Most innovative hand-held item of WWII - Page 4 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

Wandering the information superhighway, he came upon the last refuge of civilization, PoFo, the only forum on the internet ...

The Second World War (1939-1945).
Forum rules: No one line posts please.
#14062405
Xbow wrote:nichts für den Vater Landes und nichts für den Führer

Heh, but notice Hitlers not flying the plane. :lol:
#14062439
Taliz wrote:Heh, but notice Hitlers not flying the plane.
:eek: :p :lol:
I agree and I doubt that the failed Bavarian chicken farmer Heinrich Himmler would consider taking a ride in an Me163 to defend Vater Landes and as far as Herman Göring is concerned the cockpit is far too small to accept a man of his considerable girth. But even if they had a two engine wide bodied version he wouldn't take the dare...as a general rule Herman was far too busy hunting and eating on the grounds of his Hochkreuth estate in the Bavarian Alps to consider such a thing.

Note: Taliz had I been taking a sip of coffee when I read that it would have been sprayed through my nose
Last edited by Xbow on 20 Sep 2012 03:27, edited 1 time in total.
#14062442
Xbow wrote:Note: Taliz had I been taking a sip of coffee when I read that it would have been sprayed through my nose

My work here is done...
#14062478
and as far as Herman Göring is concerned the cockpit is far too small to accept a man of his considerable girth.


To be fair to Herman he was an ace in the German Air Force during the first world war and only got huge as a result of a morphine addiction he picked up after being treated for an injury he sustained during his service.
#14062491
Decky wrote:To be fair to Herman he was an ace in the German Air Force during the first world war and only got huge as a result of a morphine addiction he picked up after being treated for an injury he sustained during his service.

Oh I think Herman's extravagant living helped to add a few extra notches to his belt.
#14062594
Actually you guys are both right.

But seriously Herman was absolutely addicted to bagging game in the Bavaria Alps and having his kitchen crew prepare feasts on a daily basis for his family and cronies. Herman spent considerable time there after Hitler essentially relieved him of command and took over the battle of Britain. Hitler fucked up Herman's methodical program to suppress the UK's early warning system, attack air fields, fuel depots, aircraft production facilities etc. But still Hitler blamed Göring for the outcome of the battle of Britain. During the remainder of the war Herman could often be found enjoying the good life at his estate at Carinhall hunting with rifle, shotgun or longbow, eating and drinking to capacity and working on his magnificent and legendary model train set.

Image
.......................................................WAR IS HELL

Taliz wrote:My work here is done...

Bastard! :lol:
#14120733
The Polish mine detector


Gasoline Direct injection. Its a method for achieving higher fuel efficiencies at the expense of power output, useful under light/no load. The engines they were used on are rather larger, but the main part of GDI is the design of the piston crown, which is a component that is hand sized.
#14121297
I'll put forwards as a major inovation that was used by German glider-borne troops to knockout cupolas and casemates at Eben-Emael. The shaped charge explosive, based on the Munroe or Neumann effect. The use of a shaped charge created an effective anti-tank weapon that was light enough to be carried by a regular infantryman - and it has been this inovation that has caused some military thinkers to doubt the future life of the tank itself because of the variety and ingenuity (as well as the wealth of them in the field) of anti-tank weapons that are man-portable with a wealth of different delivery systems - especially in todays modern armed forces.

Thunderhawk wrote:The Polish mine detector

That is an interesting one. Got any info about the device itself? Since almost all armed forces during the second world war used some kind of mine detector.

Thunderhawk wrote:Gasoline Direct injection. Its a method for achieving higher fuel efficiencies at the expense of power output, useful under light/no load. The engines they were used on are rather larger, but the main part of GDI is the design of the piston crown, which is a component that is hand sized.

But it is used in... a car, which is not really, a hand-held item.

I stipulated hand held items specifically to avoid the simple minded plebs who automatically ran screaming like fanboys to the atomic bomb as being the most innovative item of the second world war.
#14121412
Tailz wrote:That is an interesting one. Got any info about the device itself? Since almost all armed forces during the second world war used some kind of mine detector.

Compact, effective. Metal detectors of one sort or another were around, but the Polish one (made/refined in Britain) was small and light enough to be carried by one person. Like the Sturmgewehr 44, it wasn't doing something brand new, but it was doing some relatively new in a very effective way.


