Favorite Weapon Systems

@ABWorsham:

Plane, tank, truck, ship, firearms

Since this covers everything from individual weapons (like firearms) all the way to weapon platforms (like warships), my favourite would be the Iowa-class battleships.  They were the fastest battleships ever completed, and even though they come in second place to the Yamato-class battlewagons in terms of sheer tonnage, main gun caliber and armour thickness their actual performance in terms of hitting power and protection wasn’t all that inferior to the Yamatos.  (Basically, the Yamatos used scaled-up versions of very conventional gun and armour technologies, while the Iowas were more advanced in both departments.)  They had twin rudders which, combined with their speed, made them surprisingly agile for ships of their size: at least one Iowa-class skipper said that he often handled his ship as though she was a big destroyer.  And all four are still in existence today.

@rjpeters70:

I’d say Iowa class is my favorite (because they’re so freaking cool). Most impactful?  A-bomb.  Altered warfare and grand security challenges for going on 70 years.  You can’t say that about battleships.

You can even combine the two: Iowa-class battleships carrying Mark 23 16-inch nuclear shells.  The Mark 23 was a naval variant of the W19 nuclear 11-inch artillery shell, with a yield of about 15-20 kt.  It’s not clear if any were ever deployed, but one of the Iowas did on one occasion fire a single inert practice round.

The three main turrets of the Iowas could be trained independently of each other, and the three guns in each turret could be elevated independently of each other, so in principle it might have been possible to fire a salvo of nine nuclear rounds simultaneously with each shell targeted differently, so that they would land in a predetermined pattern over a large target area.  (If I’m not mistaken, multi-warhead strikes against a large city using bombs or missiles are planned so that they explode in an optimal dispersed pattern rather than being bunched together in one spot; if so, something similar might have been achieved with a nine-gun salvo, though with limitations arising from the fact that the shells can only be fired along the three horizontal axes on which the guns are trained.)

Thank you for that last informative post rjpeters.

I think I will go smaller than you two and say the JU87.
As a child and grandson of an RAF pre WW2 volunteer I always liked planes. ( This is before I fell in love with tanks.)
And it has to be German and it has to be something that I have always liked.
Thus, I choose the JU87, for its funky wings, screeming siren and the delight it gave me as a child  in playing at dive bombers, with and without a model of one!

Italy: the Sahariann Scout Car

Never heard of this Worsham.
I would have said the Mini Submarine for Italy. Not sure of models, if there was more than one type.
Japan: the Zero.
UK: The Ark Royal
US: P38.
France: the crossbow.

@rjpeters70:

The reason for using multiple warheads to strike specific targets in the Cold War is that the CEPs were so ridiculously high, you only had something like an 8-12% of destroying the target with each warhead (since they didn’t have precision guided munitions during the cold war).  This is why you had ridiculous targeting requirements, such as hitting Offut AFB with 12 warheads (when Offut is a pretty small AFB):  Because if you figure that with a high CEP, each warhead only did 8% of damage to the target, you’d need about 12 warheads to get a 100% destruction on target. GPS is part of the reason why we no longer need such huge nuclear arsenals:  Because you can kill the target using one warhead versus 12, you can cut the arsenal by over 90%–which is precisely what we have done.

Many thanks for this information.  It’s interesting to find out that decreasing the size of nuclear arsenals by 90% doesn’t translate into a 90% decrease in the amount of damage that would be done to the intended targets in a nuclear strike, given that higher targeting precision would in effect just mean that the few remaining weapons would function with much higher efficiency.  It certainly fits into a weaponry trend that’s been seen over the last several decades: the move towards numerically fewer (and much more costly) weapons which have a higher kill rate.  Back in WWII, for example, ships dealt with incoming enemy planes using the “firehose” approach of filling the sky with a curtain of comparatively cheap .50 cal bullets, 20mm and 40mm autocannon shells, and 5-inch artillery shells.  Today, the job would be handled by firing one or two very expensive SAMs at each plane.

Thank you.
500 mile range seems unnecessarily excessive.I wonder if one ever went 250 miles into the desert on a recon mission, then back.
It is a pity there is no surving example and wiki says we do not know how many were made.

@rjpeters70:

Ideally, an enemy fighter would be killed by an AMRAAM 200 Kms from the CBG, so no need for SAMs.  If an enemy fighter got to a range from which it could attack a surface vessel, the commander of the CBG is doing something wrong.

