Worst equipment of WW2

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LWD
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Re: Worst equipment of WW2

#61

Post by LWD » 25 Mar 2014, 16:38

Maxschnauzer wrote:I'm reluctant to call anything best or worst but one of he most ineffective weapons systems of the war has to be the Japanese "balloon bombs". Of over 9000 balloons launched only one resulted in casualties (a woman and her children) and no major incendiary fires although their psychological effect was no doubt felt on the US west coast.
It's not so clear as that though. There may have been additional fires and casualties. Only one case was clearly attributable to the bombs but that doesn't mean that they didn't set other fires and cause more casualties. They also managed to short out the power lines to Hanaford for a few hours at least which had a (minimal) impact on Plutonium production. The psycological impact was minimized by the US and Canadian effort to prevent any information on their landing from being publicised. The fact that the campaign conicided with the rainy season in the Pacfic Northwest also limited the impact. There have been some good articles on them in the last few years, some on the web.

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Re: Worst equipment of WW2

#62

Post by ChristopherPerrien » 25 Mar 2014, 20:08

Let's see .

The Nambu pistol, the HotchKiss MG M1914 with the "strips", also the Italian M1937 and M1930 MG's , the Sten, the "sticky bomb", the Me-110, theBolton Defiant, the Wirraway, the He-177,the Mk14 torpedo, the Pueppchen .Any WWI battlecruiser still in service in WWII, though the Lexington Class might deserve a pass there :wink: , the standard Japanese Hand grenade Type 97, and the towed 2lber AT gun.

To be honest , I rather hear of non-combat/mundane use equipment that was the worst, rather than just weapons. Soldiers used that stuff far more than they used weapons, so this topic should be a discussion more of raincoats, packs, coats, heaters,lamps, boots, rations, tents , trucks , containers, tools , utility knifes, etc, ad inf., :milsmile:

One example so far given is the "Brodie Helmet". Besides its aforementioned "defects", Any helmet that cannot be used as a "bowl" is a lousy helmet. Any good helmet should be of metal AND with a easily detachable liner. I guess the US M1 Helmet spoiled me way back in basic training. The later/now used "Kevlar"/ plastic stahlhelms :roll: helmets do make a nice pillow turned around backwards, but they still ain't no bowl. :milwink:


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Re: Worst equipment of WW2

#63

Post by Maxschnauzer » 26 Mar 2014, 02:19

LWD wrote: It's not so clear as that though. There may have been additional fires and casualties. Only one case was clearly attributable to the bombs but that doesn't mean that they didn't set other fires and cause more casualties. They also managed to short out the power lines to Hanaford for a few hours at least which had a (minimal) impact on Plutonium production. The psycological impact was minimized by the US and Canadian effort to prevent any information on their landing from being publicised. The fact that the campaign conicided with the rainy season in the Pacfic Northwest also limited the impact. There have been some good articles on them in the last few years, some on the web.
I don't disagree. I was speaking purely in terms of mission effectiveness. Say of the approximately 9000 balloons launched (only 300 or so reached their "target") 25 fires were caused. That's still only a 0.3% success rate. Another limitation is that they were deployed for only a few months very late in the war well after the tide had turned against Japan and they had no military impact whatsoever. Also, as you mentioned, wartime censorship limited the PSYOPS value of this effort to a very limited area. Kind of an ingenious "thinking outside the box" attempt nonetheless.
Cheers,
Max

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Re: Worst equipment of WW2

#64

Post by LWD » 26 Mar 2014, 14:21

Again I'm not sure they would qualify for worse given the above. For instance if they had been launced in August the impact would likely have been considerably worse. Then there's the limited resources consumed. For instance much of the labor was by school girs from what I recall. A labor source that didn't have a great deal of impact otherwise.
According to this site:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... et-stream/
They think as many as 1,000 may have reached North America. ~300 (284 according to the site) have been documented.
This site:
http://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/entry ... oon_bombs/
States 361 have been found so there's the number that landed is still a rather open queston.
This site:
http://www.stelzriede.com/ms/html/mshwfugo.htm
mentions "several minor fires" as being possibly attributable to the balloon bombs. No mention of how much was burned though. That makes it hard to evaluate the damage done compared to the cost of the balloons.
A quick scan of this book:
http://www.sil.si.edu/smithsoniancontri ... F-0009.pdf
suggest that the 285 number was the number verified during and possibly shortly after the war. It also indicates the balloons (I'm assuming this is without the ordinance and perhaps some of the associated hardware) cost between a bit under $1,000 to ~$2,000 depending on exchange rate. In the epilogue it also suggest that possibly "hundreds" are yet to be found here in North America.

