Available in 3 inch (76mm) , 5 inch , 6 inch (155) and 8 inch (208 ) flavours

@@sherlocksinha2435 The APL brief was to develop 4 initial designs, a 5 Inch AA fuze for the US Navy. a 4.5 Inch AA Fuze for the Royal Navy. A 90mm AA Fuze for the US Army and a 3.7 inch AA Fuze for the British Army with priority of development in that order.

You need to look at it from a logistics perspective, then it becomes a complete no-brainer: A factor of 20 reduction in shells used does not only help you shoot down planes faster. It's: - Less overall material use - Less fuel use (for transport) - Less storage use (especially important on ships) - Fewer people/manhours required in logistics - Less targeting experience required -> lower requirements for who can man the guns New avenues of automation open up that allow you to not only match the previous level of manufacturing speed but to surpass it All-in-all you're shifting the workload from the front to the well-protected inland of your own country where there's way more available manpower. This is why the US has no qualms paying 60k $ and up for artillery rounds, you only need one or two to destroy 500k+ $ military equipment. Meanwhile Russia is running out of dumb shells in Ukraine because it can only count on statistics to hit (which can be somewhat countered by spreading out etc.)

​@@ANDSENS very well put!

Lol I chuckled too hard at this

"...finally reaching $0.49 when production was moved to China." ...wait, something here sounds fishy...

Today, that cost trend would be Inverse, and rising!🤬 Greedy Corporations today putting Profit over Readiness!

@@Asazym21 You've obviously never worked for a company on a military contract...

@@alphamegaman8847 Actually the problem is that those businesses know that the government will rip them off every time it got a chance. And return the favor. This result is a dysfunctional procurement system where both sides hate each other. (I despised our government rep because she tried everything she could to rip us off.) Got to the point where I replied with 'no bid' for a part that was absolutely essential to a high priority defense asset. I then passed the word to the people who used that part what I did - and why. (We had a competitor that also made the part but the Air Force mechanics didn't want it. Because our part came with a warranty that it would last twice as long as the requirements in the government specification. And it worked much better.) Yea we charged 25% more for a part that lasted twice as long - but we were still accused of ripping off the government. Something that a lot of people don't realize is that the defense industries attract a lot of veterans. And those veterans take a lot of pride in their work. And something else that people don't realize is just how expensive it is to make aerospace grade parts. People look at the price and thing that the company's ripping off the government. No they're not. The materials they're made out of are specialty alloys and making them takes hour on a machine whoce price starts at $1 million. And the person running the machine is making $20 - $30 an hour.

@@colincampbell767 I spent 30+ years in Aerospace, Medical Device, Automotive and Military R&D. A 25% Markup would be fine for a better part. In the example in the story, the price changed by ~40X. I understand the costs involved for materials and labor. Was making a tangential dig at the state of current Military/Government overpricing and monopoly manipulation. There is NO justification for some of the Ridiculous costs associated with Military Components and Systems. Would like to see this change, but I won't hold my breath!😁🤬

Even without the VT fuse the American 5"/38 caliber gun is considered to be the best heavy naval AA gun of the war

Take a look at the rapid fire 76 mm AA guns used on the Des Moines class Heavy cruisers.

@@YoBoyNeptune I remember hearing an eyewitness account of an incoming Japanese plane taking a 5" round right smack on the spinner; it was *atomized*.

I thought the same.

So. Are you related?

The biggest jumps in tecnology was because some war was happening at that time.

@@C0lon0 Technology is constantly being improved, war just means that untested technology would be pushed out as wonder weapons.

The way I see it capitalism is a war between companies, some of the biggest competitors are inside the same country. If they worked together and coordinated like in war time progress would be even faster.

Necessity is the mother of inventions

War probably slow down advancement in the long run. Just the death toll of millions of people during war is a waste of brain power for innovations and society development.

how can you conclude this informational video that was uploaded a few seconds ago?

@@bumsiltech8197 i study military history, especially technology.

I'm really disappointed real engineering missed this. The predictors are my personal favorite invention of world war 2.

All this fire control paired with the fast firing 6 inch guns in the US Navy leads to a machine gun of lead down range . Some of the late war USN cruisers could dish out 120 shells per minute

Indeed! hopefully we will never see the need for anything like these systems ever again.

That is absolutely correct - deception at every level of the war.

It was also a play of words, VT can also be vacuum tube...

@@loochan325 VT is a military term for a fuse that detonates the shell about 15-25 feet above the target. Typically used against infantry in the open or troops in entrenchments without overhead cover. It's also used to cover armored fighting vehicles in the offense. The shells will keep the enemy under overhead cover while causing little more than cosmetic damage to a tank. This allows your tanks and IFVs to drive through the enemy fortifications, turn around and attack them from behind.

Even so, it's still kind of a boring name. They should've called it, like, "THUNDER EXPLODERS" or something.

@@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721 less is more

AAA was still a primitive affair back in WW 2 and pilots on either side flying at altitude simply had to avoid flying at the same altitude and speed for more than 30 seconds at a time to completely negate AAA of the time. That is how far ahead of the flight you had to aim so it was simply a matter of don't be where the shells are going to be when the bombers were flying at altitude. The video saying that it worked better at low altitudes is common sense. Much less lead required of the shots at low altitude thus much harder for the pilots to dodge.

Also they used radar for targeting 128mm flacks (on flacktowers at least).

Even more interesting about the German system was the ability, just as in Berlin, to link multiple flakturm and other installations so that the batteries were synched and could keep the flak “box” squarely enveloping the bomber formations as they moved. The early war days of flak chasing formations or putting the box in the path of the bombers forcing them to fly into it was deadly enough, but the ability for German flak to literally put sometimes hundreds of guns on a formation and track them with pinpoint accuracy the entire time they were within range was absolutely devastating. Understandably, flak doesn’t look so bad in the old photos and videos and even modern representations…but with how dense the flak could often be, it’s almost unbelievable that any ships made it home. Countless vets recalled it could be so heavy that the sky was black and it seemed they could literally get out and walk atop the black puffs. Scary stuff.

@@HE-162 why i cant expand your commentary old way? Did yt changed something again?

@Big Fan Ah, just a bug. Thx

I mean it's extraordinary. I would love to hear the process that was gone through to come up with this. I imagine it was a collective endeavour.

Do we know the names of the engineers?

The Americans never contributed anything to WWII! They just stole resources and ideas from others! Like the Atom Bomb and the rocket!

And then he said use surface tension and centrifugal force 🤯Genius

and killed thousands of others

I was thinking the same! It really went to the next level. The scenes of the planes dodging through flak clouds must have taken a lot of time and skill to make.

Its very impressive 👏. I suspect with AI, in 5yrs. All of us will have access to the ability to produce this quality as well. Not saying we could do it. But access to the tools will be much simpler & easier for the novice.

I agree. The quality has taken a leap with this video.

I thought he reached the limit in the Spitfire video but he's just climbing higher

so true, i'm finding hard to listen to the essay as i'm just so amazed by the animations, the lighting, coloring. i haven't this much quality in a video essay. i have to keep rewinding. this is amazing work

Absolutely. The impact of the cavity magnetron alone cannot be overstated.

So did we give the Yanks a working proximity fuse or was it just a concept?

@@ayrplanes They had a working fuse for rockets; but couldn't get it working for shells. They gave them a number of ideas to work with.

@@ayrplanes As I understand it working at PYE in Cambridge after the war was that that the basic design originated in Cambridge. The design was sent to America because they had the heft to put it into production and miniturise it..I remember visiting the home of the Cheif mechanical to get some facts I read in his papers that going to a meeting on the fuse that on the return jouney they realised they had left all the details in a pub where they had stopped for dinner. They drove back very fast indeed.

The battery was a smaller copy of the hertz horn used in contact naval mines. You know the big spikey cartoonish looking mines. Oddly enough jet engines were developed quickly due to how much they could borrow directly from steam turbine manufacturing and turbo charger manufacturing.

"Elegant" indeed. Any engineer or designer would be justly proud of this Fuze.

As an engineer, my first thought given the problem statement would be to insert a separately delivered battery when loading the gun, not unlike the past practice of adding gunpowder at that time, with the further benefit that separate dry ZnC batteries are robust and make excellent shrapnel, their insertion can be mechanized in the AA gun using a magazine storing multiple 24V batteries, one per shot fired . Similarly, in the absence of plentiful electronic fuses, a mechanism could be devised that mechanically turns timer rounds to a value set on the gun according to load, distance and altitude, eliminating manual adjustment during battle (such a mechanism, though electronic, is in some modern guns) .

I'd probably frame it as "humans naturally want to invent things - why are so many of the famous inventions related to war? what's suppressing inventions the rest of the time?" but yeah it's pretty messed up.

Heat seeking missiles too. It's incredible they were able to build stuff lile that back in the 1940s

Usually way less effective.... But so much more creative and interesting to learn about.

@@ltcuddles685 not necessarily less effective, it depends on the type of problem.

"analogue"? That word was hardly ever applied to physical devices before personal computers became common. The correct word would simply be "mechanical".

