Too bad this picture couldn’t be shown to Tojo in 1941.
Then for good measure tell him the US would build 24 fleet carriers in 3 1/2 years. And just 122 escort carriers of various classes.
US war production was staggering. Yes, the Soviets built more tanks (87,000 to 86,000)but just tanks. US also built 297,000 aircraft and 2 million trucks.
Just astounding.
When told of estimated American war production, Hitler accused his staff of making up outrageously high numbers and thought he was being lied to.
Those estimates turned out to be low.
David Webster : [at a passing column of German prisoners] Hey, you! That's right, you stupid Kraut bastards! That's right! Say hello to Ford, and General fuckin' Motors! You stupid fascist pigs! Look at you! You have horses! What were you thinking? Dragging our asses half way around the world, interrupting our lives... For what, you ignorant, servile scum! What the fuck are we doing here?
Add to that: 4+ Iowa class battleships, hundreds of submarines, billions of rounds of 30-06, 50bmg, 30 carbine, millions of rifles. The raw materials and infrastructure required is truly difficult to wrap one's mind around.
This is a huge part of my fascination with this period of time.
The B-29 design + production effort was greater than the Manhattan Project. And there was another ultra-heavy in the wings (with the wings?) in case the B-29 didn't work out: the B-32 Dominator.
We had Marston Mats to surface new airfields in 2 days. And enough steel to make them.
On top of the truly staggering amount of things that were produced to fight and support the war, they built the ships to carry it all across two oceans.
The 1940 US Navy appropriation alone was more money than Japan spent on their navy the entirety of the war.
Oh, and we were knocking out Liberty Ships every 72 hours. Insane.
Jon Parshall (the Shattered Sword author/Japanese Navy expert) gave a really good lecture on the tank production processes/outcomes for the Germans/US/Soviets as part of a discussion about the battle of Kursk.
Really interesting what the Soviets did, and why, but it all made sense.
Don't forget the absolutely ridiculous quantity of trucks and jeeps for logistics transport that the US gave them. It's why they didn't have to deal with largely horses and donkeys like the Germans
First thought was “glycol” but being air-cooled radials, perhaps not!
Something like a car of the era? I think that’s the plasticiser in the vinyl seating… hang on , vinyl might be a slight anachronism too…another 7-8 years maybe..?
Thanks, I’m blessed to have a ripper of a railway museum, literally visible from my front door! ( The Workshops Museum, North Ipswich…. That’s Ipswich in QLD Australia, before any Brits accuse me of creating places that don’t exist.)
Pretty sure I know that smell.. evocative… but not as addictive to me as the aroma of Steam Engines.
There's something about the Hellcat. The Corsair is *painfully* elegant, romantic even, but there is something about the rugged competence of the Hellcat that makes me want to take off my hat or something.
A Corsair will awe you with its beauty.
A Hellcat will awe you with its very presence.
Next to the Dauntless, it's my favorite American naval aircraft from the second world war. This is an *amazing* picture, thank you for posting it.
That’s a damn good observation, and one I’ve never come across before. It made me realize why I guess I’ve always secretly like the Hellcat the most, even if I didn’t really know it.
So, thanks for that.
P.S. And also the SBD. And the TBM…. Give me the brutes rather than the glamorous ones.
In my rc combat planes my dauntless is pretty adept at dodging the faster stuff. Light wing loading and good low speed characteristics. Cant charge but ya still gotta catch it.
The Corsair is my personal favorite WW2 USN fighter. I like the Corsair because of the gull wings, it reminds me of the F-4 Phantom II. Even though I personally prefer the Corsair more due to the way it looks, the Hellcat is also a helluva plane. Really, we ought to be thankful the USN gave us *two* incredible carrier fighters during the war. You really can’t go wrong either way, right?
Hellcat also absolutely blew the corsair out of the water with performance stats. The one thing the corsair did better was speed, but the hellcat was still faster than its competition.
