Was that a requirement in the contract? Mine says just need to produce a certain number of planes. There's nothing in there that says the plane must be able to fly. If that's what you wanted, you should have stipulated that during negotiations. Remember, you picked fast and cheap.
I guess that's the upside of wartime and having many of the people in charge of these projects truly bought in -- they're likely trying to deliver the best they can, not maximize profits.
Yeah, I'm so pessimistic about today's attitudes, I truly think we would NOT be able to replicate that effort today. Boeing can't make doors stay on their airplane, or a rocket capsule that can have working valves. We're at a point where a total sea change in attitudes would have to occur, so maybe an all out war effort might do that? I truly hope we never need to find out
In this specific case it's a cultural thing at Boeing not the culture at large. I worked at an aerospace company and we had an unwritten rule that made sure we kept the percentage of ex-Boeing employees below a pretty low threshold to ensure Boeing culture didn't work it's way in.
On top of a poor personnel culture, Boeing cares more about splitting it's supply chain up around the world (in order to get contracts from different countries) than making airplanes. The scary part of a bad culture is you could fake it with past airplanes, but newer aircraft with lighter composite parts/less parts (which then make each part's integrity more important) there's less wiggle room. Plus with composite, you can't just do a final QA on things and ensure they are good. You have to QA each layer layup, glues, etc. An xray at the end can't really give you the whole picture. I remember friends talking about how a certain (not Boeing) company was experimenting moving composite layup to China and what a cluster that was going to be. They would find razor blades embedded inside and all kinds of FOB crap on the final xrays, and this was on the pre-production showcase pieces.
The general vibe was if you made a shitty product and it got your fellow countrymen killed, someone would track you down and make you pay for it though.
