Allied Weapons That Made the Difference in World War Two

In 1943, US bomber crews based in the UK were tasked with a 25-mission tour of duty. Most crews never made it past their fifth. The Luftwaffe owned the skies over Europe and the men of the Eighth Air Force were paying the price and strategic bombing was being called into question. Until, that is, the arrival of the Rolls Royce powered long-range P-51 Mustang. The tale of the P-51 began with a request from a wartime British procurement commission in April 1940. In response, Dutch Kindelberger and Edgar Schmued of North American Aviation set the gears in motion that would give birth to the groundbreaking fighter aircraft—the P-51 Mustang. The aircraft was an unqualified success and swept the Luftwaffe from the skies over German, facilitating devasting raids on German industry and paving the way for D-Day in 1944. This book goes on to tell the stories behind ten other weapons and weapons systems, from the drawing board to successful field deployment and their strategic impact beyond the battlefield. They were inspired by outstanding designers such as Sir Sydney Camm, scientists such as Alan Turing, and industrial visionaries such as Andrew Jackson Higgin. Their stories are interlinked with many of the most famous events and people in the history of World War II. Some of the weapons are well-known, others less so, and some are not usually regarded as weapons at all, such as SPAM and the Royal Navy’s “game” used to defeat the U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic. The Allies found that these weapons meant their forces could be better led given that they had faith in the means given to them to gain victory. The author explores the development, the challenges, and the deployment of these “weapons” and analyses their operational and strategic impact on the allied war effort and their collective contribution to eventual victory. This very readable account is a different perspective on the weapons that won the war.

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