Get the latest tech news

300k airplanes in five years

It’s no secret that the Allies won World War II on the back of the U.S.’s enormous industrial output. Even before the U.S. entered the war, the Americans provided hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of equipment to the Allies, and between 1938 and 1943 U.S. manufacturing output

It was soon realized that the scale of expansion required was far too much for the existing industry to finance (in part because banks were reluctant to provide loans), and ultimately most new aircraft factories were built by the government as GOCO (government-owned, contractor-operated) facilities. Production and material control systems were improved, eventually making it possible to incorporate major design changes on the factory floor and eliminate the need for modification centers. This mass-junking of perfectly serviceable warplanes occurred at the height of the war, when the Japanese were falling well short of aircraft production targets and struggling to keep their assembly lines in operation at all.

Get the Android app