Six months wouldn’t have hurt the US all that much in WW II; it didn’t really get heavily involved in the European war until 1943 and in the Pacific War centemetric radar wasn’t critical until 1944. It was Britain, in the battle of the Atlantic, which would have been hurt far more than the US
However, I agree that the way it worked out was advantageous to both parties, so the question of what British technology was worth to the US is, in my opinion, nugatory.
The P-51 Mustang wasn’t a great fighter with the original American Allison engine. It became a great fighter with the British Rolls Royce Merlin, which had a direct impact on its combat performance and success.
So what?
The P-51 was designed for the British at their behest, so if they didn’t like the performance with the original engine, it only makes sense they would try to salvage the design by replacing it with an engine of their own. There were plenty of very successful American-designed fighters with American engines in WW II. The P-38, P-40. F6F, P-47, and F4U come to mind.
The U.S. was in North Africa by Nov. 1942 (Operation Torch) and was heavily involved in various power struggles over the nature of the coming War not long after Pearl Harbor. And I am not sure that a relative late involvement in the War supports your argument entirely. The United States may well have had a lot of different cutting edge technical projects going on, but limited fruition came about without at least some exchange with Britain. In the period of 1940-1943, the United States had to swell it’s military from and extremely outmoded ‘constabulary force’ of a few hundred thousand to a military juggernaut, though one that never quite reached its original envisioning. America simply had its hands full attempting to reach military parity, then eventual superiority, with the Axis. In short, the U.S. had a lot of choices to make, and did have some limitations…
…and in the Pacific War centemetric radar wasn’t critical until 1944. It was Britain, in the battle of the Atlantic, which would have been hurt far more than the US
Define “hurt.” If the U.S. cannot get sufficient forces to the"world’s largest aircraft carrier" without suffering losses of attrition in men and material, then the U.S. cannot even effectively prosecute a War without suffering millions of casualties and possibly fighting for decades. Even with industrial superiority, which by no means is absolutely guaranteed in the long run if Britain collapses and the Soviet Union is conquered…
However, I agree that the way it worked out was advantageous to both parties, so the question of what British technology was worth to the US is, in my opinion, nugatory.
I don’t agree it was nugatory. British sourced research and technology saved tens of thousands of American lives, from the Merlin engine to U.S. artillery…
Your argument is extremely nebulous and unfocused. How was US participation in the North African landings affected by centemetric radar, or rather the lack thereof? The U-boats which were the prime target of centemetric radar at that point inflicted minimal casualties on US Operation Torch forces; not a single US soldier slated for Ope3ration Torch was lost to U-boats. The “power struggles” in which the US was involved before and after Pearl Harbor had nothing to do with radar and are irrelevant to this debate. It’s true in one case that US technological development was boosted by British discovery of the cavity magnetron, however, the British sharing it with the US benefited them far more than it did the US. The argument that the US was engaged in raising an army (and a Navy and an Air Force) early in the war is also irrelevant as the US was the one country in the world which managed to both mobilize it’s manpower and simultaneously launch hundreds, if not thousands, of successful technological development projects. If you have any concrete evidence that the manpower mobilization requirements of the US prevented or slowed any of it’s technological projects, please present it.
The term “hurt” in the context in which I used it means to be damaged significantly in the ability to wage defensive or offensive war or withstand the enemy’s attacks.
The US manpower build-up in Britain was not instituted until later in the war when the US would have, in any case developed workable centemetric radar on it’s own. There was simply no reason to ship huge numbers of men to England early in the war when the British were refusing to undertake effective offensive action against Germany on the European continent. They would simply have exacerbated the problem of supply enough food , fuel, and other supplies to Britain to maintain them.
Again an extremely nebulous argument with no concrete evidence to support it. Perhaps you can supply some data or evidence to support your assertions? The British certainly didn’t supply technological data to the US because it might save American lives; it supplied whatever data it thought appropriate out of an interest in preserving it’s own hide. Just as the US took actions which were favorable to the British because it reasoned these actions to be in it’s own interests.
The proposition that the US owes anything to British research before or during WW II has been pretty much debunked considering such research could or was being duplicated here or that the fruits of such research were unobtainable to the British without the means of mass producing the results.
LOL. I guess the fact that British radar was operational before the Battle of Britain doesn’t figure into your calculations.
