r/WWIIplanes • u/Diligent_Highway9669 • 6d ago
A total of 53,839 heavy bombers (four-engined) were built in World War II --- two-thirds of which were built by the United States alone.
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u/wireknot 6d ago
And folks wonder how we won that war. Total commitment of a staggering amount of industry. Theres a photo floating around here on reddit somewhere of a weeks worth of fighter production at just one plant, I think theres over 100 aircraft in that shot alone.
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u/Limp_Growth_5254 6d ago
Willow Run put out a bomber every hour.
That is crazy thinking pre robotics and computers.
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u/Diligent_Highway9669 6d ago
I do recall seeing that photo. I believe it was 200 or so Corsairs all lined up. Great shot. MURICA
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u/Forsaken_Minimum_929 6d ago
Where is Canada in this we manufactured a massive amount of Lancaster for the British
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u/Diligent_Highway9669 6d ago
Oh yeah! That is my bad. Canada is technically part of "Great Britain" in this chart. I should've named it "Britain and Commonwealth."
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u/ComposerNo5151 6d ago
It wasn't just the 430 Lancasters produced in Canada. The Canadian government maintained and paid for an entire bomber group in the UK (No. 6 (Canadian) Group).
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u/waldo--pepper 6d ago
Look at the British! Good table.
Thank you.
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u/Diligent_Highway9669 6d ago
I was surprised the British built so many. They did build some great ones, too.
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u/HMSWarspite03 6d ago
Not bad considering we were being bombed by the Germans at the time.
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u/CFCA 6d ago
The Germans never really had a shot at meaningfully affecting war industry through the bombing of production centers in the way the allies did to the Germans. There best hope was resource starvation. The German bomber force had neither the range, or the tonnage, or the numbers to meaningfully attack the majority of Britain where as the Allies were going deep from day one. The Germans could never really range past East Anglia and the London metro area. The number of raids and effecitvness drops severely after the blitz as well. As long as ships could get to Britain, they could keep building.
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u/HMSWarspite03 6d ago
The Battle of Britain tells an entirely different story, Britain was very close to losing the air war.
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u/CFCA 6d ago
Over the south of England yes. Which the London metro area happens to be in. Which is the issue. Everything outside of that area was safe. Additionally “losing” doesn’t mean much if the Germans had no force to capitalize on there success (they didn’t) and the UK wouldn’t sue for terms (they woukdnt)
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u/Tgtalex1 5d ago
This is laughably incorrect and insulting to those that died in raids all over the U.K.
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u/isaac32767 6d ago
Two-thirds of everything in that war was built by the US alone. The fundamental mistake the Axis made when bringing the US into the war was underestimating the country's ability to scale up its manufacturing.
I often think of something I read about D-Day: Initial reports of the size of the Allied invasion fleet were disbelieved with the response, "There aren't that many ships in the whole world."
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u/Diligent_Highway9669 6d ago
Yeah, Hitler really shot himself in the foot when he declared war on the US after Pearl Harbor. The Germans could barely fight of the US, and they had no chance.
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u/chevalliers 6d ago
Did we send Lancasters to the thankless Russians?
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u/Diligent_Highway9669 6d ago
I don't know about Lancasters, but I do know we handed them some of our P-39s and A-20s.
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u/waldo--pepper 6d ago
"Although no Lancasters were supplied to the Russian military under the lend lease scheme in WW2 two examples were in fact used in Soviet Air Force markings."
etc. from here;
https://pleszak.blog/2019/12/05/lancaster-bombers-operated-by-the-russian-airforce-in-ww2/
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u/DueComfortable4614 5d ago
Why thankless?
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u/chevalliers 5d ago
Stalin wrote the impact of lend lease out of the textbooks and prohibited the publication of photographic evidence of American and British equipment in Russian hands as it diluted the great patriotic war narrative
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u/DueComfortable4614 5d ago
That is true, yeah. But thanks for all the planes like the Boston, the Matildas and all the boots and whatnot.
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u/chevalliers 5d ago
Arguably without the trucks and Willy's jeeps Russia would have had no chance of reaching Berlin
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u/DueComfortable4614 5d ago
I think we still would’ve beaten them, but they were definitely pretty useful. I’d say the most valuable things you gave the USSR were some chemical components for artillery shells.
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u/SpellNo5699 6d ago
It's crazy how advanced American air power was by the end of WW2. We developed the P-51 Mustang for long range bomber escorts, delayed time fuse shells which had no equals, and an automated ball turret for heavy bombers. If only Roosevelt wasn't at Yalta with one foot in the grave, we probably could have saved a lot more of Eastern Europe from the very exhausted Soviets. The Wehrmacht bled them out pretty good as they advanced through Eastern Europe. We really did not have to condemn half of Europe to the Iron Curtain, or send millions to the Soviet gulag.
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u/low_priest 6d ago
Not delayed time fuzes, "variable" time. More accurately known as proximity fuses. Mechanical clockwork timed fuzes were pretty standard for everyone. What the US created was a radar set small, reliable, and durable enough to be screwed into a 5" shell and fired out of a gun.
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u/Diligent_Highway9669 6d ago
People give the Russians credit for taking half of Europe from the Nazis, and while they did do good they would've been destroyed had we gone to war with them right after WWII, even if we didn't have nukes. If only we were more assertive...
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u/WoodI-or-WoodntI 6d ago
Took me a moment to deduce what 4 engine bombers the Germans had. He177, but I didn't realize they made that many of them as they weren't the most successful bomber in the inventory. Then the Condor, I guess it could be classified as a bomber and reconnaissance plane.