DIYbanter - View Single Post - In 2009 They were right: "With all due respect Mr.President,thatis not true."

David R. Birch

On 5/22/2012 9:48 PM, wrote:
On May 22, 9:21 pm, Ed wrote:

Oh, wait. I covered WWII production for the 100th Anniversary Issue of
_American Machnist_. I don't know where you got your information, but
the War Production Board and William Knudson ran the show from the
federal government.

That was a VERY centralized operation. They even dictated what kind of
aircraft the automakers had to make, and what plants they had to
convert, and so on. That was central control writ large, as any
all-out war effort has to be.

My source says Knudson insisted on keeping thing decentralized and
voluntary. And the manufacturers were free to decide what war goods
they were best suited to produce.

Unless they were best suited to produce something not in high demand for
war. The War Production Board stopped Smith Corona typewriter
production, then had them make a LARGE quantity of their portable
typewriters, then utilized their facilities for the M1903A3 rifle.

Singer Sewing Machine was assigned tooling to make the M1911AI .45
pistol. When the Board saw the level of quality in the pistols, they
reassigned Singer to make Norden bomb sights.

David