OK, Wizard, have it your way, except that the British Tubular Alloys project - like radar - was way ahead of any American developments in nuclear research. You are right that the US had the financial and technical resources to bring atomic research to fruition, but this does not alter the fact that the British got there first. I don’t recall hearing that the US had any operational jet combat aircraft before the end of the war, but the British did, although they never used them for anything other than reconnaissance on the continent. It’s really not necessary to be chauvinistic about this.
[QUOTE= nugatory.[/QUOTE]
Not familiar with the word “nugatory.”
“US was right behind them”
Nonsense. The ONLY jet engines the US had were gifts from the British.
Hardly, because US radar was also operational before the Battle of Britain so that “fact” is of no consequence.
Operational? If you mean they had a working example, that’s interesting but hardly unique (quite a few countries did). What the UK had, uniquely, was an operationally useful radar system - comprising both the radar itself and the associated Command & Control systems. Big difference.
Amen to that. And it worked and helped to defeat the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain.
Far from being chauvinistic, I’m trying to be accurate, something that you seem to disregard.
BTW, it’s not “Tubular Alloys” but “Tube Alloys”.
In actuality, the British Tube Alloys project was never “way ahead of any American developments”. In fact, it was the Maud Committee (the forerunner of Tube Alloys) report that had the greatest impact on the American bomb development project and this was only to convince certain skeptical American leaders that isotope separation and ultimately a bomb, was a real possibility. Most American physicists were already convinced of that fact and were ahead of British researchers in both isotope separation and plutonium creation theory and research. By the time Tube Alloys was created(October, 1941), the Americans were markedly ahead of the British in these fields.
In “The Manhattan Project” edited by Cynthia Kelly, an exchange between Mark Oliphant, a British physicist working on the Tube Alloys project and who ad been to America to survey the American bomb project, and Sir James Chadwick, author of the Maud Report which preceded the Tube Alloys project, is reported. Oliphant says to Chadwick;
“The Americans will undoubtedly go right ahead with both projects [bomb and reactor]. and there is little doubt that they with their tremendous resources will achieve both before we have fairly begun. It seems far wiser to work in completely with them…”
Chadwick responds by saying that Britain is “some way ahead and will stay ahead”. Oliphant who had just returned from America where he had been in contact with the American researchers replies;
“I still feel that you in common with many other people in this country underestimate seriously the extent of the American effort. I am extremely sorry that you have not gone to the States yourself for I am sure the picture which one gets in that way is rather different from that obtained from visiting Americans [Pegram and Urey]…”
The Tube Alloys research had very little impact on the Manhattan Project and I can find no specific information imparted from Tube Alloys to the American team that was of any real value in hastening the American project. If you have any information along these lines, please present it.
British researchers did make significant contributions to the Manhattan Project, but only after it was well along and only by working under the overall supervision of Groves and Oppenheimer in this country. In October, 1943, the British enlisted the service of Niels Bohr, flying him from Stockholm to Britain in a Mosquito bomber. Bohr had been in touch with Werner Heisenberg, the German physicist who had drawn a diagram for Bohr of the German reactor design. Bohr later showed the diagram to Oppenheimer who thought the Germans “were crazy”. Bohr later told a friend, “They didn’t need my help in making an atomic bomb.”
In November, 1943, the British sent a delegation of several European and British physicists to the US to help with various aspects of the Manhattan project. This group included Otto Frisch, an Austrian, Wallace Akers, Rudolf Peierls, William G. Penney, George Placzek, P. B. Moon, James L. Tuck, Egon Bretscher, and Klaus Fuchs (the spy who betrayed the Manhattan Project to the Soviets).
In “The Making of The Atomic Bomb” by Richard Rhodes, Oppenheimer reportedly welcomed this group to Los Alamos by saying; “Welcome to Los Alamos and who the devil are you?”
Rhodes says on page 523 of his book;
“They were Churchill’s flying wedge. The bomb had been theirs as much as anybody’s, but more immediate urgencies had demanded their attention and now they were couriers sent along to help build it and then bring it home. America was giving the bomb away to another sovereign state, proliferating.”
Clearly, the British Tube Alloys Project was never significantly ahead of the US effort to produce a bomb and both projects were international in nature. It is inaccurate to claim that the Tube Alloys project hastened the advent of the atomic bomb or that war time Britain could have, on it’s own, developed an atomic bomb in anywhere near the historic time frame.