Tailz wrote:But it is used in... a car, which is not really, a hand-held item.

Actually, it was used by the Germans in aeroplanes. I compare it to the proximity fuse: Both are small devices that augment larger existing pieces of technologies, making them more useful and do so to the point where those existing pieces of technology are redesigned to make better use of the new device.

GDI is based around the piston crown head being shaped with a small cup in the middle, making combustion start in a smaller area and shaping the deflagration ("combustion") wave so most of the energy from the wave front is linear, pushing the piston, and less energy is wasted hitting and reflecting off the cylinder wall.
#14121434
Thunderhawk wrote:Compact, effective. Metal detectors of one sort or another were around, but the Polish one (made/refined in Britain) was small and light enough to be carried by one person. Like the Sturmgewehr 44, it wasn't doing something brand new, but it was doing some relatively new in a very effective way.

But what made it more innovative than the British mine detector, or the one the Americans used, or the one the Germans used?


Tailz wrote:Actually, it was used by the Germans in aeroplanes. I compare it to the proximity fuse: Both are small devices that augment larger existing pieces of technologies, making them more useful and do so to the point where those existing pieces of technology are redesigned to make better use of the new device.

GDI is based around the piston crown head being shaped with a small cup in the middle, making combustion start in a smaller area and shaping the deflagration ("combustion") wave so most of the energy from the wave front is linear, pushing the piston, and less energy is wasted hitting and reflecting off the cylinder wall.

Buutttt.... it was used in an airplane? So not really... hand held? Well, it was small enough to hold in the hand, but you would not use it in your hands. It was inserted into an engine, that was then mounted in a plane, that a person then got into. Kinda belongs to a larger category of innovative objects....
#14122249
Window/chaff


The Soviets used small phage pills their soldiers took to control dysentery. The basics of that research started in the 1920s, but it was the first time phage was mass produced - and also mass distributed, for preventative disease control.
Perhaps also the last time, as phage research has been in a lull for decades.


Tailz wrote:But what made it more innovative than the British mine detector, or the one the Americans used, or the one the Germans used?

It was so much better then what the British had, that the British mass produced it for themselves. Americans lacked mine detectors, they used the Polish ones provided by the British. Improvements were made over the decades, but the Polish mine detector remained the basis of British mine detectors until the 1990s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_mine_detector

I don't know about the German mine detectors.

Tailz wrote:Buutttt.... it was used in an airplane? So not really... hand held? Well, it was small enough to hold in the hand, but you would not use it in your hands. It was inserted into an engine, that was then mounted in a plane, that a person then got into. Kinda belongs to a larger category of innovative objects....

Same argument goes for proximity fuses - they are small components of larger devices.
#14122252
Thunderhawk wrote:Same argument goes for proximity fuses - they are small components of larger devices.

But the component does not work on its own, so its not really... hand-held.
#14132199
The parachute.

Although airborne operations did not significantly alter the outcome of the war, they introduced special forces and the use of airborne-interdiction as a new mode of warfare, which is now commonplace today.
#14132204
Texas_Secession wrote:The parachute.

Although airborne operations did not significantly alter the outcome of the war, they introduced special forces and the use of airborne-interdiction as a new mode of warfare, which is now commonplace today.

That is a bit of a tricky one, I think the Parachute pre-dates the start of the second world war. In fact I think it was even around in the first world war. I think the real innovation was the tactics and methodology developed by the Russians and then fine tuned by Kurt Student.
#14170334
Decky wrote:Yep, do you know a lot of them were made in old clockwork toy shops? Since the gun is basically just a tube and a spring the shops already had almost all the equipment they needed.


I own a PPSH as well as a Thompson M1, they are both pretty much the same thing design wise - a heavy metal slab on a spring, with a machined impact needle at one end. The simplicity and weight compared even to an AK47 let alone the new plastic stuff like a G36 and whatnot is astounding. The PPSH is also very awkward to hold, especially when loaded with the drum magazine. There is no forward grip and the front of the weapon is where most of the weight is, holding it by the drum magazine is unnatural, holding it just behind the drum magazine is unpractical due to the mentioned front weight.


