The world aircraft industry of the XX century: quantitative analysis

Problem statement and historiography

In the XX century, the aircraft industry occupied an important place in the economy of leading countries. Aircraft builders were among the pioneers of the introduction of advanced technologies, new materials, power plants, electronic devices, metalworking equipment were developed at their request.

The previously unknown high culture of calculating strength and saving weight, taking into account fatigue characteristics has also changed other branches of mechanical engineering.

The development of aviation, including the problems of aircraft construction, has attracted huge public attention since the beginning of the XX century. The number of books on the history of aviation is measured in thousands, articles in tens of thousands (see, for example, ^[1]). But none of them has information about the total production of aircraft in the XX century, especially – broken down by year, country, destination. In particular, there is no such data in any of the encyclopedic publications on the history of aviation known to me, including ^[2-4].

But won't it be possible to collect such numbers from particular results? After all, many researchers have studied production in individual countries well. For example, in ^[5], based mainly on archival data, the production of serial aircraft in the USSR and Russia is calculated, although experimental designs are not taken into account, and there are inaccuracies in the range of 1980-2010. For the USA, as a similar book, you can specify ^[6], for Germany ^{[7, 8]}. Many works are devoted to the history of aviation in the World Wars.

But even in the most well–studied period of aircraft construction – the time of the Second World War - various aircraft production numbers continue to circulate in publications. Figure 1 shows an example of a "discrepancy" in the most important issue: the production of aircraft in Germany in 1940-1942 according to five very authoritative authors ^[9-13]. In no case is the methodology specified, how exactly the output was calculated. The difference does not seem too big, but in the less studied periods the discrepancies are much greater.

Fig. 1. Aircraft production in Germany in 1940-1942 according to various sources

In most works, data is usually taken from the consolidated reports of departments stored in archives, no attempts are made to collect information from below. As a result, information passes from monograph to monograph that 13 aircraft were built in Germany in 1931. In particular, this is stated in ^{[10, p. 600]} with reference to ^[13]. But the recalculation of reports about aircraft takeoffs in Germany, which appeared in the press of that time, shows that at least 35 aircraft of 23 different models took to the skies in the country in 1931 ^[14]. The reason for the understatement in the reports is clear: in 1931, Germany, due to the Versailles restrictions, did not advertise the desire to revive the air fleet, and the official authorities hid data on aircraft construction.

There are many problems with the history of aircraft construction in France. For example, in ^{[15, p. 21]} it says: "In total, about 7,200 copies of all types of Nieuport, from 11C1 to 27C1, were built in 1915-1920." At the same time, in ^{[16, p. 369]} it is written: "It was 7200 Nieuport 10 and 12" were built. The number remains the same, but refers to a completely different object. Now it does not include the most popular models –Nieuport 11 and 17. Therefore, "7200 of all types from 11 to 27" and "7200 models 10 and 12" are contradictory information. And in ^{[17, p. 8]}, on the contrary, it says: "Nieuport 11 and subsequent types Nie-16 and Nie-17 were produced in 1915-1917 in the amount of several thousand copies (7200 Nie-11)». Here already "7200" is not the number of copies of models 10 and 12, not the number of all aircraft models from 11 to 27 inclusive, but only Ni.11. Contradictory numbers have been reprinted from monograph to monograph for decades and this does not lead to scientific discussion.

Working methods

I chose a time–consuming but reliable method: not to focus on summary reports, but to recalculate all aircraft models of the twentieth century, checking the release numbers from publications, where possible - from archival data, as well as based on information about the use of aircraft: state registers, lists of military units, etc.

The methodology for selecting, comparing and ranking sources is described in ^[14], the structure of the database in which information is collected is also given there. The methodology for verifying the completeness of the collected data in ^[18]. Completeness was checked both by comparison with independent samples (for example: read the magazine, noting all mentions of aircraft models. To calculate what percentage of them is not reflected in the database), and using comparisons with other totals. As an example, Figure 2 shows a comparison of aircraft production data (cumulative) the American corporation Douglas, from the book ^[19] about the history of McDonnell Douglas, and our data from the moment of the company's creation in 1921 until the end of 1966 (in April 1967, the merger of Douglas and McDonnell firms took place). The final discrepancy was 0.25%.

