Worst Weapon?

Fully agree with the statement thet the Germans had to look for asymmetrical approaches to win as they had no chance of winning a conventional war of attrition.
And if the V2 was that bad why did the US deployed what was a not much improved version of it as the Redstone.

When thinking of "worse" weapons one must distinguish betweeen:
- Bad concept
- Bad design
- Bad manufacuring (inappropriate materials, bad quality control)
Paradoxically a conbination of bad features can still give a good result if the tactical situatuation allows for it's effective use.

Some examples ...

- Bismark was an obsolescent concept, very conservative in design, but etremely well built.
- Prince of Wales was an obsolescent concept, a decent design, but less well built than Bismark.
- Early British destroyer (A to H classes) were uninspired concepts, very solid designs and well buit.
- Japanese Special destroyers were revolutionary, but flawed, in concept, well designed (once debugged) and well built (once debugged).
- Italian destroyers were flawed in concept, badly designed and just decent in build.

- The Panther was a good concept, a never fully debugged design and by war end poorly built.
- All Italian tanks were an obsolescent concept, poor design and badly built.
- Most Japanese tanks were an obsolescent concept, decent design and well built.
- The KV series was good concept, poor design and average quality.
- The T34 was a more advanced concept than the Sherman, in 1939 the Soviets had a lot more experience with tanks than the US, design was roughly equal (but with different priorities), and production quality of the M4 much better.

- The Me 110 was a too ambitious concept, uninspired design and well built.
- The CR 42 was an obsolete concept, uninspired design and decently built.
- The Buffalo was a not suffiently ambitious concept, reasonable design and well built.
- The He 177 and Machester both suffered from a concept flaw in the engine technology, pairing V12 to get a 24 cylinders X engine didn't work, once you solved that the rest of the design was sound, the Lancaster was a success and the 277 looked promising.

- The V2 was a revolutionaryconcept, decent design considering it was breaking new ground in a lot of fields, production quality was iffy and with volatile liquid fuels that was often fatal.


- The M1 carabine was a questionable concept (it was equivalent to an SMG in purpose but used rifle concepts in design ) , well designed and built.
- The FG 42 (para rifle) was a very ambitious concept, decently designed and usually well built.
- The MG 42 was a 2nd generation GPMG at the time where most other countries were thinking of LMG and MMG as different weapons, very well designed and well enough built.
- The Breda LMG was an flawed concept (cartrige was too weak for an LMG), and badly designed (relying on lubrification for lack of a good extractor mechanism, a common feture of French WW1 designs but better ideas were around in 1930) though decently built.
- The Italian M91 rifle was an uninspired concept, poorly designed and of average quality.

In the end what matters most is production quality, a reliable but not outstanding weapon is less likely to be seen as "bad" than an advanced unreliable one. The exception to the above is when the concept is so flawed the weapon works but is practically useless on the battlefield. US towed AT guns come to mind, the US Army was generally on the offensive and highly motorized so it it prefered a mobile form of defence, 1.5 tonns AT guns that could not be manhandled were unlikely to be much use.

My pick is:
- the M13 series for tanks
- the CR 42 for planes.
- The Breda for infantry weapons (though some Japanese ones were close).
- The Italian destroyers for ships (marginal AA and ASW platforns, not better than average torpedo and gun platforms, and unseaworthy to boot!)

If you think I m picking on the Italians that's true, the peculiar alliance of fascism and industry that prevented any criticism and covered up equipment failures when detected made the Italian war machine "ineffective by design".

 

Why did the US employ Redstone?

It could actually carry a 3.5 MT nuclear warhead, so it doesn't need to hit with 200m of a target to inflict damage. It doesn't bury itself into the ground before exploding, reducing its blast radius. The US army wasn't relying on second or third hand accounts of whether it hit or not to determine if it needs to correct the targeting.

It could carry a greater payload (2.8 Tons vs 1 Ton).

It had approx. the same range (200 miles).

The V2 became a last forlorn flip of the bird. If the strategic bombing of Germany, which hurt so many German cities, hadn't caused the Nazi regime to give up, then surely it must have been realised that the V-2 strikes served no purpose other than some pointless, vain exercise in self-delusion.

Even if they had destroyed the better part of London, and Antwerp it wouldn't change the fact: the Americans are in Europe, and the Russians are or will soon be in Poland. People in Chicago, Washington, Minsk, Moscow, Toronto, Sydney, and Auckland aren't going to suddenly give up the fight, because of the V2. Londoners still got up and went to work. So "shocked" as they may be, their resolve to continue the fight was not impaired.

