Most Important Technology for Allies in WW2

You're right in that the V1 and V2 didn't cause significant damage to the Allied side and didn't help the Germans win. But it still may not have been 'bad' for the Germans to invest in such weapons. The Allies would still have had to deploy their own resources to stop the attacks. (Every bomber sent to try to neutralize a V1/V2 launch site would have meant one less bomber available to attack a German factory/military target.)
But were they actually worth it? Wouldn´t building more fighters to shoot down bombers have been more effective in reducing the effect of Allied strategic bombing?
Can't really say...

It would be more effective to build more fighters, if they had capable pilots available to fly them, and if those planes weren't at significant risk at getting shot down by escort fighters. But if they were going to crank out an extra thousand ME109s with nobody to fly them, or if most of those ME109s were going to be shot down by Mustangs when trying to stop the bombing runs, then no, building the planes wouldn't be a good choice.

Admittedly, I'm not expert enough to tell either way.
 
It is my understanding that the additional problem for the British was turret ring size. They insisted that all vehicles could fit through rail tunnels.

The PzKpfw III was dropped because of its small turret ring and could not be upgraded. The Churchill and Matildas had an even smaller ring.
The Matilda I was basically a semi-mobile machine gun position, good armour, poor armament and mobility. The Matilda II was again well armoured but the 40mm gun was adequate against armour but lacked any HE shell for use against fortified positions, except the 'close support' models with the 75mm howitzer. Neither was a great design, especially in their infantry support role and neither had much upgrade potential.
The Panzer III possessed far more "stretch", starting with a 37mm gun and going through L42 and L60 barreled 50mm guns and eventually getting the 75mm L24 of early Panzer IVs. In my view it was a far superior design.
 
Can't really say...

It would be more effective to build more fighters, if they had capable pilots available to fly them, and if those planes weren't at significant risk at getting shot down by escort fighters. But if they were going to crank out an extra thousand ME109s with nobody to fly them, or if most of those ME109s were going to be shot down by Mustangs when trying to stop the bombing runs, then no, building the planes wouldn't be a good choice.

Admittedly, I'm not expert enough to tell either way.

They certainly had the men to pilot those Me-109s - though actually I would suggest building FW-190s. And pilot training is just one more use for resources. So instead of building 1000 planes with no pilots, maybe they could have cranked out another 800 or so planes with capable pilots. Or they could have expaned the pilot training program so that all the planes they already were building got decent pilots rather than half-trained rookies.
Hell, even accelerating the development of the Me-262, so that in ´44 they had a working, reasonably bug-free jet fighter rather than that glitchy experiment they had, would have helped. Me-262 with the R4M air-to-air rocket system did an awful lot of damage when they were available - and they could have done an awful lot more, had they been available earlier, in higher numbers, and more reliable.
 
They certainly had the men to pilot those Me-109s - though actually I would suggest building FW-190s.
Did they have the men? I had thought that the Luftwaffe had lost a good chunk of its qualified pilots through attrition.
And pilot training is just one more use for resources. So instead of building 1000 planes with no pilots, maybe they could have cranked out another 800 or so planes with capable pilots.
But to crank out capable pilots you also need experienced pilots, a 'product' that you couldn't expand on just by throwing resources at it.

And even if they did have capable pilots, they also had to contend with the allies, who were still going to have numerical superiority.

Hell, even accelerating the development of the Me-262, so that in ´44 they had a working, reasonably bug-free jet fighter rather than that glitchy experiment they had, would have helped. Me-262 with the R4M air-to-air rocket system did an awful lot of damage when they were available - and they could have done an awful lot more, had they been available earlier, in higher numbers, and more reliable.
Yeah, I think that might have made more of a difference than more Me-109s (assuming of course that they could make a 'bug free' version.)
 
The Matilda II was again well armoured but the 40mm gun was adequate against armour but lacked any HE shell for use against fortified positions, except the 'close support' models with the 75mm howitzer. Neither was a great design, especially in their infantry support role and neither had much upgrade potential.
The Panzer III possessed far more "stretch", starting with a 37mm gun and going through L42 and L60 barreled 50mm guns and eventually getting the 75mm L24 of early Panzer IVs. In my view it was a far superior design.

