Re: Let's make planes that can't fly......@ veti
When the US entered World War 2, its armed forces were tiny, and their technology was nothing to brag about either. But with a couple of years of dedicated development, they had planes and tanks that could match or beat both Japanese and German forces.
There was a lot of innovation, but your argument is only partly true. The US' best bomber of WW2, the B17 actually had its first flight in 1935, and was built as a commercially funded prototype albeit to a Defense department competition spec. The B24 is perhaps nearer to your argument having its first flight in 1939, but was unpopular with crews and suffered heavy losses. The best transport aircraft of the war was the C47, essentially a khaki painted version of the commercially developed DC3 that first flew in 1935. The US didn't have any decent fighters until it was able to manufacture the Rolls Royce Merlin under licence (and that engine had its genesis as a private venture by RR in the early 1930s). The Sherman tank was effective purely because of numbers than capability, and suffered appalling loss rates against the much better German tanks in Europe. The most successful Sherman tank commander (a Canuck) was credited with 18 tanks destroyed, but the top 10 German tank commanders are all credited with over 100 Allied tank kills.
The real advantage of the US military was not technology, but in the size and scale of the US economy, by having a domestic industrial base that was not under regular air attack, secure, local supply chains for materials and components, along with little dependence on foreign food or energy resources.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
