Warbird Information Exchange

I always wondered why during the war, certain type aircraft continued to be produced which seemed obsolete. I'm talking Allied forces, not just USA. Let's say, sometime in 1944, the mustang is going strong, why the need for more P-38's?, the P-47 for ground attack, why Typhoons?, B-17's, why more B-24's? ... these are just examples, NOT specific to any type. I think I know the answer already, but I would love some input from you smarter WIXer's. Another example, why didn't the allies just say ... "OK, these two fighters are really all we need to end the war and these two bombers are all we need as well, stop the assembly lines on all the rest. Seems all the effort taken to produce all the different types could have been better used to produce just a few types for all branches of the service for all the allies. ... do I dare say "Politics", "money"? .... and I do understand that certain types were cheaper and easier to produce, but the mustang seemed to be just fine for all of that as well. If two P-40's could be built for the same amount of time and money as a P-51, wouldn't you still take the Mustang? ... we're talking towards the end of the war when the number of allied aircraft seemed not as important as the type. Am I missing something here? .....

Let me continue, yes, some types flew further, could carry more payload ... OK, then why not wead out the types that couldn't do the above?. If the B-24 could carry more and fly further, why not stop producing the B-17?. If the Hellcat and Corsair were close in all aspects of performance, why not just produce the cheaper and easier the build?. The Hellcat would have made a good marine based aircraft as well. I can see the B-29 not being able to replace the B-17's or B-24's for many reasons, but I'm just not sure why certain types were still produced. I guess the P-38 stands out as to why continue late in the war? The P-38 seemed a lot of work to maintain, much bigger, two engines, etc ..... You mean the P-51 couldn't take over the P-38's role?

Neither the Pacific nor the European war were decided at that point (D-Day was in June '44 after all), and nobody knew how bad the losses would be. Maybe the Allies were confident at that point they would win, but when? To convert a B-17 plant to B-29 production would take time, it was better to continue to produce B-17s and build a new B-29 plant. The B-29 had teething troubles as well so it was a good thing they did what they did.

P-38s were especially good for long overwater flights in the Pacific. The less effective (or less desireable types) were either used in training or given out under Lend Lease.

Why? Because the factories, tooling, supply chains, and experienced workforces were in place to build multiple types. To convert (say) Lockheed's Vega plant from building B-17's to B-24's would have required entirely new tooling, a new engine/prop supply, etc. and would have meant the mothballing of productive assets.

It would have cost 6 months or a year to transform a B-17 factory to a B-24 factory. And that process would have needed to be repeated for every sub-assembly in the airplane.

That's the same reason there was no P-38K which could have been the ultimate WWII prop fighter. The AAF had a bigger demand for good fighters soon than better fighters later.

The War dept came up with a program to develop and produce the weapons, trained personnel, and transportation needed to win the war.
Often, this meant that months and years were needed to come up with weapons, the raw materials needed to produce that weapon, who and where that weapon would be produced and the personnel to be trained and then deploy the weapon. Often there were troubles and failures in new designs so the older and outdated were not eliminated, but kept in production as a backup.
Often smart new ideas were not produced because the war dept didn't want to slow production by retooling. The one that comes to mind is the story of Merlins in the P-38. It would have simplified and lightened a good performer. It would have greatly improved its performance. The war dept wouldn't let it happen. They didn't want to stop production to retool for the improved version. They also decided that the needed Merlins should be used by existing designs.
Many other mfgs farmed the earlier design out so they could bring out the next design. Vought and Grumman did this.
During that war it wasn't the normal market where the best wins and the older, poorer designs would lose out. The Washington machine controlled those decisions. Things could have been done different, probably better, but we did good enough by looking at the outcome.
After the war the door was shut on so many of those types as they quickly disappeared and became pots and pans.
Rich

Kyleb hit on the big items:

Because the factories, tooling, supply chains, and experienced workforces were in place to build multiple types.


But there were also some other limitations and in particular there were shortages of certain components, such as ENGINES. Which is why there were no RR powered P-40s or B-17s.

There is another advantage of deploying multiple types, such that if there was a weakness in one type, you didn't have all your eggs in one basket (say the wings came of early F-15s and they all got grounded; or the B-36 grounding in the 50's).

Another reason was training time and experience. You would need to retrain air and ground crews to use new equipment, as well as stock the parts pipeline with huge amounts of parts..........

Strange as it sounds, towards the end of the war, you could have been flying a 172 safely over Germany since there really wasn't a lot of opposition.

So there were a whole lot of reasons.

Mark H

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