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Re: Worst equipment of WW2

#65

Post by Maxschnauzer » 27 Mar 2014, 05:05

Ok, LWD. I agree that they were cost effective for their intended purpose but whatever the mitigating factors (I don't consider "what if's") they ultimately failed in their mission to sow mass panic in the American northwest by initiating widespread infernos. That was my point- as a weapons system they were almost a total failure.
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Max

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Re: Worst equipment of WW2

#66

Post by LWD » 27 Mar 2014, 14:27

But, at least IMO, that was due more to the timeing and how well the US responded. They also suffered from some developmental problems although how to test and correct those is rather problematic so it's kind of up in the air as to whether to consider those or not. Fasinating and inovative IMO and as you say in practice a failure but I wouldn't consider them in the running for "worst" equipment. Compare it to say the IJN's light AAA weapons where there was plenty of time to work out the bugs and take corrective action yet nothing seems to have been done. See:
http://www.combinedfleet.com/25_60.htm
http://www.combinedfleet.com/13_76.htm

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Re: Worst equipment of WW2

#67

Post by Maxschnauzer » 27 Mar 2014, 14:45

Fair play, LWD. But as I said at the outset to me it's impossible to call anything the best or worst. But it sure is a fun exercise, and there surely are a lot of candidates.
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Max

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Re: Worst equipment of WW2

#68

Post by LWD » 27 Mar 2014, 15:27

And a lot to be learned in the discussion.

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Re: Worst equipment of WW2

#69

Post by Maxschnauzer » 28 Mar 2014, 02:44

That's what I'm here for- to take advantage of all that knowledge! :thumbsup:
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Max

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Re: Worst equipment of WW2

#70

Post by Jabberwocky » 24 Apr 2014, 07:53

ChristopherPerrien wrote:Let's see .

The Nambu pistol, the HotchKiss MG M1914 with the "strips", also the Italian M1937 and M1930 MG's , the Sten, the "sticky bomb", the Me-110, theBolton Defiant, the Wirraway, the He-177,the Mk14 torpedo, the Pueppchen .Any WWI battlecruiser still in service in WWII, though the Lexington Class might deserve a pass there :wink: , the standard Japanese Hand grenade Type 97, and the towed 2lber AT gun.
The Wirraway? What was wrong with the Wirraway?

As far as I know, it was just an Australian re-work of a Texan/Harvard with some provision for armament (twin Lewis guns and light bombs). It was a perfectly servicable basic trainer that just happend to be mis-used in a moment of panic.

The fact that it failed when pressed into service as an emergency fighter in New Guniea is not a reflection of its quality, more of the fact that it was doing a job it was simply not designed to do.

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Re: Worst equipment of WW2

#71

Post by JD » 25 Apr 2014, 10:00

AVV wrote:Hello!
LWD wrote:From what I've read it made or would have made a very useful training aircraft.
And the Finns used them with relative success too.

Best regards, Aleks
Yes, we get reminded of this a lot. Flown by Finns against early war Soviet equipment, it's not too much of a stretch of the imagination. Flown in small numbers against Zeros in the Pacific and it was slaughtered.

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Re: Worst equipment of WW2

#72

Post by Maxschnauzer » 25 Apr 2014, 10:21

In the "Most Ill-conceived equipment" category I nominate the gun turrets on the Boulton Paul Defiant and Blackburn Roc.
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Max

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Re: Worst equipment of WW2

#73

Post by JD » 25 Apr 2014, 10:45

The Fairey Battle wasn't much good either.

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Re: Worst equipment of WW2

#74

Post by Maxschnauzer » 25 Apr 2014, 11:02

Right. There are numerous aircraft that would qualify either by being pressed into service in unsuited roles (Wirraway), dubious design (Roc), sheer obsolescence (Douglas B-18), or a combination of the above. The Fairey Swordfish seems to have defied this logic, however.
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Max

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Re: Worst equipment of WW2

#75

Post by Takao » 26 Apr 2014, 03:07

AFAIK, I don't think the Swordfish met any "serious" aerial opposition in the Atlantic, but they didn't perform all that well during the "Channel Dash", nor did they fair any better in the Pacific.

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