The fascination with WW2 and it's resulting advancements ...

Mark Allen M · **Joined:** Fri Feb 03, 2012 1:48 pm **Posts:** 7819

I don't like the thread title so forgive me for that if you would, but I think I'll try to post a thread (without photos this time) and see how it goes.

A thought of mine for as long as I can remember has been the "what has the world achieved and gained" by the event known as WW2. The obvious are clear. The globe achieved world peace while eliminating tyranny and oppression (to an extent anyway). The world also advanced significantly in technological areas, most notably in aviation, and again quite clearly obvious. But at what price did this advancement in technology cost. Was it worth it? and if history could be changed would we, as humans, be willing to fall back in time perhaps 20 to 30 years or further to have eliminated that God awful war at the cost of losing our place today with this technology. The cost in my opinion was far more than what we achieved and gained technologically. I'm convinced we as a society would have advanced rapidly anyway, perhaps not as fast because of the war, but we would have gotten close. I find not alarming of course, but interesting the fascination particularly with the younger generations, of the hardware used to fight that war. We Warbird enthusiasts are no exception to this fascination. We love the old airplanes, tanks, boats etc. and I wouldn't be at all surprised if there are some out there that have a genuine appreciation for the Second World War for generating most of what many of us have as a passion. This of course is not anyone's fault to believe this way. I just wonder what others thoughts may be on this subject here on WIX. Since this website is predominately Warbird related this post is intended to address advancement in aviation more so than other areas of advancement as that could be for a very long debate.

A question would be did we advance much faster in technology because of WW2, sure we did, as that's really no question. Did we advance as human beings? ... well that's in the eye of the beholder and each ones soul to perhaps help explain. IMHO you can take back all your rapidly accelerated technological advancements as a result of WW2 if we could have back all the innocent lives that were lost and property destroyed during those horrible years of war. A shame dreaming is just that, dreaming, but one can wonder.

So I hope I have generated something interesting to state here. Hopefully it's not just a bit of nonsense to waste some folks time. Probably could have added more and explained things better. See how it goes from here. Or perhaps this will enforce the thought that I should just stick to posting old photos :wink:

It would be nice to hear from some smarter people than me, which doesn't take much effort :wink:

Mods can move this one somewhere else if necessary.

seagull61785 · **Posted:** Thu Jan 23, 2014 2:41 pm

Thanks for the challenge Mark.

Here's my two cents worth. If I attempt to answer your hypothesis in an academic or philosophical manner it would probably take me till the end of time. As I am neither an academic or a philosopher, and being a realist by nature, I shall respond with more practical input.

The second world war happened, as many wars have done since the beginning of time, by basically a section of humanity trying to bully others - usually their neighbours. And with the phenomenon of bullying whether it be by kids in the schoolyard or whole nations, you have only in reality two choices. You can either cower down and accept it or you can stand up and fight it. I seem to recall the old saying from Irishman Edmund Burke that "The only thing necessary for Evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing". He was right on the bull's-eye here.

I would say that Adolf H and his followers were some of the 'biggest bullies of all' and therefore the conflict that became the second world war rapidly and unavoidably was escalated to the terrible scale it became. Unfortunately for mankind the timing of Hitler coming to power coincided with an era of very rapid technology expansion, especially in the air. Between the two world wars an awful lot was going on in the air. Better engines, blind flying, navigation aids, and of course armament. All of a sudden the nations that cried 'poor' in peacetime when it came to military budgets (does this sound familiar) suddenly found the funds to match the 'arms race' that was obviously going on in Germany and they had to keep pace or face the prospect of being out-gunned when the shooting started. As in sports or other endeavours war is no different - 'nobody relishes the thought of coming second'.

Fast-forwarding to 1946 the advances made in both aviation and weaponry were astonishing. The propeller strike aircraft was obsolete as jets were operational, combat aircraft could find their way to the target in all weathers night and day (whether they could hit it reliably when they found it was a few years away of course), and the real biggie that mankind had to deal with was the outcome of the Manhattan Project.

Was it worth the millions of lives wasted in order to remove a bully? My answer is 'Yes'. Not an easy call to make but the way I look at it is if you had let the bully Hitler carry on un-checked he would have exterminated millions more. Same goes for the other bullies intent of expanding their national borders throughout the Pacific region. In many ways they raised the practice of bullying to an 'Art Form'. Happily they were stopped too.

Sadly this behaviour still happens in places around the world. I don't think it is possible to change human nature.

Thank God we had the right technology at the right time. And of course the courage and strength of will shown by our men to use it against the bullies.

That's all

Barry

PS - Don't stop posting photos please.

