Ya know when you really look into Brewster's problems it's kind of amazing the Buffalo was as good as it was.
Brewster Buffalo....Blackburn Buccaneer....
Ya know when you really look into Brewster's problems it's kind of amazing the Buffalo was as good as it was.
Otherwise terrible companies making one decent aircraft?What?
Ya know when you really look into Brewster's problems it's kind of amazing the Buffalo was as good as it was. That's not saying the Buffalo was good by any means. Just that it's amazing it wasn't worse.
Really reading into Brewster's corporate and labor issues is like reading a tragicomic opera. I mean it's amazing that the company's corporate and labor leadership were so ridiculously cancerous, incompetent, and moronic. I mean having your Unions president openly say to a fucking reporter on the record that he'd be fine with his brother being killed in combat by Nazi's if it helped his union during the middle of WW2. It's amazing the guy didn't die via forgetting to breathe.
I'm with fellow Maryland resident 100R% here. Given everything I've read about the company itself it's amazing their planes flew at all let alone enjoyed anything remotely resembling any success in combat.
I mean the USN's more or less official guess as to the cause of the companies problems was "Probably Nazi Sabotage".
Never ascribe to malice that which can easily be explained by incompetence.
The FBI did bust a Nazi spy ring in the States right before the war. (Who managed to steal some tech and patents before they were caught)I mean the USN's more or less official guess as to the cause of the companies problems was "Probably Nazi Sabotage".
Blackburn's Aircraft weren't that bad (Roc and Botha aside). They may not have been the best but they were generally adequate for the task required and met the specifications. Blackburn was also a real company not a criminal enterprise designed to milk as much money from government contracts as possible while doing the absolute minimum.Otherwise terrible companies making one decent aircraft?
Otherwise terrible companies making one decent aircraft?
Blackburn's Aircraft weren't that bad (Roc and Botha aside). They may not have been the best but they were generally adequate for the task required and met the specifications.
You really need to go back to sometime between about 1910 & 1920 & shoot the entire Brewster management.
The thing is, AIUI (reader health warning: fuzzy recall, not source in front of me), every auto company by 1925 had converted to assembly line--but Brewster was still building bodies by hand: in short, they were incapable of even bodying a mass-produced car. (Forget building a whole one.) You'd need Brewster's financial woes to, say, attract a company to buy up the body division & make it into a subsidiary, like LeBaron for Chrysler.
I imagine Packard doing it, myself, which would mean Brewster increases production capacity and improves quality control (because Packard insists). Between better quality control & Packard's OTL dabbling in aviation, I imagine the OTL F2A (TTL's F2P?) being more advanced than OTL, & better overall.
I'd also imagine a Packard Brewster instead of the OTL 120, priced like a Caddy instead of a Buick; a Packard-Brewster entry in the Plywood Derby (maybe not good enough to win, against Elco & Higgins...); & Packard surviving long enough to merge with Rambler instead of Stude, as the luxury division of *AMC.
OTL Brewster actually did try making boats after the War for a bit, they used machinery for making PBY Catalina floats. The Boats were not very big sellersI imagine if OTL Brewster made a boat it would probably be made entirely out of lead and every production model would be missing the hull (because it was stolen.)
Ford's original Piquette Avenue factory building, built over 30,000 cars in 1910, without the moving assembly line. This was later sold to Studebaker, whi had a nearby factory building(E.M.F.) to start manufacturing cars on their own, though didn't reach Ford's 32000 for many years.Three stories high, over 67,000 square feet.The thing is, AIUI (reader health warning: fuzzy recall, not source in front of me), every auto company by 1925 had converted to assembly line--but Brewster was still building bodies by hand: in short, they were incapable of even bodying a mass-produced car. (Forget building a whole one.) You'd need Brewster's financial woes to, say, attract a company to buy up the body division & make it into a subsidiary, like LeBaron for Chrysler
Yeah, that sounds right...I imagine if OTL Brewster made a boat it would probably be made entirely out of lead and every production model would be missing the hull (because it was stolen.)
TYVM.Though this does seem one of the better possible "Better Brewster" responses. Thank you.
Yeah. And that linked page, saying cancelling the Corsair contract was unfair to Brewster--seriously? This is the company that committed fraud & sabotage, on top of incompetence.I guess the greatest mark of Brewsters complete and total state of fuck upedness would be that Henry Kaiser perhaps the greatest and most efficient industrialist couldn't get the company to actually work on anything other then a mediocre level. While some of his most famous accomplishments were more propaganda pieces then actual production (the famous Liberty ship made in a day was built from carefully preprepared pieces by crews of extremely well trained workers who practiced for weeks) but the man managed to make virtually every industrial effort he touched into a work of efficient high tech art. And even he could barely make Brewster mediocre for a while.
I'm not saying Brewster lacked the space or manpower. They didn't have the right approach. Henry's shift to the assembly line was a gigantic deal in the industry. Companies that didn't shift, even without the Depression, would fold pretty fast--& I'm unaware of Brewster doing it. (I'll happily be corrected on that.)Ford's original Piquette Avenue factory building, built over 30,000 cars in 1910, without the moving assembly line. This was later sold to Studebaker, whi had a nearby factory building(E.M.F.) to start manufacturing cars on their own, though didn't reach Ford's 32000 for many years.Three stories high, over 67,000 square feet.
Ford didn't need it anymore, the Kahn designed Highland Park Plant was 102 acres was ready in late 1910, and Model T assembly time dropped from 728 minutes to 93, thanks to the new moving assembly line and Taylorism.
The New York Brewster Building was 400,000 square feet, new in 1911. They had been one of the main Coach builders for supplying bodies to Rolls Royce USA, before that came to a halt in 1931.
At that time they did have a workforce able to do very high quality work