Fig. 2. Comparison of aircraft production data (cumulative) by Douglas

In total, over 20,800 aircraft models created in the XX century have been identified, excluding upgrades and unrealized projects. For each model, the database contains the developer and over 70 qualitative (aerodynamic scheme, structural materials, control system, power plant, etc.) and 30 quantitative (weights, dimensions, flight data, load, etc.) parameters.

The database contains more than 41300 records on the production of these models in the format "Model, Year, Manufacturer, Release" (often aircraft of the same model were built by several companies). Let's also clarify what an airplane is for us: this is an aircraft heavier than air, with a crew and a power plant, in which the main part of the lifting force is created by a fixed surface with a constant flight mode – the wing.

The data collected is not completely complete. The problems associated with the fact that sometimes only the general release is known for a sufficiently long interval – several years – were discussed in ^[20]. But, in my opinion, at the moment I have collected the most accurate and complete data on the creation of aircraft models and their production, which are unlikely to change by more than a few percent.

A feature of the study is the comparison of industrial capacities by mass of products. The production of the Yak-18 training aircraft and the Tu-16 strategic bomber loads the industry in different ways. Prices are an unreliable benchmark for a study that studies the entire XX century: there is both jumpy inflation and various pricing principles in public procurement, especially in countries with non–market economies. For example, in the USSR, the selling prices for airplanes strongly depended on how much overhead the director would be able to justify. So, in 1944, the prices of La-7 aircraft produced at different Soviet factories differed by 2.5 times – and did not correlate with the volume of production, while all factories received engines, which make up a significant part of the cost of the fighter, from the same plant No. 19 at the same price ^[21].

The mass of the structure (empty aircraft) is proportional to the material consumption and is largely proportional to the labor intensity: the pitch of the rivets is more or less the same on small and large machines. The mass estimate has long been used by the US Department of Defense to estimate the volume of purchases (see, for example, ^{[22, p. 116]}). The cost of a unit of aircraft weight, on the one hand, is growing due to the increasing saturation of aircraft with equipment, increasing requirements for the quality of processing and materials. On the other hand, it decreases due to the increase in productivity of machine tools, improvement of labor organization, planning and logistics. In general, the output in tons is a much more correct method of comparing the capacities of the aviation industry of different countries, with different economic systems, especially in the same time period.

The masses are known or can be estimated (by the masses of similar models, as the difference between take-off weight and full load) with good (<10%) accuracy not for all aircraft. But there were only 4,600 such aircraft, that is, 0.2% of the total output for the XX century (2.2 million aircraft). Only for France, the number of aircraft with an unknown mass exceeds 0.7% of the output (1,040 out of 137,000). These are mainly light aircraft of amateur design, so their contribution to the total mass of produced aircraft would be noticeably less than 0.3%. Therefore, the data can be considered quite complete.

However, the error in the period 1901-1913 can reach up to -20% - the masses of very many aircraft of the early period of aviation development are unknown. For the period up to and including 1914, only 30% of aircraft with an unknown mass are included.

            The article consistently uses the "right of the soil": the aircraft is attributed to the country in whose territory it made its first flight. So, the plane of the Brazilian Santos-Dumont, which took off in 1906 near Paris, is a French design, the triplane of Count Bolotov, built in the UK, is British, and the Italian Mosca in Moscow is Russian.

In the production of Great Britain and France, aircraft built in colonies and dominions (Australia, India, Indochina, Canada, South Asia, Algeria) are not taken into account.

The country "Russia" means Russia before 1917, Russia and Ukraine until the end of 1922 (the adjective "Soviet" is omitted, since aircraft produced in 1918-1922 under all authorities are taken into account, including, for example, the second four-plane Savelyev, built for the Kolchak government), the USSR until the end of 1991 and, then, the Russian Federation.

Until 1918, Germany and Austria-Hungary were united: the aviation industry of these two countries was very integrated, this applies to the supply of components, and capital, and the activities of designers, and consumers. After the Second World War, the FRG and the GDR were united. Korea is only South Korea, no planes were built in the DPRK. Production in Manchukuo in the period 1931-1945 was attributed to China..

The database allows you to quickly build a query with other definitions of countries, so if readers need data in a different breakdown, they can be prepared.

