The Official WWII Technical Spergout Thread - Discuss Technology, Tactics, and Strategy, but not your alt-history fantasies

magine making such a gigantic and intimidating weapon but you have to make it go in rails.

Germany what were you thinking
people make fun of this gun constantly but it was actually very effective as soon as you got it into position and was very good at destroying the heavily fortified Soviet positions.
They also never had the resources for building all the track vehicles they were supposed to go along with it.

All Soviet tanks are garbage because they suffered from Soviets not actually finishing any of the technical aspects of the tank and things missing.

It was the United States and britain's strategic bombing that made it so the Soviets eventually won because they ran out of bullets on the German side to shoot all of the Soviet Mongolian.


Also Dwight D Eisenhower was the worst general of World War Two behind Marshal zhukov

Eisenhower was a page for posting bureaucrat who literally slowed down Patton S advances in Europe because he was doing the bidding of his Soviet simp master Franklin Delano Roosevelt
 
The nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki aren't what ended the war.

The entirety of WWII up to that point more or less established that strategic bombing doesn't work. The Blitz didn't cause the British to surrender, the various raids on Berlin didn't cause the Germans to surrender, and few if any cite the Tokyo firebombings as the reason for the Japanese surrender. The nuclear bombings, at the end of the day, were just another strategic bombing. At the same time, the Japanese were clearly losing the war, an invasion of the home island looked imminent, and the Soviet Union just got involved with the invasion of Manchuria. If anything, the nuclear bombings were just one among many factors that caused the surrender.

That's not to sperg about it being "le evil warcrime." My issue is more about the implications the myth had on strategic doctrine afterwards.
Strategic bombing certainly worked on Japan, insofar as it destroyed the ability of the Japanese government to distribute resources (food) and maintain public morale in general, to the point where the civil authorities believed that another three to six months of it would have resulted in a near-total collapse of public order - mass anarchy across most of the Home Islands

The Emperor specifically stated that he had decided to surrender because the atom bombs were the ultimate expression of the overwhelming, irresistible, multiple forms of American power that he believed would literally annihilate the Japanese as a race if resistance continued. He decided it was all futile, but the nukes, which could not be defended against at all since Japan's air defenses were almost totally ineffective and had been for months, would make it all futile even faster and with more finality
 
After doing quite a bit of reading, I have come to the conclusion that the Western Allies in general, and Lend-Lease in specific, completely changed the outcome on the Eastern Front. That's not to say the Germans would have had their Thousand-Year Reich, but that it's extremely unlikely that WWII would have ended with the Red Army in Berlin.

Historians who dismiss the impact of Lend-Lease tend to fall into a couple camps. One is ideological communists who clearly have an emotional affection toward Stalin and a constitutional inability to admit those filthy capitalists ever did anything right. These sorts can be summarily ignored and dismissed. They're not serious people.

There are two more common sorts of wrong historians. One is the sort who believes the outcome of a war can be determined by gross inventories. Whoever has the most factories and people will win. The USSR had the most of these, so QED. You see such historians arguing that Northern victory was inevitable in the American Civil War. Somewhat related are historians who focus mainly on armaments. The USSR had more tanks and rifles, therefore the USSR was guaranteed to win.

Historians who focus primarily on bulk & gross numbers tend to have little to no understanding of the specific impact of individual technologies, which can often be enormous. A good example of this is the Russo-Japanese War. On paper, Russia should have won, having more ships and more men. In practice, the Japanese navy's use of electric fire control systems and radio coordination, while the Russians relied on outdated methods, resulted in them crushing the Russian Navy. Or, you could just look at Russia in WWI. They had the largest army, but didn't have the rifles and ammunition to actually equip the army, resulting in defeat by the Germans.

So, on to WWII.

One of the most important revolutions in 20th century warfare was communication technology. During the Battle of France, the Germans infamously ran circles around the French in their tanks, as every German tank had a transceiver, while French tanks communicated with flags. The same thing happened on the Eastern Front during Barbarossa. German tanks had radios, and German infantry had field telephones. Soviet forces had neither of these and took massive losses. The Russian situation was not resolved until 1943, when the United States had sent enormous quantities of radios, telephones, telephone wire, and vaccuum tubes to the Soviet Union. Zhukov's defense & counterattack at Kursk, which broke the Wehrmacht, deserves all the praise it gets, but it simply would not have been possible without the coordination enabled via American radios and telephones. Additionally, the drive to Berlin as we know it would have not been possible without American communication equipment. The USSR's large-scale operations during this period were completely dependent on modern communication and simply couldn't have happened with flag signals and couriers running handwritten notes.

