The Ford Merlin

[dieseltaylor]

In 1940, Henry Ford, who opposed American involvement in World War II, canceled a contract (arranged by Edsel) to build 6,000 Rolls-Royce Merlin aircraft engines for the British Royal Air Force, and 3,000 more for the U.S. Army. In time, however, public opinion led Ford to change his mind. Plans were made for the construction of a large new government-sponsored facility to manufacture aircraft at Willow Run, west of Dearborn.

Just browsing and found that quite interesting. How long "in time" is I do not know but any delay in providing engines was not very helpful when fighting the Germans.

[Voodoochile]

I wonder what his reasons were for opposing American involvement....considering that a lot of money was to be made....KA-CHING!!!$$$$

Did your source mention them?

[JonS]

I imagine that, like a lot of industrialists, Ford thought rather highly of Hitler and national Socialism. I suspect that he wasn't opposed to war, per se, but rather to war with Hitler. Especially when - again from an industrialists POV - there were filthy Commies to be fought.

Construction of the Will-It-Run aircraft plant had begun by May 1941 (i.e., some 6 months before Pearl Harbor) so "in time" amounts to maybe 12 months.

[dieseltaylor]

http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/chapter_06.htm

Gives an interesting insight, whether it is all totally true I cannot say but certainly it seems a well documented piece. Possibly Ford felt it would be ungracious to thank Hitler for the highest medal to be given to a foreigner by producing fighter engines for his potential enemy.

"Ford later reconsidered and agreed to construct a large new government-sponsored facility to manufacture aircraft at Willow Run. The Willow Run Aircraft plant, completed in 1942" ...,

http://www.michiganhistorymagazine.com/extra/willow_run/willow_run.html

Shows that no planes flew from there until September 10th 1942. However the fudge about reconsidering -- and actual engine production is not clarified so your "12 months" may not be accurate. However reading about Willow Run is interesting.

[dieseltaylor]

Wiki to the rescue

The Merlin was considered to be so important to the war effort, negotiations soon started to establish an alternative production line outside the UK. Rolls-Royce had checked out a number of North American automobile manufacturers, in order to select one to build the Merlin in the USA or Canada, and Packard Motor Car Company's attention to high quality and engineering impressed the parent British company so much, Packard was selected to build the Merlin. Agreement was reached in September 1940, and the first Packard-built engine, designated V-1650-1, ran in August 1941.

[JonS]

However the fudge about reconsidering -- and actual engine production is not clarified so your "12 months" may not be accurate.

I was responding to this:

In 1940, Henry Ford, [...] opposed American involvement in World War II, [...] In time, however, public opinion led Ford to change his mind. Plans were made for the construction of a large new government-sponsored facility to manufacture aircraft at Willow Run, ...

rather than specifically whether Ford ever made Merlins.

In other words, in 1940 Ford opposed helping anyone against his good buddy Hitler. An experssion of this opposition was cancelling the Merlin contract made by his brother. By mid-1941 Henry's opposition had reduced sufficiently that work had commenced on Will-It Run.

Of course, conspiracy theory would have you believe that he deliberately sabotaged Will-It Run so that money would be wasted there rather than on useful war production, giving some relief to Hitler and Germany. Or sumfink.

[dieseltaylor]

His son, no brother. : )

Apparently the conspiracy theory would fail as it was his staff who sorted it all out and he just ambled around for the photo opps and habit.

[Pak_43]

According to "The Battle of Britian", By: Richard Hough & Denis Richards, Chapter 16, The Strategic Turning Point.

"Another three weeks at the same rate of attrition, and they (The Planes) would be exhausted - even sooner if there was serious damage to the aircraft factories (or, worst of all, to the Vickers works in Sheffield, where the only drop-hammer in Britain capable of forging cranshaft castings for the Merlin engine was working round the clock, producing eighty-four (84) stampings per shift)."

Might explain Britain's eagerness to get an alternative engine maker sorted in 1940...

[gunnergoz]

Pak_43;(snip)..."the Vickers works in Sheffield, where the only drop-hammer in Britain capable of forging cranshaft castings for the Merlin engine was working round the clock, producing eighty-four (84) stampings per shift)."(snip)

Boy, talk about "for want of a nail..." Sometimes history does turn on such seemingly trivial facts. One bomb on that drop hammer in Sheffield and perhaps the Battle of Britain might have ended differently.

[JonS]

I suspect there's a little dramatic license going on there.

The RAF retained very good reserves of a/c throughout the BoB - vastly better than the GAF even considered. Also, there'd be a lag of some length before production of Merlins came to a complete halt, due to stock holdings and work-in-progress at various places in the production chain.