Yes, and the trend in this direction actually got started in WWII, during which the first line of defense against enemy fighters for a carrier task force was the combat air patrol it sent up.  If a bandit got through the CAP, it would then hit the second line of defense, which was the wall of AAA fire pumped into the sky by the cruisers and battleships disposed around the carriers.

A quaint (if one can call it that) present-day echo of the old WWII AAA firehose technique is the CIWS cannon that provides warships with their final line of defense against incoming missiles (and planes, I think).  It’s similar in approach to the traditional WWII method, but with the AAA fire squeezed into a narrow stream and focused precisely on a single target using a built-in radar and (I think) and computer-controled automatic aiming system.  Those would have been very handy to the USN when it started running into kamikaze attacks, if they had existed back in '44 and '45.

Below is a list of my favorite weapons systems by type.

Tank: E-75. Intended as the successor to the King Tiger, the E-75 had improved armor, better weapons, and infrared sighting. It was designed to be much less expensive and easier to manufacture than the King Tiger.

Infantry combat weapon: Sturmgewehr (assault rifle). Easy to produce once you had the right machinery, effective in bitter cold, and significantly better than the guns which came before it. The only assault rifle of WWII.

Handheld anti-tank weapon: Panzerfaust 250. This weapon had a range of 250 meters; as compared to 30 meters or less for a bazooka. It also had much better armor penetration. Earlier versions of the Panzerfaust had proved very successful because they were simple and easy to manufacture. However, the war ended before the Panzerfaust 250 could be put into mass production.

Battleship: Montana class. I’ve seen some discussion here lately about whether the Iowa class or Yamato class battleships were better. If anything, the Montana class battleships would have been even more advanced than the Iowa class. The Montana class battleships were 65,000 long tons; as compared to 69,000 for the Yamato class. However, plans to construct Montana class battleships were canceled so that the U.S. could emphasize aircraft carrier production. Germany’s proposed H-class battleships are also relevant.

Aircraft carrier: Essex class. Unlike some of the other items on my list, these were actually built!

Submarine: Type XXI U-boat. Several Type XXIs were in their working up phase when the war ended. They had rubber-coated hulls to make them less easily detected by radar or sonar. Their streamlined shapes allowed them to move faster under the water than they could on the surface. They could stay submerged for days, using electric power only. (Very quiet and difficult to detect.) When the time came to recharge their batteries (using diesel engines), they only needed to go near the surface; using a snorkel to provide air for the diesels. It had a highly advanced electronics suite, allowing it to passively detect targets without itself being detected. All other WWII participants used diesel-powered torpedoes (noisy/detectable, plus created a bubble trail to lead people back to the attacker). Mid to late war German subs used electric torpedoes; which were very quiet and hard to detect; and which left no telltale bubble trails.

Fighter: Focke-Wulf Ta 183. Various first-generation jet fighters had been developed during WWII (Meteor, Shooting Star, Me 262). Of these, the most advanced was the Me262. The Ta 183 was a second generation jet, intended to replace the Me 262. However, the war ended before its development could be completed; so Kurt Tank finished the design work in Argentina in the postwar period.

Bomber: Horten H.XVIII. This jet-powered flying wing would have been capable of trans-Atlantic strategic bombing raids. Interception would have been difficult due to the plane’s stealthy characteristics and high speed. Construction had been planned to begin in the fall of '45.

Strategic bomber: B-29 Superfortress. This plane had almost as long a range as the Horten H.XVIII, and ten times the bomb payload capacity. One of the most impressive piston-driven bombers ever built.

Rocket: A-12. Part of Germany’s Aggregate Series of rockets, the A-12 could have lifted 10 tonnes of cargo into Low Earth Orbit. After WWII ended, Werner von Braun took his team of German engineers with him to America. Von Braun and the other Germans designed the Saturn V rocket; using Germany’s Aggregate Series rockets as a rough draft.

Misc. cool stuff #1: death ray. Tesla had proposed a death ray. During WWII, both Germany and Japan had projects to create a death ray. Germany developed a sonic cannon capable of killing enemy troops at a maximum range of 200 - 400 meters. However, this weapon proved highly vulnerable to enemy fire. Germany had Japan had worked together to develop microwave-based weaponry.* A death ray seems like exactly the kind of weapon Japan should have had!

