How long did it take to manufacture a tank?

Discussion in 'Weapons, Technology & Equipment' started by Chris C, Mar 12, 2019.

  1. Chris C

    Chris C Canadian

    Specifically a British one, such as the Valentine.

    Also, does anyone know if serial numbers were assigned at the start or end of the production process? Logically, it must have been at the end, as there would be no point in attaching an identifier to a part of the tank.
     
  2. KevinBattle

    KevinBattle Senior Member

    I'd have thought that tanks would be built to a contract order, that's when the manufacturer would allocate their own identifier, but whether that then became the Army serial I have no idea.
     
  3. Chris C

    Chris C Canadian

    As far as I understand it, serial numbers were assigned in blocks when contracts were made, so they would be known in advance.
     
  4. Tricky Dicky

    Tricky Dicky Don'tre member

    Hang on Chris - we have a member doing a tour of the UK at the moment, he was close to Bovington so I will try and contact him to see if he can go to the Tank museum there and ask them as they may have the answer to your question

    Tee hee :rolleyes:

    TD
     
  5. Chris C

    Chris C Canadian

    :)

    If only I had thought to ask that question before I visited! Although I am not sure where exactly I would have turned to get that information.

    Come to think of it there is a scholarly book on the tank production programme in the library here. If no one recalls, maybe it will have the answer.
     
  6. TriciaF

    TriciaF Junior Member

    I'm reading a book Tyneside in WW 2 by Craig Armstrong and just got to a page with a photo of Covenanter tanks of the 9th Armoured Division on flatbed wagons at Blaydon. 1941. I think they went there for repair.
    Another photo of Cruiser tanks being constructed possibly at Vickers on Tyneside. Feb. 1941.
     
  7. von Poop

    von Poop Adaministrator Admin

    I fear this is going to be an enquiry into the length of a piece of string.
    Which tank, when, desertised, waterproofed, bombed production, flange shortages, political, presence of retired interfering officers... etc.
    Will try & have a dig through Contemporary stuff like 'Drive for Freedom' might have a claim or two.

    Another reason to miss Tom C.
    He worked repairing (& maybe building) Tillys etc. before going into uniform. Might have had a few opinions.
    Hmmm, what am I talking about... Tom was made of opinion!
     
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  8. SDP

    SDP Incurable Cometoholic

    As touched on in previous posts, tanks were built under Contracts that specified which 'T' numbers were to be used against each Contract. If the Contract was not completed for any reason it simply meant that some 'T' numbers remained unused. Bovington has a complete set (I understand) of so-called Contract Cards: these are literally simple file cards! I've got a copy - from Bovington - of a Contract Card for the Leyland built Comet tanks courtesy of their Jonathan Holt when I visited a few months ago.
     
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  9. idler

    idler GeneralList

    However long it took, I believe it became quicker after the Germans invaded Russia. Before that, some of the unions were a little bit 'the enemy's a friend of my friend so isn't really my enemy'. Wish I could remember where I read that, though.

    ^ I'm talking British tanks, for the avoidance of doubt.
     
    Last edited: Mar 12, 2019
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  10. Harry Ree

    Harry Ree Very Senior Member

    The Russian tank manufacturing centre which was located to the east of the Ural Mountains dubbed "Tankograd" was turning out 60 T 34 tanks per day at its peak.

    I believe that this factory turned out more tanks than any other during the Second World War.

    There was also an excellent documentary from the Battle Stations series on War Weapons World War 2 which gives very good coverage of the development of the T 34....T 34 Russian Victory...Christie suspension rejected by the US military authorities...... a leading tank designer,a victim of Stalin's prewar purge.

    Russia's T-34 Tank: The Weapon That Crushed Hitler and Won World War II?

    Russian rail network recovery...I remember speaking to a Russian lady and asking her what her father did during the war.....he was not in the army as such but as a railwayman was employed reinstating the railway network as the German slash and burn retreat westwards....rail facilities which supported the constant reinforcement of tanks and equipment to the front...a long logistic haul...quicker and without wear and tear on tanks before they reached the front.
     
  11. TriciaF

    TriciaF Junior Member

    Idler - there's a lot about that in the book I'm reading.
    ie the growth of the influence of the different levels of the communist parties on the shipbuilding engineering and dockers unions.
     