Losing the drop hammer would have been serious, but not immediately fatal. If it had been destroyed in, say, mid September then I would expect there'd be enough 'stuff' to keep RAF up to full strength through till late-autumn/winter, at which point SEALION becomes impractical regardless of the state of the RAF. Then the British have three or four months to get the hammer back in action, and/or build more.

Finally, one of the key lessons of the CBO against Germany in 1943-1945 is that heavy industrila machinery is very hard to destroy, especially if the owner values it highly enough to put great effort into getting it back into production.

[Stalins Organ]

Heavy machine tools take big bombs to damage - as the USAAF found later int hte way - the "standard" 500 lb/220kg bombs used early on could damage buildings, but even a direct his probably wouldnt' put machinery out of action for long.

As Jon says, the RAF had a heap more in reserve than the LW - RAF panicked when their pilot ratio got down to 1.5 per fighter....but the LW never rose ABOVE 1.1 per 109 (from a paper I did 2 decades ago...), and at one point in 1940 Britain was outproducing Germany in single-engined fighters by 2:1 (450/mth vs 220).

The RAF also never had less than a couple of hundred Spits & Hurricanes in reserve, and never less than 600 serviceable in squadrons, plus those in repair depots etc.

There was no way the LW was ever going to destroy the RAF - of course it didn't seem that way to people at the time, but with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight we can make that assertion now.

[Michael Emrys]

Heavy machine tools take big bombs to damage - as the USAAF found later int hte way - the "standard" 500 lb/220kg bombs used early on could damage buildings' date=' but even a direct his probably wouldnt' put machinery out of action for long.[/quote']

Just so. Most often all it took was brushing the debris off, rigging new power connections, and recalibrating...a matter of hours or a day or two...and you were back in business.

If the Luftwaffe had concentrated their attack on the control centers, they might have at least neutralized the RAF. But even that would not have made SEALION a winning proposition.

Michael

[Affentitten]

Heavy machine tools take big bombs to damage - as the USAAF found later int hte way - the "standard" 500 lb/220kg bombs used early on could damage buildings, but even a direct his probably wouldnt' put machinery out of action for long.

And the Luftwaffe were generally only dropping max 250kg bombs at that BoB stage, weren't they?

[Pak_43]

They had 2 pretty good goes at knocking out industry in Sheffield on the 12th and 15th December 1940 , neither put a dent in production afaik...

"In "Sheffield at War" it states that just on 12/12/1940 the Germans dropped 450 HE bombs, 6 parachute mines and thousands of incendiaries.

On the 15th a further 100 HEs, 5 parachute and again thousands of incendaries."

Of course the fact that it isn't easy to do, shouldn't have stopped the British government diversifying their production bases. T

the BoB book does say that with another 6 weeks of attrition at that rate it would become problematic, but does fail to say that it was highly unlikely the Luftwaffe could have kept up that rate of attrition for 6 days never mind 6 weeks.

IIRC it was noticable to the Luftwaffe top brass that during their big pushes the morale of the bomber crews dropped alarmingly as the casualty rates started to hit home...

[Affentitten]

They had 2 pretty good goes at knocking out industry in Sheffield on the 12th and 15th December 1940 , neither put a dent in production afaik...

Rather late in terms of affecting the outcome of the Battle of Britain too!

[Pak_43]

Indeed, possibly an attempt to knock out production of the merlin for the bombers that used them?

[Dietrich]

If the Luftwaffe had concentrated their attack on the control centers, they might have at least neutralized the RAF. But even that would not have made SEALION a winning proposition.

Neutralizing the RAF was only the first step in making Sealion feasible. Neutralizing the RN (Royal Navy) would be next, since the Kriegsmarine wasn't strong enough to secure the English Channel, and even if they were able to do so, the RN could still put the hurt on the Heer from, say, the Thames Estuary. With the RAF neutralized and the RN driven off, Sealion could have then gotten under way, but as soon as the Heer got a few miles into Kent, the stern conventional warfare as well as vicious guerilla fighting would begin.

I think Sealion would have been most feasible if the Germans had:

1) reduced the Dunkirk pocket and captured the hundreds of thousands of Allied troops that escaped therefrom (the British and such lost a lot of equipment, but they were able to save the vast majority of the soldiers themselves)

2) continued to bomb fighter factories and RAF training facilities (exacerbating the problem of not enough trained pilots to fly the numerically yet-sufficient fighters)

and

3) neutralized the RN (perhaps giving Rudel an early chance to pull off the feat he performed when he sunk the Marat?)

Even then, I think Britain would have remained effectively unconquerable. Sure, the Normans pulled it off, but they were more superior to the Anglo-Saxons and such in technology and tactics than the Germans were to the British/Commonwealth -- and the Normans had the fighting between Harold Godwinson and Harald Hardråda to take advantage of.

[Michael Emrys]

3) neutralized the RN...

