We did have the Mark 14 torpedo, in the “disaster” category.
Germany had her own torpedo problems, but the Mark 14 went out the door in abysmal form, and we were extremely slow to get the problems fixed. And we were fighting a war with more naval focus than was Germany.
And while we had some work on the VT fuze and would have eventually gotten there ourselves – though time is valuable in a war – that was really the Brits. They gave us their work and we finished the work to put it into a shell.
And some of our concepts, though we ultimately made use of them in some way, failed in their original form.
The idea that ships would be a sitting duck for high-altitude level bombers was just wrong. Down the road, yes, but not in WW2. Billy Mitchell really oversold the state of things. And while it wasn’t catastrophic for us, it did hurt our initial ability to respond to naval forces.
The B-17 concept that massive interlocked fields of fire from defensive guns would permit bombers to sail past fighters didn’t really work. It was in a stronger position than the Avro Lancaster for daylight bombing, but we took horrendous losses; ultimately long-range fighter escort was still required.
The Norden bombsight didn’t really deliver the tremendous advantage that had been expected.
We initially drastically overestimated what our early radars could do for us in naval night-fighting, and it led to things like the Battle of Savo Island. The Brits seriously bailed us out here with the cavity magnetron.
Germany also had some significant wins. Yeah, they didn’t have the semi-auto rifle as a standard issue, whereas we had the M1 Garand. But they did have the assault rifle, in the form of the StG 44. They had the general-purpose machine gun in the form of the MG 34.
The MG 34 wasn’t as big a win as people think it is. It was a better belt fed weapon than the 1919 30 cal. But that’s because we were focusing on offensive support weapons while they were focusing on defensive ones. Thus we made the BAR and deployed it to as many squads as we could. They made the MG 34 and 42, which were better defensive weapons.
They did have a big issue though, they used too much ammunition. Modern GPMGs fire at half or even a third the ROF. (The MG 42 could do 1500 rounds a minute!) This not only had a bad effect on supply but also severely shortened their barrel life in combat.
Over all it seems hard to pick out the difference between a GPMG and a SAW these days but that BAR/MG 34 difference is where it’s rooted.
We did have the Mark 14 torpedo, in the “disaster” category.
Germany had her own torpedo problems, but the Mark 14 went out the door in abysmal form, and we were extremely slow to get the problems fixed. And we were fighting a war with more naval focus than was Germany.
And while we had some work on the VT fuze and would have eventually gotten there ourselves – though time is valuable in a war – that was really the Brits. They gave us their work and we finished the work to put it into a shell.
And some of our concepts, though we ultimately made use of them in some way, failed in their original form.
The idea that ships would be a sitting duck for high-altitude level bombers was just wrong. Down the road, yes, but not in WW2. Billy Mitchell really oversold the state of things. And while it wasn’t catastrophic for us, it did hurt our initial ability to respond to naval forces.
The B-17 concept that massive interlocked fields of fire from defensive guns would permit bombers to sail past fighters didn’t really work. It was in a stronger position than the Avro Lancaster for daylight bombing, but we took horrendous losses; ultimately long-range fighter escort was still required.
The Norden bombsight didn’t really deliver the tremendous advantage that had been expected.
We initially drastically overestimated what our early radars could do for us in naval night-fighting, and it led to things like the Battle of Savo Island. The Brits seriously bailed us out here with the cavity magnetron.
Germany also had some significant wins. Yeah, they didn’t have the semi-auto rifle as a standard issue, whereas we had the M1 Garand. But they did have the assault rifle, in the form of the StG 44. They had the general-purpose machine gun in the form of the MG 34.
The MG 34 wasn’t as big a win as people think it is. It was a better belt fed weapon than the 1919 30 cal. But that’s because we were focusing on offensive support weapons while they were focusing on defensive ones. Thus we made the BAR and deployed it to as many squads as we could. They made the MG 34 and 42, which were better defensive weapons.
They did have a big issue though, they used too much ammunition. Modern GPMGs fire at half or even a third the ROF. (The MG 42 could do 1500 rounds a minute!) This not only had a bad effect on supply but also severely shortened their barrel life in combat.
Over all it seems hard to pick out the difference between a GPMG and a SAW these days but that BAR/MG 34 difference is where it’s rooted.
And we got the price down from $750 per unit to $18, about what the shells themselves cost. And we got microwave ovens out of the deal!