A Comparison of American and German economies in WW2

[mescal]

Navy

--------------------------------- Germany ------- USA
Naval vessels ----------------- 234 ------------- 379
------ displacement ---------- 280,500 -------- 1,047,000

Note: I only included major naval vessels. I.e. submarines, destroyers, carriers, battleships, cruisers, etc. Much of US ship production consisted of merchant ships. In fact, most of American ship production, in terms of value, consisted of merchant ships to replace the losses to the U-boats.
...

http://www.combinedfleet.com/economic.htm
lists the US as having produced 1249 or not counting escorts 751

Again, 1944 numbers only. Germany produced 1,150 submarines during the war, 234 in 1944. You wanna compare numbers for the whole war?

Let's try ?

Your views on Germany's naval production have already been challenged in this post (and more generally in the whole thread).

Basically, they produced 200 000 tons of surface warships (TB and bigger) between 1939 and 1945.

OTOH, the US production of naval vessels of DD size and larger is largely over 3 millions tons :

US_built.jpg

Note that this is the list of ship commissionned between December 41 and August 1945. One could add those built between 1939 and 41 to have a fairer comparison.
And this lets huge parts of the naval production out of the scope.

You may want to add that the Germans built "1150 U-boots" (1094 during wartime, actually), but from a tonnage PoV, don't forget that the US built as many escorts - which had on average a larger individual displacement. And the US Navy also commissioned 200+ subs during wartime (which were also bigger than their German counterparts)

Oh, btw, the focus on the year 1944 makes all this little exercice utterly irrelevant, as the war was lost for Germany (and won for the US) this year, which led to completely different choices of ammunition production.

[Guaporense]

A good estimate of ammunition and bombs:



American numbers are known, taken from Mobilizing US Industry for WW2, Gropman, pg. 154 - 160.

Methodology for the German numbers:

I used these numbers for total ammunition production:


And this: http://www.sturmvogel.orbat.com/GermWeapProd.html. I have used the second link as a sample to estimate average shell weight, for instance, in 1944, the second link has 50.4 million shells of artillery ammunition over 75 mm which weight 1.1 million metric tons, each shell was 21.8 kg on average. Since Germany produced 67.6 million rounds of artillery ammunition, which is usually between 14 and 45 kg in weight, the total weight of artillery ammunition was 1.48 million metric tons. Done the same method for AA and Anti-Tank ammunition. I have used 12 grams as the average weight of German infantry rounds and 10 grams for American infantry rounds (given the K98 and M1 standard bulled weights).

So, from 1940 to 1944, Germany produced 10.1 million tons of ammunition and bombs, while form 1941 to 1945, the US produced 12.1 million tons of ammunition and bombs. In terms of expenditures, Germany spent 38 billion RM on ammunition and bombs, while the US spend 19.7 billion dollars in ammunition and bombs, about 40 billion RM.

Indexed by 1941 RM prices (and by employment in case of aircraft), it appears that the ammunition industry in Germany was larger than the aircraft industry and responsible for nearly 40% of total combat related munitions expenditures. If we index aircraft expenditures in 1941 RM by employment in 1941, total aircraft expenditures would be 22.4 billion RM:



Aircraft prices steadily decreased during the war. For instance, a medium bomber cost 400,000 RM in 1940 and 250,000 RM in 1943. So a 10 billion RM ouput of aircraft in 1943 in 1940 prices would be equivalent to a 6.2 billion RM volume in 1943 prices. In terms of employment we have a similar pattern.

[LWD]

It looks to me like you have left out a substantial amount of US artillery shell produciton. I.e. Naval rounds.

For instance according to:
http://www.history.navy.mil/museums/hrn ... issue1.pdf
The Navy had manufactured over 1,000,000,000 20mm rounds alone.
(page 14)
http://www.denix.osd.mil/cr/upload/NWS- ... k_1-60.pdf
states:

Hawthorne alone, with nearly 90,000 acres, had almost as much land dedicated to ammunition storage than the combined total of the Army’s largest depots (U.S. Navy Department 1947:339-341). Navy ammunition depots also contained larger numbers of magazines. While the average Army ammunition depot contained approximately 700 earth-covered facilities and from five to ten aboveground magazines, storage capacity at Navy depots was far greater. Between 1941 and 1945, approximately 1,700 ammunition storage facilities were constructed at both Crane and Hawthorne; with a total of nearly 1,900 facilities, Hawthorne was considered the largest ammunition depot in the world.