Much more could be said about American trucks and train cars. Since at least the American Civil War, mechanized, electrified logistics have meant the difference between victory and defeat. If the USSR had been on the hook for its own transportation and communication equipment, its logistics would have been as bad, if not worse, in 1943 as they were in 1941. They also would have had the secondary effect of not being able to manufacture nearly as many tanks, rifles, and planes. Soviet manufacturing output actually dropped over the course of the war, but since America was providing essentially all of the logistical equipment their army needed, they could shift production to weapons, where you want as short a line between factory and front as possible. If we cut the Soviet tank count by a third, or alternatively throw them back on horse-drawn wagons for their transportation, Kursk and its aftermath are completely different stories.

The USSR was eventually able to build airplanes that were at least competitive with the mainstays of the Luftwaffe. However, these depended on American aviation fuel, which the USSR at the time was unable to produce. In an alternative timeline where America stays neutral, there's no way the USSR is going to develop its refining technology and build up capacity from 1941-1943. Without American fuel, the famous Yak series of fighters and the Il-2 Sturmovik, which required 90-100 octane fuel for their 1000-hp engines that Soviet refineries could not produce in any useful volume, simply would not have happened. Nearly every single Soviet offensive from 1943 onward (e.g. Dnieper) would be dramatically less effective without air support.

I could keep going on. The T-34 was a rolling piece of crap before an American design overhaul and manufacturing technology enabled the production of the T-34/85. The Red Army would have been much smaller without American boots, uniforms, and food. The volume of rifles, machine guns, and artillery the USSR produced would have been much less useful without American explosives. On and on.

A side note, head-counters tend to vastly underestimate the importance of manufacturing technology. This isn't just a WWII historian problem, it's a problem in modern businesses as well, which has led to people thinking they'll save money by moving manufacturing to China, then being surprised when the degraded quality of goods ends up costing more than it was worth. American engineers taught Soviet engineers how to properly manufacture armor plating after multiple disasters caused by T-34 armor spalling (too hard) or being penetrated (too soft). Additionally, one of the main things we sent over under Lend-Lease was high-quality manufacturing equipment (lathes and such), which resulted in T-34s lasting for less than half their rated life before falling apart to lasting well beyond it, effectively doubling the number of tanks the Red Army could actually put to field. To put importance of American quality manufacturing in perspective, the Japanese captured M1 Garands, tried to copy them, and ultimately failed because they could not forge & mill the parts at a high enough precision for the Type 4 rifles to work reliably.

One more thing, however, deserves some significant address. Without the UK holding on and the Royal Navy gaining the upper hand in the Battle of the Atlantic, the Wehrmacht's fuel problems and the eventually disastrous drive to Stalingrad would never have even happened. Had the UK surrendered in 1941, Operation Barbarossa would have happened with ample imports of fuel from around the British Empire. There are other secondary effects - Germany spent more on its navy than every ground vehicle combined. So imagine Barbarossa not just without any fuel problems, but more tanks, more assault artillery, more trucks and half-tracks, and so on. Imagine Panthers and Tigers being produced in far greater numbers. This is on top of the Soviets having all the hits to the army's size and effectiveness due to never getting access to American materiel, as discussed earlier. After the brutal winter of '41, the Wehrmacht most likely would have simply pressed on to finally take Moscow and Leningrad.

I don't think Germany would have eventually won, as the UK dropping out was an absolute political non-starter. Hitler would not have gotten his Thousand-Year Reich or his Lebensraum. America's involvement in the war was ultimately because of Japan, not Germany, and the USSR was still going to tie up enough German resources that Normandy, Sicily, etc would have eventually happened, and Germany would have been stuck in a two-front war one way or another. However, without Allied help, I think the USSR's fate would have been much like the Russian Empire's in WW1, being pummeled by the Germans until broken beyond belief.
 
