Geatest designs of WWII

[ethanedwards]

Tim, I'll look out for the book - always good to get recommendations, thanks.
I recently read 'a Willingness to Die' by Brian Kingcome which I enjoyed a lot-
being a Battle of Britain man, you're bound to have devoured it already?

Dan - I think the Bren gun was a Czech design. (Br from BRno where it was
designed, and en from ENfield where it was built at the Royal small arms
factory. I picked one of these up at an exhibition once, it was so heavy - hard to imagine carrying it all day on top of all the other gear.

I believe there was a cleverness in Soviet small arms design because they all
used the same calibre of bullet, whilst other armies did not take this approach. But I really am on thin ice with this one......

 

[Pip]

This is a fascinating thread. But I must say, it's been a little one sided. The great German designs have been mentioned, but I believe only one Russioan design, the Sturmovic. How about the T33, the greatest tank ever bult? And the Japanese had a few goodies as well, such as the legendary Zero and the infamous Long Lance Torpedo.
Any experts out there on other excellent Russian, Japanese, Italian, French, Polish, Czech, etc., etc. designs?

You're very right there.

The Dewoitine D.520 has always been a favourite of mine, beautiful aircraft, just a little too late for the defence of France.

 

[DutchIndo]

The humble P-38 Can opener ! How many of you have one on your Key ring ?!!

 

[Naphtali]

Dan, think you mean the T-34 family. /76 or /85? Can't forget the KV-1 and the Stalin tanks...

Situation's not nearly as straightforward as it appears. T-34 is derived -- that is, a close copy of -- from an American design. US War Department wouldn't buy it. As I understand the technology, the Soviets excelled at designing mortars and artillery. The Germans copied some Soviet mortars.

Nearly all other ground weaponry were skillful adaptations of existing designs, the adaptations being focused on ease of manufacture at the expense of utility/performance. A responder furnished the perfect example: rifles, machine guns, submachine guns, and handguns being 7.62 mm caliber. Sounds like a good idea. In reality, not so good for the users. After the war, focus altered.

I know zip about aircraft, so I omit any reference to the area.

 

[imported_the_librarian]

The humble P-38 Can opener ! How many of you have one on your Key ring ?!!

Check! Count me in! So other people have one too? I also got dog tags on my keyring, well...which probably isn't safe anymore, but.....

 

[Diamondback]

Sir, wasn't saying the KV- and IS-series tanks were related to the T-34, just noting their place in history as well.

 

[Chas]

Greatest designs?

The DECISIVE weapon of the war, bar none. Radar.

Followed closely by HF/DF and The Bombe.

Runners-Up:

Spitfire, obviously.

Also: the formidable series of British Commonwealth Sub killers: Black Swan Class, Hunt I & II's, Castle Class Corvettes.
HMS Starling:

Pound for pound, ton for ton, one of the war's top weapons: The Tribal Class DD:

The Liberator.

The Mustang.

 

[Jerekson]

I second the Mustang.

 

[Twitch]

The Norden bombsight was a fairly important classic piece in the war.

 

[ethanedwards]

Norden

Is there any truth in this - only the lead group bomb-aimer was looking
for the target through his Norden. The rest of the bomb-aimers were watching
his aircraft, and 'pressed the tit' when they saw that he had - often through cloud, guided by the US version of H2S radar.
Arthur Harris didn't go out of his way to curry favour and as a consequence, after the war many RAF crews were left with an(ill deserved?) reputation for indiscriminate carpet bombing, whereas in reality neither Air Forces were truly capable of serious precision bombing. (Exceptions? - attacks on the dams, Tirpiz, I suppose I'm talking about 617 Squadron now.......)

Would the Reflector Gunsight count as a great design? I think RAF fighters had them before the Luftwaffe. Please put me right on these points, it's a mistake
for me to believe that something is right, just because it's what I heard first.

 

[Smithy]

Would the Reflector Gunsight count as a great design? I think RAF fighters had them before the Luftwaffe. Please put me right on these points, it's a mistake
for me to believe that something is right, just because it's what I heard first.

Probably the gyro gunsight was the biggie improvement of gunsights during the war Ethan. It was a revelation for young fighter pilots who lacked the skill to perform accurate deflection shooting like the old hands could.

 

[dhermann1]

T33 - T34

Yeah, I got the tank mixed up with the jet trainer. That's why I always say I have an encyclopedic mind full of approximately 87% accurate information.
Speaking of RADAR, wasn't it the Americans' ability to use RADAR aiming at night that enabled them to win the great battleship slugfest in the Battle of Leyte Gulf?

 

[ethanedwards]

Probably the gyro gunsight was the biggie improvement of gunsights during the war Ethan. It was a revelation for young fighter pilots who lacked the skill to perform accurate deflection shooting like the old hands could.

