The Engineer has a detailed archive of stories serving up a rich seam of fascinating content from engineering’s past. One of the most interesting veins is The Engineer’s investigation of some of the key technologies that helped win the Second World War for the Allied forces. The conflict marked a new stage in the mechanisation of warfare, which meant that engineers and their inventions were critical factors in the eventual Allied victory.
Merlin powers the Spitfire fighter to new heights
The Engineer was invited by Rolls-Royce Ltd in December 1942 to inspect an example of the firm’s new Merlin 61 supercharged aero-engine, which was being fitted by the RAF to an improved Spitfire then operating with Fighter Command.
The article was able to position such a development as part of a continuous wartime process. It recalled that at the beginning of the war and during the Battle of Britain, every RAF first-line fighter was fitted with the previously mentioned Merlin III engine, and, striking a more patriotic note, “the complete defeat of the Luftwaffe in August and September 1940 definitely established the technical superiority of British machines. The superiority was not obtained by chance, but every move of the enemy had been anticipated and a definite counter-move worked out”.
Learn more about Rolls-Royce’s Merlin engine and the Spitfire fighter
Dunkirk ‘Little Ships’ aid an armour revolution
The ‘Little Ships’, crewed mainly by Royal Navy reservists, formed a significant part of what wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill described as the “miracle of deliverance” at Dunkirk. Among the Little Ships’ crews, however, observations had been made that would lead to the development of a material that, towards the end of the Second World War, would save thousands of lives and tons of steel. The material was plastic armour and, in August 1945, Dr JP Lawrie of the Royal Naval Scientific Service penned an article for The Engineer that summarised the material’s development and its quick evolution for use during the D-Day landings of 1944.
Discover more about the development of plastic armour
The first flight of the Lancaster bomber
By August 1942 when The Engineer was invited to see it in action, the Lancaster had already started to make a name for itself in the Second World War. “But a few months after its completion, the ‘Lancaster’ has left its mark on the German landscape and its people,” wrote our predecessors. “It has helped powerfully by night to batter Cologne and Essen, with bombs of the heaviest calibre. By day it carried out the epic raid led by squadron leader JD Nettleton, VC on Augsburg, and the raids on Danzig and Flensburg. From the initial flights and the report of the Ministry of Aircraft Production testing staff, it was soon obvious that the Allied cause had now what has since been aptly styled by many pilots as a ‘war winner’.”
Read more about the first flight of the Lancaster bomber
The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The Engineer is a conduit through which technological advances are communicated and, in doing so, it has documented periods in mankind’s history that are horrific and awe inspiring in equal measure. This point was brought to bear in January 1946 whenThe Engineer reported on the use of atomic weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War. Specifically, 5 August 1945 saw the US drop a 15kt atomic bomb on Hiroshima that wiped out over four square miles of the city, which was around 60 per cent of its total area. Four days later, a second, more-advanced, 21kt bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, which was afforded a degree of relative protection by its mountainous geographical features.
Read more about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Pioneer of radar – Sir Bernard Lovell
Following the Battle of Britain in September 1940, British Bomber Command had increased the number of night time raids on German cities, but reconnaissance was indicating that many of these bombs were falling on open country. So, at the beginning of 1942, Bernard Lovell, who had spent the last couple of years developing short wavelength air interception radar and blind firing systems for fighter planes, was told to form a group to develop a blind bombing system. Based at the government’s Telecommunications Research Establishment in the Dorset clifftop village of Worth Matravers, he set to work on the development of a precision bombing device that would use a rotating antenna within a cupola attached to the belly of a bomber to build up a map of the terrain below.
Learn more about eminent astronomer and pioneer of radar Sir Bernard Lovell
The Post Office Research Station and the Colossus code-breaking computer
The Colossi computers were developed for British code breakers in 1943-1945 to help in the cryptanalysis of the Lorenz German rotor stream cipher machines used by the German Army during the Second World War. Colossi used thermionic valves (vacuum tubes) and thyratrons to perform Boolean and counting operations. Colossus has thus been regarded as the world’s first programmable, electronic digital computer, although it was programmed by plugs and switches and not by a stored program. The Colossus was the product of the British Post Office Research Station at Dollis Hill in north-west London and opened in 1933, responsible for a host of technological breakthroughs. Reporting on its grand opening in 1933,The Engineer wrote that “it is doubtful… if a more elaborate or better equipped establishment devoted to electrical communication investigations can be found”.
Learn more about the Post Office Research Station and the Colossus
I would have had Sir Robert Watson Watt for the Radar, yes Sir Bernard did a lot during the war years but had it not been for Robert’s work de-bunking the ‘German death ray’ and coming up with and coining the name RADAR Sir Bernard would have had little to do!
Even when the Lancaster bomber had tremendous bombload capabilities, an outstanding handling and great range, it had a terrible fault: a lack of a ventral protection gun turret, soon to be realised by German fighter pilots. Another shortcoming was the use of too small caliber defensive guns. The German fighters could fire from greater distances before the smallish 0.303 Lancaster guns were effective. Thus, too many Lancaster pilots had to execute the stressful “corkscrew” maneouver in an attempt to evade a closing fighter. But nevertheless, even the Americans were ready to use Lancasters for the atomic bombings as their B-29 was not completely ready, and spent a very large sum to have them modified for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At least one of them used an adapted British mechanism for the heavy bomb release.
the bridge monster was the most deadly. Sucked up at least 50 000 soldiers
I am doing some research regarding the use of hardened plastic in the construction of fighter planes in WW2. I have the Name Krogh or Crogh or could be Kroagh/Croagh. The person sent to the Isle of Man but was then brought back to North Manchester due to his knowledge in this field. Has anyone got any information regarding this man or any idea where his family are now settled. I would be extremely grateful for any help. Thanking you in advance.