@@Tinker1950 Analogue computers were also built with things called 'op amps'. Valve and transistorised differentiators and integrators came to replace mechanical ones in solving calculus equations but were still analogue in nature - the variables were continuously variable within limits unlike digital which has discrete, albeit very small steps. I know, I studied them back in the early 1970s.

Okay, but here's the thing: digital solutions are virtual analogs of analog solutions. And I'm not just doing the "omg look at how smart I am" thing characterized by putting together some random, cool-looking words to form a sentence that has no clear/falsifiable meaning.

We've got missiles for that now; aka self-propelled, self-correcting proximity shells. ;)

@@5peciesunkn0wn And the missiles still use proximity fuses.

@@5peciesunkn0wn Missiles are more expensive than artillery shells and take up more room than shells do. One of the reasons the idea of firing missiles from tank main guns went away was because of the ammunition stowage issues (one missile displaces 3 conventional rounds). Also the anti-drone technology that's being developed won't need a lot of further development to make it effective against battlefield missiles.

@@allangibson8494 did you miss the part where he literally called them "self-correcting PROXIMITY shells ;)"

@@SuperCatacata Proximity fuses are also used on anti drone cannon systems now too…

Do we all agree it was not only deeply immoral for nazis in WWII to target civilians, but a war crime..? If so, in what way are TODAYS (Ukrop) NAZIS bombing & shelling their own citizens for 9 years now not also a war crime (which the US, UK, NATO, etc. are all supporting)... and JUSTIFICATION for this "totally unprovoked invasion" ...? Ah, you claim you didn't know about their targeting of civilians for 9 years..? What about the utterly useless killing of Russians inside Russia just bc they are Russians..? Oh, those were just "patriotic Russians" killing Russians...? Then how did they get the freaking weapons that the US & NATO gave to Ukrop Nazis..? BTW, even the NYT admits the orchestrators of this were nazis. Odd that they can't seem to find Ukrainians who AREN'T nazis to go on these crusades, no..?

Here is a little known fact. One of the people responsible for the proximity fuse was Heddy lemar an actress and pin up girl.

Real engineering and Mustard alone makes it worth it.

No! It must remain secret! Only sharer with Moscow, like Brits gave turbojet engines and radar systems to the bolshevicks... ;)

She had 12 patients for artillery fuses..? Must be some new LGBTQRSTUV reassignment surgery. :)

My guess the post owner does not know Patents and Patients is completely different things.

@@1014p No I am just a bad speller.

It's unfortunate that the role of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab in the development of the VT fuze wasn't mentioned in the video secwww.jhuapl.edu/techdigest/Content/techdigest/pdf/APL-V02-N01/APL-02-01-VTfuze.pdf

I second this! My father spent his career at JHU-APL, so I knew about this invention for sometime. The lab's into Defense, Space, Biomed, Computing, you name it!

My understanding was that spitfires played a huge part in countering the V1s. A desperate pilot discovered that he could disrupt the gyros of the rocket with his wings striking the underside of the V1 wing. Yarnhub did a video on it if I’m not mistaken. Both approaches claim to be what saved Britain hmmmmmm….

@@peaksofblue actually, most of the intercepts of V-1’s were done with coastal battery guns using shells fitted with proximity fuses.

@@Sacto1654 Good point. Looks like the planes tracked down those that got close to higher population centers. Supposedly, ~1000 were brought down by planes, which was a decent chunk of what made it through AA batteries, which culled~ 75% of the 10k v1s launched over about 80 days.

@@peaksofblue Your understanding would be wrong then. The spitfires usually get all the glory for it though, so it's understandable why you would view it that way. The daring maneuvers pilots pulled off to take them down was much better for propaganda, and the VT fuse was still top secret, so it could not be widely advertised. Also it's obvious that the UK is going to give more credit to their own men for morale, rather than a Yank invention.

Do we all agree it was not only deeply immoral for nazis in WWII to target civilians, but a war crime ...? If so ... in what way are TODAYS (Ukrop) NAZIS bombing & shelling their own citizens for 9 years now not also a war crime ... and JUSTIFICATION for the very "unprovoked invasion" for which THIS CHANNEL, the US, NATO, UK ... are all supporting these war criminals ... and if you claim you didn't know about their targeting of civilians for 9 years ... what did you call their utterly useless killing of Russians just bc they were in Russia..? Oh, those were just "patriotic Russians" ...? Then how did they get the freaking weapons that the US & NATO gave to the Ukrop Nazis..? And BTW ... even the NYT admitted that the people who orchestrated this were nazis. BTW, why is it you can't seem to find Ukrainians who are NOT NAZIS to go on these crusades do you think ...? No idea..?