  12. Don Juan

    Don Juan Well-Known Member

    I would say it would on average have taken a month to build a typical Cromwell-type medium tank from scratch to running but unstowed condition.

    The time would vary according to the complexity of the tank, production line layout, the amount of labour committed, shift patterns, worker morale, material priorities, and the varying emphasis on quality and inspection.
     
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  13. von Poop

    von Poop Adaministrator Admin

    Looking in Dick Taylor's (excellent) 'Into the Vally', there's a chart of multiple production orders for Valentine. As SDP says, Census numbers there are indeed tied to each order.

    Having strolled through assorted bits of reference, from contemporary puff pieces to some rather serious work, I think you've asked one of those 'interesting' questions, Chris.
    Every list of a specific production run is a very murky thing to try & extrapolate one tank's time on the line from.
    As others have said above, there are so many factors involved. Quite possibly too many.

    When a factory says it produces X machines in Y period, that's pretty meaningless, as the figures just tell you how smoothly they'd got things rolling, not when/how each machine begins.
    Prototypes usually have a timescale mentioned, but again it's meaningless in this context. Bespoke vehicles don't really tell you how the lines will work.

    I won't be surprised if some harder figure turns up eventually, but it'll likely have to come from some contemporary time & motion study, or serious number-crunching.
    DJ's 'about a month' seems entirely reasonable, if not carved in stone.


    Are you interested in German figures?
    Sounds like the sort of thing Spielberger etc. might mention. Got a feeling there could be something relating to Elefant.
    (Though, again, quite a bit of German production was not comparable to Commonwealth or US stuff. Each nation so different on this score so Sherman doesn't translate to Churchill etc., though you might get a rough start that way.)


    Googling WW2 AFV Time & motion studies...
     
  14. Chris C

    Chris C Canadian

    Well, I was looking at the serial numbers I know for Archers, and the production values known for them which are mostly in Into the Vally. I checked that section and it indicates some Archers (26) completed in May '44. So as far as that's concerned - I think I might have written down for myself that Archers started to be made in May '44 but that might not be true - more likely they started the production line up in April.

    Also, I was comparing the serial numbers of Archers with when they reached units, assuming that serial numbers were issued sequentially as they were completed. When the factory started production it wasn't clear when Archers were going to be issued so obviously they sat in a vehicle park or something. The first ones to be officially issued to a unit in NWE in November 1944 have serial numbers which are very low in the range, e.g. 10 higher than the prototypes. So probably finished in May, and thus 6 months old. I was somewhat surprised when I checked some later issues (mostly to Canadian units, as there aren't many British records in with the Canadian file) the serial numbers are for vehicles about 5 months after they were constructed. I'm not sure if that is significant of anything or not. I suppose if the demand was not as great as supply they might just have kept sending the oldest vehicles when it was time to ship something across the Channel.

    On the other hand, I checked Comet: A Technical History and see by comparison that it was possible to get Comets finished in something like November to the troops by January.
     
    Last edited: Mar 13, 2019
  15. dbf

    dbf Moderatrix MOD

    This doesn't state how long it took to produce each type but it does give monthly production figures
    From Tanks: periodical returns of production figures (UK), Jan 1944 - April 1945
    Source: CAB 120/356
    Screen shot 2012-01-24 at 14.51.55.png

    Clive's thread quotes TNA "AVIA 46/188" monthly deliveries of Infantry and Cruiser Tanks by Firms, 1939-1943 and CAB 120/355
    as well as same CAB source as table above, so there might be something relevant buried in those.
    British Tank Construction and the War Economy 1934-1945
    tank output_ britain, germany, usa, 1940-45.png

    currently tagged : tank production figures | WW2Talk
    (let me know if there are more similar type threads)
     
    Last edited: Mar 13, 2019
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  16. Don Juan

    Don Juan Well-Known Member

    The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) took its orders directly from Moscow, and it's true that prior to 1941 it was moderately disruptive towards the British war effort. However after Operation Barbarossa it was told by its bosses in Moscow to get fully behind the British war effort and it consequently did so.