Previous publications

            For the first time, diagrams of the aircraft dynamics output in tons in Russian were published in ^[23] – these were diagrams of aircraft production in the USSR and Germany in 1939-1945, broken down by their purpose. A summary chart of the output in tons of aircraft of the USSR and Russia by year is published in ^{[5, p.407, 410]}.

For the first time, a diagram of aircraft production in the world in the XX century in pieces, broken down by country and five-year periods, was published by me in ^{[24, p. 3]}. As far as I know, the dynamics in tons of aircraft production worldwide has never been published before. For the first time, data on output in pieces are also published, broken down by years, and not by five-year plans.

Aircraft production in the XX century: summary data

In total, 2.22 million aircraft with a total weight of almost 9 million tons (8.98 million tons) were built in the world during the XX century. If we estimate the average population of the Earth in the XX century at 3 billion. a person, then you will get 3 kg of aircraft per person per century. Or 30 grams per year. According to ^[25], 53 kg of plastic was produced for each inhabitant of the planet in 2016. In the 2010s, according to my estimates, only 10 grams of aircraft per year were produced per person – 5,000 times less than plastic, and orders of magnitude less than cars or household appliances.

Thus, the aircraft industry consumes a very small part of the resources, even taking into account a large proportion of waste during processing. Despite this, it is critically important both for ensuring the mobility of humanity and for the armed forces.

In ^{[26, p. 3]} it is said that on average, every inhabitant of the earth in 2016 made an air flight every two years (naturally, the distribution is extremely uneven), and in total 62.7 million people worked in and around aviation (for example, taxi drivers at airports, catering companies, component suppliers, etc.). a man. This is almost 2% of all able-bodied people in the world! And they were engaged in the creation and operation of products that are produced in the amount of 10 grams per year per person. It turns out that the aircraft industry creates a huge number of jobs with very little load on resources and the natural environment.

But what did aviation serve more: military or civilian tasks? How were the planes of the XX century distributed for their intended purpose? The answer to this is given in Fig. 3.

Attack aircraft and fighter-bombers are classified as "Strike aircraft". Dive bombers after much thought entered the group "bombers". Although, say, the Ju.87 dive bombers performed tasks on the battlefield, in many respects similar to the tasks of the Il-2 attack aircraft, but the Pe-2 dive bombers were mainly used as front-line bombers.

The "Scouts" also include multi-purpose aircraft of the 1920s and 30s, such as the Breguet 19 or Polikarpov's P-5, as well as electronic reconnaissance aircraft, long-range radar surveillance and air command posts.

All transport (including military transport vehicles: it is very difficult to divide the output by customers), passenger, agricultural, sanitary, forest patrol, fire fighting, aerial photographers are included in the "Commercial" aircraft - that is, all aircraft with which you can provide in–demand services.

Models that lift 1-2 pilots and 2-4 passengers are classified as "General purpose aircraft", the border between them and "commercial" aircraft is very conditional. The category "Light" includes 1-2 local recreational and sports aircraft, as well as two-seat training aircraft designed for flight skills training. At the same time, training variants of combat vehicles are classified as "shock", since most of them retain, although often in a stripped-down form, combat abilities.

Finally, the "Special" ones are experimental aircraft and various exotic destinations, such as weather scouts, repeaters and tankers.

Fig. 3. Distribution of aircraft of the XX century by destination in pieces

It follows from Fig. 3 that military and civilian aircraft were distributed (taking into account the reservations above) almost equally: 52% of the first, 48% of the second. Recall: 52% are only combat aircraft, without military transport, tankers and training vehicles used in the interests of military aviation.

But the calculation by mass (Fig. 4) gives a significantly different picture. The share of military aircraft in the global aviation industry is growing to almost two-thirds (64%). The share of heavy commercial aircraft is sharply increasing: from 8% to 26%. And numerous 40% of general-purpose aircraft and light vehicles account for only 10% of the efforts of the aviation industry.

Thus, in the XX century, the aviation industry mainly worked for the war, for a quarter – for the development of commercial aviation, and numerous Cessnas, Pipers, Aeronks and other light structures gave only a small additional load.

Of course, over the course of a century, the ratios have changed, as will be shown below.