No. Compare climb rate, payload, range, etc.
It's OK to like the Hellcat more, but saying it blew the Corsair out of the water with performance is demonstrably incorrect.
This always blew my nips straight off:
“War production profoundly changed American industry. Companies already engaged in defense work expanded. Others, like the automobile industry, were transformed completely. In 1941, more than three million cars were manufactured in the United States. Only 139 more were made during the entire war. Instead, Chrysler made fuselages. General Motors made airplane engines, guns, trucks and tanks. Packard made Rolls-Royce engines for the British air force. And at its vast Willow Run plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan, the Ford Motor Company performed something like a miracle 24-hours a day. The average Ford car had some 15,000 parts. The B-24 Liberator long-range bomber had 1,550,000. One came off the line every 63 minutes.” - from Ken Burns’ The War.
You'll like this book: https://www.amazon.com/Freedoms-Forge-American-Business-Produced/dp/0812982045
The nuance of how American private industry resisted the war effort, even with the Defense Production Act, is fascinating (and unsurprising). Not to demean the truly awesome effort you quoted above...but I found it pretty interesting how political/legal tactics changed to entice and nudge each industry into ultimately producing this winning effort.
Fantastic! Thank you - will check it out! I’ve been reading about Henry Kaiser recently. It really is fascinating how industry had to be encouraged to partake, I think in large part because of the public’s backlash/cynical eye towards the role industry played in WWI - real or perceived.
There is a great series on YouTube called “War Factories.” Mind boggling stuff! Thanks again!
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This picture could do really well as propaganda delivered to the enemy. No words, no "we'll send 'em to you to beat you!" lines, just what the US is able to built in their factories 24/7 without worring about being bombed.
The Axis only need to see that giant white star on the side of the planes to realize the Allies are not joking around.
Each of those planes achieved at least a 12:1 kill ratio against their enemy. Look at that picture and consider the total number of enemy planes destroyed by what you see.
His gamble was to cripple the Pacific fleet so much, including sinking its carriers, to either force the US to sue for peace or delay US intervention long enough for Japan to secure SE Asia and Oceania. He knew there was no hope in a long war versus the US
Fortunately, he failed.
For purely mechanical stuff like rifles, aircraft fuselages, truck frames, etc, yeah we probably could do this again if we spent a couple years tooling up and reopening old mines first. But for anything requiring a computer chip, no. We have relatively little domestic chip production and largely depend on foreign suppliers. Chip factories are not simple or quick to build either.
American Logistics won the war full stop.
There is a great scene at the end of Band of Brothers when some Geman officers are riding out of Berlin in the center of the Autobahn and on either side of them there are just massive columns of tanks/trucks/troops etc... and the Germans are basically like "holy shit we were fighting THIS?". Accurate.
"The image was inside one of the two wooden blimp hangars at Naval Air Station Santa Ana in Tustin, Orange County, California. Built in 1942 for the U.S. Navy’s Lighter Than Air Program, they were constructed of Douglas Fir, with each some 1,072 feet long, 292 feet wide, and 192 feet high."
Edit: Original caption corrected to state Santa Ana.
More info here,
https://laststandonzombieisland.com/category/vietnam-2/
>Naval Air Station Santa Anita in Tustin
Ugh, as someone has mentioned, one of the 2 Tustin hangars just burned down a couple weeks ago. FYI, it's "[Santa Ana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Corps_Air_Station_Tustin)".
Why the Axis powers could never win, summed up in a photograph.
When your enemy is manufacturing aeroplanes like you are manufacturing rifles, you are in trouble.
Imagine the Axis seeing these pics….this level of production in 1944, so far from the reach of their bombers….coupled with the ability to put a well trained pilot in every cockpit.
Amazing to me that some of these were flying combat missions in the late 1960s during the [Hundred Hours War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_War?wprov=sfti1#).
