Technology in Wwii

Furthermore, no war, preceeding or succeeding, was as profoundly affected by science, mathematics, and technology as World War II. Science and technology have always made significant impacts on the field of war. World War II is no exception. Innovations in weapons and transportation developed greatly throughout World War II, and had a very profound impact on the outcome of the war and the technology of the antebellum world. Technology before World War II was simpler and much less efficient. America was moving toward the beginning of industrialism and mass production.

This trend seems to have begun in the Civil War or, as many called it, “The First Modern War. ” During the Civil War, weapons such as the repeating rifle, iron clad ships, the Gatling gun, cannons, the Minie ball, torpedoes, mines, and the submarine were devised and considered great for that period. [i] The invented other things such as railroads, tin cans, photography, aerial observation, and telegraphs as well that were considered awesome at that time. [ii] These advances were awesome in this war.

The repeating rifle gave more accuracy and range than the previously used musket, and was much faster to load. It was especially easy to load using the Minie ball. However, this new bullet-and-gun combination caused far worse flesh damage than the old ammunition, adding to the already rather large amount of casualties of the Civil War. The Gatling gun and the torpedo were devised in the Civil war as well—the Gatling gun being a “machine gun on wheels,” and the torpedo being more of a mine than the torpedoes that will later be invented. Submarines were first used in the Civil War.

There were two types—a small submarine with a steam powered engine and one rowed with oars that were later replaced by a screw propeller. The latter proved not to work as well and sunk. Railroads were very useful, transporting men, supplies, and reinforcement. Tin cans allowed the soldiers to keep food longer before it spoiled. This was, however, restricted to foods such as unseasoned pork and beans due to a lack of refrigeration and preservatives. Telegraphs allowed commanders to communicate with each other much more quickly than sending a messenger on horseback.

Finally, photography made the Civil War the first war to be accurately recorded with real proof, rather than paintings. [iii] Using these military technologies in the Civil War, like the Battle of Gettysburg caused casualties for the opposing force allowing the force using the more modern technology to advance and progress further and more quickly. However, these technological advancements being utilized revealed the drastic lack of medical advancements that America possessed, causing the loss of even more men in the battles. [iv]

The technology in the Civil War was modernized further in World War I, with trench warfare, artillery, poisonous gas, new railways, aircrafts, tanks, more submarines, newer small arms and machine guns, and flame throwers. [v] Trench warfare was digging tunnels and using them in attack on enemies making it difficult for them to retaliate. Artillery such as the wire-cutting fuze and anti-aircraft guns were mainly used to attack directly through enemy defense. [vi] Poisonous gas not only hid soldiers, but simultaneously stimulated the chemistry industry and the economy.

Railways were still used to transport men and supplies, but were not as useful for this war due to the more complicated German warfare. More modernized aircrafts included bombers and observation balloons. [vii] The first tanks came with the internal combustion engine and caterpillar tracks. These, however, were quite unreliable and broke down very frequently. The naval force devised bigger, stronger ships with bigger guns. Their new and improved submarines were imperative in this war. They aided in the strategy of war of attrition, or breaking the enemy down by attacking its personnel and supplies. viii] Light machine guns and sub-machine guns were invented during World War I as small arms, but the larger machine guns were modernized as well. Flame throwers were used as an offensive attack against trench warfare. [ix],[x] Although the United States modernized its technologies, it was not as advanced as France. Germany faltered, though, allowing the Americans to get by with what they had. The American doctrine had been to “rely on the rifle as the principle weapon. ” The Americans continued to abide by this and went on modernizing the guns.

This is also when the Americans decided to utilize the Tank Corps more. These advancements hurt the economy ultimately. [xi] Before World War II, the submarine was very predictable and easily managed with detection systems, depth detection, and antisubmarine forces. The aircrafts were harder to manage, and could easily penetrate enemy territory. It was not so predictable. [xii] This technology worked well enough for the operations that it was used for at that time, but, being as America is so competitive, it needed to update these weapons, modes of transportation, and communication.

In World War I, America and the allies had 32 dreadnaughts, 11 battle-cruisers, 54 pre-dreadnaughts, 420 torpedo boats and destroyers, and 179 submarines—which was significantly more than the Axis Powers’ 17 dreadnaughts, 6 battle-cruisers, 45 pre-dreadnaughts, 178 torpedo boats and destroyers, and 44 submarines. These numbers would grow exponentially by World War II. [xiii] Japanese technology, however, when attacking China in 1937, showed that Japanese torpedoes completely outranged British and American torpedoes.

