Technology during World War II
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Technology during World War II played a crucial role in determining the outcome of the war. Much of it had begun development during the interwar years of the 1920s and 1930s, some was developed in response to lessons learned during the war, and yet more was only beginning to be developed as the war ended. The massive research and development demands of the war had a great impact on the scientific community. Given the scope of the war and the rapid technological escalation which happened during the war, a vast array of technology was employed, as different nations and different units found themselves equipped with different levels of technology. No area of military technology went without development during the war. After the war ended, these developments opened out to new sciences like cybernetics and computer science.
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[edit] Areas of technology
While nearly all types of technology were converted to participation or assistance in the war efforts of the participating nations, the most important items were those actually employed in the war. The main areas of technology which saw major developments were:
- Weaponry; including ships, vehicles, aircraft, hand-held weapons, artillery, rocketry, and bio-chemical/atomic weapons.
- Logistical Support; including vehicles necessary for transporting soldiers and supplies, such as trains, trucks, and aircraft.
- Communications and Intelligence; including devices used for navigation, communication, and espionage.
- Medical; including surgical innovations, chemical drugs, and techniques
- Industrial; including the technologies employed at factories and production/distribution centers.
[edit] Weaponry
Military weapons technology experienced rapid advances during World War II, and over six years there was a disorientating rate of change in combat in everything from aircraft to small arms.
The war began with most armies utilizing technology that had changed little from World War I, and in some cases (such as Polish lancers), had remained unchanged since the 19th century. The war began with cavalry, trenches, and World War I-era battleships, but within only six years, armies around the world had developed jet aircraft, ballistic missiles, and even atomic weapons by one.
The best jet fighters at the end of the war easily outflew any of the leading aircraft of 1939, such as the Spitfire Mark I. The early war bombers that caused such carnage would almost all have been shot down in 1945, many with one shot, by radar-aimed, proximity fuze-detonated anti-aircraft fire, just as the 1941 "invincible fighter", the Zero, had by 1944 become the "turkey" of the "Marianas Turkey Shoot". The best late-war tanks, such as the Soviet JS-3 heavy tank or the German Panther medium tank, handily outclassed the best tanks of 1939 such as Panzer IVs. In the navy the battleship, long seen as the dominant element of sea power, was displaced by the greater range and striking power of the aircraft carrier. The chaotic impotence of amphibious landings stimulated the Western Allies to develop the Higgins boat, a primary troop landing craft; the DUKW, a six-wheel-drive amphibious truck; and amphibious tanks to enable beach landing attacks. Increased organization and coordination of amphibious assaults coupled with the resources necessary to sustain them caused the complexity of planning to increase by orders of magnitude, thus requiring formal systematization giving rise to what has became the modern management methodology of project management by which almost all modern engineering, construction and software developments are organized.
[edit] Aircraft
In the Western European Theatre of World War II, air power became crucial throughout the war, both in tactical and strategic operations (respectively, battlefield and long-range). Superior German aircraft allowed the German armies to overrun Western Europe with great speed in 1940, largely assisted by lack of Allied aircraft.
Since the end of World War I, the French Air Force had been badly neglected, as military leaders preferred to spend money on ground armies and static fortifications to fight another World War I-style war. As a result, by 1940, the French Air Force had only 740 fighter planes and 140 bombers, against 8,250 Luftwaffe fighters and fighter-bombers. Most French airfields were located in north-east France, and were quickly overrun in the early stages of the campaign. The Royal Air Force of the United Kingdom possessed some very advanced fighter planes, such as Spitfires and Hurricanes, but these were not useful for attacking ground troops on a battlefield, and the small number of planes dispatched to France with the British Expeditionary Force were destroyed fairly quickly. Subsequently, the Luftwaffe was able to achieve air superiority over France in 1940, giving the German military an immense advantage in terms of reconnaissance and intelligence.
German aircraft rapidly achieved air superiority over France in early 1940, allowing the Luftwaffe to begin a campaign of strategic bombing against British cities. With France out of the war, German bomber planes based near the English Channel were able to launch raids on London and other cities during the Blitz, with varying degrees of success.
After World War I, the concept of massed aerial bombing—the "Bomber Dream"—had become very popular with politicians and military leaders seeking an alternative to the carnage of trench warfare, and as a result, the air forces of Britain, France, and Germany had developed fleets of bomber planes to enable this (France's bomber wing was severely neglected, whilst Germany's bombers were developed in secret as they were explicitly forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles).
