B-17s: 16/day (Seattle)
B-24s: 18/day
Liberty Ship: 42 days (Permanente) (2,751 built in 4 years)
Sherman Tank (assembled) 3 hours. (50,000 built, all variants, 9 months initial development time)
Today, we might be done thinking about it in another 10 years, and double the development budget.
I realize weapons systems are more complex than they were, but we ought to be used to that aspect now. Cars are far more complex than they were in the 1940s, too, but they get designed, produced, and modified on an annual basis.
The B-52 was ordered in 1946, prototypes flew in 1952, the B model was delivered in 1955.
Nine years from the drawing board (the engines were in their infancy at the start) to the flight line.
742 were built, the last delivered in October, 1962 (H model, still in use, with upgrades).
That's seven model upgrades and over 100 bombers a year on average during the production run.
We can't get a 'shallow' water vessel off the ways and active in that same time, and refurbishing the current fleet of B-52s will take longer than producing them from the drawing boards (literally), despite all the computerized design ability we have developed in the meantime.
WTF?
I understand the bottom line is that these systems work preferably first time, every time, but what's the hold up?
