Canada moves to 2% GDP end of FY25/26 - PMMC

[mariomike]

Allies (US and UK) had that advantage with respect to aircraft development and manufacture during WW II (not "smaller", but certainly at relatively more affordable costs and in abundance), and during the war improvement was almost entirely evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Everything old is new if we forget what we knew.

They seem to have regarded aircraft production as a profit vs loss calculation.

It will be seen that the enemy has irretrievably lost 1,000,000 man years. This represents no less than 36 per cent of the industrial effort that would have been put out by these towns if they had remained unmolested. ... Expressing these losses in another way, 2,400,000,000 man-hours have been lost for an expenditure of 116,500 tons of bombs claimed dropped, and this amounts to an average return for every ton of bombs dropped of 20,500 lost man-hours, or rather more than one quarter of the time spent in building a Lancaster. ... This being so, a Lancaster has only to go to a German city once to wipe off its own capital cost, and the results of all subsequent sorties will be clear profit."

Air Staff Intelligence Report, February 19, 1944

 

[Brad Sallows]

They seem to have regarded aircraft production as a profit vs loss calculation.

Yes, along with almost everything else to do with the air war and land war in ETO/MTO and everything to do with the Battle of the Atlantic. Attrition calculations. Focus on producing more at less cost (simpler and fewer systems and equipments); interfere with Germany's ability to do the same; create and use material superiority to force Germans to withdraw forces (air and land) from Russia to fight in the west, preferably on unfavourable terms (eg. North Africa for land forces, anywhere within range of Allied fighters for air forces).