    Most of the disruption to British war production after June 1941 was either wildcat strikes, or organised by Trotskyist groups such as the Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL) or the Workers' International League (WIL), who were as opposed to Stalinist Russia as they were to western capitalism. It should be noted that the CPGB actively collaborated with the British authorities to break strikes and drive out agitators from British factories, and that the efficiency off the British war effort was almost certainly enhanced by the CPGB.

    There were also differences between the various Trotskyist groups, with the RSL being actively pacifist/defeatist, while the WIL wanted a social reorganisation that put the proletariat in charge of the war effort.
     
  17. Harry Ree

    Harry Ree Very Senior Member

    Looking at the original question...how long did it take to manufacture a tank?

    I think that the answer could be asked in two parts as with all vehicle or indeed,all engineering projects and products.This would exclude time in design,the production of the prototype and its testing....might be regarded as the production lead time.

    Considering the manufacture of one tank

    (a) The minimum time to fabricate and manufacture the various components and deliver them to the assembly factory of the tank.

    (b) At the assembly factory,the time it takes to assemble the tank when all the component parts are delivered for assembly.

    Thus the manufacturing time of the component parts and the assembly of those parts to construct the tank can be ascertained and the minimum time can be represented on what is termed a Bar Chart.The Bar Chart will show the manufacturing path required to manufacture the tank and indicate the time in the construction path when components must be available.From the aggregate time of the individual operations,the minimum time for a tank to be manufactured can be determined.This time/path is referred to as the "critical path".The individual tasks involved in the manufacture of the tank can be assessed further to establish if a reduction in the critical path time can be achieved through component part manufacture and assembly technique improvement.

    Such planning aids are common in the planning and delivery of engineering and construction projects.

    I'm sure that present day vehicle manufacturers would have such manufacturing planning aids keyed to a component "just in time" philosophy.
     
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  18. TriciaF

    TriciaF Junior Member

    There were a lot of strikes in those days, which would have delayed things.
    But mostly dockers and shipyard workers - maybe not so much heavy engineering.
     
  19. Don Juan

    Don Juan Well-Known Member

    Worth looking at some production line photos. Here are some Covenanters at English Electric in 1941:

    P 174.jpg

    Here are some Crusaders at (I presume) Nuffield Mechanizations, also in 1941:

    D 4501.jpg

    As you can see, tanks are not built one after another, but are built in batches on adjacent lines. It should be obvious that the amount of labour committed, the number of production lines, shift patterns and standards of inspection would have a huge influence on how quickly tanks are produced.

    I think that the only way you can comparatively measure the time taken to manufacture a tank is not by measuring the build time from start to finish, but by the manhours accumulated. You could then break that down by the number of fitters employed per tank, number of shifts, shift lengths etc. to get an idea of how quickly a tank would be built under various production regimes.
     
  20. Harry Ree

    Harry Ree Very Senior Member

    As I see these contracts were based on the usual fundamental costing of time and materials,involved in component,assembly and development costs.These costs would determine the cost of the tank to the government not forgetting an element of profit which would be subject to being pared back if the government thought the contract profit to be excessive.

    Any time required to manufacture the component parts and final assembly would be determined by the level of manpower resources allocated to the task and this would be taken into consideration in determining the length of time required to manufacture a tank.I would say that there was no such techniques such as automatic welding resulting in the assembly lines being labour intensive but advantage was taken of using short term trained female labour in doing welding tasks.

    An increase in manufacturing output would be determined by increased output in the resourcing and availability of materials for the manufacture of components and increased assembly facilities...new or improved sites with the mobilisation of manpower at resource, component and assembly level as appropriate.As shown the introduction of assembly tracks being adopted following from the expertise of the civilian vehicle manufacturers.A good example being of the Boeing bomber aircraft mobile assembly tracks to increase assembly rates.

    Overall,the optimising the matching of manpower to workload and as the task increases to new targets.Digressing,a good example of the publicised ad hoc demonstration of rapid assembly was that of the Wellington at the Broughton aircraft factory completed in record time....30 hours planned but less than 24 hours achieved but as said, an ad hoc demonstration which was for morale propaganda and not the norm.
     
    Last edited: Mar 13, 2019

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