Mark Allen M · **Joined:** Fri Feb 03, 2012 1:48 pm **Posts:** 7819

Bravo Barry. Very thoughtful, nicely written and much appreciated post. Thx much.
Well worth another trip to NZ

p51 · **Posted:** Thu Jan 23, 2014 4:08 pm

It's hard to address, but some horrific things led to great breakthroughs later on. Sick as it may sound, medical experiementation in the Hollocaust was used by medical science for a long time. Several anotomical diagrams done by SS doctors were used by medical schools for a very long time after the war.
It could also be said that the missions to the Moon started with the horrors experienced by those killed building the V-2 rockets in WW2.
I doubt you could count all the advances we've had since WW2 which could directly be attributed to unspeakable acts of cruelty during the war, all in the name of beating the enemy...

k5083 · **Posted:** Thu Jan 23, 2014 4:54 pm

Geopolitically, it's important to remember that democracy was not the only winner. The biggest single player on the winning side was the USSR, a totalitarian regime. Another winner was China, an authoritarian regime under the KMT, soon replaced by a totalitarian regime. Arguably, communist USSR and China had more staying power than the personality-based fascist cults of Germany and Italy would have. So the world in, say, 1960 might have been more democratic if Germany and Italy had been allowed to subjugate Europe. No one really knows.

The Pacific war was a clash between two expansionist imperial powers, Japan and the United States, both of which had declared their intention since at least the turn of the century to be the dominant power on the shores of the Pacific, while only one of them could be. Not that they were equivalent; the Japanese were more aggressive and brutal to the countries they subjugated; but the war was fought not over ideologies and governmental systems, but over the competition for power and influence.

No doubt the war produced developments in technology that benefitted humanity sooner than they otherwise would have. Of course, it also brought advances in destructive technology that we could have stood to wait for. The technology of indiscriminate bombing of civilians, both conventional and nuclear, was not only developed but used, and used by the more responsible nations even when they had the upper hand and had eliminated any threat to their own homelands -- thus forever erasing their moral standing to argue that such technologies should be used only in the most desperate of circumstances.

In economic terms, war is always a tremendous waste. Lives, money and manufactured items literally evaporate. Not every nation is a loser, and the U.S. and Canada both profited handsomely as suppliers of war materiel while sacrificing relatively few military lives, essentially no civilian lives, and none of their cultural treasures or infrastructure. Most other nations, winners or losers, took a huge economic and cultural hit. It was the 1960s before many of those societies were on their feet again.

August

wendovertom · **Posted:** Thu Jan 23, 2014 7:03 pm

Great topic and post - great answers too.

I think that the war "pushed" advancement pretty hard. Many of the advancements would have been made anyway but probably not for many more years. Everyone worked hard to produce the tools to win (broadly speaking) and that extra effort and drive brought technical advancements far quicker than would have happened in peacetime. This of course does not make war a desirable avenue of development and evolution. I think of George Caron's (509th tail gunner) statement and while it is in regard to the atomic bomb I think it applies to the technologiacal advances as well, (paraphrasing here) "There was a monster loose in the world and it was killing everyone American and Japanese, we had to find a way to stop it and we did - it would have been wrong to not use it". Welding ship hulls instead of riviting is certainly another advancement that comes to mind along with a better understanding of the atmosphere and the jet stream. I am sure there were medical advancements in treating the wounded but that is not an area I am versed in at all.

I really like August's statement about the economic waste of war as well - google pictures of the waste in Afghanistan - there are literally mountians of military scrap around Kabul.

It would be nice to live in a world where we honor our veterans by living in such a manner that our children never need take up arms again.

Tom P.

Mark Allen M · **Joined:** Fri Feb 03, 2012 1:48 pm **Posts:** 7819

There are some who would argue that "there is nothing that war has ever achieved that we could not better achieve without it". Perhaps true in certain aspects but one still has to conclude that war (WW2 predominately) most certainly boosted technological innovation in the 1940's. WW2 was a time of incredible innovation driven by necessity wouldn't you think? As just one example I would have to suggest that we perhaps would not have advanced computer technology at the level we have today for it not the significant leaps forward during WW2 and you could conclude that we may not be having these conversations on forums such as WIX for perhaps years to come. Could have been possible.

sandiego89 · **Joined:** Mon May 21, 2012 12:28 pm **Posts:** 1199

Good stuff. I would also expand that the war also directly created the major shaping forces for the next 40 years after the war, and to some extent today, namely with the cold war.

The race for nuclear weapons delivery greatly influenced the weapons systems, aircraft, electronics, missiles and the space race. These all contributed greatly to computer advances, the internet and ultra-fast connections.