Fig. 4. Distribution of aircraft of the XX century by destination in tons

Distribution by country

In total, aircraft were built in 69 countries in the XX century, 57 of them developed their own models. But both production and development were very centralized.

Table 1. Aircraft production and development in the XX century by country

Table 1 shows data on the production of aircraft in thousands of units in leading countries, as well as how many aircraft were built in the world according to projects developed in this country (column "Development") and the production of aircraft in thousands of tons..

It can be seen that the five leading countries were technology exporters: more aircraft were built abroad on their projects than they built on foreign projects. And this is despite the fact that during the First World War, mainly French–designed aircraft were built in Russia, and in the United States during the same period and in Russia in 1919-1930 - British ^[27]. For Germany, the "export of technology" is largely the removal of production in the 1920s and 30s to other countries due to the Versailles restrictions.

For the following countries in the list, the situation is reversed: they produced more foreign aircraft (with or without a license) than they developed their own.

In the third column, the order is broken in 5-6 lines: Japan has built 250 thousand tons of aircraft, and France – only 200 thousand tons, although France is ahead by 40% in terms of the number of cars. This is due to the fact that the peak of production in Japan occurred during the Second World War, heavy military aircraft were produced. France was the leading manufacturer at the beginning of the XX century, when airplanes weighed hundreds of kilograms. The PRC mainly built combat aircraft, which was also reflected in the high average weight of the structure.

Finally, a very high concentration of aircraft production is visible. 43% (45% by weight) falls on the United States – the greatest aviation power of the XX century. Russia/USSR has firmly settled in second place, but by a large margin from the leader (15% by number of aircraft, 16% by weight). And only 6 leading aviation powers have built almost 90% of the aircraft, by weight – over 93%. Such concentration exists only in a few industries.

In the XXI century, the role of some "second-tier" countries is growing: Brazil, Canada, China, but the geography of production is still very centralized.

Aircraft production in the XX century: dynamics and global trends

Even more interesting knowledge can be obtained from the analysis of the dynamics of production. Figure 5 shows the production of aircraft in the world by year in thousands of units (blue columns) and in tons (red line). The years 1901-5 are not present: during this time, only two dozen small aircraft appeared worldwide. For ease of analysis, Figure 6 shows the same graph, but with the peaks of the world wars cut off.

Figure 5 is dominated by peaks associated with World Wars. In 1944, the production of aircraft reached an absolute maximum: 224 thousand cars (10% of the output for the century), 1178 thousand tons (13%). Thus, more than 1/8 of the century-old efforts of the global industry were realized in just one year!

Fig. 5. Aircraft production in the world by year in units and tons

To make it more convenient to consider the remaining periods, we will cut the graph from above (Fig. 6).

Fig. 6. Aircraft production in the world by year in units and tons

From Fig. 5, 6 it follows that the average weight of the aircraft structure is constantly growing. If in 1906-1910 it was 0.23 tons, then in 1941-1945 it was 4.8 tons, and in 1991-1995 (this period, and not the next one, was taken to avoid errors at the boundary of the studied range) it was already 9.1 tons: an increase of almost 40 times over the century.

The growth was not entirely monotonous. Figure 5.6 shows that until the early 1940s, the red line goes much lower than the columns (light aircraft), in the first half of the 1940s - on a par with them (the share of heavy military aircraft increased due to light aviation, plus the aircraft structures themselves progressed rapidly). In the second half of the 1940s, light vehicles began to prevail again: military orders decreased significantly, and the demand for personal aircraft in the West increased. The Korean War again increased the share of military vehicles (this will be discussed below), but soon everything returned to the situation of the second half of the 1940s. Finally, the crisis of the first half of the 1980s hit light aircraft manufacturers the hardest - and the average weight of the aircraft grew. In the last 15 years of the XX century, the mobility of the world's population has grown very rapidly, and with it – air transportation and the demand for heavy passenger and cargo aircraft.

A noticeable decline in output in tons in the early 1990s was associated with a sharp decline in purchases of combat aircraft in all leading countries after the collapse of the USSR.

Changing the release structure

Fig. 7. Dynamics of aircraft production by destination (thousands of units)

Fig. 7 shows the dynamics of changes in the structure of output by year, the color designations are the same as in Fig. 3, 4.