Amazing what you can do when your industry is not being bombed day and night by the enemy...... and you are given the tech as well.....

Sonar/ASDIC was invented in France. US aircraft, except P51B's and up and two variants of P40, used turbo chargers. Self-sealing fuel tanks had been around since WW I, they would not be standard on RAF aircraft until after the Battle of France. "given" As of 2006 Britain still owed the US 4.4 billion 1934 USD in WW I debt. "First and foremost, they note that they have written off the main body of Lend-Lease, amounting to something of the order of £4,000,000,000 to £5,000,000,000 (16 to 20 billion USD) net" below 678 Hansard ANGLO-AMERICAN FINANCIAL ARRANGEMENTS HL Deb 17 December 1945

@@nickdanger3802 So the P51D had turbocharger fitted to its RR Merlin? Heavier than air flying machines have been around since long before WW1, that doesn't mean that the technology had not advanced by WW2 on various aviation fronts. Not that it has any relevance, but On 31 December 2006, Britain made a final payment of about $83m (£45.5m) and thereby discharged the last of its war loans from the US. Also In 1952, the London Agreement on German External Debts assessed the final reparation figure at $3 billion. Germany has yet to pay off its debts for World War II.

Brits take credit for everything 🙄 Couldn't even give the Poles credit for decrypting the Enigma Machine

@@gnosticbrian3980 "US aircraft, except P51B's..." Allison engines in everything EXCEPT P38's had a single stage supercharger, P38's used a turbocharger as the second stage. Radial engines in combat aircraft had superchargers and turbo chargers. United States: War Loans to UK HL Deb 27 May 2002 vol 635 cc126-7WA127WA §Lord Laird asked Her Majesty's Government: Whether they owe money to the United States Government as a result of World War Two debt: if so, how much is owed; when it will be repaid; and what representation they have made to the United States Government concerning the debt being cancelled. [HL4422] §Lord McIntosh of Haringey Under a 1945 agreement, the United States Government lent the United Kingdom a total of $4,336 million (around £1,075 million at 1945 exchange rates) in war loans. These loans were taken out under two facilities: (i) a line of credit of $3,750 million (around £930 million at 1945 exchange rates); and (ii) a lend-lease loan facility of $586 million (around £145 million at 1945 exchange rates), which represented the settlement with the United States for lend-lease and reciprocal aid and for the final settlement of the Financial claims of each government against the other arising out of the conduct of the Second World War. Under the agreement the loans would be repaid in 50 annual instalments commencing in 1950. However, the agreement allowed deferral of annual payments of both principal and interest if necessary because of prevailing international exchange rate conditions and the level of the United Kingdom's foreign currency and gold reserves. The United Kingdom has deferred payments on six occasions. Repayment of the war loans to the United States Government should therefore he completed on 31 December 2006, subject to the United Kingdom not choosing to exercise its option to defer repayment. As at 31 March 2001, principal of $346,287,953 (£243,573,154 at the exchange rate on that day) was outstanding on the loans provided by the United States Government in 1945. The Government intend to meet their obligations under the 1945 agreement by repaying the United States Government in full the amounts lent in 1945 and so no representation has been made.

It is just fascinating what America accomplished in winning this war. Surely, there was some help, and massive loss of life, but it just makes you so proud of our country and its allies for fighting so hard and achieving so much.

I remember as a kid seeing surplus military gear on sale everywhere. Spent hours prowling through this fascinating stuff,

And not just Allied inventions. The V2 rocket was the basis for the Saturn V that sent men to the moon.

We were still using PRC 77's until at least 2005 when I retired from the Corps... lol I went to work as a contractor a few years later (2007), and NOBODY even knew what a PRC 77 was!

one of them was probly taking a shit when he got blown up, rip

I don’t think it bothered them for long

​@@hazza2247Wow. You are certainly a deep thinker.

they probably in hell

At least, if they didn't realise what was happening, then they wouldn't feel so much pain.

How about 1 airplane in 1h on average? This war was over from very beginning.

@@alexturnbackthearmy1907 Not just any airplane. *a four engine heavy bomber*

It's funny because in HOI4, America is nerfed to hell and back seven times over or else America curbstomps every nation on industry output alone. There's a few mods for 'realistic American industry'. We were building more 14 thousand ton merchants than Germany could make torpedoes to sink them all!

Indeed and not being troubled by hostile action within its own territory, strikes and labour issues along with supply issues such as Tungsten which had to be imported from China were impediments

The scale of American industry in WW2 still boggles the mind. 400,000 trucks, 20,000 trains and 500,000 railcars were sent so the Soviet Union alone.