As for the development of Jet engines, the British were not significantly ahead of US researchers and did not gift the US with jet engine technology; any such suggestion borders on the absurd. Britain did field jet planes first, but this was due to a deliberate US decision to con concentrate on the production of the pop fighters that actually won the war. Jet engine technology was not significant until post-war and at that time the US was in advance of almost all other nations in this field.
Try looking it up in a dictionary, unless you are in the habit of having other people do your research.
I suppose you can support that rather ludicrous claim with some citations of authority?
Not Really. The US Navy had operational radar systems aboard it’s carriers with the associated command and control systems in place. While the operators were not as experienced in actual combat as the British were, the equipment was every bit as good according to a man who was familiar with both systems.
See the testimony of Commander William E. G. Taylor; http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/myths/radar/taylor_4.html
I was specifically responding to your incorrect assertion that the U.S. wasn’t involved in the ETO until 1943. But I will concede that my response could have been better organized as I was in a rush this morning. They were in fact already planning and allocating months after Pearl Harbor, including plans to launch an operation in France in spring or summer of 1942. To say the U.S. didn’t engage Germany until 1943 is way off the mark, even if she hadn’t literally plowed into Europe.
The U-boats which were the prime target of centemetric radar at that point inflicted minimal casualties on US Operation Torch forces; not a single US soldier slated for Ope3ration Torch was lost to U-boats. The “power struggles” in which the US was involved before and after Pearl Harbor had nothing to do with radar and are irrelevant to this debate.
It’s true in one case that US technological development was boosted by British discovery of the cavity magnetron, however, the British sharing it with the US benefited them far more than it did the US…
Again, see above response. IIRC The Kreigsmarine, the entire Wehrmacht, was caught off guard by Operation Torch. I was speaking more in line with troop ships earmarked for Britain. Even a few troop ships going down into the Atlantic would have caused stateside consternation, as indeed the German E-boat raid that killed 750 U.S. soldiers prior to D-Day was kept secret for just that reason…
The argument that the US was engaged in raising an army (and a Navy and an Air Force) early in the war is also irrelevant as the US was the one country in the world which managed to both mobilize it’s manpower and simultaneously launch hundreds, if not thousands, of successful technological development projects. If you have any concrete evidence that the manpower mobilization requirements of the US prevented or slowed any of it’s technological projects, please present it.
I don’t have evidence other than it was quite clearly the British who were light years ahead of the U.S. with certain projects that had a very tangible affect upon the war, especially in reducing casualties and shortening the conflict. But for you to make such a bold demand, you would first have to tell us when the American research projects were to bear fruition on such technologies as proximity fuses; or indeed developing a long range fighter that could escort bombers all the way to Berlin. Because prior to the P-51, every U.S. fighter seemed imbued with significant shortcomings. Personally, I think the bomber escorting was nice. But what this really allowed was the Merlin-equipped P-51D Mustang to directly challenge the Luftwaffe in a “kill them everywhere” campaign --no doubt shortening the War. The American development of the proximity fuse was a complete nonstarter and the British were way ahead thanks to some lucky breaks. I understand the “Tizard Mission” also contributed to resolving the troublesome supercharger problems earlier American fighters had and added several technologies freely shared, and so on.
The term “hurt” in the context in which I used it means to be damaged significantly in the ability to wage defensive or offensive war or withstand the enemy’s attacks.
Fair enough, I see.
The US manpower build-up in Britain was not instituted until later in the war when the US would have, in any case developed workable centemetric radar on it’s own.
I think some would argue that U.S. centemetric radar was at a bit of a dead end. Secondly, the U.S. was already planning for a preliminary invasion of Europe to buttress the Soviets, and to invade in force by 1943.
There was simply no reason to ship huge numbers of men to England early in the war when the British were refusing to undertake effective offensive action against Germany on the European continent. They would simply have exacerbated the problem of supply enough food , fuel, and other supplies to Britain to maintain them.
I agree. But you and I would have argued with the U.S. high command who were filled with ‘piss-and-vinegar’ to get at the Germans directly in Europe with a largely untrained, undersized, inexperienced, and ill-equipped army. I think the British had a point, as it would have been their divisions that would have had to bear the brunt of the initial fighting as the American Army simply didn’t have the trained divisions yet. Not to mention the fact the British were a bit more cynical regarding the ability of greenhorn U.S. divisions to stand up against an experience Wehrmacht. Thusly, FDR was sold on the Torch expedition…
Again an extremely nebulous argument with no concrete evidence to support it. Perhaps you can supply some data or evidence to support your assertions?