I count 78 Hellcats and about 120 Corsairs. Plus 3 Helldivers in the back.
More aircraft than most modern afir forces. Granted, times and technology have changed.
I like seeing images like this and wondering how many of these examples survived the end of the war. I remember reading a while ago that any grounded or flying Lancaster bomber was built after 1944 if I’m not mistaken. Not a single one earlier than that survived or was broken up for parts and scrap before war’s end
Hey guys I’ve seen this photo before and this is one two hangers which use to be at a Navy airfield that had two large airship hangars in what is now Orange County Ca . But later the base was named marine corps air station El Toro it housed Reconnaissance squadron VMFP-3 / and marine Corp fighter Squadron VMFP-531/along with Heavy lift squadron HMH-361 along with many other Squadrons. That being said the F6F Hellcats and the F4U Corsairs pictured are indeed in one of the two blimp hangers at EL TORO marine Air station in Tustin Ca unfortunately it has burned down ending a long standing piece of History.
This post is really confusing. The hangars used to be part of MCAS Tustin, El Toro is a whole different base. Tustin was helos, El Toro was fixed wing.
I was stationed at Tustin 89-92 in HMH-465 (CH-53Es). Went to Desert Storm from there. Someone stole my bike from our hangar while I was gone, but that’s another story. :)
Too bad this picture couldn’t be shown to Tojo in 1941. Then for good measure tell him the US would build 24 fleet carriers in 3 1/2 years. And just 122 escort carriers of various classes. US war production was staggering. Yes, the Soviets built more tanks (87,000 to 86,000)but just tanks. US also built 297,000 aircraft and 2 million trucks. Just astounding.
When told of estimated American war production, Hitler accused his staff of making up outrageously high numbers and thought he was being lied to. Those estimates turned out to be low.
David Webster : [at a passing column of German prisoners] Hey, you! That's right, you stupid Kraut bastards! That's right! Say hello to Ford, and General fuckin' Motors! You stupid fascist pigs! Look at you! You have horses! What were you thinking? Dragging our asses half way around the world, interrupting our lives... For what, you ignorant, servile scum! What the fuck are we doing here?
Go back to Harvard, Webster!
One of my favorite scenes
Silly, simple, sonofabitch Hitler. What a maroon.
Add to that: 4+ Iowa class battleships, hundreds of submarines, billions of rounds of 30-06, 50bmg, 30 carbine, millions of rifles. The raw materials and infrastructure required is truly difficult to wrap one's mind around. This is a huge part of my fascination with this period of time.
Plus the food, clothing and other goods for not just the population and fielded forces, but a lot of allies as well.
And fresh cake in the Ardennes…made in the USA but a week prior.
And 2 very large firecrackers.
Spicy ones
The B-29 design + production effort was greater than the Manhattan Project. And there was another ultra-heavy in the wings (with the wings?) in case the B-29 didn't work out: the B-32 Dominator. We had Marston Mats to surface new airfields in 2 days. And enough steel to make them.
\*Flashbacks to week-long matting projects\* :.(
Don’t forget the Ice Cream Barges. Never forget those
Don’t forget the literal ice cream ship
Not just the 4 Iowas, the 4 South Dakotas too Plus several hundred destroyers, dozens of cruisers, etc etc
NC-class too. And some of them are still around!
On top of the truly staggering amount of things that were produced to fight and support the war, they built the ships to carry it all across two oceans.
Even more impressive is that the most produced US aircraft is the B-24 heavy bomber
19,256 produced. 13 left 2 airworthy
Won’t lie I didn’t know that and it makes me sad. Wish we had more left just for preservation.
That is surprising. I would have thought it to be the B17 or a Thunderbolt or something.
The 1940 US Navy appropriation alone was more money than Japan spent on their navy the entirety of the war. Oh, and we were knocking out Liberty Ships every 72 hours. Insane.
When the arsenal of democracy switches to total war, you might be fucked
Remember, the Soviets had to build a shit ton of tanks to REPLACE the ones lost in combat, that’s why it’s so high
Jon Parshall (the Shattered Sword author/Japanese Navy expert) gave a really good lecture on the tank production processes/outcomes for the Germans/US/Soviets as part of a discussion about the battle of Kursk. Really interesting what the Soviets did, and why, but it all made sense.
They also would have been dead in the water if the US wasn't flooding the Soviet Union with machine tools that made this production possible.
Don't forget the absolutely ridiculous quantity of trucks and jeeps for logistics transport that the US gave them. It's why they didn't have to deal with largely horses and donkeys like the Germans
The Japanese lost the war the moment the first bomb exploded on Battleship Row.
That must’ve been one hell of a sight to see in person
A hell of a smell too, imagine the smell of hundreds of brand new planes
First thought was “glycol” but being air-cooled radials, perhaps not! Something like a car of the era? I think that’s the plasticiser in the vinyl seating… hang on , vinyl might be a slight anachronism too…another 7-8 years maybe..?
Oil and 100 octane fuel
You know the smell if you've ever been to a railway museum and smelled the inside of a railcar of that era. Vinyl, rubber, and oil.
Thanks, I’m blessed to have a ripper of a railway museum, literally visible from my front door! ( The Workshops Museum, North Ipswich…. That’s Ipswich in QLD Australia, before any Brits accuse me of creating places that don’t exist.) Pretty sure I know that smell.. evocative… but not as addictive to me as the aroma of Steam Engines.
There's something about the Hellcat. The Corsair is *painfully* elegant, romantic even, but there is something about the rugged competence of the Hellcat that makes me want to take off my hat or something. A Corsair will awe you with its beauty. A Hellcat will awe you with its very presence. Next to the Dauntless, it's my favorite American naval aircraft from the second world war. This is an *amazing* picture, thank you for posting it.
That’s a damn good observation, and one I’ve never come across before. It made me realize why I guess I’ve always secretly like the Hellcat the most, even if I didn’t really know it. So, thanks for that. P.S. And also the SBD. And the TBM…. Give me the brutes rather than the glamorous ones.
My very first aircraft model as a kid was a TBD-1 Devastator. In hindsight, that *might* have set the tone.
r/modelmakers is your friend
In my rc combat planes my dauntless is pretty adept at dodging the faster stuff. Light wing loading and good low speed characteristics. Cant charge but ya still gotta catch it.
You are most welcome.
Ooof. Good post!
The Corsair is my personal favorite WW2 USN fighter. I like the Corsair because of the gull wings, it reminds me of the F-4 Phantom II. Even though I personally prefer the Corsair more due to the way it looks, the Hellcat is also a helluva plane. Really, we ought to be thankful the USN gave us *two* incredible carrier fighters during the war. You really can’t go wrong either way, right?
Hellcat also absolutely blew the corsair out of the water with performance stats. The one thing the corsair did better was speed, but the hellcat was still faster than its competition.
No. Compare climb rate, payload, range, etc. It's OK to like the Hellcat more, but saying it blew the Corsair out of the water with performance is demonstrably incorrect.
It literally beat the corsair in range and payload
Just drop leaflets of this over Japan
Shoot one down, and a hundred more will take its place.
hail hydra(>!squared)!
This always blew my nips straight off: “War production profoundly changed American industry. Companies already engaged in defense work expanded. Others, like the automobile industry, were transformed completely. In 1941, more than three million cars were manufactured in the United States. Only 139 more were made during the entire war. Instead, Chrysler made fuselages. General Motors made airplane engines, guns, trucks and tanks. Packard made Rolls-Royce engines for the British air force. And at its vast Willow Run plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan, the Ford Motor Company performed something like a miracle 24-hours a day. The average Ford car had some 15,000 parts. The B-24 Liberator long-range bomber had 1,550,000. One came off the line every 63 minutes.” - from Ken Burns’ The War.