It depends what you mean by superior. Matilda II was innovative in that it used 3 castings bolted together to form its hull and the castings were made thick where the armour was needed most. For the first couple of years of the war it was more or less impervious to enemy tank fire.. It was compact and reliable. It was liked by all its crew both British and Russian. It's 40mm gun was the best tank gun of the first couple of years of the war, its lack of HE was a problem butthe equivalentguns used by the Germans, Italians and Russian were no better, their HE round and performance was poor and their AT round wasn't a patch on the 2 pounder.

Where the PZ3 and 4 were better was in their turret design, not only did they have a larger diameter ring the design of the turret allowed for upgunningbecause they were built from armour plate allowing for a new front plate capable of takiing a loarger gun. Matilda had a cast turret with no possibility of upgunning even if the ring had been larger, Shermans had a similar problem, this was got round by designing a new turret. Crusader was upgunned as the war went on in the same way as the German tanks as it had a plate turret and could be fitted with a new front plate. Unfortunatley Crusader was terrible in all other respects.

What was an advantage in the PZ3 was th Torsion Bar suspension, it allowed for serious upgunning and up armouring. British designs tended to be at the limits of their suspension design and not capable of much increase in weight until the late war Comet and Centurions came along.
 
Did they have the men? I had thought that the Luftwaffe had lost a good chunk of its qualified pilots through attrition.

I said "they had the men", not "they had the qualified pilots". What they did not have was resources for the training that turned men into qualified pilots.

But to crank out capable pilots you also need experienced pilots, a 'product' that you couldn't expand on just by throwing resources at it.
They had those - in the front line unit. Given the resources for a training program, they could have rotated the pilots back home as trainers, much like the US did.

And even if they did have capable pilots, they also had to contend with the allies, who were still going to have numerical superiority.(/quote]

No question. Whatever they did, it could only have drawn out the agony.

Yeah, I think that might have made more of a difference than more Me-109s (assuming of course that they could make a 'bug free' version.)

Had they thrown adequate resources at the Me-262, they could have had the buggy version a lot earlier, and by ´44, might have had a bug-free, or at least tolerably buggy, version.
 
The thing that is starting to bother the hell out of me here is the fact that no matter what anyone says, someone tries to shut them down. The 163 was innovative I say, someone says that it was a deathtrap. Someone says that we had "X" someone else says "Well "Y" had them too".

Hi, welcome to the internet. Here nobody has the last word.

Really, I've enjoyed the hell out of this thread. I mean someone says the bombs only had 50% of their weight as explosive and on the same page someone pulls out the exact percentages for few different bombs in that weight range. I'm sorry, that is ****-ing cool in a very geeky sort of way.

I know very little about this topic but I find this thread very entertaining. Not as much fun as going to the Nimitz Museum with my kids and watching the flame thrower demonstration, but hey, its the internet.
 
You're right in that the V1 and V2 didn't cause significant damage to the Allied side and didn't help the Germans win. But it still may not have been 'bad' for the Germans to invest in such weapons. The Allies would still have had to deploy their own resources to stop the attacks. (Every bomber sent to try to neutralize a V1/V2 launch site would have meant one less bomber available to attack a German factory/military target.)

Granted, it wouldn't have been enough to 'win the war', but it might not have been a total waste either.


Sure, there is that indirect effect, but it's a marginal one at best considering the resources Germany devoted to those two programs.

By September 1944 the Allies had such a vast air force at their disposal that any diversion would not have significantly affected its striking power. At that time, between the 8th and 15th air forces, there was a total of about 3,000 heavy bombers plus nearly 1,000 fighters available for operations. Bomber Command contributed another 1,300-1,400 heavy bombers. Then there were the Allied tactical air forces, which added about 1,000 medium bombers and 3,100 fighter-bombers to the sum.

This was the aerial armada Germany was up against. (Then to that we'd have to add the Russian air forces.)