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Germany still could not have conquered Russia if Lend-Lease hadn't happened

But Russia could also not have conquered Germany if Lend-Lease hadn't happened

It was American aviation gasoline that fueled the Red Air Force (a large proportion of which flew American planes post-1941), and American trucks, and American radios, that turned the Red Army from a bumbling giant to a force capable of large-scale, coordinated maneuver warfare
 
he Emperor specifically stated that he had decided to surrender because the atom bombs were the ultimate expression of the overwhelming, irresistible, multiple forms of American power that he believed would literally annihilate the Japanese as a race if resistance continued.
No he specifically used the bombs as an excuse why the Japanese military, navy and state didn't win the war despite doing a great job, the two paragraphs are literally back to back. Calling the Americans cruel and who want to mass murder civilians using their new weapon. And he said the US might cause the "total extinction of all human civilization" due to their careless use of the bombs. Y'know, cause this was still the time when theories like the atmosphere igniting due to the atom bombs was a thing.

He wasn't sucking the dick of 'murica like you fantasized lilbro, nor was he making an accurate assessment. He was saving face in a brisk speech and borderline calling the US a bunch of retarded psychopaths. The same historical research that shows Hirohito's claims about the army&navy doing a great job was bullshit, also shows that his claims about the bombs being the reason they surrendered is bullshit.
 
No he specifically used the bombs as an excuse why the Japanese military, navy and state didn't win the war despite doing a great job, the two paragraphs are literally back to back. Calling the Americans cruel and who want to mass murder civilians using their new weapon. And he said the US might cause the "total extinction of all human civilization" due to their careless use of the bombs. Y'know, cause this was still the time when theories like the atmosphere igniting due to the atom bombs was a thing.

He wasn't sucking the dick of 'murica like you fantasized lilbro, nor was he making an accurate assessment. He was saving face in a brisk speech and borderline calling the US a bunch of retarded psychopaths. The same historical research that shows Hirohito's claims about the army&navy doing a great job was bullshit, also shows that his claims about the bombs being the reason they surrendered is bullshit.
No, you're specifically confusing his face-saving statements with the underlying truths, and you're mad at the internet because God knows why. Nowhere did I say he was sucking murica's dick, and he was making what he believed was an accurate assessment of the future of Japan if he didn't surrender: none. You're also confusing his public statements with his private statements

With your love for referencing historical research, maybe you should research the Emperor's statement at the "Imperial Conference" held on the night of August 9-10, made in response to Prime Minister (Admiral) Suzuki asking him to decide then and there between the 'continue fighting for better terms' and the 'we're fucked, we need to stop now before we get fucked even worse' factions of the cabinet. Also his statement at the conference on the night of August 13-14
 
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No, you're specifically confusing his face-saving statements with the underlying truths, and you're mad at the internet because God knows why. Nowhere did I say he was sucking murica's dick, and he was making what he believed was an accurate assessment of the future of Japan if he didn't surrender: none. You're also confusing his public statements with his private statements

With your love for referencing historical research, maybe you should research the Emperor's statement at the "Imperial Conference" held on the night of August 9-10, made in response to Prime Minister (Admiral) Suzuki asking him to decide then and there between the 'continue fighting for better terms' and the 'we're fucked, we need to stop now before we get fucked even worse' factions of the cabinet
This is really important - groups of people do not have a single mind. We have a lot of information about what the war cabinet & the Emperor talked about in those crucial days between the bombing and the surrender, and we know for a fact that the bombs factored into the thinking of multiple key decision-makers, including and perhaps especially the Emperor.

We can't say the bombs were THE reason, as though they were the unique deciding factor on which the surrender decision hinged to the exclusion of all others. But they were certainly A reason.
 
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Cross-posted from the Russia thread is another example of what a difference Lend-Lease made.

Below is an early Soviet fighter plane, the I-16.
1744666333830.webp

It was, by all accounts, a competently designed plane for what it was, but its low-compression power plant, a 380 hp radial engine, copied from a British design, powered by 77-80 octane gasoline, couldn't push the thing high or fast enough to compete with German WW2 designs. Consequently, this fighter was no match for high-flying Messerschmitts with Daimler engines that delivered over 1000 hp. A new airplane was needed. I-16s might as well have been flying turkeys for as much challenge as they gave Bf.109s.

