Talk:United States aircraft production during World War II

Untitled
All the figures originally shown represent only those planes delivered to the USAAF during World War II. That figure is approximately only 60% of what was produced 1940-1945 (for example, 295959 were delivered: 158880 to USAAF, 73711 to USN-USMC, 3714 to "other US" (US Army ground forces), 38811 to UK, 14717 to USSR, 1225 to China, and 4901 to other nations). I will work on this in my sandbox and come back with both corrected figures and source.--Buckboard 11:36, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Done.

Need Citations
Bad URL to "Army Air Forces Statistical Digest (World War II), Aircraft and Equipment, Table 79". Please source.DLH (talk) 18:19, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * it's at AAF Digest Rjensen (talk) 18:58, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Confusion
I am rather confused. I thought that 'light bombers' were types like the Fairey Battle, (sorry, I couldn't think of a US example); 'Medium Bombers' included the likes of the B-25 Mitchell, (pictured) and the B-26 Marauder; and 'Heavy Bombers' were the B-17 Fortress and the B-24 Liberator. If so, what falls into the category 'Very heavy bomber'? The only aircraft I can think of that might qualify is the B-29 Superfortress, but that was quite late in the war.

Does anyone know the answer?

RASAM (talk) 21:54, 23 October 2011 (UTC)


 * B-29 and B-32 = very heavy see google search Rjensen (talk) 00:21, 24 October 2011 (UTC)


 * That might be so, but according to the B-32 Wikipedia article, which incidentially describes this aircraft as a 'heavy bomber', comparable aircraft such as the Avro Lincoln and the B-29 are heavy bombers, the Me-264 was designed for maritime reconnaissance, (although the Bundesarchiv description is of a schwer or heavy bomber), the TU 4 was a "strategic bomber" and some variants of the X-B 33 'Super Marauder' are not categorised while others are noted as 'medium bombers' ! Only the XB-31 and the XB-30 are described as 'very heavy' bombers. And they do not seem to have progressed much beyond the prototype stage.


 * I think we have a problem here similar to the 'heavy' and 'medium' machine gun situation. The question is, how do we deal with it? Is there any way of breaking the figures shown down into aircraft types, or is that information no longer available? RASAM (talk) 13:20, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Editorializing?
I flagged this sentence: "The profit motive proved to be a greater spur to production than were the edicts from the generals running the totalitarian societies." This strikes me as OR, unless someone can provide a reference. It's also one that historians dispute: a major reason that US aircraft production was greater than other powers at war was because American factories were not getting bombed.

It's also factually-inaccurate in a number of ways. UK manufacturers weren't motivated by profits? German companies weren't (they were military contractors, not state companies, after all)? "Generals" also weren't running every totalitarian country - they were busy getting shot in the 30s in the USSR, for example. I'd argue to remove this line.Konchevnik81 (talk) 19:06, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Model Breakdown
It would be interesting to have the production categories broken down by design type (how many fighters were P-47s or P-51s, for example). I don't know how easy would be to do - the USAAF link still seems to be dead.Konchevnik81 (talk) 19:12, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

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