Wars across the world in the 1930s, such as the bombing of Shanghai by the Imperial Japanese Navy on January 28, 1932 and the bombings during the Spanish Civil War (1936 - 1939), had demonstrated the power of strategic bombing, and so air forces in Europe and the United States came to view bomber aircraft as extremely powerful weapons which, in theory, could bomb an enemy nation into submission on their own. As a result, the fear of bombers triggered major developments in aircraft technology.
Nazi Germany had put only one large, long-range strategic bomber (the Heinkel He 177 Greife, with many delays and problems) into production, while the Amerika Bomber concept resulted only in prototypes. The Spanish Civil War had proved that tactical dive-bombing using Stukas was a very efficient way of destroying enemy troops concentrations, and so resources and money had been devoted to the development of smaller bomber craft. As a result, the Luftwaffe was forced to attack London in 1940 with heavily overloaded Heinkel and Dornier medium bombers, and even with the unsuitable Junkers Ju 87. These bombers were painfully slow—German engineers had been unable to develop sufficiently large piston aircraft engines (those that were produced tended to explode through extreme overheating), and so the bombers used for the Battle of Britain were woefully undersized. As German bombers had not been designed for long-range strategic missions, they lacked sufficient defenses. The ME 109 fighter escorts had not been equipped to carry enough fuel to guard the bombers on both the outbound and return journeys, and the longer range ME 110s could be out-maneuvered by the short range British fighters. The air defense was well organized and equipped with effective radar that survived the bombing. As a result, German bombers were shot down in large numbers, and were unable to inflict enough damage on cities and military-industrial targets to force Britain out of the war in 1940 or to prepare for the (unrealistically) planned invasion.
British long-range bomber planes such as the Short Stirling had been designed before 1939 for strategic flights and given a large armament, but their technology still suffered from numerous flaws. The smaller and shorter ranged Bristol Blenheim, the RAF's most-used bomber, was defended by only one hydraulically-operated machine-gun turret, and whilst this appeared sufficient, it was soon revealed that the turret was a pathetic defence against squadrons of German fighter planes. American bomber planes such as the B-17 Flying Fortress had been built before the war as the only adequate long-range bombers in the world, designed to patrol the long American coastlines. Defended by as many as six machine-gun turrets providing 360° cover, the B-17s were still vulnerable without fighter protection even when used in large formations.
Despite the abilities of Allied bombers, though, Germany was not quickly crippled by Allied air raids. At the start of the war the vast majority of bombs fell miles from their targets, as poor navigation technology ensured that Allied airmen frequently could not find their targets at night. The bombs used by the Allies were very high-tech devices, and mass production meant that the precision bombs were often made sloppily and so failed to explode. German industrial production actually rose continuously from 1940 to 1945, despite the best efforts of the Allied air forces to cripple industry; despite this, German industrial production actually rose at small fraction the pace of the Western Allies, thanks in part to the strategic bombing campaign. Significantly, the Bomber Offensive kept the revolutionary Type XXI U-Boat from entering service during the war. Moreover, Allied air raids had a serious propaganda impact on the German government, all prompting Germany to begin serious development on air defence technology—in the form of fighter planes.
The Jet aircraft age began during the war with the development of the Heinkel He 178, the first true turbojet. Late in the war the Germans brought in the first operational Jet fighter, the Messerschmitt Me 262. However, despite their technological edge, German jets were overwhelmed by Allied air superiority, frequently being destroyed on or near the airstrip. Other jet aircraft, such as the British Gloster Meteor, which flew missions but never saw combat, did not significantly distinguish themselves from top-line piston-driven aircraft.
Aircraft saw rapid and broad development during the war to meet the demands of aerial combat and address lessons learned from combat experience. From the open cockpit airplane to the sleek jet fighter, many different types were employed, often designed for very specific missions.
During the war the Germans produced various Glide bomb weapons, which were the first smart bombs; the V-1 flying bomb, which was the first cruise missile weapon; and the V-2 rocket, the first ballistic missile weapon. The last of these was the first step into the space age as its trajectory took it through the stratosphere, higher and faster than any aircraft. This later led to the development of the Intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). Wernher Von Braun led the V-2 development team and later emigrated to the United States where he contributed to the development of the Saturn V rocket, which took men to the moon in 1969.
