WesWorld

Quoted from "Daidalos"

Okay, I did some research and I found out the production numbers in my head which I used as a reference were from late 1943... 120 is indeed way to optimistic for Chosen. So lets assume 30-40 of all types for now.

*Nods*.

I'll explain a bit of my understanding about tank production. (This is intended for information-sharing, not a diatribe.) The way I tend to look at tank production for my countries is to figure out a work-flow. As I'm now currently employed in a small industrial setting, I am seeing a lot more of how these sorts of things work. A tank requires about thirty thousand individual parts, usually manufactured by between a thousand to two thousand different companies or factories - give or take. And the factories are pretty specialized, requiring very heavy cranes: twenty to thirty tons capacity - that's a lot bigger than anything my factory has, and we manufacture massive industrial equipment. When my company builds a lot of something - for instance, we build containers for the military to ship parts in - we can get a pretty good workflow going. The welders get to know the product; errors the engineering drawings get fixed; and purchasing gets parts delivered regularly so that the stock stays up to date. Economies of scale. When we do something custom - and we do a lot of custom work - the process drags. An engineering drawing ends up wrong but isn't discovered until the pressmen make it - throw it away and start over. The welders have to go figure out what they're supposed to do. Everything bogs down.

With so many parts, including highly-complex members (engine, transmission, steering, suspension, turret...), workflow becomes important. The factory thus has to establish a goal: let's say they promise one tank a day. It takes eight thousand man-hours to build this tank, and the factory has a thousand shop-workers (by which I mean people actively engaged in assembly). This means that a thousand skilled workers can assemble one tank per day. (In real life, these thousand workers would be likely split between teams working in a single production bay, each building many tanks over the course of days or weeks - but you still end up with one finished tank completing per day.) What I know from this environment implies to me that new workers will slow production down up to three months after they're brought onto the manufacturing force.

When I set up my estimates for tank production in France, I pulled a list of the number of working days in each month, and then established a rate of production for a factory. Here's an example:
January (1943): 21 days
February (1943): 20 days
March (1943): 23 days
April (1943): 22 days
May (1943): 21 days
June (1943): 22 days
July (1943): 22 days
August (1943): 22 days
September (1943): 22 days
October (1943): 21 days
November (1943): 22 days
December (1943): 23 days

If our hypothetical factory produces one tank per workday, then it produces 261 tanks over the course of a year. This seems to be about the rate where tank production becomes efficient, and so I tend to aim at that for my baseline. In France, I prefer to manufacture at a slightly higher rate - 1.5x to 2x tanks per workday - to keep one or two factories running for domestic and export consumption at peacetime rates. (It's my estimation that, in wartime, France should be able to build, give or take, between ten to fourteen tanks per day from the combination of the Renault, AMX, Somua, ACL, and ARL factories. This is just bringing the five factories on-line and up to standard work capacity. In true desperation, the French could probably shift light tank production to truck and railway rolling stock manufacturers in order to free up a bit more capacity. But I don't believe that will ever happen in Wesworld, short of a Great Power going nutters.)

Very interesting concept of determining the production rates. Thanks for sharing.

Giving some more background informations about Chosens economy and production capacity is definately on my to-do-list (not only for tanks but for small arms and aircrafts too). I just have to find a bit more time to finally do it...

Brock has provided some excellent guidance on the production scheme for any military vehicle - the final assembly plant is dependent on a myriad of suppliers. The complexity of that subcontractor network makes change difficult - before the first new vehicle of a new design can leave the plant all the suppliers have to switch over to the new part designs.

This makes the decision to adopt new light and medium tank designs in early 1944 - cited elsewhere in Land Equipment - a doubtful one. Production of current designs will be disrupted by the switchover, cutting back deliveries at the very moment that they are needed most. Production of the new designs will take time to ramp up, and Chosen needs vehicles now. It is in very much the same situation as Britain after Dunkirk - the need to replace immediate losses will delay the production of new designs in order to get something into the hands of the troops.

It is a dilemma of grand portions.

Aye. That change-over difficulty was one of the things that helped kill the intended successor to the M4 Sherman. I may be recalling incorrectly, but switching over was estimated to take several months, during which time production would have dropped substantially. The Army thought the Sherman was still "good enough" and preferred to stick with the quantity. (In my opinion, a poor decision - by that point in the war, the US could have afforded a bit of a drop in quantity if the result was a rise in quality. But JMHO.)

Switching to the new medium tank may be doable in a few circumstances. Since it seems based so heavily off the Japanese Type 96, perhaps Chosen could source major subassemblies out of Japan (for instance, transmission, suspension, etc), saving themselves production time and concentrating purely on building the less technological parts. The danger is that it places Chosen's tank production entirely at the mercy of Japanese industry. Not a situation I'd want to put myself in willingly...