Which suggest you are missing a large part of the US ammunition produciton. Indeed according to:
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/Adm ... in-20.html
The Navy spend 13.8 Billion on Ordiance during the period from July 1940 through June 1945. It also notes:

During the later part of the war about ten percent of the Navy's purchases were for the account of the Army and of the Navy. Another nine percent represented purchases by the Navy in collaboration with the Army and twelve percent by the navy as part of the Army-Navy group purchases. The Army, for example, purchased all the meat and various other food products for both services and manufactured all the .30 caliber small arms of ammunition for the Navy and the Marines, while the Navy manufactured certain larger forms of ammunition used by both services.

[RichTO90]

Definitive ammunition and bombs estimate

Although I can barely contain my laughter reading this shit, it's gone so beyond sloppy estimations to outright dishonesty that I think I will have to come out of lurking to comment.

American numbers are know, taken from Mobilizing US Industry for WW2, Gropman, pg. 154 - 160.

Too bad bubbala that pages 154-160 of Gropman's Mobilizing U.S. Industry in World War II contain nothing of the sort. That is actually midway through Appendix B: The War Agencies of the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. Page 154 begins with the "Joint Economic Committees-United States and Canada" and page 160 ends with the "Presidents Committee on War Relief Agencies".

What you are rather dishonestly "quoting" from (quoting in quotes since you have obviously not really seen the work in question, but are rather using someone else's garbled version of it) may be found in Appendix A: "Production of Selected Munitions Items", which are on pages 141-145. The actual table in question though is on pages 143-144. Of course, 1940 isn't given in the tables as "n.a." - that is also your invention. Rather, the first column covers the period July 1 1940 through December 1941. And, of course, you converted the crap made up numbers to metric tons, and also "invented" artillery round size conventions that are not in the tables - the actual designation for the "ground ammunition" and the units of measure are:

Heavy field, weight and rounds
Light field, tank, and antitank, weight and rounds

I'm sure you fudged quite a bit else in your "definitive estimate" - is that really what they teach you down in Brazil? How can an estimate be definitive? Or a definite number be an estimate? You can have one or the other.

Sadly, the information as given by Gropman is badly abbreviated and more than incomplete. It is taken from the Wartime Production Achievements, which was at best a "definitive estimate". The most definitive count is actually in Official Munitions Production of the United States.

For example, "Aircraft Bombs" in total produced were 5,924,000 short tons or 5,374,163 metric tons. The figure Gropman actually gives is for Army procured only.

20mm rounds? Well, there were 1,153,639,000 Oerlikon 20mm produced new...as Naval antiaircraft ordnance. Another 22,708,000 Hispano-Suiza 20mm was produced by the War Department as aircraft Ordnance..for practice and drill. A total of 411,302,000 were produced as aircraft Ordnance.

Rounds "over 118mm"? War Department total acceptances for heavy field artillery (i.e., everything 4.5" and larger) was 33,956,000, not "33,572" (It's okay, I understand, you only "accidentally" dropped the last three zeroes.) BTW, didn't you notice that the sums of the annual production did not equal the "Full Total"? You must be using the new banker's Excel...

Rounds "over 118mm" procured for the Navy?

16-inch - 123,984
14-inch - 149,175
12-inch - 29,754
8-inch - 381,508
6-inch - 1,070,185
5-inch (Surface Fire) - 354,516
5-inch (AA and DP) - 12,456,000

Mind, you were actually informed of all this in your first incarnation a couple of years ago. Nothing like serial dishonesty. Have you graduated yet? I'm gonna bet they've tapped you to do investment banking - you'll fit right in.

Anyway, back to lurking. Sorry for the intrusion of reality to your Fantasyland, I'll let you all get back to the Fanbois, Trolls, and Liars now.

Cheers!

[RichTO90]

Fighters -------------------------- 28,926 --------------- 38,873
------ single-engine ------------- 25,580 --------------- 34,140
------ twin-engine --------------- 3,066 ------------------ 4,733
Bombers ------------------------- 6,468 ----------------- 35,003
------ tactical -------------------- 5,950 ----------------- 18,958
------ strategic ------------------- 518 ------------------- 16,045

Germany produced comparable numbers of fighters, a reaction to the air attacks of the United States. In the absence of Allied intervention, in 1945 Germany was planning to produce a total of 70,000 fighters. Note the massive difference in terms of bombers produced, a result of the fact that the United States focused on strategic bombing while Germany focused on the airforce as a tactical support of the ground forces. Note also that the low level of tactical bomber production relative to fighter production was also a consequence of the bombing of Germany, which redirected resources from bombers to fighters in response.