The only way it was going to do serious harm, was to deliver chemical or biological agents. They were, however, off the table. A theatre weapons platform, with a tactical payload just isn't going to cut it in 1945. We are not talking about a "surgical strike" capability. In an existential battle, it was just a waste of resources.

I still suggest that it would have been better to send the workers out digging ditches. Never mind spending 3 billion USD. Use that for the Bavarian Redoubt.

The V2 was under development since before the start of the war. IMO, it should have been cancelled, and the effort put into more immediate, less fantastic, but still advanced weapon systems.

As to seeking asymmetrical means of winning the war, well, it was a very forlorn hope. A large chunk of his entourage are scuttling around fantasizing about a separate peace with the West.

At very best, it gave them another vector of attack utilizing certain less seriously limited resources, for very limited results, at inordinate costs, and had no real effect on the Allied effort, and did not alter the outcome, nor was there any real hope it would do so.

 

I think the initial question asked becomes too broad when we're discussing small arms vs the V2.

I'd like to address one comment above about the M1 Carbine being a questionable concept. The concept was excellent, because it was designed to be an alternative to the 1911 pistol. It was not designed to be an alternative to a subgun or battle rifle, but to give somebody who would ordinarily carry a pistol extra range, accuracy and firepower. That's an excellent concept. And in practice, employed correctly, proved itself. In combat, soldiers sometimes ignored that concept and thus became disappointed, or dead.

I recently read Gavin's memoir where he berates the Carbine because of its lack of killing power vs the Garand. It was Gavin who changed the TOE to have his troopers use the Carbine in Sicily, where its limitations became obvious. Yet, he never seems to realize, or never admits, that it was his own folly that created the situation, so he blames the Carbine. Gavin blames a lot of people for his occasional failures, though he's not unique in that. I suspect the mistaken concept of the Carbine being a poor "battle rifle" stems from Gavin.

 

I fully agree. The M1 Carbine was never designed to replace the M1 Garand, but was instead designed for specialized troops in lieu of a M1911A1. The idea was not to replace rifles with a more portable weapon, but to provide troops who would otherwise have meager firepower with a greater punch. This is a fact that many overlook.

 

I know what the M1 carabine was for and it's a niche that was filled by the SMG, in most other armies. For "self defense" you need stopping power not range. The problem was it looked like a rifle rather than a SMG so it was sometimes considered as possible rifle replacement. It was not a failure just not necessary as the slot could be filled by the M3, and if used as battle rifle, especially by the US squads where the BAR could not provide as much firepower as a true LMG, made for a weak squad firepower at medium and long range.
Paradoxically the MP44, that was an intended rifle replacement, was labeled an SMG for political reasons..

 

The M1 had more stopping power than any subgun at close range because of the higher velocity of its round - 2000 fps.

An M3 weighs 8 pounds and a Thompson 10 1/2 pounds (both empty) while a Carbine comes in at 5 pounds, which to a radio or mortarman is a definite advantage. Being able to make hits at medium range is just an added plus, not anything that detracts from the usefulness of the weapon. If you can make hits at 200 yards you may never have to face anyone at 5 yards, but if you do, a 15 round magazine spitting 110 grain pills at 2000 fps semi-auto is pretty damned effective.

I get what you're saying about it looking like a rifle (and in fact being referred to as a rifle), leading to its mistaken employment as a battle rifle at times. An analogy might be the M5 (3 inch) AT gun being used in an indirect artillery role. It could be employed that way, and the army trained AT men to use the weapon in this fashion, but it was not effective in that role. The M5 has detractors because of the upgraded armor on German Panzers, but nobody is damning it because it was a poor artillery piece. And the Carbine shouldn't be judged as a battle rifle, but praised as an excellent alternative to a pistol.

 

Not to beat a dead horse, but in thinking about roughly comparable cartridges I checked the ballistics of the .762x39 (AK47) round. It's a 30 caliber, only 12 grains heavier in weight, though in a spitzer shape rather than the round nose of the Carbine round.

At the Muzzle, the standard 122 grain .762x39 is 2344 fps. At 100 meters it has dropped to a 2044 fps.

The muzzle velocity of the 110 grain M1 Carbine round is about 2000 fps at the muzzle - it does poorly at longer range because its round-nose profile sheds velocity quickly. Yet, theoretically, the M1 Carbine has roughly the same killing power at close range as the AK does at 100 meters.

I gotta admit, that surprised even me!

 

To be fair he said the Sten would bounce off not bullets fired from a Sten ...
I do suspect he meant the latter though.