The rapid militarization of the aircraft industry during the First World War is visible, a sharp increase in the share of civilian vehicles immediately after it and a further increase in this share – the first golden age of civil aviation – until the beginning of the Great Depression. After that, the demand for new civilian aircraft plummeted. And then the leading powers began to prepare for war: the share of combat aircraft grew year by year.

After the end of World War II, the production of combat vehicles declined sharply, but the outbreak of the Korean War led to a strong increase in the production of weapons in all leading countries. The world, unlike the Vietnam War (the vivid reaction of the aviation industry to this war is not visible in any of the countries), really stood on the threshold of a new world conflict.

But in the second half of the 1950s, the share of combat aircraft declined sharply again: This is due to the defusing of international tensions, the brilliant prospects of the emerging jet passenger aviation and, in many ways, the emergence of a new type of weapon.: rockets. Frequent reproaches against N.S. Khrushchev, who "arbitrarily" reduced military aviation and redistributed production capacity in favor of the production of missiles (for example, the Progress plant, which still produces Soyuz family missiles, is the former oldest aviation enterprise in Russia, Duks, after the revolution, State Aviation Plant No. 1"), not quite fair. The authorities of Great Britain, France and the USA did the same (Germany at that moment had just begun to restore the aircraft industry after World War II).

The processes taking place in these countries may be less noticeable to the historian, since they were not accompanied by the closure of firms or, as in the USSR, the transfer of enterprises to another department (for example, from the Ministry of Aviation Industry to the Ministry of General Engineering, which was in charge of the production of space technology and strategic missiles) with a partial replacement of leadership, which was then reflected in numerous memoirs. Missiles in the UK and the USA were built and are still being built, mainly by aircraft companies British Aerospace, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and others.

The share of combat aircraft was established at a new, much lower level of about 20%, but then the collapse of the USSR led to a very significant reduction in the military budgets of all leading countries and an abrupt reduction in defense spending worldwide.

The transition to accounting in tons (Fig. 8) significantly corrects the picture. The share of light and civil aircraft in the loading of the aviation industry is much less than in Fig. 7.

Fig. 8. Dynamics of aircraft production by destination (thousands of tons)

The end of the Korean War and the rapid growth of civil aviation, including the appearance of jet passenger airliners, led to the fact that since 1957 the production of civil aircraft prevails not only in pieces, but also in tons, despite some spikes in the production of combat vehicles in the early 1960s (the Caribbean and Berlin crises) and in the first half of the 1980s (Afghanistan and the reaction to it).

The red spot in Fig. 8 in the 1950s is the creation in the United States of a huge fleet of heavy tanker aircraft for refueling strategic bombers.

The increase in the share of combat aircraft in the early 1980s was not due to an increase in their production, but to the crisis and general decline (see Figure 6) in the industry, which hit, first of all, general aviation. State orders remained at the same level.

In 1991-1992, the production of military aircraft declined sharply again. The demand for light aircraft has also decreased (some experts believe that the appearance of personal computers is partly to blame for the latter, which provided young people with a new emotionally saturated form of leisure and reduced interest in flying). As a result, almost the entire world aviation industry at the end of the century was engaged in the production of commercial aircraft. Most of the remaining resources were spent on general–purpose aircraft, and only the remainder on light and combat aircraft.

In the press, both news and professional, the share of attention to combat and light aircraft is noticeably higher, and to commercial – less compared to how much they load production facilities. Such a bias can lead, and often leads, to the adoption of incorrect management decisions.

Fig. 9. The share of combat aircraft in total production in Russia/USSR, USA and the world average (in units)

Fig. 10. The share of combat aircraft in total production in Russia/USSR, USA and the world average (in tons)

Of course, the output structure differed in different countries. The aviation industry of the USSR and China was especially militarized. In the USSR, despite the construction of large numbers of passenger airliners that began in the mid-1950s, the production of combat aircraft dominated (Fig. 9, 10). There are only two "detente periods": five years after the Second World War and the second half of the 1950s.

The graph of the share in combat aircraft in tons is even more indicative. The red column turns out to be lower than the others only once: in the second half of the 1950s, during the Khrushchev reduction of the armed forces. But even in this five-year period, its value exceeded 60%.. Nevertheless, after the Korean War, in all countries (except, perhaps, China), the share of combat aircraft in the total output, albeit at different rates, is decreasing.