The actual, and rather more important figures:

Combat Aircraft Germany/USA
4-engine Bombers 518/16,331
2-engine bombers 5,041/18,672
1-engine bombers 909/8,614
2-engine fighters 3,066/4,733
1-engine Fighters 25,860/34,140
Total Engines Required 37,055/154,788
Total Engines Produced 42,092/232,422
Ratio Engines/Airframes 1.14/1.50

Note that from 1 January 1940 to 31 December 1944 Germany produced 109,858 engines for 110,521 tactical aircraft. Ever wonder why Luftwaffe readiness rates were so low and why so many airframes without engines were found parked at German airfields at the end of the war?

Now back to your regularly scheduled fantasyland.

[Guaporense]

I have made a statistic detailing labor productivity in 1939 dollars, deflated and converted using the official exchange rates (except the USSR, which had it's money converted using the MPI):



US labor productivity was clearly the highest, followed by the UK. This fits rather well the GDP per capita figures from Maddison, adding the Fukao, Ma, et al, revision of Japan's GDP:

1937 - PPP GDP per capita
USA --------- 6,400
UK ----------- 6,200
Germany ---- 4,500
USSR --------- 2,000
Japan -------- 1,800

Notice that between Germany and the USSR and Japan we have a very strong Balassa-Samuelson effect: Japan's productivity is valued at exchange rates as 19% of Germany'sin 1939, but it's per PPP capita income was ca. 40%, that's because it's costs of living were much lower. Its a well noted effect that poor countries have much lower prices.

[stg 44]

Fighters -------------------------- 28,926 --------------- 38,873
------ single-engine ------------- 25,580 --------------- 34,140
------ twin-engine --------------- 3,066 ------------------ 4,733
Bombers ------------------------- 6,468 ----------------- 35,003
------ tactical -------------------- 5,950 ----------------- 18,958
------ strategic ------------------- 518 ------------------- 16,045

Germany produced comparable numbers of fighters, a reaction to the air attacks of the United States. In the absence of Allied intervention, in 1945 Germany was planning to produce a total of 70,000 fighters. Note the massive difference in terms of bombers produced, a result of the fact that the United States focused on strategic bombing while Germany focused on the airforce as a tactical support of the ground forces. Note also that the low level of tactical bomber production relative to fighter production was also a consequence of the bombing of Germany, which redirected resources from bombers to fighters in response.

The actual, and rather more important figures:

Combat Aircraft Germany/USA
4-engine Bombers 518/16,331
2-engine bombers 5,041/18,672
1-engine bombers 909/8,614
2-engine fighters 3,066/4,733
1-engine Fighters 25,860/34,140
Total Engines Required 37,055/154,788
Total Engines Produced 42,092/232,422
Ratio Engines/Airframes 1.14/1.50

Note that from 1 January 1940 to 31 December 1944 Germany produced 109,858 engines for 110,521 tactical aircraft. Ever wonder why Luftwaffe readiness rates were so low and why so many airframes without engines were found parked at German airfields at the end of the war?

Now back to your regularly scheduled fantasyland.

Yeah, the RLM didn't intervene in engine manufacturing until about 1941, leaving it up to the manufacturers to streamline themselves, even though the contracts they were given prior to this point were cost plus, which inherently makes it more profitable to keep manufacturing inefficient and labor/resource intensive.

[paspartoo]

Yeah, the RLM didn't intervene in engine manufacturing until about 1941, leaving it up to the manufacturers to streamline themselves, even though the contracts they were given prior to this point were cost plus, which inherently makes it more profitable to keep manufacturing inefficient and labor/resource intensive.

If Overy said it it must be true right?

'The government decided in 1938 that aircraft producers had to concentrate on a few different types, and in 1937 that cost-plus contracts were replaced with fixed price contracts. What followed was not a sudden production miracle but a continuous development which was fuelled first by learning-bydoing and then by the ongoing growth of the capital and labor endowment.'

Source: 'Demystifying the german “armament miracle” during world war ii. New insights from the annual audits of German aircraft producers'

[stg 44]

Yeah, the RLM didn't intervene in engine manufacturing until about 1941, leaving it up to the manufacturers to streamline themselves, even though the contracts they were given prior to this point were cost plus, which inherently makes it more profitable to keep manufacturing inefficient and labor/resource intensive.