As far as handheld weapons are concerned:

Sturmhewehr 44 (this one is a no brainer). Also innovative is the optional curved barrel modification. Innovative, but not really effective as the bullets would come out in pieces and fly all over the place. The purpose was mainly for tank crews to fend off any close infantry without having to expose themselves.
Image

X-4 wire guided missile (You can hold this in your hands if you make an effort )
Image

Panzerfaust, Bazooka, Panzerschreck
Image Image Image

Hafthohlladung magnetic anti tank grenade
Image

FP-45 Liberator - yes it's absolutely horrible, but it was quite innovative in what its purpose was meant to be: a cheap as fuck pistol to be airdropped over Axis occupied areas in hopes of them falling into the hands of resistance and ordinary folk, thus encouraging an uprising.
Image

ShKAS machine gun, not innovative in anything but its batshit crazy rate of fire of 1800 rpm, with the Ultra-ShKAS variant firing an unbelievable 3000 rpm. Of course the later was just a crazy adventure more than anything useful as it ate ammo in a heartbeat and broke down often. Again, while this was an aircraft weapon, at 10kg you could hold it in your hands if you really wanted to. I am widening the rules a bit
Image

And lastly, not strictly a WW2 weapon but widely used in it, the Nagant M1895 revolver, one of the most innovative pistols ever in my opinion. The only revolver that can effectively use a suppressor to my knowledge. Not very powerful, not very accurate, and takes ages to reload, but still a very interesting design none the less.
Image
#14203101
roxunreal wrote:FP-45 Liberator - yes it's absolutely horrible, but it was quite innovative in what its purpose was meant to be: a cheap as fuck pistol to be airdropped over Axis occupied areas in hopes of them falling into the hands of resistance and ordinary folk, thus encouraging an uprising.
Image

If memory serves me correctly, the Liberator was mainly used in Asia, if at all, see the wiki: General Eisenhower's staff never saw the practicality in mass dropping the Liberator over occupied Europe, and authorized distribution of fewer than 25,000 of the half million FP-45 pistols shipped to Great Britain for the French resistance. Generals Joseph Stillwell and Douglas MacArthur were similarly unenthusiastic about the other half of the pistols scheduled for shipment to the Pacific. The Army then turned 450,000 Liberators over to the OSS. Resistance fighters in both theatres were supplied with more effective weapons whenever possible, and French use of the FP-45 remains undocumented; although OSS distributed a few to Greek resistance forces in 1944. One-hundred-thousand FP-45 pistols were shipped to China in 1943, but the number actually distributed remains unknown. A few were distributed to Philippine troops under the Commonwealth Army and Constabulary and resistance fighters.

The idea was that the single shot pistol was to be used to acquire the equipment from a slain soldier. To quote the wiki: It was originally intended as an insurgency weapon to be mass dropped behind enemy lines to resistance fighters in occupied territory. A resistance fighter was to recover the weapon, sneak up on an Axis occupier, kill or incapacitate him, and retrieve his weapons.

This is obviously a terrible idea since the same method of delivering the Liberator was also be used to deliver far more sensible weapons, such as sten guns.

roxunreal wrote:And lastly, not strictly a WW2 weapon but widely used in it, the Nagant M1895 revolver, one of the most innovative pistols ever in my opinion. The only revolver that can effectively use a suppressor to my knowledge. Not very powerful, not very accurate, and takes ages to reload, but still a very interesting design none the less.
Image

I don't think it was all that innovative, as far as six shooter pistols go. It was certainly known for its reliability. But that was about it.

A weapon I would put down as innovative would be the De Lisle Carbine, I can't remember if it has been put up yet or not...

While another innovation I would recommend would be the Minox miniature camera that was adopted by pretty much all espionage series of the war as a spy camera because it was easy to conceal. But it was invented just before the war in 1936 if my memory serves me correctly...
#14540066
PTRS or PTRD 41s. One of the first rifles that started using .50 cal as an anti-material force. Browning was first obviously, but browning was a machine gun and wasn't really designed to be an anti-tank rifle or anti-material rifle for long shooting. (I think some of the brownings were only upgraded for that purpose durring vietnam)

In general i think it was the first rifle that actually had testing and figured out that 12.7x108 (Soviet) or 12.7x99 (Nato) aka .50 cals are effective as an anti-material force.

They are building a Russian Type nuclear reactor..[…]

Russia-Ukraine War 2022

Hamas are terrorist animals who started this and […]

It is possible but Zelensky refuses to talk... no[…]

Israel-Palestinian War 2023

@skinster Hamas committed a terrorist attack(s)[…]