Misc. cool stuff #2: suborbital bomber. (Silverbird, or Silbervogel.) Stage 1: use a rocket-powered sled to impart initial velocity to the aircraft. Stage 2: the plane would use on-board rockets to increase its velocity. It would achieve very high altitude; where it would proceed to bounce along the Earth’s atmosphere like a stone skipping across water. It would cross the Atlantic, deliver a payload to the United States, then continue on to the Japanese-held Pacific.

Misc. cool stuff #3: space mirrors. Once Germany had finished developing the capacity to put cargoes into Low Earth Orbit (see above), there were those who planned to use that capacity to put mirrors into space. In ancient times, large numbers of mirrors had been used to set enemy ships aflame. The concept here is similar, except that space-based mirrors would have allowed for a more powerful effect and global targeting capacity.

Some of the above items like the Essex carriers and assault rifles were used during WWII; all but two or three things would have been used had the war lasted a few more years; and a small number of items (space mirrors) were more of a long-term project.

*Edited to correct an error.

Just a comment on the x-ray death ray and on the space mirror concepts you mention.  Any weapon that uses pure electromagnetic radiation is constrained by the inverse-square law, which basically states that when you double the distance than a beam travels, its power drops to one-quarter of its value.  As a result, radiation-based weapons are severely restricted in range.  Further power is soaked up by traversing the atmosphere, especially in the presence of factors like mist, smoke and dust (common on many battlefields) that absorb or diffuse the beam.

@CWO:

Just a comment on the x-ray death ray and on the space mirror concepts you mention.  Any weapon that uses pure electromagnetic radiation is constrained by the inverse-square law, which basically states that when you double the distance than a beam travels, its power drops to one-quarter of its value.  As a result, radiation-based weapons are severely restricted in range.  Further power is soaked up by traversing the atmosphere, especially in the presence of factors like mist, smoke and dust (common on many battlefields) that absorb or diffuse the beam.

Supposedly, a parabolic reflector can cause beams to be parallel. But when this technology was put into practice during WWII, the result was beams which were approximately parallel. A good example is the searchlight; which produced beams visible from 28 - 35 miles (45 - 56 km) in good weather.

Parabolic reflectors were probably not a good enough technology to make space mirrors into an effective weapon. The laser wasn’t invented until the '50s. Space-based weaponry of that sort was more of a long-term project for the postwar era.

Anything you can do with a searchlight, you should also be able to do with an x-ray. A surface-based x-ray weapon might have potential in land combat or as an anti-aircraft gun. Currently, microwave-based weaponry is employed as a non-lethal weapon.

@KurtGodel7:

Anything you can do with a searchlight, you should also be able to do with an x-ray. A surface-based x-ray weapon might have potential in land combat or as an anti-aircraft gun.

X-rays have a much shorter wavelength than visible light and are much more penetrating (which is why they’re used for medical imaging).  Making a parabolic reflector for light is easy – simple aluminum or silvered glass will do the job nicely – but I suspect (while admitting that this isn’t my field of expertise) that devising a parabolic reflector for X-rays (made of heaven knows what material) would be a more tricky proposition…assuming it’s even possible.  I think that the US fooled around in the 1970s with the concept of building satellites armed with X-ray lasers (intended for use in shooting down incoming enemy ICBMs), and as I recall the proposed design was essentially a one-shot weapon in which the X-ray laser beam would be generated by a nuclear detonation that would destroy the satellite as it fired.

One of the odd things about radiation-based weapons is that they don’t function in the same way against human targets as they do against, let’s say, a missile.  Humans consist mostly of water, which has a different heat-absorption capacity that metal – so in principle a conventional infra-red laser that can punch through a sheet of steel might simply have the effect of giving a person a painful but superficial burn rather than drilling through him.  (A much simpler and lower-power anti-personnel use of lasers is to use an optical laser to dazzle or blind enemy soldiers.)  As for ionizing radiation (such as X-rays), its battlefield practicality would depend on whether a large enough dosage could be delivered to kill or incapacitate an enemy soldier instantly.  Zapping him with enough sieverts to kill him in years, months or days would be of little tactical use, and even lethality within hours would be inadequate if the tactical requirement is to take out the guy who’s in the process of spraying your squad with machine gun fire.

@CWO:

@KurtGodel7:

Anything you can do with a searchlight, you should also be able to do with an x-ray. A surface-based x-ray weapon might have potential in land combat or as an anti-aircraft gun.

