I guess that's the upside of wartime and having many of the people in charge of these projects truly bought in -- they're likely trying to deliver the best they can, not maximize profits.
Yeah, I'm so pessimistic about today's attitudes, I truly think we would NOT be able to replicate that effort today. Boeing can't make doors stay on their airplane, or a rocket capsule that can have working valves. We're at a point where a total sea change in attitudes would have to occur, so maybe an all out war effort might do that? I truly hope we never need to find out
In this specific case it's a cultural thing at Boeing not the culture at large. I worked at an aerospace company and we had an unwritten rule that made sure we kept the percentage of ex-Boeing employees below a pretty low threshold to ensure Boeing culture didn't work it's way in.
On top of a poor personnel culture, Boeing cares more about splitting it's supply chain up around the world (in order to get contracts from different countries) than making airplanes. The scary part of a bad culture is you could fake it with past airplanes, but newer aircraft with lighter composite parts/less parts (which then make each part's integrity more important) there's less wiggle room. Plus with composite, you can't just do a final QA on things and ensure they are good. You have to QA each layer layup, glues, etc. An xray at the end can't really give you the whole picture. I remember friends talking about how a certain (not Boeing) company was experimenting moving composite layup to China and what a cluster that was going to be. They would find razor blades embedded inside and all kinds of FOB crap on the final xrays, and this was on the pre-production showcase pieces.
The general vibe was if you made a shitty product and it got your fellow countrymen killed, someone would track you down and make you pay for it though.