Global trends

At the beginning of the XX century, aircraft production grew rapidly, but in 1912 growth slowed down. In the press of that period, this was characterized as a "crisis" ^[28]. In the UK, USA, and France, aircraft production even declined, but the rapid growth of production where the state supported the domestic aircraft industry and acted as a major customer – and this, first of all, Germany and Russia – allowed global indicators to grow (Fig. 11). The crisis was much more pronounced in the decrease in the number of new aircraft models appearing since 1911 (Fig. 12). Its possible causes were discussed in ^[18].

The First World War led to a sharp increase in demand for military aircraft. But the collapse of the industry after the end of the war was much sharper than in 1946. In 1920, fewer aircraft were built than in 1913 (although heavier). The strongest decline was in the UK: in 1920, 98 times fewer aircraft were produced in the country than in 1918. In Russia, in the minimum of 1921, production decreased only 23 times compared to the maximum of 1916: and the maximum was not too high, and the civil war continued to demand aircraft. The recession of 1919-1921 was much sharper than the recession of 1945-1946. The reasons for this can be seen in Fig. 7, 8: in 1920, there was almost no demand for commercial aircraft in the world, and general-purpose, postal, sanitary aircraft were converted from huge stocks of military vehicles, which by design were not too different from civilian ones. In 1946, the development paths of military and civilian aircraft diverged, and such a massive conversion could no longer be carried out. Civil aviation had also grown by that time, so the factories had someone to sell new cars to.

The current state of the economy and consumer confidence in the future are very important for the purchase of civilian cars – unlike military ones – this is true for all long–term investments, which include airplanes.

Commercial aviation and general aviation began to develop rapidly in the 1920s. It is with them that the noticeable rise in Fig. 6 during this period is associated. But it was civil aviation that suffered the most during the depression, as can be seen in Fig. 7. a sharp decrease in the share of civil aircraft in 1929 Soon the pre-war arms race began, and then the war itself broke out. As a result, both the production of aircraft and the share of combat vehicles grew until 1944.

Let's touch on the issue of the impact of repression on the Soviet aviation industry. Sometimes it is claimed that it was insignificant, since aircraft production in the USSR grew steadily throughout the 1930s. The only failure of production in 1935 has completely different reasons and is associated with the transition to the production of new equipment and a change in production technologies ^{[5, pp. 112-113]}.

But the number of newly created models decreased sharply in 1937-1938 and recovered to the previous level only in 1940, after the organization of several new design bureaus (see Table 2, the author's calculations). Thus, the repressions had a significant impact on the development of Soviet aviation and became one of the important reasons for its systemic lag in World War II.

Table 2. The growth of aircraft production in the USSR (thousand tons) before World War II and the number of new aircraft models created in the country

A strong increase in the production of combat aircraft occurred during the Korean War. This gives an argument in favor of the fact that the conflict was considered by the leading countries so seriously that the mobilization of their economies began, and it could well escalate into a world war (Fig. 11). Unlike the Korean War, there was no such reaction of the aviation industry to either the Vietnam War or the invasion of Afghanistan.

In the second half of the 1950s, aircraft production worldwide declined sharply, mainly due to combat vehicles. This was due both to the defusing of global tensions, and to the worldwide repurposing of part of the aircraft–building capacity for the production of new weapons – missiles, and a little later - for the production of space technology. During these years, the production of another type of aircraft that competed with aircraft in both the military and civilian spheres began to grow steadily: helicopters.

11. Production of combat aircraft in the first half of the 1950s. The increase in output in the UK in 1956 was associated with the events in Egypt

At the same time, the production of new-generation commercial aircraft, turbojet and turboprop, has increased dramatically. As a result, the share of commercial aircraft in global production initially equaled (by weight), and then surpassed the share of combat aircraft – for the first time since 1914.

