Wooden, subsonic airplanes can be built to similar weight and strengths as aluminum airplanes. Sheet metal construction was really only perfected during the 1930s, so tooling and skilled workers were still in short supply.
Since wood-working tools and labour were widely available, all WW2 combatents built wooden trainers and assault gliders.
One of the few front-line wooden airplanes was the DH Mosquito fighter bomber. DeHavilland of Canada furthur simplifies tooling by casting concrete moles that were more stable than the wooden production kits used in Britain. Mosquito’s smoother skin reduced drag compared with metal airplanes. Mosquito’s biggest disadvantage was its short airframe life caused by water saturation or termite saturation. In the Far East, termites and white ants especially enjoyed the flavour of glue.
The Bakelite, Duramold, etc. plywood used by America, Canadaand Russia helped seal plywood against water saturation. When you compare a Duramold Canadian-made AvRO Anson with a British-built steel tube, wood and fabric Anson, the reduction in parts count is as amazing as the much larger useable volume in the fuselage!
Try to think of plywood as composites/fibreglass built with organic materials. You can tailor the strength and weight of plywood airplanes by only laying wood strands in the same direction as structural loads. The next step is adding a few e-glass (common window glass) ribbons in highly-stressed areas like spar caps.
As an aside, sheet aluminum P-51 out-performed most other metal fighters because of precise attention to detail on outer seams and flush rivets on leading edges.
Germany always suffered man-power shortages. WW1 ground to a halt when Germany exhausted its supply of young men/soldiers. They needed another 20 years - to raise another crop of young men - before they could resume the war. Many modern historians teach WW1 and WW2 as a single war. Slave labour is a clear sign that a country is short of labour.
Over on the
www.homebuiltairplanes.com website, there are plenty of threads comparing the relative merits of aluminum versus wood versus composite construction. While theoretically modern carbon fibre composites can be built lighter than other methods, few amateurs have the skills or tooling to build light, composite airplanes and most plans-built composite airplanes weigh more than the prototype. We can expect similar crude, heavy composites during WW2.
