What our nation accomplished in tooling for WWII is nothing short of amazing but we had something going for us then ..... time.
Today things move so much faster.
Our manufacturing base was really budding by Dec. 7, 1941 and though I am no fan of FDR one has to admit his administration did a fantastic job marshaling production from some pretty unlikely sources into the war effort.
I attended college prior to coming home to farm and ranch and would not trade that knowledge for anything, but "we" have made a horrendous mistake encouraging our youngsters towards college in such crushing numbers. We should be giving them better guidance and undeniably many more of our young need to be going into the trades. Better for them and better for the country.
I have a feeling that the war reserve you are familiar with likely has been squandered. Also today's snow flakes looking at what is likely "old school" machinery and being clueless of what to do with it.
With respect to manufacturing, the advent of CNC allows one to produce parts at a much faster pace with much less man hours but our adversaries share this advantage and with a greater participation of their populations in the trades, we would find ourselves on the short end of that stick as well.
We have arguably the finest military on face of the earth, but in a protracted struggle our fine defense capabilities could make an amazing sprint only to sputter to a stop when the call for repairs goes out and the need for new equipment occurs.
Three 44s