[edit] Theoretical foundation
The laboratory of Ludwig Prandtl at Göttingen was the main center of theoretical and mathematical aerodynamics and fluid dynamics research from soon after 1904 to the end of World War II. Prandtl coined the term boundary layer and founded modern (mathematical) aerodynamics. The laboratory lost its dominance when the researchers were dispersed, after the war.
This helps to understand why the Messerschmitt Me 262 had swept wings but the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star, which was designed later, did not.
[edit] Vehicles
The Treaty of Versailles had imposed severe restrictions upon Germany constructing vehicles for military purposes, and so throughout the 1920s and 1930s, German arms manufacturers and the Wehrmacht had begun secretly developing tanks. As these vehicles were produced in secret, their technical specifications and battlefield potentials were largely unknown to the European Allies until the war actually began. When German troops invaded the Benelux nations and France in May 1940, German weapons technology proved to be immeasurably superior to that of the Allies.
The French Army suffered from serious technical deficiencies with its tanks. In 1918, the Renault FT-17 tanks of France had been the most advanced in the world, although small, capable of far outperforming their slow and clumsy British, German, or American counterparts. However, this superiority resulted in tank development stagnating after World War I. By 1939, French tanks were virtually unchanged from 1918. French and British Generals believed that a future war with Germany would be fought under very similar conditions as those of 1914–1918. Both invested in thickly-armoured, heavily-armed vehicles designed to cross shell damaged ground and trenches under fire. At the same time the British also developed faster but lightly armoured Cruiser tanks to range behind the enemy lines.
In contrast, the Wehrmacht invested in fast, light tanks designed to overtake infantry. These vehicles would be useless in trench warfare, but would vastly outperform British and French tanks in mechanized battles. German tanks followed the design of France's 1918 Renault versions—a moderately-armoured hull with a rotating turret on top mounting a cannon. This gave every German tank the potential to engage other armoured vehicles, but in contrast, around 35% of French tanks were only equipped with machine guns (again designed for trench warfare), ensuring that when French and German tanks met in battle, a third of the French vehicles could only fire machine-gun bullets, which simply bounced harmlessly off German armour. Only a handful of French tanks had radio sets, and these often broke as the tank lurched over uneven ground. German tanks were all equipped with radios, allowing them to communicate with one another throughout battles, whilst French tank commanders could rarely contact other vehicles.
The Matilda Mk I tanks of the British Army were also designed for infantry support and were protected by thick armour. This was ideal for trench warfare, but made the tanks painfully slow in open battles. Their light cannons and machine-guns were usually unable to inflict serious damage on German vehicles. The exposed caterpillar tracks were easily broken by gunfire, and the Matilda tanks had a tendency to incinerate their crews if hit, as the petrol tanks were located on the top of the hull. By contrast the Infantry tank Matilda II fielded in lesser numbers was largely invulnerable to German gunfire and its gun was able to punch through the German tanks. However French and British tanks were at a disadvantage compared to the air supported German armoured assaults, and a lack of armoured support contributed significantly to the rapid Allied collapse in 1940.
World War II marked the first full-scale war where mechanization played a significant role. Most nations did not begin the war equipped for this. Even the vaunted German Panzer forces relied heavily on non-motorised support and flank units in large operations. While Germany recognized and demonstrated the value of concentrated use of mechanized forces, they never had these units in enough quantity to supplant traditional units. However, the British also saw the value in mechanization. For them it was a way to enhance an otherwise limited manpower reserve. America as well sought to create a mechanized army. For the United States, it was not so much a matter of limited troops, but instead a strong industrial base that could afford such equipment on a great scale.
The most visible vehicles of the war are the tanks, forming the armored spearhead of mechanized warfare. Their impressive firepower and armor made them the premier fighting machine of ground warfare. However, even more important to a fighting mechanized army were the large number of trucks and lighter vehicles that kept the army moving.
[edit] Ships
Naval warfare changed dramatically during World War II, with the ascent of the aircraft carrier to the premier vessel of the fleet, and the impact of increasingly capable submarines (originally known as U-boats by the Germans) on the coarse of the war. The development of new ships during the war was somewhat limited due to the protracted time period needed for production, but important developments were often retrofitted to older vessels. Advanced German submarine types came into service too late and after nearly all the experienced crews had been lost.