X-rays have a much shorter wavelength than visible light and are much more penetrating (which is why they’re used for medical imaging).  Making a parabolic reflector for light is easy – simple aluminum or silvered glass will do the job nicely – but I suspect (while admitting that this isn’t my field of expertise) that devising a parabolic reflector for X-rays (made of heaven knows what material) would be a more tricky proposition…assuming it’s even possible.  I think that the US fooled around in the 1970s with the concept of building satellites armed with X-ray lasers (intended for use in shooting down incoming enemy ICBMs), and as I recall the proposed design was essentially a one-shot weapon in which the X-ray laser beam would be generated by a nuclear detonation that would destroy the satellite as it fired.

One of the odd things about radiation-based weapons is that they don’t function in the same way against human targets as they do against, let’s say, a missile.  Humans consist mostly of water, which has a different heat-absorption capacity that metal – so in principle a conventional infra-red laser that can punch through a sheet of steel might simply have the effect of giving a person a painful but superficial burn rather than drilling through him.  (A much simpler and lower-power anti-personnel use of lasers is to use an optical laser to dazzle or blind enemy soldiers.)  As for ionizing radiation (such as X-rays), its battlefield practicality would depend on whether a large enough dosage could be delivered to kill or incapacitate an enemy soldier instantly.  Zapping him with enough sieverts to kill him in years, months or days would be of little tactical use, and even lethality within hours would be inadequate if the tactical requirement is to take out the guy who’s in the process of spraying your squad with machine gun fire.

Good post.

I noticed an error in one of my earlier posts: the Germans and Japanese had been working together to create a microwave-based death ray; and not (as I’d incorrectly stated) a death ray based on x-rays. Microwaves have a longer wavelength than visible light. If (as you implied above) the shorter-than-visible-light wavelength of x-rays would give them a more constrained range than searchlights; then presumably microwave-based weapons would have a longer effective range.

Brain tissue is very sensitive to changes in temperature. You can kill insects almost instantly by using hot water to heat their brain tissue. Human brain tissue is even more vulnerable to heat. If you could microwave a pilot’s brain, you could kill both him and the aircraft he was flying.

Best weapon systems of world war II:

Germany: MG42 machine gun
USSR: T34 tank
Japan: bayonette
USA: Garand semi-automatic rifle
China: pitchfork
UK: funny helmets
Italy: the terrain
ANZAC: more funny helmets
France: maginot line

oh man. where to start…

USS Enterprise: Yorktown Class Aircraft Carrier. She was the most renown and most decorated ship of WWII. She was constantly thought by the Japanese to be sunk and was always a thorn in their side. She fought the Japanese navy single handed at one point in the Pacific War. Iowa/Montana are close seconds

HMS Illustrious was a fine carrier for the British and helped save Malta a few times if I remember correctly. Plus shes a beauty to look at.

t-34…what can i say? it won the war for the USSR

Magiont line? i mean it was formidable but essentially useless when war broke out in Europe, the Germans just went around it.

7th infantry for the Aussies. Total Badasses

Japanese nighttime naval tactics and pioneering of naval air power/usage of carriers was probably one of the most significant things of the war. the US learned quite a bit by studying their tactics.

German blitzkrieg tactics and armored warfare doctrine was also very feared and renown at the same time by the allies. again, studied greatly by the allies.

Italian Battleship Vittorio Veneto was Italy’s Iowa in a way. it was their prettiest ship, it was their best ship, and most advanced ship. it also was let down by the Italian high command. they didn’t want to hurt their beautiful ships so they rarely sailed, even though they could have seriously harassed the British.

Italian Battleship Vittorio Veneto was Italy’s Iowa in a way. it was their prettiest ship, it was their best ship, and most advanced ship. it also was let down by the Italian high command. they didn’t want to hurt their beautiful ships so they rarely sailed, even though they could have seriously harassed the British.

I enjoyed this paragraph. Good writing.
I agree with your points.

Now for a really unconventional choice:  the Allied codebreakers who deciphered both the Japanese and German codes.  Last year around the anniversary of the Midway battle, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I shared a ride to the USS Arizona with one of the originals who broke the Japanese code, Rear Admiral (then ensign) “Mac” Showers.  http://vimeo.com/34531133 and https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.400758056633152.86706.108793245829636&type=3  Unfortunately he passed away a few months later on Oct. 19, 2012.

In one fell swoop the Midway engagement broke the back of the IJN.  A smaller, inferior U.S. force destroyed the elite fleet air corps of the IJN in a single battle.  This decisive victory was made possible only because of the intelligence coup of breaking the current Japanese naval code.