Aircraft Production

[willedoo]

Interesting looking through the production figures of various aircraft.

 

The top 20 in order of numbers produced includes variants and license builds.

 

1. Cessna 172. (43,000+)

 

2. Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmovic. (36,183)

 

3. Messerschmitt Bf-109. (34,852)

 

4. Piper Cherokee. (32,778)

 

5. Cessna 150. (23,949)

 

6. Cessna 182. (23,237+)

 

7. Supermarine Spitfire. (20,351)

 

8. Focke-Wulf Fw-190. (20,051)

 

9. Piper J-3 Cub. (20,038)

 

10. Polikarpov Po-2. (20,000)

 

11. Consolidated B-24 Liberator. (18,482)

 

12. Antonov An-2. (18,000+)

 

13. Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15. (18,000)

 

14. Beechcraft Bonanza. (17,000+)

 

15. Yakovlev Yak-9. (16,769)

 

16. Douglas DC-3. (16,079)

 

17. Republic P-47 Thunderbolt. (15,660)

 

18. North American P-51 Mustang. (15,586)

 

19. North American T-6 Texan. (15,495)

 

20. Junkers Ju-88. (15,183)

 

Those with a '+' sign are supposedly still in production, with the An-2 being built in China under licence as the Y-5.

 

Not sure how accurate all this is, but it would be fairly close.

 

Cheers, Willie.

 

 

[Spin]

Thanks Willie, there are a couple there that I would not have come close to guessing eg FW-190 coming within 300 of all marks of Spitfire. As for the Mig-15 and the DC-3, wow.

 

 

[willedoo]

there are a couple there that I would not have come close to guessing eg FW-190 coming within 300 of all marks of Spitfire. As for the Mig-15 and the DC-3, wow.

I certainly wouldn't have guessed those numbers of DC-3's; it would have made Douglas a lot of money.

 

The MiG-15 was helped along by foreign production in Poland and Czechoslovakia to the tune of about one third of total production. China also made some 2 seat UTI trainers; not sure of the numbers. Of the more than 13,000 made in the USSR, nearly 3,500 were Mig-15 UTI trainers, as there was no MiG-17 or Mig-19 production trainers. In the Warsaw Pact countries the old twin seat MiG-15 UTI was the primary trainer into the seventies until the L-29 and L-39 replaced it. So that would have boosted production numbers a bit.

 

Another interesting number is the B-24 Liberators. With all the glamour the B-17 attracts, it's easy to forget about the Liberator being the primary bomber produced.

 

Cheers, Willie.

 

 

[winsor68]

What about the Quicksilver Ultralight?

 

To quote one of the websites it " became so popular it outsold Cesna, Piper, and Beechcraft combined and has since earned the moniker, "The Cessna of the Ultralight Industry"

 

 

[Spin]

Probably true at one time, in relation to annual sales, but I'd be surprised if even their most popular model (MX probably) came close in total production.

 

 

[willedoo]

Looking at it from the perspective of manufacturers, Cessna has around 90,000 in the top ten, and Piper close to 53,000. That's a lot of aeroplanes. Makes you wonder if the founders had any idea it would come to that.

 

Cheers, Willie.