The next crisis suddenly began in the first half of the 1980s. Many reasons were offered to explain it: both the rise in oil prices – and, therefore, aviation fuel (but this happened in 1973), and stricter laws on liability and life insurance when flying in the United States (but this only affected the market of light aviation and general aviation in this country). The collapse of demand – and after it, and production, was universal. For example, the production of passenger airliners in the USSR has sharply decreased, which can hardly be attributed to fuel prices and US laws, and this happened before the beginning of perestroika. On the contrary, in the second half of the 1980s, aircraft production in the USSR was kept at about the same level ^[20]. The decline in output in the USSR is also explained by local reasons, but the synchronicity of events suggests that the industry is mainly regulated by global processes. Previous crises, for example, the crisis of 1912 mentioned earlier, were also universal and simultaneous.

Since the crisis of the 1980s affected light aircraft the most, the production curve in tons in Fig. 6 is not decreasing as much as the output in pieces. But it is decreasing.

In the 1990s, stabilization took place at a new, lower level. In the first two decades of the XXI century before the outbreak of the covid epidemic, production mainly grew (adjusted for two crises: after the terrorist attacks in the USA on 11.09.2001 and fiscal 2008), primarily due to the growth of air transportation and, accordingly, the demand for commercial aircraft. Unfortunately, detailed statistics for this period have not yet been collected by me.

Distribution by country

Let's move on to the description of the role of individual countries. 12, 13, shows the production of aircraft by year in the leading countries in units and tons, respectively.

Figure 12. Dynamics of countries' shares in aircraft production (in units)

Fig. 13. Dynamics of countries' shares in aircraft production (in tons)

At the beginning of the XX century, France dominated – the world aviation center of those years, a little later, production in the UK, Germany, Russia and the USA was rapidly developing. But in 1912, the output in the United States sharply decreased, and increased only after the country entered the First World War. The rest of the participants in the war increased production until 1918. Except for Russia, the year of maximum output for it was 1916.

After the First World War, France came forward again: it built a lot of aircraft for the colonial service, but completely lost its position by the mid-1930s. The Japanese aviation industry appeared and began to successfully increase its capacity.

            The growth of the US share in the 1920s was associated with the rapid development of commercial and private aviation, interrupted by the Great Depression.

In the 1930s, the rapid recovery of the aviation industry in Germany and, above all, the USSR was impressive. The share of the Soviet Union looks especially impressive, where hundreds of complex and expensive all-metal heavy bombers TB-1 and TB–3 were built, a little later - high-speed bombers SB by the thousands.

The Second World War demonstrated the enormous mobilization capabilities of the US economy. Of the 224,000 aircraft built in the world in the peak, 1944, 95,000 took off in this country.

After the Second World War, the USSR confidently took the position of the second aviation power, not too inferior in the tonnage of the machines produced by the United States and by a large margin from all others. Attention is drawn to the difference in the shares of the post-war USSR in Fig. 14 and 15: it is due to the fact that many light aircraft and general aviation aircraft were built in the USA, and the USSR focused primarily on the production of heavier and more labor-intensive military aircraft.

In 1982-1985, the output in the USSR (in tons) was almost halved, while the annual production of combat aircraft decreased from 1200 to 690 tons. The next big decline occurred in the early 1990s: the production of combat aircraft almost completely stopped, and in 1994-1995, the production of other aircraft also halved. As a result, the share of the USA has increased.

By this time, the independent aviation industry of European countries produced mainly light aircraft: therefore, their share is noticeable in Fig. 14, but very small in Fig.15. But the share of European international projects has sharply increased, first of all, concerns EADS (European Aeronautic Defense And Space) and Airbus. In the diagrams, they are shown in gray, among others. In the 1980s and 90s, Brazil, Canada, and China increased the production of aircraft - therefore, the share of "other" countries, compared with the 1970s, has increased significantly.

Conclusions

            For the first time, the article presents diagrams of aircraft production by year in the XX century in the world, including, broken down by destination and manufacturing countries, in pieces and tons.

It is shown that estimates in units and tons give significantly different results. The assessment in tons gives a more accurate idea of the capacity of the country's aviation industry and its role in world processes, the role of individual countries is revealed.

The crisis of 1912 and the violent reaction of the aviation industry of the leading countries to the war in Korea were noted.

It is shown that in the last decades of the XX century, the share of combat aircraft in production was constantly decreasing, and by its end the world aviation industry was mainly loaded with the production of commercial aircraft. At the same time, until the early 1990s, the share of combat aircraft in the total output in the USSR was much higher than the global average.