Could the US mount an industrial effort equal the effort of WW2?

[Lancer]

Well, maybe up in Portland...

There's Bremerton up in Washington, but I don't know if they build.

No doubt the Japanese do, and the Koreans. In Europe the Poles and Norwegians have a good shipbuilding industry iirc.

[Vandal-1]

Alot of companies that once manufactured cars,motorcycles,and farm machinery were switched to military production during WW2.The machinist and technicians were Americans in America.Much of the Great Lakes industrial belt is now a historical fact since the Jobs were sold to equally efficient less costly foriegn operations.I know this much but I also know that alot of the major Industrial manufacturing is primarily assembly of components and it is more robotic than human centered in Texas- Loiusianna and Aircraft in West coast
also robotic. The thing is the manufacturing may be in the Pacific rim not here.If it had to be moved,If it were attacked the assembly plants would shut down,if it had to be refitment of antiquated facilities probably a year to 18 mnths and the output would dwarf peak WW2.
But and heres the Kicker WW2& Korea was llikely the last open force war and the Army is changing its doctrine to counter insurgency with development of urban capable
Rapid deployment forces and high co-ordination landwarrior sytems We don't need the heavy weapons in police work look at Chechnya as a example and the failure of Soviet Mechanized doctrine in Af

[David Floyd]

First of all, that figure of 111 aircraft carriers is misleading. Most of these were escort carriers. The peak strength of US fleet carriers was 28, in 1945, and the peak strength of auxiliary carriers was 71, also in 1945. The US lost 4 fleet carriers in WW2, but all of these were built prior to WW2, plus another 3 that were not sunk (Ranger, Enterprise, Saratoga), meaning the US built a total of 21 fleet carriers and 72 auxiliary carriers (the Princeton was sunk in 1944) during WW2 - still very impressive.

Now, Serb. You again.

Let me ask you a simple question. If the US and the Soviet Union, in WW2, had each built nothing but tanks, who would have built more? That is, which nation had the greater manufacturing capacity?

[David Floyd]

It should also be noted that out of that number of 111, many of them were escort carriers built for the Royal Navy.

[Serb]

Re: Re: Re: Could the US mount an industrial effort equal the effort of WW2?

Originally posted by Cruddy


It's remarkable then, how many of these "much more superior" tanks are scattered in pieces over the Middle East... or lined up as battle booty in Israel.

Good job you didn't sell them with a money back guarantee.

Mind you, WW2 Russki tanks were very good for the time - but times change.

It's funny. You think if Russian tanks STILL fought in Middle East conflicts vs. modern tanks after say 20-30 years when they were designed and produced it's a sign of bad design or poor quality?

[David Floyd]

You still haven't addressed my WW2 point, of course, you usually don't

[Serb]

Originally posted by Sprayber


What is bsh?

"bullsh!t" a claim like this for example:

Soviet tanks were largely based off of a pre-war American design (the Soviets continued to use the same basic American suspension design through to the 1960s)...

Typical bullsh!t.
American pre-war tanks were obsolte and absolute sh!t. Complete and pure sh!t. In 1941 you had 400+ tanks of obsolte models that were DECADES behind of Soviet tanks. Soviet Union had over 23 000 tanks in 1941. Some of them were the best tanks in the world for this time. Tanks like T-34 (about 1000 in June 1941) and heavy tanks (about 500 in June 1941) KV-1 and KV-2. T-34 was the best medium tank of the world. KV-2 was the best heavy tank in the world. USA, UK or Germany simply didn't have heavy tanks, only Russians and French had. Saying that Soviet tanks were based on pre-war American design is to saying bullsh!t, because American pre-war designs were light years behind Soviet designs. Tanks were never priority for US army before WW2 shown their effectivness. Your mistake. During all war USA was 2-3 years behind both Russians and Germans in tank design. You simply didn't have the same experience with tanks as Germans and Russians had.
As for suspension...if you are digging so deep then fine. Soviets used a lot of foreign tanks in 20's because there were no tanks or tank industry in Russia. They had to start from something and first Soviet tanks were based on deeply improved and re-designed French Renualts and American Christie tanks. But claimimg that for example T-34 was rip-off of Christie is the same as saying that modern Ford is rip-off of first Ford automobile because both of them use wheels.

...and captured war time German designs which were reverse engineered.

Blah...blah...blah...
That's why Russian tanks looks exactly as German or American tanks, right?
In 1941 Soviets had the most advanced tanks in the world. German Pzkfw-3 and 4 were ineffective against T-34. To fight versus T-34 they needed new, more powerfull tank. The first German prototype of Pzkfw-5 'Panter' was a pure copy of T-34 and was abandoned because it had absolutely the same silhouette as T-34, had expensive (for Germany) engine and its armor required a lot of rare metals that were needed to make it harder and that Germany didn't have. German designers failed to create the same technologicaly easy for mass production tank as T-34 and for fight vs. T-34 they created more heavy, complex and expensive Panther.
So, wtf are you talking about? Which Russian tank had reverse engineered design of German tank?

