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Originally Posted by Jack Geratic
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Terry, you make an interesting point about the early style VVSS, and thanks for pointing this out. I was quite surprised to see this on a Sherman just prior to D-Day. Although Bomb and Holy Roller are separated by 1 digit on their census numbers, they are a lot further apart looking at their American built serial number, 8007 and 7606 for HR - of course I've no idea what this means in the grand scheme of things.
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The build numbers are actually quite close together. Fisher Tank Division was making 400 to 500 tanks a month on that one contract for 2000 M4s, and 4600 in just over 2 years on five contracts, out of a US total of 49,000-plus produced. When they got rolling, the daily through-put was staggering! Other more well read historians than me, come back to the high standardization of parts and components as central to US wartime production. If a shipment didn't meet inspection standards, it would be refused. If the supplier kept shipping bad parts, they'd lose their contracts. It wasn't just tanks but rifle parts to airplane parts.