(Historical footnote: the majority of attacks on V-1 sites were undertaken by Bomber Command. The USAAF only conducted such attacks when otherwise unable to operate against German industry. In July and August of 1944, for example, just over one-quarter of all V-1 site raids were performed by the USAAF; the remaining three-quarters were by Bomber Command.)


They certainly had the men to pilot those Me-109s - though actually I would suggest building FW-190s. And pilot training is just one more use for resources. So instead of building 1000 planes with no pilots, maybe they could have cranked out another 800 or so planes with capable pilots. Or they could have expaned the pilot training program so that all the planes they already were building got decent pilots rather than half-trained rookies.


The problem for pilot training wasn't a lack of aircraft or trainees, it was a crippling lack of aviation fuel—there simply wasn't the fuel to spare for training flights. And in-flight training is crucial in producing a good pilot who knows how to get the most out of his aircraft. In May of 1944, German production of aviation fuel came to 156,000 tonnes; in September, production had fallen to just 10,000 tonnes. This compared to the 320,000 tonnes per month the Luftwaffe actually needed. When the fuel begins to run low, the first thing cut are the training missions so that the fuel is there for the combat missions.

It didn't help that German policy was for its fighter pilots to fly until either killed or rendered too injured to fly. In contrast, the U.S. sent its fighter pilots home after one or two tours to help train the new recruits, and the combat experience provided by such veterans was invaluable.
 
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Joseph P Kennedy died when his B24 flying bomb suffered premature detonation on the way to destroy V1/2 launch sites.

Full story here: http://www.b-29s-over-korea.com/kennedy_story/kennedy_story01.html

There were desperate measures from both sides during the war.
Operation Aphrodite was not supposed to be suicidal for the pilots, though there were at least nine fatalities during the project including Kennedy and Willy. It was however a complete failure. This was not Doolittle's finest hour.

And the account on that website is rather overblown.
 
It depends what you mean by superior. Matilda II was innovative in that it used 3 castings bolted together to form its hull and the castings were made thick where the armour was needed most. For the first couple of years of the war it was more or less impervious to enemy tank fire.. It was compact and reliable. It was liked by all its crew both British and Russian. It's 40mm gun was the best tank gun of the first couple of years of the war, its lack of HE was a problem butthe equivalentguns used by the Germans, Italians and Russian were no better, their HE round and performance was poor and their AT round wasn't a patch on the 2 pounder.

Where the PZ3 and 4 were better was in their turret design, not only did they have a larger diameter ring the design of the turret allowed for upgunningbecause they were built from armour plate allowing for a new front plate capable of takiing a loarger gun. Matilda had a cast turret with no possibility of upgunning even if the ring had been larger, Shermans had a similar problem, this was got round by designing a new turret. Crusader was upgunned as the war went on in the same way as the German tanks as it had a plate turret and could be fitted with a new front plate. Unfortunatley Crusader was terrible in all other respects.

What was an advantage in the PZ3 was th Torsion Bar suspension, it allowed for serious upgunning and up armouring. British designs tended to be at the limits of their suspension design and not capable of much increase in weight until the late war Comet and Centurions came along.

Conceptually the 'Infantry' tank idea didn't work; they were supposed to protect infantry from enemy tanks. However in 1940 in France the German advance was on too wide a scale. Rommel later said (of the A12) "It would be interesting to know why (the Mark II) was called an Infantry tank when it has no HE ammunition with which to engage the opposing infantry". He also described it as "far too slow".

The Matilda I (A11) was vulnerable to German 37mm AP rounds, was under armed (two Vickers .303 or one .303 and one .50 machine guns) and with an incredibly difficult to use radio system (it required the tank commander to lie down on the hull floor to tune).

While the Matilda II generally performed well its tracks were prone to filling with mud, leaving them unable to grip the ground, the engines were unreliable and it got bogged down too easily in trenches.
After the fall of France Britain didn't evaluate the lessons of tank warfare, mainly as there didn't appear to be the time to do so and the Matilda continued in service. Though at least one tank fitted with a larger turret (believed to be from the Cavalier/Cromwell) mounting the 57mm "six pounder"

The lack of a HE round caused significant loss of tanks when engaged by dug in 75mm and 88mm guns (the PAK fronts) and by 1941 even the 50mm guns could penetrate the Matilda's armour using CR shot.