By 1940, the Allies had built conventional ships and aircraft sufficient enough to beat blockades, and, virtually designed and developed from scratch, an armada of specialized landing aircraft, eventually to carry men and equipment on to hostile beaches as the first stage of invasions. This would essentially bring about the fall of Germany, and then finally, Italy. [xiv] The Japanese and the Germans were skilled in infrared technology and communication, but the Americans were more advanced in these technologies and broke many of their codes.

The Allies were actually considered the most advanced in the technologies in radar and communication, even though Japan continued to cause a shift in power to the East during the attack on Pearl Harbor due to technique, despite a lack of technological preparedness. [xv] When the Americans came to war, succeeding the attack on Pearl Harbor and the major surrounding bases—Kaneohe and Ford Island Naval Air Stations, the Marines’ Ewa Field, the Army Air Corps’ Wheeler, Hickam, and Bellows Fields—88 airplanes had been destroyed with another 159 badly damaged (86% of the total number) and 2,413 Americans had been killed with 1,178 wounded.

The infrastructure was essentially left alone, and the Lexington and the Enterprise were left unharmed. [xvi] It was declared “a date with shall live in infamy” by President Franklin Roosevelt. The Japanese continue to take victories everywhere from Hawaii to Singapore. [xvii] America was in no way prepared for any of the attacks. At the Battle of Midway, however, the tide turned. America produced 96, 318 aircrafts and 415 warships, which trumped Japan’s 28,180 aircrafts and 287 warships. By the end of the war, the Navy had commission over 1,200 ships and over 100 aircraft carriers—27 fleet carriers and 77 small escort carriers.

By the end of the war, America had 17, 976 frontline aircracts in the Pacific while Japan had 4,600. It was said that the United States were producing one aircraft every 294 seconds and “the United States would have been able to replace all that were lost on Oahu on 7 December 1941 in something like 16 hours. ”[xviii] By the end of 1942, the Japanese aviators that had once been used to devastate the United States of America had almost all been lost in battle. America continued to break Japanese codes, again shifting more and more power back West.

America matched Japanese innovations, preventing Tokyo from winning the war, and Imperial Japanese Navy. [xix] The next step was to deploy a long-range bombardment on the Japanese home islands. The United States could have dropped highly explosive bombs from altitudes of 25,000 to 30,000 feet and remain impervious to air defenses. Instead, the Americans dropped napalm, jellied gasoline mixtures, to burn the houses in Japan rather than blasting them, from altitudes of only 5,000 to 8,000 feet. They flew this low for better accuracy, but left themselves open for attack from Japanese fighters.

Each aircraft’s load had been increased to 12,000 to 16,000 pounds of bombs. 334 American fortresses took flight. B-7s and B-29s filled the sky, many blown out. [xx] Many of the bombers missed their targets, and many were lost due to bad weather, mechanical complications, and the great challenge of thousands of miles over open water. Lieutenant Colonel Morgan said, “We’d flown over 2,000 missions over Japan, with no decisive damage to any important target. ” Major Curtis E. LeMay, “The Big Cigar,” decided that something had to be done immediately.

Thus became the rise of strategic bombing. [xxi] Guilio Douhet wrote a book outlining the strategy. America would use 3 types of bombs consecutively, starting with high explosives to start chaos in Japan. America would drop incendiaries to burn cities. The United States would then follow up with napalms so that the previously evoked fires could not be put out. The American day air combat to the German industry had been to use the strategy of accuracy. [xxii] The German aircrafts and submarines, however, had thick ceilings that could not be penetrated by American day air combat.

The United States decided, then, to attack the army’s lifeblood—petroleum, oil, and lubricants (POL). It was the support for TORCH and Operation Overlord. America enhanced the effects with D-Day by blitzing. The Americans flew 8,722 sorties, and used a “blind bombing” strategy that proved more accurate than anything. On average, 20% of the bombs hit within a thousand feet of their targets. This still was not good enough. The Americans devastated Germany in the last year of the war, dropping 83% of their total bombing tonnage on Germany—that is, 1. 4 million tons. [xxiii]

Modernization during World War II was remarkable for America, the Allies, and the opposing powers as well. During World War II, the Americans had to continue to modernize their technologies to try to stay ahead of the game or to simply not fall behind. The modernization of the weapons would have seemed ridiculous to even think of in the previous wars. No one would have thought it would be possible to create these weapons. The aircrafts, ships, submarines, torpedoes, tanks, guns, grenades, and flame throwers could do things that may have been thought to be impossible.