Hi Tim, is it possible for a simple in-a-nutshell explanation as to how this sight worked? (I am not technically minded though!)

 

[BellyTank]

The Italian MAB 38 9mm submachinegun and it's descendents.
http://www.comandosupremo.com/1938a.html

Have you seen the Finnish submachine of WW2 and immediately before?
Fantastic designs.


B
T

 

[Smithy]

Hi Tim, is it possible for a simple in-a-nutshell explanation as to how this sight worked? (I am not technically minded though!)

Ethan,

The gyro gunsight operated on the principal that if a pilot followed an enemy aircraft in a turn and held his gunsight on it, then his rate of turn was proportional to the deflection angle necessary to hit the enemy aircraft. A gyroscope in the sight measured the rate of turn and tilted a mirror which moved the position of the sighting graticule to show the required deflection angle.

Here is how a RAF fighter pilot using a Mk II Gyro Gunsight would use the sight...

The pilot selected the approximate wingspan of the target aircraft prior to the engagement by rotating the switch on the front of the gunsight. The pilot then manipulated a control on the throttle arm to vary the diameter of the circle in the sight so that it match the size of the wingspan of the enemy aircraft. The pilot then held the target in the centre of the circle for a couple of seconds to give the device time to calculate the deflection angle necessary to achieve hits.

HTH,

Tim

 

[Diamondback]

Speaking of RADAR, wasn't it the Americans' ability to use RADAR aiming at night that enabled them to win the great battleship slugfest in the Battle of Leyte Gulf?

Bingo--we were just discussing that over on one of the A&A Miniatures boards, comparing the American "one-eyed" and Japanese "blind" performance in Surigao Strait. I know I'd rather have been on one of VADM Lee's (IIRC) antiques than Fuso or Yamashiro...

Also, radar was critical in the Washington/South Dakota beatdown of Kirishima at Guadalcanal--SoDak's radar was knocked out early, so their role was taking the hits while the slightly-older ship (screened by the flaming carcasses of four burning destroyers) tore gaping holes in the Japanese battlecruiser.

 

[ethanedwards]

Superb Tim, thank you. I now have a notion as to what this really means,
instead of it being just a name. I wonder if the kill rate improved -
didn't 10% of all pilots claim 90% of all victories or something similar?
(Were the Luftwaffe employing an equivalent device do you know?)
Can you imagine those chaps' reflexes, their ability to process information
must have been phenomenal.

One last thing... (ahem) - did anyone mention the Gloster Meteor yet - I think the Me262 has it on aesthetics, but I still love the design of those early British jets. Glorious.

 

[Smithy]

I wonder if the kill rate improved -

Hi Ethan,

As you know the Battles of France and Britain are more my speciality but Alfred Price quotes a study undertaken to attempt to measure the effectiveness of the gyro gunsight. This was carried out in 1944 with an analysis of 130 combats joined by Spitfire IXs with fixed graticule sights (standard reflector gunsights). This revealed there had been 34 kills or 26% of the total. During the same period another squadron operating IXs but with the gyro gunsight joined 38 combats and scored 19 kills, or 50%. The outcome of the study claimed that the new sight doubled the effectiveness of air-to-air gunnery. But really the incredible thing was that pilots were reporting the ability to hit targets with deflection shooting at ranges up to 600 yards and at angles up to 50 degrees deflection.

didn't 10% of all pilots claim 90% of all victories or something similar?

Although it's tricky to put an exact figure on it, that is most certainly the case and one which I would definitely argue becomes very apparent when reading about the Battle of Britain. It becomes quite obvious when you look deeper into squadron claims and victories that in squadrons there are a core cadre of pilots responsible for most of the killing and numbers didn't matter so much as whether those pilots could keep cohesion.

Apologies if I have bored others here in this discussion rigid with this but I hope that helps a little Ethan.

Tim

 

[Vladimir Berkov]

Hi Ethan,
Although it's tricky to put an exact figure on it, that is most certainly the case and one which I would definitely argue becomes very apparent when reading about the Battle of Britain. It becomes quite obvious when you look deeper into squadron claims and victories that in squadrons there are a core cadre of pilots responsible for most of the killing and numbers didn't matter so much as whether those pilots could keep cohesion.

The same was found true in studies of infantry combat. There is a small percentage who actually do most of the productive fighting, a bunch who sort of support it but don't shoot much of anything, and a few who do absolutely nothing.

 

[Alan Eardley]

Have you seen the Finnish submachine of WW2 and immediately before?
Fantastic designs.


B
T

BT,

You mean the M-31 Suomi or the L-41 Sampo?

Alan