I don't remember which writer got detailed instructions by mail on how to manufacture atomic bombs just by inquiring about them. Which makes sense. Only an entity with a very large industrial capacity could produce a functioning nuke. So yeah, I hope they make that video and make it detailed 👀

He mentioned that when talking about the Battle of the Bulge

The Crosley Corporation manufactured many of the VT fuse but did not develop it. It was developed by physicist Merle Tuve's group at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL).

@@J36Ops The British had a working VT fuze which went to the US with the Tyzard mission. IT WAS NOT AN AMERICAN INVENTION!!!! Get the history right for f*ck's sake.

You can see who worked on the video in the credits

there's about 6-8 people working on them not counting patreons

@@clf400 Thank you!

The Americans never contributed anything to WWII! They just stole resources and ideas from others! Like the Atom Bomb and the rocket!

Mass remained unchanged, but weight increased by 20,000 times.

@@randomname4726 You're absolutely right! My point stands, though

The secret was to miniaturize the components as much as possible.

I thought this video was going to be about the cavity magnetron that enabled radar to be fitted to ships and planes.

Sorry, they did not invent or develop it, it came from the UK and what the Americans did was the final optimisation for mass production. The method of operation and circuit had been established, as well as the specifications for the components. READ THE HISTORY BOOKS! Even reading Wikipedia is better than nothing...

@@ricardodavidson3813 How about I just go work at the Applied Physics Lab for 17 years and read the lab’s official history? OH, WAIT - I DID! Sure, the Brits did a lot of good early concept work. Bur if you think that the initial idea is all that counts and everything else is easy, then you’re no engineer. Ideas are a dime a dozen. Execution is what separates the heroes from the toddlers in capes.

@@jaymoore332 American institutions have the habit of re-writing history in their favour. I'm sorry if this rubs you up the wrong way but the British had built working fuzes that were amply tested (on rockets to mitigate the destructive acceleration forces), one of which was sent over to the US. The issue was with mass production, there was no way British industry would be able to fulfill the estimated demand. The battery unit may have been developed in the US, I haven't checked, but what the Brits brought over was not just an "idea", that's hogwash. Also "ideas are two-a-penny" may be right for crackpot ideas that go nowhere (the nazis were good at this, flying saucers, etc.) but not ones that work, those are precious. The initial developer of this concept was Compton Turner, a very skilled engineer and entrepreneur, and his team. The story of how this came about is told in some detail by Professor R. V. Jones in "Reflections on Intelligence" which was written after the 30 year ban was lifted, so it tells the whole story rather than only the bits that were not blocked out by the security ban. His first book "Most secret war" was written before 1975 so bits of the history had to be redacted, the second book fills in the blanks. I strongly recommend you get copies of both, (in the US the titles may be different). There is also the question of the Oslo Report, Prof. R. V. Jones was responsible for identifying its author after the war, one Prof. Hans Mayer working at Siemens. In a conversation, Prof. Mayer mentioned to Compton Turner (Mayer's and Turner's companies had business together, a lot of licence production of each other's stuff so CT was a regular visitor) that the nazis were developing a proximity fuze but did not say what the technology was. This spurred Compton Turner to work out with his team possible approaches, working on radio and putting aside the electrostatic idea as impracticable. This was the approach the nazis had been following and it went nowhere. Anyway, read it up it's much more interesting than I can put across. If you want proof of US institutions re-writing history you only have to listen to the History channel, or Nat. Geographic. It's really quite sad as well as blatantly dishonest. More and more we see the West adopting the marxist maxim that "truth is what the party says, facts just get in the way".

Incidentally, the very elegance of the electronic approach is very much "British school", Americans tended to complicate matters a bit more, they had the resources so they applied them even if it wasn't strictly necessary. The Germans were and still are the masters of over-engineering though.

Just no. Ww2 was won the moment it were declared, on grounds of the scale of the economies involved.

​@egoalter1276 Not at all, it came really close dude. If Germany had captured Moscow, the rail hub for the whole USSR, as well as the oil fields in the south it would have been over for the USSR. Without the infinite manpower of the USSR things would look very different.

@@Shrouded_reaper Axis victory in the east was not entirely impossible, if still severely unlikely. Axis victory against britain could nonle happen by negotiated peace. Axis victory against the US was economically impossible.

@@egoalter1276 If you mean an invasion of mainland USA, sure. But if Britain is taken out of the picture either by surrender/ceasefire or sustained carpet bombing now that resources can be reallocated from the east then USA loses its foothold and its not realy feasible for them to take any actioj in europe.

@@Shrouded_reaper It was not feasable for nazi germany to force any terms on britain.

I agree