Late War Fw 190 Build Quality

[Graham Boak]

Tony. Your comment is only relevant to "poor workmanship" if the parts were intended to be interchangeable. Even decades after WW2, there were many parts on many aircraft that were not interchangeable, as achieving this is expensive. Interchangeable parts would indeed come predrilled and pre-prepared, but this required dedicated tooling and additional time in production. Replacement parts were provided without the (in this case) rivet holes predrilled, so that this could be done in the repair workshop at the time of the repair. It seems that these Fw190 tails, being predrilled, were not considered as interchangeable. At least between factory lines.

Consider the Merlin Mustang. Supposedly the same aircraft that were built in two separate factories were given different variant designations (P-51B and P-51C) to ensure that the supply chain was provided with enough different parts to provide for both.