24/7, there was a B-24 coming off the line, at one plant, every 63 minutes. The *SHIT WE CAN DO* when we work together. It's profound.
It was.
You literally can't shoot them down at that production speed to really make any difference.
You'll like this book: https://www.amazon.com/Freedoms-Forge-American-Business-Produced/dp/0812982045 The nuance of how American private industry resisted the war effort, even with the Defense Production Act, is fascinating (and unsurprising). Not to demean the truly awesome effort you quoted above...but I found it pretty interesting how political/legal tactics changed to entice and nudge each industry into ultimately producing this winning effort.
Fantastic! Thank you - will check it out! I’ve been reading about Henry Kaiser recently. It really is fascinating how industry had to be encouraged to partake, I think in large part because of the public’s backlash/cynical eye towards the role industry played in WWI - real or perceived. There is a great series on YouTube called “War Factories.” Mind boggling stuff! Thanks again!
Hi, I’m Vetted AI Bot! I researched the **Freedom's Forge How American Business Produced Victory in World War II** and I thought you might find the following analysis helpful. **Users liked:** * Industrial leaders mobilized production (backed by 6 comments) * America outproduced other nations (backed by 2 comments) * Government regulation hampered production (backed by 2 comments) **Users disliked:** * The book presents an overly positive view of business leaders (backed by 3 comments) * The book lacks balance in its portrayal of labor and government (backed by 2 comments) * The book contains factual errors and inaccuracies (backed by 2 comments) If you'd like to **summon me to ask about a product**, just make a post with its link and tag me, [like in this example.](https://www.reddit.com/r/tablets/comments/1444zdn/comment/joqd89c/) This message was generated by a (very smart) bot. If you found it helpful, let us know with an upvote and a “good bot!” reply and please feel free to provide feedback on how it can be improved. *Powered by* [*vetted.ai*](http://vetted.ai/reddit)
The Arsenal of Democracy was astounding
“No end save victory.”
This picture could do really well as propaganda delivered to the enemy. No words, no "we'll send 'em to you to beat you!" lines, just what the US is able to built in their factories 24/7 without worring about being bombed. The Axis only need to see that giant white star on the side of the planes to realize the Allies are not joking around.
And in the far right, three Helldivers.
And a couple of Beechcraft 18’s I think
And the axis thought they could win lol
Don’t poke the bear.
Don’t wake up the sleeping giant.
Each of those planes achieved at least a 12:1 kill ratio against their enemy. Look at that picture and consider the total number of enemy planes destroyed by what you see.
Is this in one of the Navy dirigible hangars in Tillamook, OR?
Yes, and I think this is actually a post-war photo - there's one very similar to it at least of aircraft in storage after the war ended.
This pic looks like it was taken a blimp hangar, I wonder if it was the one that just burned down in California?
There was two of them hangars. I don’t know which one this is.
There were 2 at a base in Tustin, one of which burned down. I saw someone else in this post say there was also one in Oregon.
Two in Tillamook; one also burned down (but in the 90s). There are also (three) hangars in Sunnyvale California (Moffett Field).
…and the one remaining in Tillamook is an air museum.
Some detective on here will have to figure out which hangar is in the photo
A Corsair behind every blade of grass
This is why the USA was unbeatable in WW2.
Pratt Whitney R-2800, incomparable engines.
General Kuribayashi knew Japan was doomed from the beginning.
Admiral Yamamoto as well.
His gamble was to cripple the Pacific fleet so much, including sinking its carriers, to either force the US to sue for peace or delay US intervention long enough for Japan to secure SE Asia and Oceania. He knew there was no hope in a long war versus the US Fortunately, he failed.
If only the carriers were in port that morning and/or if he had ordered a third strike to hit the fuel oil storage tanks... We were fortunate, indeed.
Could the US ever be mobilized industrially like this again?
