Cost of American Fighter WW2

[F4UDOA]

Gents,

One of the repeated mantra's on the boards lately has been "They stopped building my favorite A/C because it cost too much".
Well here are some real numbers on the cost of production A/C during WW2 courtesy "America's Hundred Thousand".

Aug. 1943 P-47 cost $104,258

Aug. 1944 P-38 cost $97,147

Aug. 1944 P-40 cost $44,892

May. 1944 F4U-1D cost $75,000

I couldn't find the rest. But I think based on that small sampling that it wasn't cost that determined a fighters future.

BTW, my F4U comes with a CD player, a roll bar and alloy wheels  

[Sable]

It would be really interesting to also see how much time it took to produce the aircraft, as well as how much time was required to train a pilot to use it effectively.

Sable
352ndFG

[Westy]

 I've honestly never seen the original P-38 price that low. All I've seen had it anywhere from $125-135,000.  And The P-47 and P-51 were at least half that.
 Somethings askew.

 -Westy

[Jimdandy]

 

Originally posted by Westy:
I've honestly never seen the original P-38 price that low. All I've seen had it anywhere from $125-135,000.  And The P-47 and P-51 were at least half that.
 Somethings askew.

 -Westy

It's kind of interesting that cars, clothes, and stoves have roughly kept up with inflation over the past 57 years. Fighter planes have left inflation in the dust! Modern fighters are far more expansive than their WWII counter parts (with inflation taken in). All those computers and missiles must add a lot. I'm sure the fact that they can operate above the speed of sound must add something to the price.

[F4UDOA]

Westy,

That was 1943 so it was probably a P-38F.
Maybe the P-38L cost more. Bucket seats, dive flaps etc.

[Jimdandy]

Here's an interesting quote that goes with what I said above. It's out of an older book called Modern Air Combat. It's an interesting take on aircraft expense.

 "Even more important than the diminished importance of flight speed is the influence of inflation on cost. In WWII a team of 50 draughtsmen each earning 5 pounds a week could turn out hundreds of actual production drawings every week, and complete the design of a fighter in about two months. Today the design of a new fighter needs a team of thousands of engineers, each costing 150 pounds a week and doing all sorts of vital things except producing actual drawings of parts.
  Eventually hardware does get made, in some cases as the end product of computer graphics and magnetic tape which can steer the machine-tool cutting heads without any ordinary drawing having been created. We have been so busy sitting at our EDP graphics terminals in order to save time and work faster that today a new fighter design takes about six years and costs not hundreds of times more but thousands of times more. In a country such as Britain the Air staff hardly need to bother writing OR's (Operational Requirements) any more. There is no money to have anything built, and if a decision were to be taken to go ahead the OR on which the design was based would be totally outdated years before the first flight of the prototype. Can this truly be regarded as "progress"?"

I know I've seen this kind of "progress" on my industry.  

[Hooligan]

Sorry can't find the source but....

As I recall P-51 cost about $50,000.  I also recall reading that the P-51 cost close to half as much as a 47 which correlates with the $50k figure.

Hooligan

[Jigster]

Bewteen late '45 and '50 surplus P-51's were available from the North American plant to private and commercial aviation for @ 17,000$

The only plane that presently comes close to that are MiG-15's (about 20k) but given it's fuel consumption it makes little more then a hanger queen.

Just putting into perspective how many they cranked out, how cheap production was, and how anxious they were to get ride of them  

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33rd FW www.33rd.org

[janjan]

Just from memory:

Bf 109 cost was about 1/4 of p-47

Fw 190 cost about 1,5 * 109.

From memory...could be wrong.

[Sascha JG 77]

Out of curiosity:

How much would $ 100.000 "from" 1943 actually be worth in 2001?
$ 1.000.000? $ 10.000.000?

I remember seeing an original add for a 50's Cadillac (think it was a 1958 Coupe de Ville) with a price tag of roughly $ 8000. Nowadays $ 8000 prolly woulnd't even buy a Yugo, and certainly not a Cadillac...

Sascha


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Jagdgeschwader 77 "Herz As!"

[Jimdandy]

 

Originally posted by Sascha JG 77:
Out of curiosity:

How much would $ 100.000 "from" 1943 actually be worth in 2001?
$ 1.000.000? $ 10.000.000?

I remember seeing an original add for a 50's Cadillac (think it was a 1958 Coupe de Ville) with a price tag of roughly $ 8000. Nowadays $ 8000 prolly woulnd't even buy a Yugo, and certainly not a Cadillac...  

Sascha

Ten times would be a ruff estimate. If you look at a 1971 Camaro and a 2001 Camaro there is about a factor of 10 difference. The real heavy duty inflation didn't hit until the 70's so prices for goods remained fairly stable post WWII thru the 1960's. That's only a ruff estimate. You can see from my previous replay that fighter aircraft have left inflation in the rear view mirror. They are much more than 10 times as expensive.

[BUG_EAF322]

It's easy to see the P38 is the most expensive.
 
U got too make 2 engines 2 tails etc. plus the extra equipment for 2 engines (instruments). The production is just more complicated.

Why should a single engined plane be more expensive. As i understood from my father (ground mechanic) the engine is the most expensive part off the plane. But hell i'm talking about cessnas now.  

[SFRT - Frenchy]

F4UDOA, Westy, guys,

From "Air Command, Fighters and bombers of WW2" by jeffrey L. Ethell :

B17 - $204,370
B24 - $215,515
B25 - $142,194
B26 - $192,427
B29 - $605,360
A20 - $100,800
A26 - $192,457

P38 - $97,147
P47 - $85,578
P51 - $51,572

matches what u said about P51 alf price P47. But book didn't say about wich versions.


[This message has been edited by SFRT - Frenchy (edited 01-24-2001).]