Quote:
Originally Posted by Terry, NJ
I don't know! The old Franklin zinc (NJ Zinc Co) mine was going great guns with 3 shifts. They must've needed that zinc and the Iron and manganese they pulled out of that hole! Battle ships (Remember them?) and carriers, IIRC had hull thicknesses of 13" (Correct me if I'm wrong) That's a lot of steel! Never mind the 16" naval rifles that were on the decks. They needed a lot of steel! And manganese Bronze and Aluminum bronze! And the rolled a lot of aluminum sheets, And I mean a lot! I believe the govt really needed all those old frying pans just to build the machines that built the ships, cannons, jeeps, 6x6es, M1 Garands, shell casings, shells, M4 Shermans, and so on.......! I think the whole thing was based on the very real needs of the war.
Terry
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100% in any country involved.
Up till the end of the tank battle between Rommel and Paton in the Middle East, tanks were fabricated from sheets of steel. The battel raged back and forth as one, then the other got a new shipment of tanks. Australian engineers worked out how to make a steel casting much bigger than had been possible before (about the size of a football). We didn't have the industrial capacity to make the most of the development but the US did. The new tanks were made from 3 castings far quicker than the old way. The three were chassis with motor, transmission etc, the body and the turret. We showed them how to do it and they were able to get more tanks on the ground than Rommel. That freed up our troops to return home just in time to stop the Japanese army's advance in New Guinea (Kokoda Track - Google it, very interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kokoda_Track_campaign). Meanwhile, the US navy put an end to the Japanese navy in the Coral Sea. Australia stopped them on land, the US stopped them on the seas. Then came "The Big Bang".