 

I'm not sure I would consider the Bismarck to be obsolesecent at the time she was built or necessarily very conservative. Indeed her vitals were better protected than just about any other BB.

Again I wouldn't consider the PoW obsolescent. Given the design constraints I also think it was a more than decent design. The 4 gun turrets had some teething problems though.

The Panther had a number of concept/design flaws. I'm not sure that some of them could have been "debugged" out. Of course whether they were concept flaws, design flaws, or even flaws at all depends on how such are determined.

While the T-34 was developed earlier I'm not sure why it qualifies as a more adnvanced concept. Indeed some of the features of the M4 seem clearly supperior to me.

The Buffalo was caught in a transition period and was short on upgradeability. I'm not at all sure that the importance of this was clear to anyone at the time.

Already addressed by others.

I'm not sure that is the case. For instance the production quality of the T-34 was pretty poor, on the otherhand the fact that the Soviets could crank them out by the thousands and the concept was well thought out meant that they were good enough. As for the towed AT guns, remember the US Army indeed the US military was considered a defensive force prior to our entry in the war. Even the B-17 was justified as a defensive weapon to be used against any naval forces that would attack the continental US. Thus the problem wasn't the AT guns it was the defensive mind set and doctrine. Indeed towed AT guns could be quite useful in defence, especially of the homeland, the allied tankers fear of German AT guns is proof enough of that.

 

Boys Rifle and PIAT are both perfectly good weapons.

Excellent article on the worst aircraft of WW2 here:

http://worstworldwar2aircraft.wordpress.com/

 

All true. And a lot more energy than a .45 Thompson, 7.62 PPsh and MP40 and I've never heard those called under powered.

But I'm an unabashed and and completely biased carbine fan.

My dad carried one and loved it. His words were, 'Accurate to 100 yards and you could carry plenty of ammo"

Audie Murphy was a big advocate as well.

 

I’m going to disagree. I’ll add ‘respectively disagree’ since I think I might have unintentionally come across as confrontational in some of my earlier posts

The Bismarck had many obsolete features. The most visibly obvious one was lack of duel purpose secondary armament. Having both low angle 150 mm and 105mm AA guns wasted hundreds of tons of displacement that could have been better utilized. RN and USN had that figured out but not the French or IJN.

The main armored deck was located towards the bottom edge of the armored belt, like a WWI battleship. American, British, French and, I think Japanese WWII battleships located the armored deck towards the top of the belt, one or two decks higher. This protected a lot more interior space (like communications and combat control centers) from plunging shellfire, which was a more important concern during WWII than it had been in WWI.
Her final battle bore witness to this where she remained afloat with her interior space a shambles

The stern and rudder area was cantilevered out from the hull, also like WWI ships. We all know what happened when the Swordfish torpedo detonated in that area and set up a whipping resonance that jammed her rudders.

Finally, the hull shape was an enlarged WWI design that wasn’t as hydrodynamically efficient as the newer British and American designs. I can’t find the source material at the moment but I’ve seen a paper, I think in INRO/Warship International, that calculated the HP required to propel a KGV vs Bismarck at the same speeds (adjusted for displacement) and KGV was significantly more efficient, using less HP/ton and giving a corresponding increase in range.

 

In an emergency, the P2V-F Neptune (late comer to WWII) was one of the worst. The flight engineer/comms officer had to standby with parachutes for the pilot and copilot as they would exit the cockpit hatch before diving across the wing to the escape hatch in the floor of the plane. The flight engineer would then grab his own parachute and make the same dive across the wing to get out. As an avionics tech, I had to practice the drill every few months and hated it every time we failed to exit in 4 minutes or less and had to do it again... and again... and again.

 

Let's see if I can get this out without the board eating it this time. For some reason it's acted like I hit the back button twice now. Will probably post then edit a couple of times to prevent looseing it all again.

Confrontational is not necessarily bad indeed it can be good (IMO but I tend to be confrontational myself) one should be careful however of overstating ones position or being too firmly attached to it. Cirtainly I don't have a problem with the tone of your statements todate and hope you don't have one with mine.

That's a subject for considerable debate. One of the big qualifiers is here is Bismarck had a considerably deferent "design space" from the US, UK, or for that matter IJN battleships. Some of her features would have definitly been suboptimal for a desing of the latter three. It's less clear that they were so for the Germans or would have been so for the French.

But is it really? Remember the Bismarck was designed to fight close to home compared to the RN or USN battleships. In the North Sea for instance destroyers, torpedo boats, and cruisers armed with torpedoes were argueablly a more significant threat especially prior to 1942. Now having as many different calibers of AA as she had may be considered suboptimal but I'm not sure obsolete or even obsolesent fit. Note that the French are in much the same situation with the Japanese to a lesser extent. Then there's the question of whether any of these had a good dual purpose design. Arguably the IJN didn't until they came out with their 3.9" guns and in their case the emphasis on night actions and especially night torpedo actions may have pushed their designs toward having a better surface secondary design.

If close to home having a ship that is hard to sink is not a bad idea. Look at some of the German ships that made it home from Jutland. Bismarck encorporated some of that. The following page goes into considerable detail in the design of Bismarck's armor:
http://www.combinedfleet.com/okun_biz.htm
You might also want to look over on kbismarck. One of the things they brought up there that isn't addressed in the link above is the impact of yaw introduced by the weather deck on penetrating to the ships vitals. Again in some ways the design was suboptimal but I wouldn't say obsolete. Indeed I would also point to her final battle to substantiate (Denmark Straits could also be used as a reference).

The question is would any battleship do well in such a case? A torpedo detonating next to your rudders is a bad thing and a rare one. Notice also that the other torpedo hits by the Swordfish did almost no damage.

However range was very important for both the US and British. Indeed the definition of "standard displacement" in the Washington and London naval treaties was designed so as not to place the latter countries at too much of a disadvantage since they needed ships with very long ranges compared to most other powers. Furthermore a number of US battleships had problems with how they handled in certain weather conditions which was also a function of hull design. This was far from a solved problem at the time.

 

The Bismarck had many obsolete features. The most visibly obvious one was lack of duel purpose secondary armament. Having both low angle 150 mm and 105mm AA guns wasted hundreds of tons of displacement that could have been better utilized. RN and USN had that figured out but not the French or IJN.

The French were actually the first to employ dual-purpose secondary armament, in Dunkerque and Strasbourg. They had sixteen 130mm guns in three quad and two twin mounts. They were not very effective in the AA role due to a low rate of fire and unreliability, especially in the unique quad mounts (there don't seem to have been any really successful heavy AA mountings larger than twins).

The triple 152mm mounts in the Richelieu class were also intended to be DP. Conventional wisdom at the time held that guns needed to be around 6" to effectively engage destroyers, but this made them even less effective in the AA role. The planned secondary armament of the Richelieus was five triple 152mm, but two of them were changed for a total of six twin 100mm.

The British 5.25" was a good idea in theory, but disappointing in service due to low rate of fire, rate of train and elevation, and 70 degree maximum elevation. They were improved with the installation of Remote Power Control in a few ships late in the war.

The only really successful DP mount in WWII was the US 5"/38. Its shell weight, range, and muzzle velocity were less than what was considered ideal for the surface role, but ironically they were one of the few battleship secondary guns to actually sink a destroyer in combat. The 5"/38 was originally a destroyer gun*; the USN considered developing a larger weapon, around 5.3", for battleships and also planned to step up to the 5"/54 - heavier shell, higher range and velocity - in the Montana class.

So while the benefits of DP seem obvious in retrospect, it was not so clear when ships like Bismarck or Yamato were being designed. DP was a new technology, and none of the DP guns designed for battleship secondary armament were really successful.

* the USN was way ahead of most navies in putting effective DP main armament on destroyers as early as 1932.

 

I don't think the Boulton Paul Defiant has been mentioned in this thread yet.

 

The Defiant served quite admirably as an early nightfighter and was rather successful in that role.

 

One strange thing about DP mounts is that by 1940 the Germans had a perfectly good 128mm heavy AA gun that could have been adapted for naval use, it was planned to use it for the never built 1936C and 1942C classes of destroyers and the experimental Z51 DD but hostoricaly the Kriegsmarine only has a few in shore installations. A little more forethought and Bismark and Tirpitz could have had the formidable AA suite they badly needed.

If I had to choose a failed day fighter for night use my pick would be the Me 110 not the Defiant (unles I was the third crew menber with no escape hatch of couse ). The much maligned Me 110 was actually a decent attack plane and a significantly better bomber killer than the Me 109 thanks to it's better range and armament, the MG FF (or MG FFM) of the 110 had 180 rounds per gun compared to the 60 of the Me 109 though this figure is a bit misleading as the ammo was in 60 round drums that had to be changed by the gunner.

 

Well the final USN version of the Buffalo might be a better choice for a failed day fighter. Apparently it was still a pleasant plane to fly but as a fighter ...