World War II And Advancements In Technology
It is amazing to me how far we have come in technology since World War II. We know in some areas the Germans had gotten as much as 20 years ahead of the rest of the world in technology. There was no doubt they were ahead in many of the areas of weapons development. They were also ahead in some technologies which could be used both for war and for peacetime activities such as rockets. The German V2 rocket became the first man made object to fly into space. Some of the things we have heard about German technology were not true, such as the fact they were the only ones with guided missiles. The United States had several kinds in use during the war. There is no doubt however that German technology gave a push to technological development as many countries rushed to try and keep up with the Germans and also to break their codes. World War II had the greatest effect on technology that anything up to that time had.
One of the problems with warfare was you never seemed to have enough notice when the enemy was sending its forces to bomb you. That all changed in World War II when radar was deployed. A German inventor built what is recognized as the first practical radar unit. It was put on a ship to help avoid collisions. His name was Christian Hülsmeyer. Radar became extremely useful after the British invented the magnetron. This allowed the radar system to be much smaller and much more accurate and was one of the key factors in saving Britain when the Germans repeatedly attacked them from the air. This device gave the British enough time to send up their planes and also told them where the enemy force was coming from.
Planes became much more deadly in World War II, I am not only talking about just fighter planes, but bombers also. When the Germans released their first jets it was too late to change the outcome of the war. Had they been able to have the jets at the beginning in 1939, no plane would have been able to stand against them. But the Americans had something which also was a game changer, it was the Norden bombsight. The bombsight was one of the most secret of American inventions and very closely guarded. It was actually a computer of sorts. It increased the accuracy of bomb runs to the point the bomber became a much feared weapon. In case you are wondering how secret it was, let me tell you this. The bombsight wasn’t in the bomber. It was loaded under armed guard just before the planes took off and then removed under armed guards when the planes returned home. Every crew was sworn to protect the bombsight with their lives if necessary.
Another area the U.S. excelled in was the development of a long range fighter aircraft. The plane was the P-51 Mustang. The reason this was so important was the fact it was needed to escort our bombers when they went on long range missions. The plane even used special explosive ammunition depending on its setup. It came into being in early 1944 and allowed the allies to do daylight bombing. The pilot also had unprecedented fields of view when a bubble canopy was introduced.
Ship building technology leaped ahead in World War II with the aircraft carrier becoming the deadliest ship in a navy. For some strange reason the Germans had no carriers and relied on their submarines which had made great strides and their heavy ships, such as battle ships and heavy cruisers. When a way was perfected for a war plane to land and take off from an aircraft carrier it became possible to launch air attacks on a country no matter how far away it was. The battleship was already doomed when World War II started. The story was different for submarines and the ships which pursued them. Submarines now had more reliable torpedoes and could dive deeper and go faster than they could in the previous war. On destroyers Hydrophones had been used in World War I to detect submarines. Sonar was in full swing by World War II and was not only being used by destroyers to detect enemy submarines, but also for mine detection. Even sonobuoys had been developed by this time.
Perhaps one of the greatest inventions of the war was a computer. One of the hardest things to break was the German code created by a special machine called Enigma. It looks somewhat like a typewriter, but had several wheels build into it. It was capable of an incredible amount of combinations. So many in fact it could have taken several people many thousands of years to break this code if they worked every day for 24 hours a day. A scientist named Turing looked at the Enigma machine which had been captured and reasoned it was a waste of time to try and break the code, instead he needed to build a machine which could do it. Thus he created a large computer to do the job and he succeeded. Alan Turing invented the computer age and we can all thank him for our PC, tablets and cell phones.
Some inventions of the war we could have done without. I am thinking specifically of the atom bomb. Yes it seemed necessary at the time and yes it did save American lives, because an invasion of Japan was estimated to cost about one million American lives. This single invention may someday be responsible for a war so deadly it could destroy the planet. Never has a weapon been so desired by so many countries and never has a weapon been so dangerous that a despot having only one can be a threat to the world.
If it wasn’t for World War II, the world would not have advanced as far as it has. The problem is many people died for us to get this far ahead in technology. It seems wars are one of the vehicles for technological advancement. Even if we go back thousands of years we find the chariot was developed as a war machine as was the cannon and small arms. World War II was also responsible for our trips into space. If the Germans hadn’t developed the dreaded V2 rocket we might not have had the Apollo missions or the robotic planetary missions.
