Allied WW2 experimental weapons.

[Dirty Hipsters]

The great panjandrum is pretty cool.

Panjandrum - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

A rocket propelled explosive delivery system for taking out German fortifications. It didn't work during testing, but it's a really cool concept.

 

[Thaluikhain]

The Delisle carbine, IIRC, wasn't really adopted. But that was a bolt action .45 with a suppresor, not exciting. The OSS had a little crossbow, which they expected to use because it was quiet, but people preferred a suppressed 1911. Also the OSS had caccolube, a condom full of abrasive materials you could stick into the oil intake of an enemy vehicle to ruin it after the engine's been run for a bit. The US would get a lemonade bottle full of petrol and phosphorous which self-ignited when it broke, but that's just a fancier molotov.

The Australian Owen gun was weird looking, but it was standard for Australian forces, don't know if that counts.

 

[Worgen]

How has no one mentioned the Bat Bomb yet?
Incendiaries delivered via bats, deployment was only halted due to the completion of the atomic bomb.

I imagine that would make for one hell of a killstreak reward. A colony of bats, all on fire, descending upon your enemies like tiny, angry, enemy-tracking molotovs.

Heh, I literally mentioned that in the post above yours. LOL, I posted it like 1 min before you posted too.

 

[Terminal Blue]

This is one is actually kind of sad and a good story. It's the Miles M.52.

By 1942, Germany was developing very fast jet and rocket powered aircraft. The British government was looking for an aircraft which could match those speeds. However, due to a mixup between metric and imperial measurements, the specification ended up calling for an aircraft that could reach 1000mph. This would be supersonic flight and was, at the time, widely believed to be impossible. Getting close to the sound barrier was incredibly dangerous, because the massive increase in drag would lock up existing control surfaces and make aircraft unable to maneuver.

So for three years, the Miles aircraft company worked to build a supersonic aircraft noone actually wanted. They solved the theoretical problems of how to maintain control of an aircraft at transsonic speeds. However, the project was cancelled as soon as the war ended, both because of the horrific financial situation after the war and because much of the air force command still believed transsonic flight was impossible. In the end, the M.52 only existed in the form of scale models and design documents and an almost finished prototype. The scale models, incidentally, did achieve controllable supersonic flight.

Under allied technology sharing agreements, the research and specifications for the M.52 were shared with US counterparts, and ultimately many of the innovations were incorporated into the Bell X1. However, after receiving the data the US simply neglected to send anything back (this is actually surprisingly typical of allied technology sharing agreements).

The M.52 was hugely ahead of its time (so ahead of its time that it had to be commissioned by accident). The work which went into designing it made supersonic flight achievable, and yet it never actually flew. It could very easily have been the first manned supersonic aircraft, but instead it's just a sad little footnote in aviation history.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

A lot of our very stupid shit got the grace to be tested well away from the front lines and well away from enemy invasion.

But, like, the Locust, a paratrooping tank that couldn't paratroop:

For the record, the Tiger was a perfectly good tank at what it was designed to do. Get moved to a place, gear up, launch a devastating assault, then fall back for maintenance while conventional forces exploit the break.

It was never a tank of the line. It's just that the realities of war against the Soviets meant they didn't get to be used as designed. More than anything, the Nazi war machine was absurdly hyper-specialized. We're talking individual fitted uniforms and dozens of helmet designs. And that's before we get to the batshit loony stuff

 

[Meximagician]

Heh, I literally mentioned that in the post above yours. LOL, I posted it like 1 min before you posted too.

Okay then, on the subject of Worms'-exploding-sheep-but-in-real-life, there were also the anti-tank dogs trained by the Russians and a similar program tested by the US. This one was less successful, as it turns out dogs:

• don't like loud noises like tanks or gunfire,
• don't like wandering into unknown places when scared,
• often ran towards their handlers when scared,
• in the case of the Soviet program were trained on Russian diesel engine tanks, and thus preferred them over German petrol/gasoline engine

 

[Dalisclock]

The British started developing a giant aircraft carrier out of ice, but surprisingly it turned out to be not such a good idea.

Project Habakkuk - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Good against torpedo's. Not so good against melting while still uncomfortable as shit to serve on.