I agree that many of the advances would have come eventually, but the war and the cold war did influence who made the advances. Europe was a major center of inovation before the war, but much of that shifted to the USA during the war (often with European help). The USA had a tremendous resource base to pull from, and as others have stated, was not surrounded by the rubble of war.

I also think WW2 was a "positive" in that the technology and consequences of warfare that matured in WW2 have essentially prevented a major world wide war since then. No one thinks they can "win" a major territorial war between two or more large powers. There have been major conflcits since WW2, but not major wars.

p51 · **Posted:** Fri Jan 24, 2014 6:54 pm

Someone recently asked what good ever comes out of war and he's a space program fan.
I said, "Do you really think we could have landed men on the moon before the 1960s were over had WW2 not happened?"
He just stood there and blinked... :shock:

O.P. · **Posted:** Fri Jan 24, 2014 10:06 pm

I think most of the tech advancements would have happened anyway, in a shorter time than most folks imagine. Most of it was on the board before the war. The war provided an a$$pile of cash to make it happen somewhat quicker, without all of the questions asked from investors, gubmint, ect. As far as airplanes, I would think the timeline would be darn near the same, quantities less, tech, the same. They were headed that way before the war. 5 years or less. It might not have looked the same visually, or in the massive amounts, but it would have been the same and broken the same barriers. Other tech was on the same track, and would probably have the same results.

Sans War, we would have been in a "Cold War" anyway with some extra folks involved, and that would have fueled more advancement, like it actually did in the real life timeline.

Money drives tech.

I think a good modern analogy to this question is phones. I think most of us here are old enough to remember the days of the landline phone, your phone bill, and, "get off the phone boy, it's costing me money!" I'm old enough to remember listening in on the "Party Line". The last time I had an actual phone line in my house was 1997. I do IT for a living and the last time I had actual DID lines in a business I set up was 2003. Real touchscreen smartphones, 2007. Look at it now. Shoot, look at all of it now. less than 15 years. All money driven. No war. World War anyway.

The jet engine and the modern airliner were on the board before the war, it probably would have happened anyway in about the same timeline. Put yourself then. Think about it for awhile. If you were born in 1920, what did you see up to 1940?

As a side thought, the thing that worries me is the taking the wrong track thing, due to the lack of an all out everybody is in it kind of war. Maginot line kinda stuff. There hasn't been a no $hit put up or shut up fight since WW2. It makes me wonder if a wrong track or two might have been taken.

I'm rambling. I'm sick and am curing it with beer.

Luv ya'll Wix!
OP

Wilson · **Posted:** Fri Jan 24, 2014 10:20 pm

Germany, Japan and Italy all wanted to be major players on the world stage, but were late to the party. The world had already been split-up by the superpowers of the time.

Consequently, Germany, Japan and Italy went about it the old fashioned way: military force. Italy was not strong economically, so they went after the low hanging fruit. Germany and Japan showed a lot more ambition and daring. They also raised a whole generation to be used as fodder for their aims.

Remarkably, in the years after the war, the winners gave up their colonies - the very thing Germany, Japan and Italy were after. It became accepted practice that if you needed natural resources, you bought them, not seized them by force.

Very few countries have tired natural resource grabs since the end of World War II. Saddam Hussein trying to grab Kuwait is the main one that comes to mind. And China seems to be testing the waters the last few months, but with the world united against them. Yeah, the Soviets grabbed Eastern Europe, but their motivation was different, and in the end, they still gave it up.

But anyway, there you have it: the end of colonies and the general acceptance that you can’t take territory by force because you want its natural resources.

It still does seem odd to me, however, for us to have conquered the vast natural resources of Iraq and Afghanistan, only to walk away.

p51 · **Posted:** Sat Jan 25, 2014 1:39 am

O.P. wrote:

I think most of the tech advancements would have happened anyway, in a shorter time than most folks imagine.

I disagree. Sure, many of these advances would have occured, but without a crushing mandate from the combatant nations to push these technologies, we'd have been years further back, at least in the immediate postwar era.
That said, TV was getting into Britain before the war started, and i do wonder if we'd had TV before 1950 if the war had never happened. I talked with a 91st BG B-17 pilot year ago who swore he saw TVs in every British house he was ever invited to, all being used as tables now that British TV was on hold for the duration.
But I'll go back to my space analogy again. Does anyone think we'd have landed a man on the Moon before 1970 had WW2 never happened (if, even at all)?
Seriously, think of where both the Russian and US programs were before each side decided they needed the German scientists to help them out. And there simply NO WAY Germany would have gotten nearly that far without the war to push the technology as far out as it could go for the time.
Before the war, a few futurists figured we'd land a man on the Moon maybe by the 1980s...

seagull61785 · **Posted:** Sat Jan 25, 2014 9:10 pm

A couple of thoughts to add to the discussion...

