Cheers,
As a delighted and sobered reader of Tony's poetry, decrying the
need for Army-Navy stipulated fittings in the Europa - and as a rebuilder of
the Lysander, and assistant to the Firefly crew - I think I can understand
the reason. Perhaps this is redundant.
The fittings (especially the connectors for airframe assembly)
of Westland and Fairey are so dissimilar that one wonders if they were on
the same side......... I understand from retired workers that the commercial
considerations fostered distrust between factories such that building under
licence of a competitor's machine required more diplomacy and confrontation
than the pursuit of hostilities at the front.
The US on the other hand came to the conclusion that such
detraction would hamper the production of government orders, and so imposed
a 'standard' system (AN) upon the builders. Thus the bolts from one design
could be used equally in another. So you have a large system well-organised
to compete with world trade after WW II.
I do remember an article by an old hand at Boeing describing the
rivetting of B47 wings. If the 'bucker' in behind signalled a duff rivet
result, the rivetter would drill out the old and enlarge the hole to replace
the original rivet. he used a new rivet with the body diameter of the larger
hole, but 'specially made to have the head of the original rivet - to fool
the inspector (penalties for poor quality were severe). The
author claimed that at Boeing these hidden pearls were called "Douglas
rivets", at Lockheed were named "Boeing rivets" and at Consolidated were
called "Lockheed rivets" (or words to that effect). It was in an old Air &
Space mag.
Divide and conquer, Tony?
>Ferg
A064
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