World War II

Technologies

Main article: Technology during World War II

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The massive research and development demands of the war, including the Manhattan Project's efforts to quickly develop the atomic bomb, had a great impact on the scientific community, among other things creating a network of national laboratories in the United States. In addition, the pressing need for numerous time-critical calculations for various projects like code-breaking and ballistics tables accentuated the need for the development of electronic computer technology. While the war stimulated many technologies, such as radio and radar development, it retarded related yet non-critical fields such as television in the major powers.

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The Jet aircraft age began during the war with the development of the Heinkel He 178, the first true turbojet; the Messerschmitt 262, the first jet in combat; and the Gloster Meteor, the first Allied jet fighter. During the war the Germans produced various Glide bomb weapons, which were the first smart bombs; the V-1 flying bomb, which was the first cruise missile weapon; and the V-2 rocket, the first ballistic missile weapon. The last of these was the first step into the space age as its trajectory took it through the stratosphere, higher and faster than any aircraft. This later led to the development of the ICBM. Wernher Von Braun led the V-2 development team and later immigrated to the United States where he contributed to the development of the Saturn V rocket, which took men to the moon in 1969.

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Military technology progressed at rapid pace, and over six years there was a disorientating rate of change in combat in everything from aircraft to small arms. The best jet fighters at the end of the war easily outflew any of the leading aircraft of 1939, such as the Spitfire Mark I. However, despite their technological edge, German jets were overwhelmed by Allied air superiority, frequently being destroyed on or near the airstrip. Other jet aircraft, such as the British Gloster Meteor, did not significantly distinguish themselves from top-line piston-driven aircraft. The early war bombers that caused such carnage would almost all have been shot down in 1945, many with one shot, by radar-aimed, proximity-fuse-detonated anti-aircraft fire, just as the 1941 "invincible fighter", the Zero, had by 1944 become the "turkey" of the "Marianas Turkey Shoot". The best late-war tanks, such as the Soviet JS-3 heavy tank or the German Panther medium tank, handily outclassed the best tanks of 1939 such as Panzer IVs. The chaotic impotence of opposed amphibious landings typical of WW I disasters was overcome: the Higgins boat, primary troop landing craft; the DUKW, a six-wheel-drive amphibious truck; and amphibious tanks were developed by the Western Allies to enable beach landing attacks, and the organisation and coordination of amphibious assaults coupled with the resources necessary to sustain them became a science.

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Manhattan Project: [[Image:Calutrons at Oak Ridge.jpg|thumb|right|300px|Control panels and operators for calutrons at the Y-12 National Security Complex|Y-12 Plant in Oak Ridge National Laboratory|Oak Ridge, Tennessee....

Atomic bomb: REDIRECT Nuclear weapon...

Code-breaking: REDIRECT Cryptanalysis...

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