We did have the Mark 13 torpedo, in the “disaster” category.
Germany had her own torpedo problems, but the Mark 13 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 work on the VT fuse and would have eventually gotten there, 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 Lancaster for daylight bombing, but we took horrendous losses; ultimately long-range fighter escort was still required.
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 machine gun in the form of the MG 34.
We did have the Mark 13 torpedo, in the “disaster” category.
Germany had her own torpedo problems, but the Mark 13 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 work on the VT fuse and would have eventually gotten there, 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 Lancaster for daylight bombing, but we took horrendous losses; ultimately long-range fighter escort was still required.
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 machine gun in the form of the MG 34.