If Overy said it it must be true right?

'The government decided in 1938 that aircraft producers had to concentrate on a few different types, and in 1937 that cost-plus contracts were replaced with fixed price contracts. What followed was not a sudden production miracle but a continuous development which was fuelled first by learning-bydoing and then by the ongoing growth of the capital and labor endowment.'

Source: 'Demystifying the german “armament miracle” during world war ii. New insights from the annual audits of German aircraft producers'

This doesn't contradict what I wrote. That's how fixed price contracting works. The steady increases came from this, but the larger increases after 1941 came from rationalizing production methods and bureaucracy.
Also this doesn't refer to anything about engine manufacture, something that VERY few scholars have written about except in passing, which was less well managed until the war started and didn't get the benefit of fixed price contracts until about 1941.

[Guaporense]

By June 1940 Germany became master of a vast economic empire. After conquering France, the western half of Poland, Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg and annexing Austria and Czechoslovakia, the evil Nazis had a dominion of 160 million inhabitants with an economic strength comparable to the United States, at pre-war conditions. However, with the Allied blockade of Germany, the critical supply of raw materials collapsed and it had severe effects on the economies of the countries under German occupation and their levels of production declined, while American levels increased. Still, even with the blockade the German Grossraum maintained levels of production of it's basic commodity, coal, and was able to provide the massive resources needed by the Wehrmacht to fight a world war for 5 years.


http://i451.photobucket.com/albums/qq23 ... dtheUS.png
(open link to see full image)

In 1939 this Grossraum had a GNP of 78.7 billion dollars*, a total coal production of 346 million metric tons and a total steel production of 38 million tons. The United States had a GNP of 90.5 billion dollars, a coal production of 405 million metric tons and a total steel production of 48 million tons. The total steel production capacity of the Grossraum was 47 million metric tons, the US's, 65 million metric tons. During the next 6 years the US steel production capacity was increased by over a third, to 90 million metric tons, which enabled American steel production to reach 80 million tons in 1943-1944 while in the Grossraum steel production declined to 30-35 million tons and never reached pre-war levels. Germany had a severe scarcity of steel during the war, indeed, in 1942, Grossraum GNP was 63% of US's, in terms of black coal, it's supply was 64% of the US's in 1942, in terms of iron, 48%, and in terms of steel, only 41% of American production.

*I converted the GNPs of France, Germany and Poland into dollars using the official exchange rates, the GNPs for Belgium, Denmark and Netherlands have been estimated by assuming the same per capita income as the German-French average multiplied by their population.

[Guaporense]

Yeah, the RLM didn't intervene in engine manufacturing until about 1941, leaving it up to the manufacturers to streamline themselves, even though the contracts they were given prior to this point were cost plus, which inherently makes it more profitable to keep manufacturing inefficient and labor/resource intensive.

If Overy said it it must be true right?

'The government decided in 1938 that aircraft producers had to concentrate on a few different types, and in 1937 that cost-plus contracts were replaced with fixed price contracts. What followed was not a sudden production miracle but a continuous development which was fuelled first by learning-bydoing and then by the ongoing growth of the capital and labor endowment.'

Source: 'Demystifying the german “armament miracle” during world war ii. New insights from the annual audits of German aircraft producers'

This doesn't contradict what I wrote. That's how fixed price contracting works. The steady increases came from this, but the larger increases after 1941 came from rationalizing production methods and bureaucracy.
Also this doesn't refer to anything about engine manufacture, something that VERY few scholars have written about except in passing, which was less well managed until the war started and didn't get the benefit of fixed price contracts until about 1941.

German armament production from 1941 to 1944 increased for two main reasons:

1 - Learning in the aircraft industry. In 1941 it took Junkers 15,200 hours to make a medium bomber. In 1943, 7,000 hours.

2 - Increased steel allocation to ammunition. In 1941, ca. 100,000 tons a month were allocated to ammunition, In 1944, 400,000 tons of a month were allocated for ammunition production. By late 1944 Germany was basically a shell factory:



Note that ammunition and aircraft were together 80-75% of Germany's armament production.

[Guaporense]

Note that this is the list of ship commissionned between December 41 and August 1945. One could add those built between 1939 and 41 to have a fairer comparison.
And this lets huge parts of the naval production out of the scope.