The German submarines were used primarily for stopping/destroying the resources from the United States and Canada coming across the ocean for the soldiers. Submarines were critical in the Pacific Ocean as well as in the Atlantic Ocean. Japanese defenses against United States Navy submarines were ineffective. Much of the merchant fleet of the Empire of Japan, needed to supply its scattered forces and bring supplies such as petroleum and food back to the Japanese Archipelago, was sunk. This kept them from training adequate replacements for their lost aircrews and even forced the navy to be based near its oil supply. Among the warships sunk by submarines was the war's largest aircraft carrier, the Shinano.
The most important shipboard advances were in the field of anti-submarine warfare. Driven by the desperate necessity of keeping Britain supplied, technologies for the detection and destruction of submarines was advanced at high priority. The use of ASDIC (SONAR) became widespread and so did the installation of shipboard and airborne radar.
[edit] Weapons
The actual weapons; the guns, mortars, artillery, bombs, and other devices used to actually do the killing and destruction, were as diverse as the participants and objectives. A bewildering array were developed during the war to meet specific needs that arose, but many traced their development to prior to World War I.
Note that weapon can be taken to mean any tool used to hurt the enemy. Thus one can consider the United States' industrial might to be a weapon against the Axis. This would not be incorrect, but for the purpose of this article and sub-articles, the term weapon is taken to mean the actual instrument of destruction, and not the vehicle it is carried on.
Specific Weapons substantially invented during the war were:
- Infantry Weapons: The Bazooka and Panzerschreck Rocket propelled grenade and the PIAT Anti-tank weapons, the Assault rifle.
- Naval Weapons: Guns reached 18 inches in bore and were aimed with the aid of radar and airplanes. Torpedoes began to use magnetic detonators; compass directed, programmed and even acoustic guidance systems; and improved propulsion. Fire-control systems continued to develop for ships' guns and came into use for torpedoes and anti-aircraft fire.
- Armour Weapons: The Tank destroyer, Specialist Tanks for Combat engineering including mine clearing Flail tanks, Flame tank, Submersible.
- Aircraft: Glide bombs - the first "smart bombs" had wire or radio remote control.
- Missiles: The Pulse jet powered V-1 flying bomb was the world's first cruise missile, Rockets progressed enormously: V-2 rocket, Katyusha rocket artillery and air launched rockets.
- HEAT, and HESH Anti Armour warheads.
- Proximity fuze for shells, bombs and rockets. This fuze is designed to detonate an explosive automatically when close enough to the target to destroy it, so a direct hit is not required and time/place of closest approach does not need to be estimated. Magnetic torpedoes and mines also had a sort of proximity fuse.
- Guided weapons (by radio or trailing wires): glide bombs, crawling bombs, rockets.
- Self-guiding weapons: torpedoes (sound seeking, compass guided and looping), V1 missile (compass and timer guided)
- Aiming devices for bombs, torpedoes, artillery and machine guns, using special purpose mechanical and electronic analog and (perhaps) digital "computers". The mechanical analog Norden bomb sight is a well known example.
- Napalm
[edit] Small Arms Development
Often too overlooked by the general public, the state of small arms technology made a huge leap during the period around the war. New production methods for weapons such as stamping, riveting, and welding came into being to produce the number of arms needed. While this had been tried before, during World War I, it had resulted in quite possibly the worst firearm ever adopted by any military for use: the French Chauchat light machine gun. Design and production methods had advanced enough to manufacture weapons of reasonable reliability such as the PPSh-41, PPS-42, Sten, MP 40, and M3 Grease Gun submachine guns.
World War II saw the birth of the reliable semi-automatic rifle e.g. the American M1 Garand and, more importantly, that of the first real assault rifles. The Germans essentially created and pioneered the idea of an "assault rifle" or sturmgewehr, coining the name for the species in the process. Earlier renditions that hinted at this idea were that of the employment of the Browning Automatic Rifle and 1916 Fedorov Avtomat in a walking fire tactic in which men would advance on the enemy position showering it with a hail of lead. The Germans first developed the Fallschirmjägergewehr 42 (FG 42) for its paratroopers in the assault and later the Sturmgewehr 44 (StG 44), the world's first true assault rifle. The FG 42 would probably hold this place but for its use of a full powered rifle cartridge making it hard to control by an unskilled operator.