These were things such as aircrafts that could be used at night, some with cannons, rockets, and machine guns attached, some that could go over 450 miles per hour and reach altitudes over 30,000 feet, and some that were used as torpedoes. [xxiv] There were bigger, stronger ships that could weigh over 45,000 tons, travel at a speed of over 38 knots, and hold over 20 guns and 10 torpedo tubes. The submarines could displace over 3,000 tons and travel at a speed of over 12 knots. The torpedo boats could go a top speed of about 45 knots and displace 28-32 tons. xxv] Tanks in World War II could hold a gun of 152 millimeter along with other guns and go a speed of 36 miles per hour. [xxvi] The innovation with guns in World War II was remarkable. There were divisional guns, self-propelled guns, heavy guns, very heavy guns (240 millimeter), anti-aircraft guns, knee mortars, and rocket launchers that usually weighed about 8 tons with15 to 45 degrees in elevation, 10 to 30 degrees transversal on a mount, up to 60 tubes that could be over 150 millimeter, and a range of almost 8,000 yards. The United States’ small arms are not very small anymore.

There are 88 millimeter/2. 36 inch anti-tank rocket launchers, 14. 5 millimeter anti-tank rifles that could penetrate 1. 2 inches of armor plate, heavy guns that could weigh almost 125 pounds mounted on an aircraft firing 400 to 500 rounds per minute, liquid-cooled . 30 caliber machine guns, . 45 caliber submachine gun, . 30 caliber semi-automatic rifles, . 303 caliber bolt-action rifles, . 45 caliber and 9 millimeter 38 automatic pistols, and flamethrowers weighing upward 60 pounds filled, 2. 5 feet long, firing over 20 yards in 8 to 9 seconds. xxvii] Although the United States had all of these wonderful advancements, the Germans, Russians, British and Japanese were inventing weapons even bigger and stronger than those of the Americans. [xxviii] They also not only advanced in weaponry, but they advanced in the science and technology behind the strategy to efficiently utilize the weapons as well. Electronic warfare originated in the early 1900s, but was used in bombing strategies in World War II. They had created message encoders, interception receivers, and radar warning receivers. xxix] They would encode messages to each other and track Ally movement. In opposition to this, Americans created “jammers. ”[xxx] These were machines or tools used to “jam” radars and block their reception. They made jammers to penetrate German airspace at every frequency and wavelength that they used. [xxxi] Germany also had a technical superiority, though often muddled, during the war due to its scientific achievements. The led anyway in many fields—many leads taken where they previously had no contribution. [xxxii]

The atomic bomb was probably the most important invention during World War II. The question of atomic energy to be used in war was brought up as early as 1941 in America and even before that in Germany. Germany had created atomic fission in 1938 and by 1941 and 1942, was believed to be quickly passing America up in atomic experimentation. [xxxiii] The United States decided to create the atomic bomb and use it against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and tested its newly devised bomb in New Mexico on July 16. The bombed proved to be just as much of a weapon of terrible destruction as the Americans had hoped.

On August 6, the United States dropped an atomic bomb in Hiroshima, and on August 9, dropped yet another atomic bomb in Nagasaki. [xxxiv] Had Japan or anyone else had an atomic bomb to retaliate with, the Americans would have been “caught with their pants down” because the only atomic bombs that had been prepared were the two that were dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. [xxxv] No one retaliated, however, and the bomb had proven to not only function as a weapon of terrible destruction, but a psychological weapon as well. [xxxvi]

This new technology was not only used to compete in the race of arms; it actually affected the war. The innovations of World War II affected the armed forces, the progression of the war, and the battles themselves. The weapons used in World War II caused many American casualties. This was sometimes because of the types of weapons that the opposing force used, which were at times much bigger and better than the Americans’ weapons. Other times, the casualties were caused by poor planning and problematic strategies enacted to utilize the weapons.

The progression of the war was affected by the technology of the war as well. [xxxvii] Radar technology used by Germany allowed the Germans to be able to detect American movement, causing the Americans not to be able to carry out their plans at times. [xxxviii] Conversely, the Americans’ jamming of the radar machines and code breaking prevented the Germans and the Japanese from being able to carry out their plans sometimes as well. Throughout World War II, America had to keep updating its weaponry and technology just as much as the opposing powers did.

When America did not have technology or weaponry as advanced as the opposing forces, it would undertake many casualties, and the weight of power would again shift toward the Eastern hemisphere. However, when the United States had technology and weaponry that was more advanced than those of the opposing forces, the weight of power in the war shifter to the Western Hemisphere, and the opposing forces undertook casualties causing them to fear America, and causing the war to come closer and closer to an end. [xxxix] Having these effects in the war also affected the outcome of the war.

The technology and weaponry in the war is what caused most of the struggle and achievements of the war for both sides. A main reason that the war was ended was because of the way America wore down the opposing forces with its constant, successful attempts at new technology and advancements. Has the United States not been so determined to have the most powerful and most innovative technology and weapons, the war would not have turned out the way it did. The Americans devastated the Axis Powers with their many advancements, allowing the Allies to develop and progress in the war more than they ever could alone.