Below is one of the most important airplanes of the Soviet war effort, the Yak-9.
1744666352628.webp

It was, by all accounts a very competent fighter that was at least the equal of the Bf.109, arguably its superior, and therefore as worthy of being numbered with the WW2 classics. Now, what do you notice about the nose? It's got the elongated shape one associates with a high-compression inline engine. Initially, it took flight with the 1200-hp VK-105PF engine.

1744666369476.webp

It's honestly not a great engine, prone to leaking and breaking down, but good enough to dogfight Messerschmitts is good enough. The important thing is that its 7:1 compression ratio and dual-speed superchargers allowed it to generate power on par with Western-designed power plants, thanks to switching to 95-100 octane gas. You can't use low-octane gas in a supercharged engine, or it will detonate and destroy the motor.

There's just one tiny, tiny little problem. It's really hard to produce 95+ octane gas. People who don't understand anything about technology--say, the kind of person who thinks Pashtun raiders with AK-47s destroyed armored divisions in Afghanistan--think that refining oil is no big deal. Turns out it's a pretty technologically demanding enterprise. It's even harder to produce it out of the sour crude in the Urals. The Siberian petroleum basin's light, sweet crude wouldn't be discovered until both Hitler and Stalin were dead. A combination of high-sulfur oil and a refinining industry decades behind the West's meant that the USSR primarily produced diesel and 77 octane fuel, and the highest octane they could produce at volume was ~85 octane. This was perfectly fine for the T-34 (which ran on diesel) and the armies of American trucks that kept the Red Army's logistics alive.

There was only one Allied country in the world in with the refineries capable of producing high enough volumes of high-octane aircraft fuel to spare enough to fuel the Soviet air force. That's why about 90% of Soviet Russia's high-octane aviation fuel came from the United States. Of the remaining 10%, much of that came from the UK's refineries in Canada. Also, add in the fact that 40% of all aluminum used in the USSR came from the United States, as well as the radio stations these fighters relied on to coordinate their attacks. No Lend-Lease means the Soviet air force is effectively stuck in in 1933.
 
I-400-class submarine
People generally make fun of the submarine but the level of engineering it took to actually build something like this is impressive for the 1940s
 
Interesting numbers on the T-34 via the Chieftan:


TL;DW - The Germans destroyed all of the T-34s the USSR fielded at the beginning of the war, at least all the ones that didn't break down in the field. Soviet analysis of the destroyed tanks showed the vast majority of them were defeated with 5cm or smaller guns, meaning the Pz III and Pak 38 mainly, but there were even a fair amount defeated by 3.7cm rounds, corresponding to the Pak 36, Pz 38(t), and early Pz III models.

This is due to the absolutely atrocious quality of Soviet welding and armor fabrication. Prior to America sending over instruments and tools via Lend-Lease, Soviet forges lacked the instrumentation to properly measure and control temperature, resulting in a lot of guesswork and armor that was either too hard or too soft. Additionally, the Americans taught proper welding techniques after Aberdeen. The T-34/85 was virtually invincible against the lower-caliber German guns, but not the early T-34s.
 
Soviet forges lacked the instrumentation to properly measure and control temperature, resulting in a lot of guesswork and armor that was either too hard or too soft.
It was especially important for Magnitogorsk, the MMK had the experience and ability to produce it but was missing key pieces of the production process. It also still used a lot of imported equipment from the 1930s that couldn't be replaced by Soviet products, which Lend-Lease helped to replenish.

They had to learn on the fly based upon rapidly-changing research because the plant had produced only civilian steel prior to WWII.
 