 

[Dalisclock]

The bliztkrieg was really a tactic of last resort since Germany knew it didn't have the resources for another WW1. It just turned out that Frances allies weren't as ready for it as they were with the Maginot line, which also wasn't long enough. The V2 was pretty impressive but as I understand the rocket tech actually came from an American inventor who was really bad at selling himself and Germany was the only country that would listen. But they were kinda useless. Their accuracy was garbage so they were really only good for hitting a city with a few bombs worth of explosives, they made decent terror weapons but terror tactics are notoriously useless to try and humble a population of a country unless you do it for a very very long time. Even if they somehow managed to split the atom first and make a few bombs they didn't have a good delivery method. The V2 didn't have the load capacity needed and they never really had a good heavy bomber, we had the B29 and even that plane needed to be modified to be able to carry the bombs. Not to mention them losing air superiority pretty hard.

It's been argued that the V2 was a massive waste of German resources that only much later paid off for the US and USSR trying to build ICBMs and Space Missions. Every piece of metal, every liter of oil, not to mention manpower and associated logistics required to build the V2s and test them and launch them were resources that couldn't be used for tanks, airplanes, rifles, bullets, supply trucks, etc(which were much more pressing, especially once the Red Army went on the offensive). Considering Germany was pressed hard and had notable issues with it's logistics chain for much of the war, squandering resources to scare the Londoners doesn't really help you.

 

[Thaluikhain]

It's been argued that the V2 was a massive waste of German resources that only much later paid off for the US and USSR trying to build ICBMs and Space Missions. Every piece of metal, every liter of oil, not to mention manpower and associated logistics required to build the V2s and test them and launch them were resources that couldn't be used for tanks, airplanes, rifles, bullets, supply trucks, etc(which were much more pressing, especially once the Red Army went on the offensive). Considering Germany was pressed hard and had notable issues with it's logistics chain for much of the war, squandering resources to scare the Londoners doesn't really help you.

In hindsight, yes, but the effectiveness wouldn't have been known in advance. There's legitimate reasons for thinking it would be desirable.

Certainly, it's a gamble, and you could argue that you shouldn't muck about with new and unproven weapons during a war, but that would have excluded the bouncing bomb, bazooka and nuclear weapons, amongst others.

 

[Breakdown]

Good against torpedo's. Not so good against melting while still uncomfortable as shit to serve on.

Yeah, in real life an aircraft carrier built out of ice and woodpulp is pretty unworkable. It might be interesting to explore in fiction though, a steampunk style story set on a gigantic pykrete ship or floating island.

Maybe the Wall in Game of Thrones was built from pykrete...

 

[09philj]

Good against torpedo's. Not so good against melting while still uncomfortable as shit to serve on.

The crew on a science programme that used to be on the BBC had a go at making an ice boat, it did float although it was quite hard to control.

 

[Agema]

This is one is actually kind of sad and a good story. It's the Miles M.52.

Odd but true: WW2 jet aircraft development was terrible.

The first jet engine was develped by Frank Whittle in the mid-30s. The British government couldn't have cared less, and left it to stew for years; the air force didn't seem to have believed a pilot or plane could tolerate those sorts of speeds. WWII rolled along, and the Germans looked at jet aircraft with far less vigour than they pursued inferior projects. For some inexplicable reason made a fight-bomber rather than a fighter: it was reputedly highly effective as a fighter aircraft, albeit far too late the change the course of the war. The British meanwhile continued half-heartedly and stuck it's jet engines on a deeply unimpressive chassis to make it's own fighter-bomber, which it then barely used just in case one crashed over German territory and was copied. (Did they not realise the Germans had their own jet fighter?)

What a waste.

Under allied technology sharing agreements, the research and specifications for the M.52 were shared with US counterparts, and ultimately many of the innovations were incorporated into the Bell X1. However, after receiving the data the US simply neglected to send anything back (this is actually surprisingly typical of allied technology sharing agreements).

Even more bizarrely, the British apparently sold a load jet engines to the USSR after WW2 with the idea of a trade deal to supply them, and of course the Soviets instead just reverse engineered it, and poured out a ton of Mig-15s without paying a penny. What were they thinking?

 

[Dalisclock]

Yeah, in real life an aircraft carrier built out of ice and woodpulp is pretty unworkable. It might be interesting to explore in fiction though, a steampunk style story set on a gigantic pykrete ship or floating island.

Maybe the Wall in Game of Thrones was built from pykrete...

What always kills it for me is the inherent problem with the concept.

Aircraft Carriers use big steam turbines and boilers to drive them. So you need at least part of the ship to be full of hot-ass steam pipes to make the thing actually move, and that's assuming you don't want hot water or steam pressure for anything else. Now stick this in a carrier made of ICE and you can see why this all feels like a very expensive way to sink a carrier without the enemy firing a shot at it.'

