My 10p’s worth.
A large majority of the aircraft components were built on Jigs so the quality was only as good as the quality of the Jig. also you had specific personnel trained for specific tasks for example 1 person would drill / ream holes and 1 person would rivet there was no ‘Jack of All trades’ used in the initial construction aircraft production is not like car production with a moving line
For example you have 6 aircraft on the go at once in the erecting shop.
Bottom end of the hanger were the Jigs for wings, tail plane and Fuse assembly’s here were the skilled workers who were paid more money. Top end of the Hangar was the erecting shop with all the major assemblies converging on these aircraft for assembly by semi-skilled workers under supervision of foremen when six were completed they were wheeled out the hangar to the flight test area and paint shop. and another 6 were built in the empty space.
By restricting all the skilled operations to your best workers on the Jigs (They all had to take rivet / drilling checks, if they didn’t meet the standard they were put in the Erecting shop) a good level of quality control was built in.
If you look at WWII aircraft in general Lancaster Bombers for example are pretty slab sided are were relatively easy to build , but spitfires with its curves and streamlining required lots of effort and skill to produce but again if built in a Jig was 10 times easier to assemble than hand built. (I saw a report on spitfire MH434, where at some stage early in its life one of the wing’s was swapped with a wing built in a shadow factory and was 1/2 inch smaller ! so as I said precision was with the Jig)
Please also remember we were early doors during WWII in using fully riveted aluminium panels these days we use gallons of thick sealant between the panels so it is very difficult to pull a rivet with the panel ‘bonded’ to the adjacent panel. (DH Comet crashes and excessive rivets springs to mind)
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