Plus all the way to the end of 1944 the bulk of the Soviet Tank Corp was pre-war in both design and date of manufacture so you really can't say that a stock pile of older tanks is equal to much newer and more advanced models other powers were putting out.

Three news for you:
1) Soviets lost bulk of their obsolete and light tanks during first summer of war. So, after that Soviet tank forces were mostly equiped with newly produced tanks of modern models (T-34 mostly).
2) Soviet Union outproduced USA in tanks.
3) NOT A SINGLE AMERICAN OR BRITISH TANK WAS SUPERIOR TO ITS SOVIET COUNTERPART. Everything was exactly reverse. Soviet tanks were much more advanced.

?Add to that something like 1/4 of all Soviet military supplies can from the west and most of their bomber, fighter, submarine, and ship designs were rip offs from other powers (mostly the US/UK but a few German) and you can see that the Soviets were mostly followers and not leaders. Very good followers but certainly not on the cutting edge.

First of all 1/4 is pbs. (pure bullsh!t)
As for navy...perhaps. SU was land power. And Germans were far ahead of any other nation in submarine development. All nations, not only Soviet Union used German designs and inventions in that feild.
As for aviation...
I'm using word 'bullsh!t' to much in this post.
Ok. Please enlighten me if you could- which Russian planes was rip-offs of planes of other powers? Yaks? Laggs? IL-2 perhaps?

As for manufacturing output the Soviet's could never get any where near the US even with the slave labor Stalin used.

Yeah right. That's why Soviet Union during WW2 produced more small arms (rifles, submuchine guns, pistols) then USA, UK and Germany combined.

Have a nice day.

[Serb]

Originally posted by David Floyd
You still haven't addressed my WW2 point, of course, you usually don't

I have to work time after time. And I somehow lost almost completed reply to Oedrin, so I had to type it again.
As for the answer.

Let me ask you a simple question. If the US and the Soviet Union, in WW2, had each built nothing but tanks, who would have built more? That is, which nation had the greater manufacturing capacity?

IF? Could? Nothing but?
blah...blah...blah...
Who cares who what you could? Only facts are important. Your "if", "we could" doesn't count.

[David Floyd]

Serb is actually quite right on most of his points, except for his apparent belief that the Soviet's manufacturing capacity exceeded that of the Americans. That is blatantly false. While there were a few categories in which the Soviets outproduced the US, the US outproduced the Soviets in the vast majority of categories. Aircraft output and shipbuilding are two of the most blatant examples of this, as well as the fact that the Soviet Union never had any Lend Lease programs to other nations - that is, the Soviets were not equipping the militaries of other nations, which the US was (most significantly, the SU, Britain, China, etc.).

[David Floyd]

IF? Could? Nothing but?
blah...blah...blah...
Who cares who what you could? Only facts are important. Your "if", "we could" doesn't count.

But you are missing the point. OF COURSE the Soviet Union outproduced the US in tanks - the US had to produce many things that the Soviets didn't, such as 11 million tons worth of merchant shipping, over 100 aircraft carriers of various types, etc., as well as outproducing the SU by quite a bit in aircraft.

The fact is, at the end of WW2, the US had over 50% of the world's manufacturing capacity. The Soviets weren't even close to this number.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Re: Could the US mount an industrial effort equal the effort of WW2?

Originally posted by Lancer
By the end of WW2 we had 111 aircraft carriers, thousands of liberty ships, tanks, bombers, fighters, submarines and battleships in greater quantity than any other country. We had supplied the British, Russian, Chinese and recontituted French with various weapons and vehicles. Truly, the US was the arsenal of democracy.

Could the US do it again?

Why on earth would we want to?

A single carrier battle group now has more firepower than entire fleets. A single US division has more firepower than the US 1st, 3rd and 9th Armies in the western theater.

We made generally mediocre stuff en masse for relatively untrained troops (sometimes grossly untrained if you get into the whole Repo-depot thing) who were considered expendible en masse. In the Hurtgen forest, we had two regiments who went 100% casualties in less than a week.

Four US divisions had casualties over 250% of their authorized strength, another dozen had casualties over 200% of authorized strength.

WW2 was fought as a meatgrinder war with very little real information about the enemy.

[David Floyd]

MtG,

People tend to listen to you. Tell Serb he's wrong

[Serb]

Sure. The most industrialized part of Soviet Union was in ruins. Millions of people died, millions of people fight vs. invaders. What the hell do you expected? Had USA experienced at least something equal to this, I doubt it still had half of the world's manufacturing capacity.

[David Floyd]

Ah, but according to you, "ifs ands and buts" don't count

And post-WW2, the Soviet population still exceeded the US population.

[David Floyd]

And by the way, throughout the Cold War US manufacturing exceeded Soviet manufacturing.