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The interesting claim in the article is that US ship production was less efficient in terms of man-hours as quantity went up. That's unexpected.
by Animats 2y ago
The interesting claim in the article is that US ship production was less efficient in terms of man-hours as quantity went up. That's unexpected.
- lurk2 2y agoCould be economies of scale reaching a point of diminishing returns.
- bruckie 2y agoIt seems plausible that as you add more people to the project, the people added later have fewer skills or less interest compared to the ones who are more engaged ones who joined earlier.
- creshal 2y agoEarly war designs also had dangerous flaws that had to be corrected, which slowed down construction of subsequent ships, but made them less likely to spontaneously break apart. Between that and muss less skilled, much less experienced labour producing ships in newly constructed shipyards with teething issues that were also in less ideal locations... something had to give, and taking a bit longer was the least bad option.
- _DeadFred_ 2y agoYou have to think not having access to healthy 18+ year old men was an impact to the super physical jobs as well.
- creshal 2y agoThe US "solved" that particular problem by keeping its army much smaller than it could've been, precisely to free up more healthy 18 year olds for factory jobs. Between the British Empire, the various Chinese governments and Soviet Union, the Allies had plenty of manpower, but all that was meaningless without US munitions, US equipment, US food, and US ships to get them where they were needed.