OT: German vs Allied Tech in WW2

[copeab]

Originally Posted by Raellus

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The Japanese, although tough and determined enemies, were cursed with some of the worst tech of the war. Pretty much all of their weapons systems were inferior to the Western equivalent. The Zero was king for a while, but as soon as allied pilots figured out not to get into a turning/climbing fight with it, it lost a lot of its mystique. Later Allied designs like the Hellcat and Corsair were superior.

The much-maligned P-40 was actually a good match against the Zero as long as the Allied pilot didn't engage in a low-speed turning dogfight or try to out-climb the Zero.

(At high speeds, the P-40 could actually out-turn the Zero)

Japanese infantry weapons were generally crap, across the board. The only major exception was their little "knee" mortars, which could generate impressive close-in indirect fire support. They never had enough artillery, their tanks were crap, and most Japanese infantrymen fought with long, unwieldly bolt-action rifles.

Despite looking like an antique, the Japanese 70mm battalion infantry gun was quite effective.

While their tanks had thing armor and weak guns, they were reliable and had good cross-country performance. The main problem was that fighting the Chinese had taught the Japanese the wrong lessons about tank warfare.

It kind of makes one wonder how the Japanese would have fared with better weapons systems and better leadership.

IIRC, each infantry rifle was stamped with the Imperial chrysanthemum: this marked the weapon as the Emperor's property, which the soldier was allowed to use on his behalf.

Additionally, the long bayonets the Japanese used were "stand ins" for the katana.

[copeab]

Let's remember other German bits of tech that didn't work right:

(1) The FG 42 tried to pack too much power into too small a package, resulting in terrible recoil in automatic fire. Additionally, the cost to produce one was outrageous.

(2) The Me 163 Komet, a rocket fighter tat killed more of it's own pilots than Allied planes did. And that doesn't include ground crew killed by the toxic fuel.

[Legbreaker]

All sides of the war tried different ideas out which failed spectacularly. That's just the price of developing new and wonderful ways of killing the enemy...

[95th Rifleman]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

All sides of the war tried different ideas out which failed spectacularly. That's just the price of developing new and wonderful ways of killing the enemy...

I'm reminded of that American bloke who tried to attach incendiary devices to bats.

[Legbreaker]

Or the British idea to detect U-boats by training seabirds to dive on them.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Or the Type 99 machine gun the Japanese had that featured a bayonet lug.

[copeab]

Originally Posted by raketenjagdpanzer

Or the Type 99 machine gun the Japanese had that featured a bayonet lug.

The Japanese loved bayonets more thanthan the USMC did

[Raellus]

Or the incidiary-carrying balloons the Japanese unleased against the U.S. west coast.

[copeab]

Originally Posted by 95th Rifleman

I'm reminded of that American bloke who tried to attach incendiary devices to bats.

Those actually worked in tests, in one case blowing up the car of a general observing the test ...

[Webstral]

Originally Posted by 95th Rifleman

I'm reminded of that American bloke who tried to attach incendiary devices to bats.

That idea would have worked if it hadn't proved possible to cut out the middle man (bat) and deliver incendiaries straight from the bomb bay to the target.

[Webstral]

Originally Posted by copeab

(2) The Me 163 Komet, a rocket fighter tat killed more of it's own pilots than Allied planes did. And that doesn't include ground crew killed by the toxic fuel.

There was an idea ahead of its time. If the fuel problem could have been solved in early 1944, the Komet would have the been the ultimate interceptor of its day.

[RN7]

Originally Posted by copeab

The much-maligned P-40 was actually a good match against the Zero as long as the Allied pilot didn't engage in a low-speed turning dogfight or try to out-climb the Zero.

(At high speeds, the P-40 could actually out-turn the Zero).

The P-40 had a slow climb rate and an inferior turn rate to the Zero, but it was actually as fast as the Spitfire 1A and Bf-109E and was slightly quicker than the Zero. The Zero was more maneuverable than the P-40 but it was more maneuverable than every other fighter in 1940/41. The P-40 had good armor, firepower, roll rate, and dive speed, and the Japanese rated it as their most dangerous opponent at low altitude. The P-40 actually had a very good air-to-air combat record, particularly with Chennault Flying Tigers in China against the Japanese, the 325th Fighter Group in Italy and the Royal New Zealand Air Force and was still in use with American forces at the end of the war.

Originally Posted by copeab

While their tanks had thing armor and weak guns, they were reliable and had good cross-country performance. The main problem was that fighting the Chinese had taught the Japanese the wrong lessons about tank warfare.

The main problem with the Japanese is that they didn't learn any lessons about tank warfare.

In 1939 the Russian army gave them such a hammering in northern China that Japan refused to even think about attacking Russia even after the German invasion. The Japanese Army continued to use the same outdated tactics and type of weapons throughout the war against the Allies instead of learning how to fight against modern mechanised armies. Little or no attempt was made to ask the German army for their very experienced and competant advice in how to counter Soviet or Western mechanised armies and tactics, or to even license producing modern German tanks to give themselves a fighting chance when they went up against modern Allied tanks. The result was a one sided slaughter and led to the biggest military defeat in the history of the Japanese Army when Stalin send the Red Army back into China in August 1945.

[Webstral]

Originally Posted by RN7

The main problem with the Japanese is that they didn't learn any lessons about tank warfare. In 1939 the Russian army gave them such a hammering in northern China that Japan refused to even think...

This is one of the big problems with NTC and JRTC, in my mind. When you lose the game by a couple of runs, you have a serious look at what you can do improve your game. When you lose the game by a dozen runs, you shrug your shoulders and put it behind you. My brigade walked away from NTC with nothing new to talk about because we got taken so thoroughly to the cleaners that we were more interested in forgetting about the experience and salvaging our self-esteem than in investigating why we got pounded so hard. The OPFOR needs to learn how to back off and provide the BLUFOR with a learning experience, not another high-fiving experience for themselves at the downtown establishments. The Japanese got handled so roughly that they turned their backs on all of the lessons they could have learned.