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Kurt_Laughlin · ***Power User*** Offline Joined: Jan 24, 2006 Posts: 577

[quote="the_shadock"]

- Roy_A_Lingle

Hi Folks! Hi Soldat!

Love the new site. Good luck Soldat!

I have a production related question.

Did the plants that built the tanks, also make the turrets?
Or did another plant with casting equipemt make all the turrets?

Puzzled,
Sgt, Scouts out!

Roy, to follow up on what P-O wrote, it depends on what you mean by "make the turrets". P-O has given you the answer for the foundries that cast the turret bodies, but if you mean, who assembled the pieces to the turret body (welded in brackets, added the wiring, mounted the turret basket, etc.), the evidence is that the assembly plants did that as well.

KL

Roy_A_Lingle · Posted: Tue Dec 18, 2012 5:34 pm Post subject: Re: "Sherman minutia" website

Hi Folks! Hi P-O and Kurt!

Thank you P-O. Your answer is what I was asking about. I was talking with a visiter to the Ft. Bliss Museum a couple of weeks ago and the question of who made the turret castings came up. I was thinking they were supplied to the plants that assembled the vehicles and the visitor was thinking the plants that assembled the vehicle did all the casting work also.

He doesn't understand what the delay was with casting the turrets. He felt that all that was need was for the Presdent to tell/ask someone to just do it.

While the knowledge was there, they still needed to build a couple of test models. Test the design with a 75mm cannon, go back and make changes if needed, and them build the assemble line plants that could make the turret.

The visitor thinks it could have been done faster. Between Hunnicutt and your folks here, I told him that it was done about as fast as it could have been done. The only way to have done it faster would have been if they had today's internet. LOL.

Thank You All!
Sgt, Scouts out1

Thank You!
Sgt, Scouts out!

Kurt_Laughlin · ***Power User*** Offline Joined: Jan 24, 2006 Posts: 577

An interesting story Roy . . . The problem was that there just wasn't enough foundry capacity for armor. This is much different and more difficult than casting manhole covers or even railroad parts, and required a furnace to heat treat the parts to make them strong enough to work as armor.

The fact is that the President did tell somebody to go do it. Unfortunately, he told EVERYBODY to go do whatever their IT was, at the same time! (In fact, the President had ordered an Army so large that there was no possible way to find enough Americans to serve. I think it was something like 200 infantry divisions and 75 armored divisions, vice the ~100 TOTAL that were actually fielded.) There just wasn't enough industrial capacity to finish the weapons, make the assemblies, build the small parts, machine the pieces, roll the steel sheet, make the steel, mine the iron ore, dig the coal, cut the lumber, make clothes, plow fields, harvest crops, design the weapons, design the new plants, design the new steel mills, design the new mines, make the machine tools that make the parts that make the weapons, build the barracks, create the armies, build the Pentagon, publish the manuals, build the printing presses, make the paper, build the A-bomb, build the B-29, build the DUKW, build escort carriers, etc., etc., etc.

People just don't realize that everything was competing against everything else for land, raw materials, people, and energy. Even money wasn't infinite. (Close, but not nearly.) Need more electricity? Build a power plant. Fine. Need engineers to design it? Take them from those building synthetic rubber plants. Need steel to build it? Take it from the expansion at Boeing. Need special steel for the boilers? Take it from the armor foundries. Need lathes to make the parts? Take them from making prop shafts for Liberty ships. Need construction workers? Give draft exemptions. Need electricity to keep it moving? Build a power plant . . .

The fact was that on V-E day the US had hit the wall. EVERY Army unit was deployed or deploying. There were no more soldiers available in training, and no reserves, and no way to get any more without taking people from the production of weapons, or food, or electricity, or raw materials, or . . . We would essentially be "eating our seed corn". (Britain more or less did.)

KL

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