WIX Archives
Re: FlugWerk FW190 craftsmanship?
Posted by Ron Henry on Mon Nov 04, 2002 01:19:50 PM
In reply top Re: FlugWerk FW190 craftsmanship? posted by Mike Walton on Mon Nov 04, 2002 08:26:42 AM
: I have watched their Fw-190's come together for several ye
: ars and have visited Flug Werks numerous times. In additio
: n, Flug Werks is in the process of restoring parts and maj
: or components for the Fw-189 we are rebuilding. Their prof
: essionalism and workmanship is excellent.
I'll guess that it's just about avoiding potential compatibility problems of mixing parts from different sources.
Time for a story.... Even into the 1950s and 60s the UK aircraft industry still believed in investing in human labour rather than new machine tools, so many fabricated aircraft components had a lot of "individuality" and required careful hand fitting and triming in final airframe assembly.
I first heard about this from a friend who was a Victor BK1 (ie refuelling tanker) co-pilot in the RAF. One of the sqaudron's aircraft got a damaged bomb bay door and a new one was ordered from RAF stores. When it arrived, it was too long, and Handley Page's tech rep was called. He said "You can't expect it to fit. All the bomb bay doors were hand built, and individually fitted to each aircraft !"
Reading yesterday's paper, I see a new version of the same problem still allegedly dogs the UK industry. In the programme that will convert old Nimrod MR2s to the new MRA4, the hew wings are, at last, being built using modern machine tools, and very accurate, uniform, dimensional standards are being achieved. However, the Nimrod fuselages (which will be re-used in the MRA4 prog), date from the 1960s and involved a good deal of hand fitting. Result = the wings won't fit !! Apparently a good deal of manual labour input is being used to solve the problem. Yet another problem for a prog that is already very late.