OK I meant to add more, including the 'Tank Triangle' but I have urgent feline duties.
 
Again I will recommend The Great Tank Scandal: Part 1: British Armour in the Second World War by David Fletcher (Curator of the Bovington Tank Museum)
It tells the sotry of British Armour from immediately pre war up to the Dieppe Raid. A sorry story it is as well.

This is getting very much off the subject of the OP though.
 
I reckon the most important technologies for the Allies were :

1. Synthetic materials such as rubber and plastic.:)

2. Cordite Sc.;)

3. Mobile brothels.:p

4. The slightly softer stiff upper lip.:confused:

5. Brandy distilling tech. (for Winston).:jaw-dropp

6. Th'atom bomb. :boxedin:
 
presuming that aircraft of the time needed runways more than several hundred feet long to launch or land under their own power, an aircraft carrier does need a couple of specific inventions that other ships don't need: the catapult and the arresting cable. Are those what kept Germany & Italy from making the ships, or did they know how to make those and just not decide to follow through with the idea?
Steam catapults weren't used on WW2 carriers, they're a post war development first used on HMS Perseus in 1950. They were used on cruisers and battleships (from 1918) to launch reconnaissance/gunlaying aircraft which landed on the water for recovery by crane.
Then about how fast did a WWII fighter need to be going in order to be airborne? (And what were their top speeds like?)

And how long were these aircraft-launching strips on battleships & cruisers with the catapults in them, and where were they located? I don't think I've ever seen them and can't picture where they'd fit in.
 
Then about how fast did a WWII fighter need to be going in order to be airborne? (And what were their top speeds like?)

And how long were these aircraft-launching strips on battleships & cruisers with the catapults in them, and where were they located? I don't think I've ever seen them and can't picture where they'd fit in.

This is from the mid 30's Italian Navy. Pretty standard stuff for most of the time. In WW2 a spitfire variant used to rocket assisted of the bow of merchant ships in convoys

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHUo2czKork
 
Then about how fast did a WWII fighter need to be going in order to be airborne? (And what were their top speeds like?)


The exact takeoff speed depends on the fighter make and model (different designs, different characteristics) as well as how heavily loaded it was. But as a rough ballpark estimate I'd say something on the order of 80-100 MPH.

Top speeds likewise varied by make and model. You'll find slightly different figures in different sources due to the parameters involved in the testing of the aircraft. That said, the following figures are illustrative of the range of top speeds achieved:

F4F-4 Wildcat: 318 MPH
F6F-3 Hellcat: 376 MPH
F4U-1D Corsair: 425 MPH
P-38L Lightning: 414 MPH
P-51D Mustang: 437 MPH
Spitfire Mk VC: 374 MPH
Me 109G-6: 386 MPH
Fw 190A-8: 408 MPH
A6M2 "Zero": 331 MPH
N1K2-J "George": 369 MPH


And how long were these aircraft-launching strips on battleships & cruisers with the catapults in them, and where were they located? I don't think I've ever seen them and can't picture where they'd fit in.


U.S. battleships and cruisers usually had the catapults for the scout floatplanes located on the fantail (stern) of the ship. This photo of the U.S.S. Iowa shows it fairly well—on the right you can see two floatplanes on their launchers, plus the crane which was used to lift the floatplane out of the water after it had landed next to the ship. This photo of the U.S.S. Missouri is taken from above the stern of the ship. Though there are no aircraft in the image, you can see the two catapults, one on each side, with the crane between them. There are some crewmen visible in the shot as well, so that'll help give you an idea of the size.

The main scout floatplane used by the USN during WWII was the OS2U Kingfisher.
 
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The exact takeoff speed depends on the fighter make and model (different designs, different characteristics) as well as how heavily loaded it was. But as a rough ballpark estimate I'd say something on the order of 80-100 MPH.

And it also has to be remembered the speed of the plane on the deck does not have to be 80 miles an hour. If the carrier is sailing at 20 miles and hour and sailing into a 20 mile an hour wind, the plane only needs to generate 40 miles an hour to make take off
 

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