Most Important Technology for Allies in WW2

McHrozni said:
Precisely :)

McHrozni
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This was most important for the single-ship attacks, of course. When there were sufficient escorts there would be one or more standing off to maintain contact while the attacking ship or ships made their runs. The two-ship was made in "race track" patterns at right angles to each other. This allowed time for the hog racks to be reloaded.
 
Britain had an Infrared vision system years before the German system. It was classified until after the warr. It was the 'Tabby' night driving system. It consisted of a battery powered monocular viewer and a 'black light' headlight. It was issued to vehicle drivers and was used mainly for convoy work rather than as a scope. Manufacture of tubes started in 1939 and it was being issued by 1941.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Britain had an Infrared vision system years before the German system. It was classified until after the war. It was the 'Tabby' night driving system. It consisted of a battery powered monocular viewer and a 'black light' headlight. It was issued to vehicle drivers and was used mainly for convoy work rather than as a scope. Manufacture of tubes started in 1939 and it was being issued by 1941.
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Cool! I did not know this. I did a basic search ("Tabby", "Infra Red"). ( I got an infra-red photos of someone's cats at first).

A fan's forum identifies the "Tabby" device as "the OS 960 GA.ZA 23119" and the infra-red receiver tube is designated cv143 and offers this photo.
http://www.tubecollector.org/cv143.htm

A fan claims to have the viewer working but no one seems clear what the infra red searchlight "partner device" is called or looks like. In theory it should be big like this German UHU (unless the device was only used for convoys) http://i36.tinypic.com/6i5xd1.jpg

However I did finally find a fairly comprehensive description of the Tabby device on a fan page. Here is the address http://www.hmvf.co.uk/pdf/Tabby01.pdf

The article states that British commandos were the first to use infra-red viewers in 1941. ( which is pretty early)
 
Anything that helped Bomber Command during the Battle of the Ruhr, really, such Oboe navigation, as well as radar and all the new bombs and bombers being developed. Basically, the Battle of the Ruhr stopped Speer's armaments miracle in it's tracks, right when the German War Economy needed to step up production (i.e. 1943).

Sure, Allied Production seriously outstretched German production (America alone produced 7 times the amount of materiel as Germany), but the Battle of the Ruhr crippled the German War Economy, which probably ensured that the end of the war was a lot easier on the Allies.
 
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Spindrift said:
There are lots of anecdotes like that. There's a scene from the movie Battle of the Bulge where the German general finds a cake that had been sent over from the states and it's still fresh. He says if they can afford to ship cakes across the ocean, we've lost.
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On a similar note, there is a tale of Gorbachev realising that the Soviets had lost the Cold War, when on a visit to the U.S. he saw adverts for childrens toys containing computer technology when many factories back home were still pre-computer.
 
kookbreaker said:
The American Helmet was the best for the war. Other nations wore helmets dating from WW1, some eventually adapted but in Germany's case Hitler forbade any changes as he thought the "coal scuttle" was a major source of identity for the German soldier.
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I think you're wrong about the helmet - don't current US helmets bear an astonishing resemblance to the German one?
 
Another thing was that the Allies kept up their R&D programmes right through the war. In 1941-ish, didn't the Germans discontinue a lot of their R&D (basically anything that wouldn't be ready to go into production within a certain time, I'm not sure how long it was), thinking that the war was all but won and wanting to save money? The Germans started the war ahead in a lot of technologies (radar for one), but never recovered from this decision.

On radar for example, it was not radar itself that won the Battle of Britain for the RAF, but the way it made Dowding's GCI system so effective - the concept of the system actually pre-dated the invention of radar, initial experiments involved the use of sonic detection. German radar was technically superior; but in an air defence role, they used it only for point defence (AA gun-laying, one reason why Bomber Command quite quickly gave up on attacking Wilhelmshaven). In fact using fighter aircraft defensively ran counter to Lufwaffe operational philosophy - German fighters were to be used offensively, to shoot down enemy aircraft over their own territory.
 
Uzzy said:
Anything that helped Bomber Command during the Battle of the Ruhr, really, such Oboe navigation, as well as radar and all the new bombs and bombers being developed. Basically, the Battle of the Ruhr stopped Speer's armaments miracle in it's tracks, right when the German War Economy needed to step up production (i.e. 1943).
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Hmmm, I'd have to crack open some of the books I have to be sure, but as I recall I'd say that claim is not correct. Most of the post-war analysis has shown that the area attacks favoured by Bomber Command were of limited value in directly impacting German war production. They did produce from time to time short-term effects, but never achieved the level of impact you are describing.

