" The Staggering Cost of WWII" Topic

"THE PRICE OF VICTORY

Cost per plane to make:

B-17 $204,370. USD P-40 $44,892. USD
B-24 $215,516. USD P-47 $85,578. USD
B-25 $142,194. USD P-51 $51,572. USD
B-26 $192,426. USD C-47 $88,574. USD
B-29 $605,360. USD PT-17 $15,052. USD
P-38 $97,147. USD AT-6 $22,952. USD

ON AVERAGE
6600 American service men died per MONTH, during WWII (about 220 a day).

PLANES A DAY WORLDWIDE
From Germany's invasion of Poland Sept. 1, 1939 and ending with Japan's surrender Sept. 2, 1945 — 2,433 days.
From 1942 onward, America averaged 170 planes lost a day.
Nation Aircraft Average
USA 276,400 113
S Union 137,200 56
G Britain 108,500 45
Germany 109,000 45
Japan 76,300 31

How Many is a 1,000 planes?
B-17 production (12,731) wingtip to wingtip would extend 250 miles. 1,000 B-17s carried 2.5 million gallons of high octane fuel.
Lifting 10,000 airmen to deliver 2,000 tons of bombs…"
Full article here.
link

Amicalement
Armand

Lots of sites out there, for example link and link

I was actually looking for one I had come across before that said the that the US had lost 70 aircrew every day during the war… not fighting, this was on routine flights and training in the US itself.
The facts site said:

'According to the AAF Statistical Digest, in less than four years (December 1941- August 1945), the US Army Air Forces lost 14,903 pilots, aircrew and assorted personnel plus 13,873 airplanes — inside the continental United States. They were the result of 52,651 aircraft accidents (6,039 involving fatalities) in 45 months.'

So my memory was a bit wrong, but still, over 1000 accidents a month in the US is not good.

We were trying to catch up and prepare for war in a hurry and as the old saying goes, "Haste makes waste." It is still incredible what was achieved, of course there was considerable incentive as it looked pretty bleak in the early months of 1941.

Of course we may never know how much Soviet material and lives of workers, sailors, soldiers, airmen were lost due to accident as they were behind an even larger eight ball to catch up. I will end with another old saying, Adversity is the mother of invention."

There's a certain valuable determination to "we either win this, by any means we have available, or we all get murdered by nazi's"

Still those numbers are sobering and hard to comprehend today.