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

What always kills it for me is the inherent problem with the concept.

Aircraft Carriers use big steam turbines and boilers to drive them. So you need at least part of the ship to be full of hot-ass steam pipes to make the thing actually move, and that's assuming you don't want hot water or steam pressure for anything else. Now stick this in a carrier made of ICE and you can see why this all feels like a very expensive way to sink a carrier without the enemy firing a shot at it.'

Psh, who needs an engine? Just wait for the carrier to drift to the position you want it. It should arrive there sometime within the next couple of decades. Problem solved.

 

[Thaluikhain]

What always kills it for me is the inherent problem with the concept.

Aircraft Carriers use big steam turbines and boilers to drive them. So you need at least part of the ship to be full of hot-ass steam pipes to make the thing actually move, and that's assuming you don't want hot water or steam pressure for anything else. Now stick this in a carrier made of ICE and you can see why this all feels like a very expensive way to sink a carrier without the enemy firing a shot at it.'

Can't you have it towed by another ship? If you really wanted to do this at all, that is.

 

[Dalisclock]

Can't you have it towed by another ship? If you really wanted to do this at all, that is.

I guess you could do that but it creates more problems
-You're tasking another ship(likely a battlecruiser or the like) to tow it around and effectively limiting it from doing it's main job, since it can't really take evasive manuevers or tack for optimal gunfire(broadsides), so you're reducing an already useful warship to a glorified tugboat. The fact carriers had to turn into the wind to launch also means they're pretty much stuck following those maneuvers rather then anything else they could be doing. Arguably if you have ships to spare for such an endevour you're probably not in a position to need to the ice carrier in the first place.
-You're creating an obstacle in front of the flight deck for planes to hopefully not crash into....which isn't optimal for planes that need takeoff space.
-If you take out the towing ship, the carrier isn't going to move and if it doesn't have strong wing across the flight deck, the carrier is now useless for launching planes.

And it's still gonna melt even without any steam engines, it'll just melt slower.

Now, if the carrier is meant for a single mission and who cares after that, sure, but that's a lot of time and effort for a one off.

 

[Terminal Blue]

WWII rolled along, and the Germans looked at jet aircraft with far less vigour than they pursued inferior projects. For some inexplicable reason made a fight-bomber rather than a fighter:

As I understand it, that was mostly Hitler's interference. Hitler maintained a fairly irrational belief that strategic bombing would destroy the allies will to fight (which probably derives from his political views on the weakness of liberal democracy) and placed a huge amount of stock in the idea of the vengeance weapon attacks on allied cities.

 

[Thaluikhain]

As I understand it, that was mostly Hitler's interference. Hitler maintained a fairly irrational belief that strategic bombing would destroy the allies will to fight (which probably derives from his political views on the weakness of liberal democracy) and placed a huge amount of stock in the idea of the vengeance weapon attacks on allied cities.

I'm not sure about that. The vengeance weapons, sure, but at least originally, the idea was against strategic bombing, as Germany needed places to conquer that weren't wastelands. Because of this they favoured tactical rather than strategic bombers.

Of course, when they obviously couldn't invade over the channel and bombed British that wasn't as intended, and they had the wrong planes for it.

 

[deleted20220709]

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[Satinavian]

I mean, the UK achieved more than whole German armies by inventing a computer. Or vastly superior radar. These things might not seem so flashy, but they were a damn sight more useful than the expensive, inaccurate, glorified fireworks Werner von Braun came up with.

Whether the Germans or the British or even someone completely else "invented" the computer is heavily disputed. But the British put way more ressources to it and used it in the war while the German version got destroyed in some air raid and put aside for better times.

And the radar started out as some kind of ray based anti-aircraft gun. Only during development people recongnized that they would never get enough power to shoot down anything but the whole system could be used for detection.

But the whole V2 stuff was just smoke and mirrors. A propaganda stunt to distract the population that the own side is loosing. "Ok, the allies are bombing all of our cities, we thoroughly lost air superiory in our own territory and won't get it back, but we can still bomb London as well. We haven't really lost yet."


In general your argument is correct. A lot of wartime German projects are just grandiose nonsense, born more of the desire to flatter the Nazi leaders and their taste and less because they are actually that useful. But then most of that stuff never even got to prototype stage for good reasons and is just famous nowadays because people like the whacky Nazi technology trope.