Even Hamburg, which was pretty much burned to the ground in July of 1943 in the first large firestorm of the war, lost only about two months' worth of war production, and within five months of the raid total production was at 80% of its pre-raid value.

The most important effects of Bomber Command's efforts were the indirect effects on the German war economy, namely in keeping a significant portion of the Luftwaffe as a night-fighter force when many of those aircraft could have been put to better use elsewhere; in the large amount of heavy artillery which was diverted to anti-aircraft role rather than being used in the anti-armour role, along with the personnel to man those weapons; and the general disruption of the economy which required the efforts of many workers to repair.

The real crippling of the German economy was due to the Oil and Transportation Plans, and those didn't get well underway until the spring of 1944 for the former and September 1944 for the latter, by which time the Luftwaffe's strength had been broken. Though Germany did well to weather those storms, by the spring of 1945 the German economy was teetering on the edge of complete collapse.
 
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Sonic Devices like the 'Sound Mirrors' were part of the deception plan to keep Radar secret rather than an effective system. At the start of the war the Germans didn't even realise that Britain had a radar system. They sent the Hindenberg AIrship flying up and down the North Sea and Channel while their technicians aboard 'listened' for Radar. They were looking for signals similar to their own. When they didn't find them they assumed the signal they were getting was interference from the national Power Grid. British 'Chain Home' Radar worked on a lot longer wavelength and at a frequency the same as the AC power transmission lines. In addition rather than rotating arrays it used an array of static transmitters and receivers and relied on phase differences and time delays to produce bearing and altitude www.radarpages.co.uk has the full story. It worked at a lot longer range than German equipment. It wasn't attacked much by the Germans as they thought the stations were part of a radio system rather than Radar. One station was put of action for a while but a portable station was put into action to fill the gap while it was repaired. Later in the war 'Chain Home Low stations were added to fill the low level 'gap' and later still fighter direction and control sets were added.

As far as being superior, British Scientists were re assured that the Germans weren't ahead when a Commando raid accompanied by Radar Engineers captured the important parts of a German station on the Channel Coast. With the development of the Cavity Magnetron the Germans were left far behind.
 
Corsair 115 said:
Hmmm, I'd have to crack open some of the books I have to be sure, but as I recall I'd say that claim is not correct. Most of the post-war analysis has shown that the area attacks favoured by Bomber Command were of limited value in directly impacting German war production. They did produce from time to time short-term effects, but never achieved the level of impact you are describing.
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Crack open Adam Tooze's The Wages of Destruction. It's a good work on the Nazi War Economy in general, and makes the argument for RAF Bomber Command being highly successful during the Battle of the Ruhr, though not so much during the rest of the war when Bomber Command switched to 'dehousing'. Given the figures he brings up, I find it hard to deny the success of Bomber Command in stopping the armaments miracle. He certainly makes a good argument against Gailbrath's US Strategic Bombing Survey and AJP Taylor's conclusions.
 
Matthew Ellard said:
Cool! I did not know this. I did a basic search ("Tabby", "Infra Red"). ( I got an infra-red photos of someone's cats at first).

A fan's forum identifies the "Tabby" device as "the OS 960 GA.ZA 23119" and the infra-red receiver tube is designated cv143 and offers this photo.
http://www.tubecollector.org/cv143.htm

A fan claims to have the viewer working but no one seems clear what the infra red searchlight "partner device" is called or looks like. In theory it should be big like this German UHU (unless the device was only used for convoys) http://i36.tinypic.com/6i5xd1.jpg

However I did finally find a fairly comprehensive description of the Tabby device on a fan page. Here is the address http://www.hmvf.co.uk/pdf/Tabby01.pdf

The article states that British commandos were the first to use infra-red viewers in 1941. ( which is pretty early)
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I have some pics of the British IR system in use I'll dig them out. As I remember it was fitted to a late model Sten with the illuminator under the barrel, the image tube on top and a bulky backpack power system attacked to them by a split cable.
 
Segnosaur said:
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)?
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Did Germany also have all of these technologies? I ask this because they had the bomb first.
 
dasmiller said:
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?
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Autobahn equals logistics.
 
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