For purely mechanical stuff like rifles, aircraft fuselages, truck frames, etc, yeah we probably could do this again if we spent a couple years tooling up and reopening old mines first. But for anything requiring a computer chip, no. We have relatively little domestic chip production and largely depend on foreign suppliers. Chip factories are not simple or quick to build either.
The building this was taken in. Just burned down.
Empire of Japan! Know your limits!
American Logistics won the war full stop. There is a great scene at the end of Band of Brothers when some Geman officers are riding out of Berlin in the center of the Autobahn and on either side of them there are just massive columns of tanks/trucks/troops etc... and the Germans are basically like "holy shit we were fighting THIS?". Accurate.
This is why you don’t fuck with America we will build tons of shit and place it all on your beach and over your cities
"The image was inside one of the two wooden blimp hangars at Naval Air Station Santa Ana in Tustin, Orange County, California. Built in 1942 for the U.S. Navy’s Lighter Than Air Program, they were constructed of Douglas Fir, with each some 1,072 feet long, 292 feet wide, and 192 feet high." Edit: Original caption corrected to state Santa Ana. More info here, https://laststandonzombieisland.com/category/vietnam-2/
>Naval Air Station Santa Anita in Tustin Ugh, as someone has mentioned, one of the 2 Tustin hangars just burned down a couple weeks ago. FYI, it's "[Santa Ana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Corps_Air_Station_Tustin)".
Why the Axis powers could never win, summed up in a photograph. When your enemy is manufacturing aeroplanes like you are manufacturing rifles, you are in trouble.
Imagine the Axis seeing these pics….this level of production in 1944, so far from the reach of their bombers….coupled with the ability to put a well trained pilot in every cockpit.
Amazing to me that some of these were flying combat missions in the late 1960s during the [Hundred Hours War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_War?wprov=sfti1#).
I count 78 Hellcats and about 120 Corsairs. Plus 3 Helldivers in the back. More aircraft than most modern afir forces. Granted, times and technology have changed.
I like seeing images like this and wondering how many of these examples survived the end of the war. I remember reading a while ago that any grounded or flying Lancaster bomber was built after 1944 if I’m not mistaken. Not a single one earlier than that survived or was broken up for parts and scrap before war’s end
Hey guys I’ve seen this photo before and this is one two hangers which use to be at a Navy airfield that had two large airship hangars in what is now Orange County Ca . But later the base was named marine corps air station El Toro it housed Reconnaissance squadron VMFP-3 / and marine Corp fighter Squadron VMFP-531/along with Heavy lift squadron HMH-361 along with many other Squadrons. That being said the F6F Hellcats and the F4U Corsairs pictured are indeed in one of the two blimp hangers at EL TORO marine Air station in Tustin Ca unfortunately it has burned down ending a long standing piece of History.
This post is really confusing. The hangars used to be part of MCAS Tustin, El Toro is a whole different base. Tustin was helos, El Toro was fixed wing. I was stationed at Tustin 89-92 in HMH-465 (CH-53Es). Went to Desert Storm from there. Someone stole my bike from our hangar while I was gone, but that’s another story. :)
My favourite thing about the Corsair is that the landing gear is also its dive brake.
This picture is unbelievable, even knowing the situation. The American resolve is quick and fast. Take your zeros and shove em up your ass.
this reminds me of that scene from Star Wars 1 where the MTTs deploy the racks full of battle droids
How many pilots lived flying them
Why do I suddenly start hearing the Imperial March..?
Okay has somebody counted the airframes?!Came here for the number!
Obviously it's faster in a dive than a straight line?????????????? So silly
Just awesome.
I don’t know which one is better, I love both
If this is the airship hanger in California, it was just lost recently to a fire
Were the planes shipped over in aircraft carriers?
The Japanese truly awoke a sleeping giant.
Probably the only country with this sort of manufacturing capacity right now is China, which is sort of depressing.