No more nebulous or abstract than your beliefs that the U.S. would simply have developed said technologies without the sharing of the British.
The British certainly didn’t supply technological data to the US because it might save American lives; it supplied whatever data it thought appropriate out of an interest in preserving it’s own hide. Just as the US took actions which were favorable to the British because it reasoned these actions to be in it’s own interests.
Of course! I couldn’t agree more that, like the post-war Marshall Plan, it was ‘benevolent self-interest’. But it should be said that the British could have economically benefited from said technologies after the war, and damaged its own economic interests by doing so. I think the direct sharing of Whittles jet technology also greatly enhanced U.S. jet fighter development extending benefits well into the Cold War…
The proposition that the US owes anything to British research before or during WW II has been pretty much debunked considering such research could or was being duplicated here or that the fruits of such research were unobtainable to the British without the means of mass producing the results.
A rather highly “nebulous” assertion lacking concrete examples…
Regards.
Well, the U.S. did in fact have the P-80 (later F-80) Shooting Star online just prior to the end of the war. But it of course did use what was basically a copy of the Rolls Royce jet engine. That’s off the top of my head, I’ll look it up if you wish.
He’s talking about the US Navy fitting radar to their carriers in late 1941. Last time I looked at a calendar, this is over a year after the end of the Battle of Britain. Furthermore, he described the operators as “green and inexperienced” and the communications systems “were totally inadequate to control fighters more than five miles off shore”. During the raid on Pearl Harbour itself (much smaller than most Luftwaffe raids, and over 18 months after the start of the Battle of Britain) he states that “the plots that were coming in from the various radar stations were in such confusion it was impossible to determine what was going on.”.
That isn’t an operationally useful system. It’s a wires and thermionic valves which one day with a lot of training and good leadership might (and did) morph into an operationally useful system. RAF Fighter Command had a much more useful system with Chain Home 2 1/2 years previously - the radars may have been downright primitive, but the system collated the information and got it to the people who needed it in time for it to be operationally useful. By the testimony you linked, the US armed forces were manifestly not capable of doing so at the end of 1941 - let alone at the time of the Battle of Britain as you claimed.
Regardless of what you have alleged, there was no significant US engagement of German forces in the ETO prior to 1943. Operation Torch took place in NORTH AFRICA in November, 1942. No US troopships carrying US troops were sunk by U-boats in the Atlantic at any time; thus the lack of centemetric radar cannot have been a factor in the US build-up of troops in Britain.
I am mystified by your assertion that the lack of centemetric radar was somehow a factor in the high-level planning of operations in 1942-43. True, such planning included tentative plans for operations in Europe in 1942-43, but British reluctance to come to direct grips with German forces on the continent certainly scotched those plans. I don’t see any connection between such planning and the l;ack of any kind of radar or other technology.
Such as? And where is your evidence?
Not at all. The American proximity fuse project would have borne fruit within no more than six months of the actual historic date of the first production of a workable fuse; the British project, on it’s own never would have.
I have never denied that the P-51 enjoyed superlative engine technology courtesy of the British, but it was not originally an American project. There were plenty of American designs which could have taken the place of the P-51 as a long-range fighter escort had the British not developed it first. The P-51 was, after all, a long range fighter, not primarily because of the engine, but because it was a flying gas tank.
As for the Tizard mission solving supercharger problems for the American aviation industry, citations please. It’s my understanding that the American aviation industry had no peer in supercharger technology in the early 1940’s.
I have never heard that argument expressed by anyone. Who might those people be who would so argue?
Yes, but that has absolutely nothing to do with technology projects or already deployed military technology.
Not at all. The US had projects already under way and making serious progress in practically every field, and in some cases were significantly ahead of the British. There is no reason to believe that American scientists were not the equal or the British, Germans, or anyone else, and America’s industrial resources were certainly far superior.
The Marshall Plan has nothing to do with this debate.
Perhaps the British could have benefited from postwar commercial exploitation of military research, but they made the calculation that it was more important to survive as a nation. And of course, that assumes that such military research wouldn’t have already been rendered obsolete by American technological advances, which by the end of the war were far beyond British capabilities.
No, I given examples, proximity fuses, and the atomic bomb project, you just refuse to acknowledge them.