It all proves, along with so many other engineering innovations, that applied engineering , cleverly applied and not wasted in V1-type projects with little military value, won WW2. The lessons of WW1, and its bloodbath, were well learned by 1944.
The .303 round weighs 28.6 grams and the 0.5 round weighs four times as much at 116.5 grams. This meant that at night, where ranges tended to be short due to the difficulty in seeing the target, the .303 had an advantage in sustained firepower as more ammunition could be carried.
During the day, where the ranges were longer, the .50 had the advantage.
Sadly, this article perpetuates the myth that we won WW2 by being clever. It is true that some of the technology shortened the war and/or saved lives. But the real reason we won can be summed up in five words: Russian blood and American steel. In other words, we won through brute force – more men and more materiel.
I am sure there are many technologies that were brilliant.
The magnetron was a radical research innovation, because it was not done by the experts but by experts from another field (particle acceleration) – and hence was disruptive.
I think it was an American General who said that the way to win was to be the “firstest with the mostest” – so the success of D-day landings epitomised this – from the innovative diversionary tactics to the logistics of the landings; some of the technologies (such as inflatable tanks) were simple and others more complex (such as the mulberry harbours) .
I think that it was a innovative attitude (bringing all the required innovations together) is what counted; the idea of engineering the innovations for success was possibly more important than any single innovation.
Sadly the belief in the “heroic” innovation is now, again, all too prevalent – rather than a chain or network of radial innovations or innovators.
Engineers who have not already done so, might enjoy reading “Not much of an Engineer” -the auto-biography of Stanley Hooker: later Chief Engineer of RR. [He was the same at Bristol Siddeley Engines when I was a vac student there in 1961/2 ]:
the title? how he was apparently described by the guy at RR who first interviewed him when he joined: as Hooker studied mathematics. In his book he describes doing the mathematics for an axial flow compressor to ‘boost’ the earlier Merlins: and described one RAF pilot (his spitfire fitted with one of the new engines) being waved at and offered a smile by a Luftwaffe pilot as the RAF plane passed the latter in a climb!
We Engineers surely all recognise that it is technology which advances every element of the human state: what a shame that so much is used improperly.
There is a through and well researched book titled “The Bomber War”. It has the testimony of many many pilots, gunners, navigators, bombers (crew), and some top brass (Generals) etc.
To say that a 0.303 is advantageous is like stretching the truth a little too much. The reality was that the specification for using and keeping the .303″ in fighters (and that was permeated into bomber defensive weaponry too) was the belief that fighter pilots had up to two seconds machine gun burst duration and no more to inflict damage to the enemy fighter. Thus it resulted into an spec that ordered 4 machine guns per fighter. Fortunately enough, both the Spitfire and the Hurricane had 8, but latter versions changed that arrangement.
NOW, the caliber was an indirect result of older WW-I ammunition being available (and ready to be manufactured) in huge quantities. But frankly speaking, British planes were in disadvantage in respect to guns against the German ones. A careful comparison of specifications of both sides armament, but changing places would show an opposite picture. In retrospective, both sides fighters, Me-109 and Spitfire (and Hurricane), flying on opposite roles would produce almost the same result. A lack of flying range characterizes all those designs. Thus, combat times were very different when having to fly from France and back against flying over own territory. Even renowned German aces like Adolf Galland (who became a close friend with his corresponding adversaries Robert Stanford Tuck and Douglas Bader after the war ended), clearly described both sides armament good and bad points. And not all the heavier Autocannons were equally effective: some had terribly low muzzle velocities (Japanese Zero). But thing is clear: even the very effective american .50 cal machine gun was nothing compared to the German 20 mm cannons. Plus, the multiple machine guns installed on the wings had to be “harmonized” to converge at only one distance, and beyond that point, the bullet streams crossed and diverged badly. The Me-109 had its cannon shooting through the airscrew spiner, and was both more concentrated and powerful. We are lucky later Spitfires had two 20 mm plus smaller machine guns.
For those curious enough on this theme, I’d recommend the excellent information on this site:
http://users.skynet.be/Emmanuel.Gustin/fgun/fgun-pr.html most appropriately called: “The WWII Fighter Gun Debate”… that will give ample food for the though…
I would say that if Germany won over Britain in 1940, they would prevail. So, not only Russian blood or American steel.
The Germans were more advanced with radar technology at the beginning of the war but, luckily, Hitler was more interested in offensive not defensive capabilities. Also the Me262 was so advanced that if the Germans had managed to deploy it properly (Hitler wanted it used as a fast bomber ‘vengeance weapon’) the Allies might have had more trouble gaining air superiority. Once again, the Germans did not employ these technologies to maximise their effect.
I would rank the aircraft carrier above technology #2 – little boats / plastic armour. Though carriers did not play a major part in the European theatre , they were the means of providing air support for liberating islands from the Japanese in the Pacific beyond the range of land based airfields. A picture of war in the Atlantic too, had Britain fallen?