The more critical bottlenecks in tank production, IMHO, are to be found in the casting or fabrication of the hull and turret components. If you are casting major hull components out of armor-quality steel, there is where you are going to find the choke point; few foundries would be large enough and skilled enough to handle such jobs, and it would take considerable investment to set up a major production run. It is one reason why you make few changes in design. If you are welding your armor you may have greater flexibility, but welding armor plate has its own issues. It cannot be improvised without a risk to the quality of the vehicle.

Chosen might be better served in continuing to buy vehicles from Japan - which, unless Japan wants to find the Chinese in possession of Pusan - the Japanese would be happy to provide under some sort of Lend Lease. As South Africa is the country that seems to demand payment on delivery, they may not be the best supplier at this point in time.

I wonder at which point in time the Chosenian use of weapons of mass destruction and the Japanese intervention will become public knowledge.

Who knows when Japanese involvement will become known, Bruce. I do like to look at it this way:

Quoted

A dead Japanese soldier wearing a Chosen Uniform in a Japanese tank with Chosen markings is less obvious than a dead Mexican soldier wearing a Chinese Uniform in a Mexican tank with Chinese marking...

or

Quoted

It is a lot easier to recognize a Mexican infantryman in a China Army uniform than a Japanese infantryman in a Chosen Army uniform...

True, that...

Quoted from "Brockpaine"

True, that...

Agreed. But Japan is not Mexico...

Although, Japanese tanks are easier to identify than Mexican tanks and there's a whole lot more Japanese present.

I think that Japanese tanks (or South African tanks) among Chosen tanks are just as obvious as Mexican tanks among Chinese tanks. In both cases that does not say a thing other than that China and Chosen are buying foreign tanks.

True that there are a lot more Japanese present, but it is easier for them to blend in among the Chosen soldiers than it is for one single Mexican. The Japanese have a bit more freedom to move around while the Mexicans have to stay out of sight (unless they want the whole world to know that they are there). Using cameras as comparison, let's assume that China's forces are Canon cameras and Chosen's forces are Nikon cameras and that the lens on camera determines the soldier's nationality. Looking below, it is obvious which one sticks out in a crowd.

Chosen


China


Japan


Mexico

However, it is a lot easier to to claim that 5,000 Mexicans are volunteers than that 35,000 Japanese are. Plus the Mexicans have openly sent humanitarian supplies and units and have had a presence in China for a while.

The whole question of numbers is unimportant; for the rest of us to react or comment in character, one side or the other has to announce the presence of foreign volunteers in the conflict - whether that is praising the volunteers on their own side or castigating the foreign volunteers on the other. As far as I am aware, that has not yet happened. I am certain that had Mexican volunteers been captured by Chosen forces they would have been paraded for the press before being liquidated; if the Chinese happened to capture a group of Japanese, I suspect they would be quite capable of ascertaining that fact and making a propaganda coup of it. As for foreign equipment - eh, we know who pays attention to the limits of neutrality and those who do not.

Comments on the propaganda front.

Chosen - rather blatant and not overly believable; Chosen press management skills are far too well known to accept a press conference at face value. Suggestion - produce the body, or preferably the live prisoner, not the photograph - it could come from anywhere.

China - Nice touch; the Emperor appears to still command the Mandate of Heaven. Suggestion - have the International Red Cross or other outside observers show solicitude for the many Chosen POWs in your possession.

Quoted from "Daidalos"

casualty report week 13:

KIA: 7889
WIA: 10890
MIA: 340
POW: 967
tanks: 2
light tanks: 4
armored vehicles: 12
unarmored vehicles: 101
art. guns: 34
fighter planes: 13
bomber planes: 11
recce planes: 4

Think this should be Week 14, not 13.

For a moment, I thought it was encouraging that Chosen had only lost two tanks this week, but then I wondered how many they had to begin with.

Quoted from "The Rock Doctor"

For a moment, I thought it was encouraging that Chosen had only lost two tanks this week, but then I wondered how many they had to begin with.

To quote Colonel Hessler liberally, "The Chosenians are learning how to retreat".

Yeah - the previous week was extremely bad for Chosen's armoured forces, so they're probably very thin on the ground at the moment...

Quoted from "Brockpaine"

Think this should be Week 14, not 13.

Thanks, you are right of course. It is corrected now.



And yes, you guessed right, tank casualties are that low because at the moment there are very few tanks in frontline service (I would guess 25 - 35). Most have been destroyed or abandoned during week 13.

That's no good. I guess more tanks need to be sent over...