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Most Important Technology for Allies in WW2

Segnosaur

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Segnosaur
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I was watching a show on allied air power in World War 2, and it got me thinking:

What exactly was the most important technology that the Allies had in World War 2 (something that either "won" the war for us, or at least gave us an edge to win the war sooner.)

Some of the possibilities:

- The Atomic Bomb (although it could be argued that Japan was virtually defeated by that point. The use of the Bomb may have saved American lives, but the result of the war was pretty much decided by then.)

- The Norden bombsight: Allowed more accurate bombing of German infrastructure

- Oboe: Improved night bombing capability

- Radar: allowed interception of planes/protected infrastructure

- Code breaking technology: allowed decryption of both German and Japanese messages (although a lot of this wasn't just technology, but involved significant human work too.)

So, what do people consider to be the 'most important' technology? Anyone have their own ideas (things I might have missed)?
 
Production technology.

It wouldn´t have mattered if the Allies hadn´t had all those fancy modern gadget, as long as they could bury the Axis under heaps of newly built tanks, planes and warships.
 
Ugh. Sonar didn't make to your list? War for Britain could turn very differently, and very ugly for Allies if it weren't for that. It wasn't unique to Allies, but the Allies made far more use of them.

Hedgehog mortar also comes to mind as a fairly meaningful technology, if you're looking for small things.

Code breaking and general intelligence were also extremely important.

Overall, Allies had just about all the cards. A good thing too :)

McHrozni
 
Chaos said:
Production technology.

It wouldn´t have mattered if the Allies hadn´t had all those fancy modern gadget, as long as they could bury the Axis under heaps of newly built tanks, planes and warships.
Click to expand...

50,000 Sherman tanks, for example. Vs. ~483 King Tigers. Every other number is just as out of proportion. "Detroit is on the front!"
 
Chaos said:
Production technology.

It wouldn´t have mattered if the Allies hadn´t had all those fancy modern gadget, as long as they could bury the Axis under heaps of newly built tanks, planes and warships.
Click to expand...

How much of that was due to technology and how much due to the allies simply being bigger in terms of production capacity?

My suggestion: Lubricants that worked in extreme cold. (Winter clothing too, but that was planning/distribution failure, not tech). Once the Germans were stopped outside Moscow, the Allied victory was virtually assured - it was mostly a matter of when it would be accomplished.
 
Wasn't the mass production of penicillin figured out during WWII? I would rate that quite highly.
 
Chaos said:
Production technology.

It wouldn´t have mattered if the Allies hadn´t had all those fancy modern gadget, as long as they could bury the Axis under heaps of newly built tanks, planes and warships.
Click to expand...
I do recognize that much of the allied success in the war came from superior production (especially in the U.S.). But was there any particular technology that favored the allies? I always assumed it was just because the U.S. had A: a large population/more infrastructure, B: was relatively isolated (so they didn't have to worry about factories getting bombed), and C: made a few wise production decisions (favoring quantity over quality in some cases).
 
McHrozni said:
Ugh. Sonar didn't make to your list? War for Britain could turn very differently, and very ugly for Allies if it weren't for that. It wasn't unique to Allies, but the Allies made far more use of them.
Click to expand...
Actually, hadn't really thought of Sonar. (Probably should have included it in the list, but I'm not familiar with any particular allied 'advantage' in technology.)
Hedgehog mortar also comes to mind as a fairly meaningful technology, if you're looking for small things.
Click to expand...
Again, something I'm not that familiar with.
 
Not sure if it's a technology or a philosophy or just a way of life, but the Allies understood logistics in a way that the Axis never really did. I'd probably rank codebreaking above logistics as war-winning technologies for the Allies, but logistics was still a huge (if unglamorous) factor.

Is "lack of insane leaders" a technology?
 
Chaos said:
Production technology.

It wouldn´t have mattered if the Allies hadn´t had all those fancy modern gadget, as long as they could bury the Axis under heaps of newly built tanks, planes and warships.
Click to expand...

I second this. In fact, I would say that the Allied victory was due to resources (especially oil) and industrial capacity much more than superior technology. The Axis powers and Allies were pretty evenly matched in terms of technology, but the Allies were able to produce more tanks, plains, ships, etc. and were better able to fuel them.
 
I wonder about obscure, mundane stuff that might go unnoticed. Were there differences between the two sides in what kinds of stuff the average soldier carried while marching from town to town... a gun less likely to jam or needing reloading less often or easier to aim... faster lighter ammo you could carry more of... boots less likely to cause blisters or infections... better preserved food or food containers making them less dependent on new supplies... better camouflage... more or better radios to make them better at coordinating with other units and aircraft... better binoculars or telescopes...? But I've never heard any such differences being discussed.
 
I would go with mass-production technology as well. We just made huge numbers of nearly everything needed for war, from ammunition to battleships.
I don't think any axis power succeeded in increasing their respective naval fleets after the war started, for instance.
We not only rebuilt ours in short order, we vastly increased it.

Another little item that figured way out of proportion was the proximity fuse. This made anti-aircraft gunnery greatly more effective, and was likely responsible for limiting the damage from Kamikaze attacks.
Applied to artillery later in the war, it allowed for effective and precise air-bursts on enemy positions.
 
The Proximity artillery fuse and penicillin, as others have mentioned. The priority and funding for each of these was comparable to that of the Manhattan project.

Gen. Eisenhower and Gen. Patton declared the DC-3 cargo plane, the M-1 rifle and the jeep very important to the winning of the war.
 
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Digital computers. Colossus allowed the code breakers in England to break enigma and ENIAC in the US which calculated more accurate trajectory tables for artillery.
 
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