You may want to add that the Germans built "1150 U-boots" (1094 during wartime, actually), but from a tonnage PoV, don't forget that the US built as many escorts - which had on average a larger individual displacement. And the US Navy also commissioned 200+ subs during wartime (which were also bigger than their German counterparts)

My source states 3.4 million tons of major combat vessels. If you take your number and add the 200 submarines at 1.500 tons, you get 3.4 million, therefore my source on the american numbers, which state: 3.4 million tons of major combat vessels, including 1.1 million build in 1944.

Oh, btw, the focus on the year 1944 makes all this little exercice utterly irrelevant, as the war was lost for Germany (and won for the US) this year, which led to completely different choices of ammunition production.

Well, ammunition production tends to peak in the year of most intensive army activity. It peaks later than production of durable equipment. US ammunition production peaked in 1944, the same year as Germany.

[Guaporense]

The actual

Didn't you notice they are the same figures?

and rather more important figures:

Combat Aircraft Germany/USA
4-engine Bombers 518/16,331
2-engine bombers 5,041/18,672
1-engine bombers 909/8,614
2-engine fighters 3,066/4,733
1-engine Fighters 25,860/34,140
Total Engines Required 37,055/154,788
Total Engines Produced 42,092/232,422
Ratio Engines/Airframes 1.14/1.50

Note that from 1 January 1940 to 31 December 1944 Germany produced 109,858 engines for 110,521 tactical aircraft. Ever wonder why Luftwaffe readiness rates were so low and why so many airframes without engines were found parked at German airfields at the end of the war?

Sources?

Here we have aero engine production:
http://www.wwiiarchives.net/servlet/act ... /150/144/0

By year it appears:

1940 - 15,000
1941 - 23,000
1942 - 40,000
1943 - 54,000
1944 - 54,000

total: 186,000

It's true that aero engine production was a binding constraint on the German aircraft industry, while the US produced a huge number of engines, more than they used.

Now back to your regularly scheduled fantasyland.

Everybody lives in his/her "fantasyland". That's because each individual mind cannot grasp the whole reality. If the reality in our mind is different than mine that doesn't mean that you have the right to impose it with pathetic ad-hominem attacks. That's a Nazi type of attitude coming from a pro-American chauvinism perspective, that doesn't fit with perspectives from people from other parts of the world.

Attacking me from getting the page number wrong by 14-15 pages, because I cited it from memory, is infantile.

[Guaporense]

For example, "Aircraft Bombs" in total produced were 5,924,000 short tons or 5,374,163 metric tons.

2% discrepancy, not that relevant.

The figure Gropman actually gives is for Army procured only.

Therefore the navy consumed a very small quantity of aircraft bombs, ca. 100,000 metric tons. Aircraft carriers couldn't carry that much ammunition.

20mm rounds? Well, there were 1,153,639,000 Oerlikon 20mm produced new...as Naval antiaircraft ordnance. Another 22,708,000 Hispano-Suiza 20mm was produced by the War Department as aircraft Ordnance..for practice and drill. A total of 411,302,000 were produced as aircraft Ordnance.

Therefore the tables should not include 20mm. Also, I didn't count navy and aircraft ammunition for Germany as well.

I have made better tables. Overall, from 1940 to 1944, Germany made 4.7 million tons of artillery, AA, tank and anti-tank projectiles for the army over 30 mm (not 5.6 million, here I was wrong in thinking that Jason Long's figures were wrong, the artillery ammunition he didn't include consisted of 75 mm shells, not the 105mm - 210mm categories), the US, 2.7 million and the USSR 1.75 million (though, not including AA ammunition, here are the USSR's figures: http://i451.photobucket.com/albums/qq23 ... uction.png).

The German total was greater than the combined Soviet and American outputs, 4.7 versus 4.45, million tons of projectiles. Though, in 1944, the combined Soviet and American output was greater than the German by about 15%.

Rounds "over 118mm"? War Department total acceptances for heavy field artillery (i.e., everything 4.5" and larger) was 33,956,000, not "33,572" (It's okay, I understand, you only "accidentally" dropped the last three zeroes.) BTW, didn't you notice that the sums of the annual production did not equal the "Full Total"? You must be using the new banker's Excel...

Yes, they equal.

Rounds "over 118mm" procured for the Navy?