Number 1 - Both Germany and Japan had their industrial might and a lot of their infrastructure severely damaged if not destroyed by 1945. So what happened when the shooting stopped? The USA, Britain and other members of the Allied Coalition wasted no time in occupying and assisting in massive rebuild programmes. Why? Because we were the good guys and we believed in a lot of noble things like democracy, fair play, helping the 'under-dog' etc. Practically speaking it also helped to ensure that the 'Dark Side of the Force' was significantly eradicated in these ex-Axis countries.

What happened then? By the 1960's the world was waking up to the fact that the two losing nations (the 'bad guys') had made the most of their brand new factories and modern allied-built facilities and were rapidly becoming the dominant nations in world trade and manufacturing. Of course they could do this as they had a real competitive edge while most of the American and British companies had to make do with mostly antiquated production facilities due to the fact that not many were destroyed by enemy bombing pre-1945.

It seems to me that although they lost the war, the ex-Axis powers appear to have 'won the peace'.

So is the moral of this viewpoint a subtle piece of strategy : If a poor nation wants to get rich all they have to do is to declare war on the US and/or its former allies, get bombed to kingdom come, then receive a whole lot of financial aid to build themselves into a rich nation? Slightly tongue in cheek I know and I'm sure this was not in Hitler's motivation at all. Just thought I'de throw it in for a slightly left field view.

Thought number two is more relevant to the aircraft and military technology. Back in the mid-1930's Hitler sent elements of its fledgling Luftwaffe to Spain to assist the Fascists. The Condor Legion benefitted immeasurably from this excursion with the refinement of equipment, tactics and real-time battle experience. This gave them a real edge in 1940. While it is true we have not had any more 'world wars' since 1945, we do appear to have had a whole lot of 'serious conflicts' that one way or another have probably have given the world's arms and weaponry suppliers an invaluable opportunity to test new designs, new types of aircraft, weapons etc., just like the Condor Legion did years before. Who can estimate just how much collateral damage, military and civilian casualties there have been in these small wars, while the process of testing and the development of aircraft and weapons' system refinements carried on regardless. After all the best way to test a new product is surely to use it for real isn't it? (This statement obviously shouldn't be allowed to apply to nukes).

My point here is that Man has always been a warlike species. If Man's neighbour has the latest in destructive firepower, then Man feels vulnerable if he cannot match it. That is the nature of the animal and I doubt he will ever change for the better.

Sad isn't it?

shrike · **Posted:** Sun Jan 26, 2014 11:46 am

seagull61785 wrote:

Thought number two is more relevant to the aircraft and military technology. Back in the mid-1930's Hitler sent elements of its fledgling Luftwaffe to Spain to assist the Fascists. The Condor Legion benefitted immeasurably from this excursion with the refinement of equipment, tactics and real-time battle experience. This gave them a real edge in 1940.

One other huge advantage that both the Luftwaffe and Heer (particularly armour development) had was a fairly clean slate to start from. Building up an air force and tank force from scratch in the mid to late 1930's meant that no one was bucking the previous 20 years of 'tradition' - ie. preconceptions.

seagull61785 · **Posted:** Sun Jan 26, 2014 2:55 pm

That's a very good point Shrike. The clean slate approach also gave them the industrial edge in post-war world trade (as already mentioned).

Unfortunately (for Germany) the focus on developing the 'blitzkrieg' approach to tactical warfare with light, comparatively short range bombers providing close support to tanks and infantry ultimately became their Achilles Heel. As much as this 'dream-team' pairing of aircraft and fast tanks on the battlefield perfectly suited the dubious practice of quickly conquering one's European neighbours it deluded their own planners in high command into ignoring any likelihood of waging war for longer periods, thus denying any need for a strategic, longer range bomber force. Their 'tactical' focus had led to huge successes so why should they change the recipe? As they never saw the need for a heavy bomber force they never built one. Once they realised that they had an extended fight on their hands it was too late to develop and build one, because they were having to commit all of their resources into building the defensive aircraft needed to wage war on two fronts at once. In hindsight Operation Barbarossa was a bit silly on Hitler's part. Mind you the silliness didn't end there. Why go to the trouble of developing a superb world-beating defensive fighter like the Me 262 only to use it as a 'Blitz Bomber' (another of Adolf's incredible edicts - just what was the man smoking?) That was just downright stupid. We should all be thankful the man remained in charge until the very end.

Barry

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