Some of my more controversial opinions

The mosin isn't very good; it wasn't good when it came out, and was very not good by WWII standards. Its overly complicated, expensive to produce, uses a rimmed cartridge, not clean or smooth of an action, was actual long rifle length even in the 40s, and overly heavy. It worked no doubt, but nearly every other standard issue rifle was a better choice
The STG44 is ok, but also not great; A lot of people act like the gun is some wonder weapon that would have won the war. Ignoring the fact that small arms don't win wars, the gun itself wasn't all that great on its own. It had an upwards of 60% rejection rate during manufacturing and some parts weren't interchange between manufacturers. Furthermore, the receiver was easily bent due to how thin it is, and both the British and Americans reported frequent stoppages, especially in full auto. Theres a reason the G3 is so different
The Carcano is pretty decent and its cartridge is underrated; the worst part of the carcano is the mannlicher magazine, the rest of it is a solid rifle. Long rifles by WWII were rare, and carbines were ubiquitous, and even in the m38 italy only produced short rifle variants. Its a strong forward locking lug bolt design, and specifically one in the vein of mauser which does  not have a removable bolt head and uses a controlled feed system. This avoids the flaws of the mannlicher/schlegelmilch (commission rifle) bolt, and the mosin. Its simple, cheap, and actually a decent design.
The Hi power is better than the 1911; Its lighter weight (which is actually a big deal since according to 90% of military handgun doctrine, the handgun is almost never used, and mostly just carried), holds 13 rounds of 9mm instead of 8 rounds of 45 acp, and has a simpler disassembly mechanism that would ultimately be simplified further by the CZ 75 later on.
 
There was only one Allied country in the world in with the refineries capable of producing high enough volumes of high-octane aircraft fuel to spare enough to fuel the Soviet air force. That's why about 90% of Soviet Russia's high-octane aviation fuel came from the United States. Of the remaining 10%, much of that came from the UK's refineries in Canada.
Texas crude is more than 90 octane with basic distillation and is great for gas. Russia oil is great for diesel. US exported a lot of TEL additive to boost engines all the way to 140 and 150 octane. At such high rating you can run unrestricted supercharging as autoignition temp is over 400°C.
Compression does need to be low 7 or 8:1 as with supercharging you are going over 12 and 14:1.
US exported TEL to germany all the way to the end of the war.
Germans didn't need as much octane-ish gas as they had direct fuel injection figured out during the war.

TL;DW - The Germans destroyed all of the T-34s the USSR fielded at the beginning of the war, at least all the ones that didn't break down in the field. Soviet analysis of the destroyed tanks showed the vast majority of them were defeated with 5cm or smaller guns, meaning the Pz III and Pak 38 mainly, but there were even a fair amount defeated by 3.7cm rounds, corresponding to the Pak 36, Pz 38(t), and early Pz III models.
German reports about organization were to not engage T34 with PzIII but battalions did it anyway and with good success. T34 had no radio and very bad survivability. Engine life was only 500km and in videos you can see a lot of them with spare engines strapped on back.

Best plane of war was first MIG using stolen-borrowed tech from british. Once the jet engines were around, the piston pushers simply became obsolete.

Imagine making such a gigantic and intimidating weapon but you have to make it go in rails.
Rails then were what autobahn is today. They simply had know how, men and willpower to make it go wherever they wanted it to go.
And the only way you'll move this thing is via train loco anyway. The amount of hp needed is just immense and trucks of those days were weak and pathetic.
These guns were designed to break fortifications.
A single shot of these detonated entire russian arsenal 20m under ground and ended a month long stalemate.
However, without Allied help, I think the USSR's fate would have been much like the Russian Empire's in WW1, being pummeled by the Germans until broken beyond belief.
I think the allies knew that and wanted to avoid it. Germany rulling over entire europe with russia's resources would mean serious damage to anglosphere.
The US itself would have cracked in half as well as there were nazi party rallies in US before and were getting good ground before WW2 erupted.
Today, germany is split in half, iron and coal are left to poland and cz and it was reliant on russian gas for industry. It lost access to adriatic sea via austria as well.
 
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There are two more common sorts of wrong historians. One is the sort who believes the outcome of a war can be determined by gross inventories. Whoever has the most factories and people will win. The USSR had the most of these, so QED. You see such historians arguing that Northern victory was inevitable in the American Civil War. Somewhat related are historians who focus mainly on armaments. The USSR had more tanks and rifles, therefore the USSR was guaranteed to win.
They also dont understand the importance of soldiers and logistics.
The Western allies bombing germany and wining in africa put a timer on germany while hurting the logistics. Germany could have won with useing less men for offensives but the timer forced them to attack way to aggressiv.

Germans didn't need as much octane-ish gas as they had direct fuel injection figured out during the war.
Leuna Benzin also was high octane to begin with and that could be pushed even further.
mastering synthetic fuel from coal was incredible important for germany.
 
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