16-inch - 123,984
14-inch - 149,175
12-inch - 29,754
8-inch - 381,508
6-inch - 1,070,185
5-inch (Surface Fire) - 354,516
5-inch (AA and DP) - 12,456,000

That would weight ca. 0.55 million tons.

And considering only the 1940-1944 production, the surface fire ammunition was only 261,000 metric tons. That's 12% of the difference between German and American army ammunition production between 1940 to 1944. I don't have data on 55 inch AA production from 1940 to 1944, to allow a complete comparison.

I would also need to consider the large quantities of naval ammunition produced by Germany, a total of 18 million rounds of naval ammunition over 75 mm from 1940 to 1944, using the same average weight as for ground ammunition over 75 mm (4.57 million tons of projectiles from 302 million rounds), that yields a projectile weight of 272,000 metric tons. That's greater than the total American production of surface fire naval ammunition over the same period, though it surely included some AA ammunition. Yep, Germany wasted a great deal of resources making naval ammunition.

[mescal]

My source states 3.4 million tons of major combat vessels. If you take your number and add the 200 submarines at 1.500 tons, you get 3.4 million, therefore my source on the american numbers, which state: 3.4 million tons of major combat vessels, including 1.1 million build in 1944.

Therefore we could at first glance compare the 3.4 Mtons of the US with the 1.2 Mtons of the Germans.

But there is a major problem, which lies in the definition of "major combat vessel".
This category is at best ambiguous, and moreover, you seem to apply it to the US but not to Germany.
One widely accepted definition of "major combatant" is the set of destroyers and bigger vessels. But submarines are generally excluded from this set. The reason being that the implicit raison d'etre of those major combat vessels is to gain control of the sea, an objective the submarines (at least the subs of the era) were unable to fulfill.
This would thus exclude the subs from the German sample and bring it down to 200,00 tons, while not altering the 3.1 Mtons I computed for the USN.

Another way to try building a comparable dataset would be to choose one (or more) property the vessels of each navy should verify, and only include those vessels in the set.
Here I would go for "blue-water capable" as a criterion. If it's clear s to what we want to compare, it's a bit fuzzy wrt which ships verify it or not (after all, it's technically possible to cross the Atlantic in an open cutter). But in practice, it has a translation in terms of tonnage threshold which is relatively clear in practce.
During wartime, the smallest German warships which operated on a sustained basis on the high seas were the Typ VII U-boat (750 tons). For the British, it was the Flower class (900 tons), and for the American the Auk class MS (850 tons). Thus we have a smallest class for each navy, and moreover those classes had relatively comparable dsiplacement.

Therefore, we still have the 1.2 Mtons for the German naval building between 1939 & 1945, but now we have many classes of escort vessels to add to the US sample :

US_built_esc.jpg

And there are still the subs to add - let's say 300000 tons.
And the two CBs : +60,000 tons.
Thus we now have close to 4.4 Mtons to compare with the 1.2 Mtons of the German
But we still don't have in this US sample the ships built (i.e. completed) between 1939 & 1941, which amounts to a bit more than 100,000 tons for DD, CL & CV only.
Thus its 4.5+ Mtons to 1.2 Mtons.

But now we have another fact to take into account - namely that if these combat vessels represented most of the Kriegsmarine, they were only the sharp end of the USN. We still haven't taken into account he dozens of AO, AK, AP which were a strength multiplier. And neither are taken into account the ~1,000 LST or the other amphibious ships.

I'm too lazy to make the computation and I probably lack some of the data for all those support ships, but it's rather obvious that US production exceeded the German one - perhaps as much as 10 times higher.
But the point is that, if you want to make a comparison of the investment in naval power, it's sensible to try to take into account all the component of naval might, and not only the flashy battleships.

ammunition production tends to peak in the year of most intensive army activity.

Or is it the other way round ?

US ammunition production peaked in 1944, the same year as Germany.

I don't have the data for the US production, and I'm not so sure it's completely true for Germany either - probably depends on what "ammunition" is, exactly.
And it's to be noted that in 1944 the US were still investing (that is, thinking post-war), while Speer reoriented all the German economy towards immediate production (that is, they payed for their 1944 guns with the investments which would have enabled production in 1945).
Therefore, comparing USA and Germany in 1944 is irrelevant - they basically had two completely different logic guiding their ammunition production.


Finally, I do not have the exact amount of investment in the Navy for 1944. But the Navy budget in 1944 was lower than in 1943 & 1945 :

USN_budget.jpg