A few of my choices:

The Hedgehog ASW system
The MP 43 / 44
The VT fuze
The Type XXI submarine and high underwater speed submarines like it.
The GP machinegun... eg., MG 34 / 42
HEAT / Hollow charge weapons. From Eben Emael to the bazooka and panzerfaust.

Maybe the not the most clever, but certainly is a honorable mention.

The Jeep

Attached Images

Bantam BRC40 Jeep 1941.jpg (66.5 KB, 7 views)

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Best Regards,
JW

Excellent suggestion Slipdigit!

How about the B29 for a shockingly 'full on' piece of military technology?

Cheers,
Adam.

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"Wars cannot be fought with dream stuff" - Sir Percy Hobart.

Most of these inventions were just variations or improvements on existing weapons. My choices would be:

Jeep
Landing Craft/Higgins Boat
Both of the specialty bombs used by the Dam Buster Squadron
the snorkle
A-bomb

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Lord, let me be the person my dog thinks I am.

Yes, an improvement was made to the snorkel which was used by the Dutch even before the start of WWII. However, if the Germans were smart they would have foreseen the advantage of such a device and employed it earlier on to solve problems associated with its operation, which in turn may have slowed or quickened (a "what if" question?) the Allies technological advancements in dealing with submerged boats. My point is that by the time they chose to use the idea it was much too late.

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going from bolt action rifles to semi-automatic rifles such as the SVT-40, M1 Garand and others .


And the Tiger. Killing Morale and knocks your tank out

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Time is only enemy you'll never get rid of.

Another thought, since an army travels on it stomach.

How about C, D and K rations and 10-in-ones?

Seems like every first person account I have read regarding Soviet armies, the men spent an inordinate amount of time trying to secure food. If the field kitchen didn't show up, there was nothing to eat except what could be scrounged or saved. The Germans apparently had a similar problem especially later in the war and while on the move, as did the Japanese. What about the Brits and Commonwealth forces, did they have prepackaged food along the lines of the U.S. Army Field Rations?

That little can opener deserves some merit also, does it not?

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Best Regards,
JW

They sure did, compo ration packs contained food for 10 men for one day or 1 man for 10. According to several sources they tasted far better than US field rations and were highely prized by US troops (my Grandpa refers to a shelter that had a wall stacked with compo boxes, wen the US trooops arrived the wall vanished). Good idea for a war winning weapon, but then the attitude to food in the RKKA was different, when the field kitchen was at the front about the best you could expect was thin cabbage soup or maybe buckwheat porridge if you were lucky. There was a formal food ration along western lines but rather than being tins of stew etc it consisted of bread, cheese, meat and some grain. Apparently spam was quite popular and one soviet soldier was entertained by the site of siberian troops eating Spam and Pineapple, unsure of what either of them was.

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There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.

The P-38............yes a novel little widget.

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American by birth, TEXAN by the grace of GOD!

I used to have one of these, the most practical and useful tin opener I ever saw

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Everly Brothers - What I Have To Do Is Dream
"Never wrestle with pigs, you both end up getting dirty and the pig likes it."

Stumbled on this one.....
www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUsuoVm_XKI&eurl=

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Ouch, wouldn't want to be in that tank. I didn't realise howmuch pace they had.

Good find there.

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There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.

Nice video, Will. I have'nt read an awfully lot on it. Supposedly it does'n have a reverse, so if you miss you'd have to circle around or what-not.

Can't think why I hadn't mentioned it before, but one of the simplest, most devilishly-effective weapons to catch the enemy by surprise has to be 'Schrage Musik', the upward-slanting MG-FF cannon used by the Nachtjagd.

Designed 'in the field', this mounting of what were effectively obsolete weapons was absolutely devasting, and it took the RAF an incredible amount of time to 'cotton on', preferring instead to believe in 'scarecrow shells', etc....

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

While that Goliath video makes it look nifty, it was in practive relatively ineffective. It was very suspectable to small-arms fire, which usually destroyed the little sucker before it got near its target. And its controller usually had to be within view of the target too...not a very happy predicament to be in in either case!!

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I had mentioned this in an earlier reply. Maybe against a buttoned up tank where the vision was'nt good. It does seem expensive,though........just for 1 tank.
Then again, you had to get close with a Panzerfaust and it's tell-tail smoke giving you away.

The German 88 mm AA gun which also was a good AT gun.

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Regards, Richard

There back this Xmas 2008

Many

Teller mine (stackable), magnetic (anti-ship) mine, bouncing "Betty", WP airbursts, para-frags, skip bombing, Molotov cocktail, API, those British X-craft that attacked Tirpitz, Italian manned torpedos, Kaitans, Napalm, flash-less powder, V-1(2), Me 262, Jazz Muzic, night fighters, Asdic/Sonar, delayed fuzes-already said-Hollow charge, proximity.
A time of invention.

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"Danger Will Robinson!"

Yeah, but just HOW effective could a single 20mm on this little fella be?

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I think that box art is just wishful thinking on the model designer. I have never heard of a FW-189 used as a night fighter.
All I ever saw it used for is tactical recon in the desert and over the eastern front.

Do you have any web sites that tell of it's use as a night fighter ?

I always thought the Japanese knee mortor was a good weapon.

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Work Harder ! Millions on welfare are depending on you.

The Fw189 was basically a reconnaissance aircraft and for sure never mounted Schrage Musik. Most carried two machine guns but the later Fw189A-4 carried two MG-FF cannon for use in the ground support role.

SM was used by the frontline Nachtjagd aircraft in the West such as the Bf110G-4, He219 and Ju88G.

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson