Question

American Miltary History question: The Second World War brought about new technological developments that changed the destructive capacity of war on a whole new level.  What were at least three of those innovations and how would they shape the battlefield in combat throughout the war (and immediately afterward)?

Answer 1

1. Penicillin

It wasn't until 1939 that Howard Florey and a team of researchers, discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928, showed the promise of penicillin; and it was during the war that the antibiotic got its popularity. In 1943 the US War Development Board produced a proposal for the mass delivery of penicillin to combat Allied troops in Europe. The US had developed 2,3 million doses by 1944, and the drug is credited with saving an estimated 12-15% of the casualties.

2. Radar

The opening to radar of higher frequencies (those of the microwave region), with its attendant advantages, occurred in late 1939 when British physicists invented the cavity magnetron oscillator. In 1940, the British generously disclosed the idea of the magnetron to the United States, which then became the basis for the research undertaken by the newly formed MIT radiation laboratory at Cambridge.It was the magnetron that made the World War II Microwave radar a reality.

MIT Radiation Laboratory's rapid production of groundbreaking and important microwave radars has been attributed to the necessity of meeting emerging military needs.Over the five years of its life (1940–45) more than 100 different radar systems were built as a result of the laboratory's program.One of MIT Radiation Laboratory's most popular microwave radars has been the SCR-584, a commonly used gunfire-control system. It used conical scan-tracking having sufficient angular accuracy to place antiaircraft guns on target without the need for searchlights or optics, as was required for older radars with wider beamwidths.

Radar is used in thousands of military and civilian applications. It is used in aviation to alert pilots of obstacles and to provide precise height readings and to help ships prevent collisions with other ships in maritime use. The Police also use it to track car speed.

3.Nuclear power

The potential power contained inside the Atom had long been recognized but it was during the Second World War that the race really began to harness its power. The US first got there with the Manhattan Project, which produced history's first Atom bomb. The bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 and then a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. It's estimated that between 150,000  and 244,000 people were killed as a direct result.

There's been a lot of debate about these incidents and nuclear weapons proliferation since then. Without this discovery, however, there would be no nuclear power, which has remained essentially a secure and, potentially, comparatively clean way to produce electricity.

4.The first computer - Colossus

Colossus was a digital electronic device, designed from more than 1700 valves (tubes) during WWII. It was used to crack the codes of the German Lorenz SZ-40 cipher machine which the German High Command had used. Colossus is sometimes considered the first fixed software in the world-digital, electronic, machine. It was designed and built before the US machine ENIAC

Colossus was broken down after the war and kept a secret so specifics of how it worked were not well known. As such, it had little influence on computer development, and it is changing from subsequent projects to modern computers. Colossus ' idea helped something though. If that computer was designed, it was understood that an electronic high-speed computer could be rendered reliably. It was this knowledge that helped to drive the development of subsequent computers, and one can not underestimate the influence of Colossus on the modern world.