Developments in machine gun technology culminated in the Maschinengewehr 42 (MG42) which was of an advanced design unmatched at the time. It spurred post-war development on both sides of the upcoming Cold War and is still used by some militaries to this day including the German Bundeswehr's MG 3. The G3, and many other Heckler & Koch designs, came from its system of operation. The United States military meshed the operating system of the FG 42 with the belt feed system of the MG42 to create the M60 machine gun used in the Vietnam War.
German firearms technology was well in advance of any other nation during the war. The resulting advances in design and manufacture are still to be seen to this day around the world. Many famous gun makers arose from the ashes of their defeat. Heckler & Koch, SIG, Fabrique Nationale, all went on to produce firearms recognized by even those uninterested in the subject. The repercussions of Germany's desperate surge of brilliance in technology spawned not only firearms but jet technology and the space race.
[edit] The Atomic Bomb
The massive research and development demands of the war included the Manhattan Project, the effort to quickly develop an atomic bomb, or nuclear fission warhead. It was perhaps the most profound military development of the war, and had a great impact on the scientific community, among other things creating a network of national laboratories in the United States.
Development was completed too late for use in the European Theatre of World War II. Its invention meant that a single bomber aircraft could carry a weapon sufficiently powerful to devastate entire cities, making conventional warfare against a nation with an arsenal of them suicidal.
The strategic importance of the bomb, and its even more powerful fusion-based successors, did not become fully apparent until the United States lost its monopoly on the weapon in the post-war era. The Soviet Union developed and tested their first nuclear weapon in 1949, based partially on information obtained from Soviet espionage in the United States. The competition between the two superpowers would lead to the Cold War. The strategic implications of such a massively destructive weapon still reverberates in the 21st century.
There was also a German project to develop an atomic weapon. This failed for a variety of reasons, most notably German anti-semitism. The first tier of continental high energy physicists (Einstein, Bohr, Fermi, and Openheimer), were either Jewish or, in the case of Enrico Fermi, married to a Jew. When they left Germany, the only significant atomic physicist left in Germany was Heisenberg, who dragged his feet on the project. He made some faulty calculations suggesting that the Germans would need significantly more heavy water than was necessary. The project was then doomed due to insufficient resources.
[edit] Electronics, Communications and Intelligence
Electronics rose to prominence quickly in World War II. While prior to the war few electronic devices were seen as important pieces of equipment, by the middle of the war such instruments as radar and ASDIC (sonar) had proven their value. Additionally, equipment designed for communications and the interception of those communications was becoming critical.
Digital electronics, particularly, were also given a massive boost by war-related research. The pressing need for numerous time-critical calculations for various projects like code-breaking and ballistics tables accentuated the need for the development of electronic computer technology. The semi-secret ENIAC and the super-secret Colossus demonstrated that devices using thousands of valves could be reliable enough to be useful, paving the way for the post-war development of stored program computers.
The United Kingdom and the United States were the leaders in electronics. The US center for basic radar development was the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Radiation Laboratory. The British developed the magnetron which is now used in microwave ovens.
Electronic and optical countermeasures such as jamming and radar absorbing material were developed.
While the war stimulated many technologies, such as radio and radar development, it slowed down related yet non-critical fields such as television.
[edit] Industrial technology
While the development of new equipment was rapid, it was also important to be able to produce these tools and get them to the troops in appropriate quantity. Those nations that were able to maximize their industrial capacity and mobilize it for the war effort were most successful at equipping their troops in a timely way with adequate material.
One of the biggest developments was the ability to produce synthetic rubber. This eased the demand on natural rubber and bolstered the production of war machines, thus allowing the United States to gain an edge in World War II.
[edit] Medicine
Advances in public health methods may have been the most crucial medical developments, but the most dramatic single medical advance was probably the wide spread use of penicillin to treat wounds and bacterial diseases.
[edit] See also
- Military funding of science
- Military production during World War II
- Technology during World War I
- Technological escalation during World War II
- List of equipment used in World War II
- Operation Paperclip
[edit] References
Anderson, J. (2005). Ludwig Prandtl's boundary layer. Physics Today.
