By the autumn of 1919, the United States was already the largest industrial economy on Earth. It was industry being carried out on a scale never before seen: oil wells, refineries, factories, railroads, material flows, conversion capacity. The US had woven industrial capacity and manufacturing into every fiber of its economy. The entire nation was a huge factory.
In 1901, Ransom Olds, owner of Oldsmobile, had invented the assembly line. In 1913, Henry Ford had improved upon it by using a conveyor belt to bring the work to the worker, instead of moving workers around the factory. Before this innovation, it took 12.5 hours to build a Model T, but afterwards it only took 2 hours.
A few years later, Ford went on to invent the 40 hour workweek, and the US workforce was still the most productive in the world.
The entire rise of the USA to being the world economic leader was created in the first quarter of the 20th century.
When a young Isoroku Yamamoto (later Admiral of the Japanese navy) was a graduate student at Harvard, one of the things he marveled at was the US manufacturing capacity. He told the leaders of Japan that any war with the US would need to be won in 6 months or less, or the US would manufacture things faster than they could be destroyed.
He was right. The US at the height of wartime production was allowing a shipyard to complete a fleet aircraft carrier in just 16 months, and an escort carrier in two months. In all, 170 aircraft carriers were produced between 1942 and 1945.On top of that, the US built 350 destroyers, 48 cruisers, 10 battleships, 230 submarines, with the a total of more than 9,000 combat ships and 3,600 cargo ships.
There were over 96,000 aircraft produced in 1944 alone. A B-24 rolled off the assembly line in 2 days from start to finish, one bomber every hour.
Every month, 2000 M4 Sherman tanks rolled off the assembly line.
Now compare that to today. 750 Patriot, 90 Tomahawks, and 100 SM3 missiles per year. In any real conflict, the US will be outproduced by China, just as the Axis was in WW2. Now we struggle to built 10 ships a year, and we struggle to maintain a fleet of 300 ships. In fact, the only thing our Navy is producing in large numbers is Admirals- we have as many of them as we do ships. OK, maybe paperwork is produced in larger numbers.
The only good news here is I don’t think China will need to fight the US. Instead, they will continue what they have been doing: destabilize the nation by supporting the left while using honeypots to compromise our lawmakers. Our nation will eventually collapse under the weight of bureaucrats and useless breeders who collect government benefits to make more useless breeders. We don’t even create the currency that we use to pay them any longer- it exists mostly in digital form now.
7 Comments
SiG · April 17, 2026 at 8:23 am
The lower amount of arms being cranked out today should be compensated for by the increased lethality of what we’re producing, but I honestly don’t think it is. Perhaps the more relevant question is whether wars will last long enough for it to matter, or if they’ll get to the scale of the World Wars. And if they do reach two halves of the world fighting each other, will the superpowers nuke each other sooner? If they get behind sooner, do they throw nukes sooner, or is it always the last resort of a dying country? Are future wars going to be more like Afghanistan – a decade or more – or are they going to be harder and faster? Or something else, like the way Iran and their allies are fighting the war by feeding false BS onto social media so that we tear ourselves apart?
Divemedic · April 17, 2026 at 9:12 am
Lethality is increased, but so is defense. Radar guided missiles spawn stealth aircraft and electronic countermeasures.
Right now the new hotness is drones. That will motivate someone to invent an effective counter. The wheel goes round and round.
Toastrider · April 17, 2026 at 8:30 am
“In 2013, Henry Ford had improved upon it…”
Beg pardon?
Other than that, solid post. About the only good thing about the Covidmania was that it kicked a huge hole in the ‘just in time’ concept of logistics. Maybe, just maybe, people will continue to bring industry back closer to home.
Or not. No one ever went broke betting on stupidity.
Divemedic · April 17, 2026 at 9:18 am
Fixed. Mea culpa
Mike_C · April 17, 2026 at 8:56 am
>Our nation will eventually collapse under the weight of bureaucrats and useless breeders
Yes. But is it good for the finance (vulture) capitalists, the crypto bros, the pornographers, and the professional victims? (Less sarcastically, I don’t get the “short termism”. Why slaughter the herd to cut out a few steaks from each, leaving the rest of the carcass to rot, when you could be milking them for decades? High IQ, low wisdom? Or just plain malice?)
BTW, typo on Ford and 2013.
Divemedic · April 17, 2026 at 9:18 am
Fixed
ghostsniper · April 17, 2026 at 9:14 am
“Every month, 2000 M4 Sherman tanks rolled off the assembly line.”
===============
And for years now I’ve been routinely waiting 6-8 weeks to get a building permit.
The system is entirely bogged down by you know who, which is a huge part of why new housing is so expensive.