They would have had to sink a lot of ships to accomplish that. In order to frustrate the Sealion landings—and more importantly the re-supply missions—all the RN would have needed was a handful of destroyers and some smaller craft, and they had many destroyers to throw into the battle. If the Luftwaffe is trying to fight off the RN, they aren't going to be able to give much support to the forces on the ground, who are going to have a very rough go of it.

It might have been an interesting fight, but I give the Germans less than a 10% chance of success overall. To have achieved their goals would have taken a miracle or at least a wild-ass fluke.

Michael

[JonS]

There are some interesting period documents on SEALION available here. (Note that the bottom one is mis-dated. It should read Oct 1940, not Oct 1941)

[Dietrich]

Yeah, you're right, Michael. As it is, Hitler respected the British (or so he said on occasion), and perhaps he respected them too much to actually invade the British Isles. At least, his inclination to invade the UK was not nearly as great as his obsession with invading the Soviet Union.

With the Wehrmacht stretched thin occupying all the territory it would have after invading and conquering the British Isles, the Red Army could have steamrolled westward all the way to Berlin in 1941. Then there might have been a Berlin Wall even sooner, except it wouldn't quite actually be in Berlin.

If the Germans had taken over the British Isles, though, the US wouldn't have been able to use England as a giant aircraft carrier. They would have had to launch their B-17s and B-24s from...Algeria, maybe? Tunisia? They probably would have used Malta, but only so many four-engined bombers could have fit on that little island.

Thanks for the link, JonS. Back when I was playing CM:AK more, I so wanted to make a series of serious scenarios based on plans for Unternehmen Seelöwe but, sadly, my skill with map-making was then as it is now -- dismal. lol (I'm much better with analyzing TO&Es. hehe)

[JonS]

Yeah, you're right, Michael. As it is, Hitler respected the British (or so he said on occasion), and perhaps he respected them too much to actually invade the British Isles. At least, his inclination to invade the UK was not nearly as great as his obsession with invading the Soviet Union.

It's my understanding that, at a grand strategic level, in late-1940/early-1941, the invasion and defeat of the USSR was seen as a pre-req for invading the UK.

[JonS]

... Back when I was playing CM:AK more, I so wanted to make a series of serious scenarios based on plans for Unternehmen Seelöwe ...

Andreas created a series of rather good SEALION scens for CMAK.

I don't know where you'd get them now though

[Stalins Organ]

If the Luftwaffe had concentrated their attack on the control centers, they might have at least neutralized the RAF. But even that would not have made SEALION a winning proposition.

Michael

KO'ing 11 Group's control centres wouldn't really have helped IMO - fighter Command was prepared to withdraw beyond London at strength levels well above "destroyed", and the control centres for 10 and 12 group were never going to be attacked and could probably have taken over the task of controlling 11 Group's area (I don't specifically know this but it seems like a reasonable measure to have available!)

[Affentitten]

And what is a control centre anyway in the 1940 context? A bunch of people with radios and telephones. Fairly replaceable.

[Michael Emrys]

With the Wehrmacht stretched thin occupying all the territory it would have after invading and conquering the British Isles, the Red Army could have steamrolled westward all the way to Berlin in 1941. Then there might have been a Berlin Wall even sooner, except it wouldn't quite actually be in Berlin.

With all due respect, I think this is quite an exaggeration.

First of all, in 1941 the German army was rather large, as you no doubt recall, and garrisoning the British Isles would have taken only a fraction of it, and for the greatest part those would have been second or third rate divisions. The bulk of the field army would still have been available for duty elsewhere.

Secondly, the Red Army was in no shape to take on a major power in 1941 and Stalin knew it. That's why he kept stalling and making nice to the Germans. The earliest conceivable date that the USSR could have taken the offensive would have been some time in 1942. And even then, there is much reason to doubt that they could have steamrollered their way to Berlin in one campaign season...if at all.

For one thing, they would not have been so well off in terms of logistical support in 1942 as they were two and three years later. All those Lend-Lease trucks you may recall. Secondly, the Germans would have been fighting on territory where their own logistics were vastly better than they were on Soviet territory. They also would not yet have have been bled white by two years of hard fighting in the USSR. We could also mention that, even with the BoB losses factored in, the Soviet air force would not have been close to being a match for the Luftwaffe in 1942, let alone 1941.

I think the most that can be said for a Soviet offensive in 1942 is that if they had caught the Germans off-guard, it might have reached Warsaw before it ran out of steam. In 1941, it probably wouldn't have gotten even that far.

The big question is what would this scenario look like if, instead of going directly after Berlin, the Soviets make their first target the Rumanian oil? I don't see that as a sure win for them either, but to some extent it does make for a more interesting and unpredictable fight.

Michael