. Packard started production before the 60 series, so they got the new design first.
In addition there weren't a great many time-served employees or much hand finishing involved in building Merlins at Ford UK at Trafford Park or Rolls Royce at Hillington. Even if there was any cross-fertilization of ideas on "productionization", there would have been no end of changes needed to Americanize a British design, from fasteners to carburettors and much in between. The effort involved fully justified looking at every aspect of the design. Again, Ritchie's book mentioned above is good on this kind of thing.

Cheers,

Angus McLellan

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Re: Cost: 405-billion RM

#58

Post by nebelwerferXXX » 01 Feb 2014, 16:00

pp 14 (2).png
Additional output of German Military Industry.
nebelwerferXXX wrote:The historical German Armament Spending during the war cost 405-billion RM. The German military production of Small arms, Tanks and Armored vehicles reached 770,000 MG-34/MG-42 machine guns, 1,047,000 MP-40 SMGs, less than 500,000 assault rifles (including 7,000 FG-42 paratroop rifles and 80,000 StG-44 assault rifles), several millions of standard rifles, 5,000 Panther tanks, 1,000 heavy tractors, 15,000 medium APCs (including 60 'Uhu' IR vehicles) and 4,250 light APCs. The sinking of the Graf Spee, the Battles of Britain 1940 and Moscow 1941 were Hitler's first three setbacks.

In the Battle of Stalingrad, Hitler lost 1,500,000 casualties between August 1942 and February 1943, while about 3,500 tanks and assault guns (about 7 months production), with over half a year's output of guns and mortars (about 12,000), and 3,000 aircraft (at least 4 months production). At Kursk, by July 1943, the Wehrmacht deployed 570,000 combat troops, 330,000 support troops, 2,700 tanks and assault guns (including 147 Tigers and 200 Panthers), 10,000 guns and mortars and 2,500 aircraft (Geoffrey Jukes mentions this).

The German war industries made 1,400 Czech T-38 tanks, 1,350 Tiger tanks, 484 King Tiger tanks, 90 Porsche Ferdinand assault guns, 12,000 assault guns (including 500 early Marder SP guns and 800 late Marder SP guns) and two 800-mm railway guns named 'Dora' and 'Gustav', though they were expensive but they were all built.

For comparison purposes:
1) The German 'Z-Plan' cost 33-billion RM as programmed.
---2 x 42,000-ton Bismarck-Class battleships (sunk)
---2 x 32,000-ton Scharnhorst-Class battle-cruisers (sunk)
---2 x 23,000-ton GZ-Class aircraft carriers (never completed)
---6 x 56,000-ton H-Class battleships (never completed)

2) The Peenemunde Secret Rocket Test Center was erected at a cost of 180-million RM to house,
eventually, over 2,000 scientists.
---30,000 V-1 flying bombs (all were completed)
---10,000 V-2 rockets (all were completed)

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Re: German Armament Production

#59

Post by nebelwerferXXX » 22 Mar 2015, 09:43

nebelwerferXXX wrote:German Production of Armaments: 1940
15,510 aircraft engines
german, BMW.jpg
german, BMW.jpg (85.44 KiB) Viewed 1363 times

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