What do you guys think is the most useless weapon used during WW2... you know the kind when asked to attack the enemy and were offered 'this useless' weapon or a turnip... you grab the vegetable and Tally Ho towards the enemy.
Most useless weapon of WW2?
- Thread starter Bootie
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Maybe the russians Anti-tank dog?
Well yeah... they were trained using Russian tanks so when they were released they ran for the T-34's with the hopes of food underneath them.
I quite fancy pinning the Spigot Mortar with the title of most useless.... 22'000 issued to the British Home Guard and never fired in anger.
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Wow, One new to me too.
R
Richtig
Guest
Looks like something you would make after you were shown a Piat for half an hour and then asked to recreate it from things you had in your garage or shed...
Oh and not that I am saying the Piat was useless, I am sure many people were injured by the Piat - just a shame most were British... Or Germans who overdid the laughter...
Oh and not that I am saying the Piat was useless, I am sure many people were injured by the Piat - just a shame most were British... Or Germans who overdid the laughter...
Looks like the ugly sister of the vickers gun.
Love the dubious look on the face of the guy in the back.
Not counting all the little oddity weapons that never made it out of testing...
The 2 Pounder AT Gun. From pretty much day 1 it was never up to scratch against the armour it was intended to take out.
The 2 Pounder AT Gun. From pretty much day 1 it was never up to scratch against the armour it was intended to take out.
R
Rommel
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They had good gears in their tanks. 3 reverse gears and one forward gear.
S
SLIM
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The most useless weapon of WW2? The Boulton-Paul Defiant.
It's the only aircraft in WW2 that I know of, that had to fly IN FRONT of the enemy in order to attack them.
It's the only aircraft in WW2 that I know of, that had to fly IN FRONT of the enemy in order to attack them.
I have to disagree in both mentioned reasons! Sorry! a) The Blackburn Roc Mk-I and Roc B-25 had a rotating tower and four MGs in it. It was a british Navy fighter in WW2. b) The Defiant scored 65 air victories in 1940 over France. Later the plane was used as a night fighter and there successful as well. Defiant as Roc Mk-I weren´t thougt for fighter to fighter combat but for the chase of bombers. Their main deficit was the slow max. speed. Not that they fired rearwards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackburn_Roc
Greetings
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackburn_Roc
Greetings
The Chauchat -
A French light machine gun that was so bad that soldiers issued it threw it away in favor of rifles. Issued during WWI it was so shoddily constructed that the parts were not interchangeable from one chauchat to another. The magazine with its big holes in the sides begged for dirt and mud to mix with the cartridges which resulted in immediate jamming, leaving the weapon useless especially since trench warfare is all about mud and dirt.
A French light machine gun that was so bad that soldiers issued it threw it away in favor of rifles. Issued during WWI it was so shoddily constructed that the parts were not interchangeable from one chauchat to another. The magazine with its big holes in the sides begged for dirt and mud to mix with the cartridges which resulted in immediate jamming, leaving the weapon useless especially since trench warfare is all about mud and dirt.
S
SLIM
Guest
I have to disagree in both mentioned reasons! Sorry! a) The Blackburn Roc Mk-I and Roc B-25 had a rotating tower and four MGs in it. It was a british Navy fighter in WW2. b) The Defiant scored 65 air victories in 1940 over France. Later the plane was used as a night fighter and there successful as well. Defiant as Roc Mk-I weren´t thougt for fighter to fighter combat but for the chase of bombers. Their main deficit was the slow max. speed. Not that they fired rearwards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackburn_Roc
Greetings
I will have to disagree with you there as well. In the article you linked to, the Blackburn Roc had exactly ONE (yes ONE!) confirmed victory before being removed from active service and relegated to target towing, and training duties. The Boulton-Paul Defiant, while it had a few victories, didn't have the performance to be used as a dedicated fighter platform, and didn't have enough armament to be a successful night fighter either, being replaced very quickly by Mosquitos and Beaufighters.
The "Turret Fighter" concept itself was flawed from the beginning, being an idea left over from WW1 that simply refused to die during the interwar period. While rigid airships, "land battleships", "airborne fighter carriers", and Nikola Tesla's "Death Ray", died a quiet death. These ideas were relegated to the museum of oddities while other ideas such as "Cruiser Tanks", "Light Panzer Divisions", the 37mm AT Gun, The M3 Grant/Lee Tank, and fighter airplanes armed with turrets, soldiered on until enough men died proving the flaws.
The argument can be made that if the Defiant had been used in a different role, and strictly against unescorted bombers, then it might have been a success. However, when designing weapons for war, you don't design weapons to fill a small niche. The most successful weapons in history have been the "all purpose" weapons. The Sherman Tank for example, was not a technical masterpiece, but there is no doubt that it won the war for us.
As I sat here thinking of the most useless weapon of WW2, the Defiant immediately came to mind. I could have listed any of the weapons that existed at the start of the war being already obsolete. Everyone knows the German Panzer Mark 2 was practically obsolete by the time it rolled into France. The Defiant stands out to me though, being a weapon designed near the start of the war. The problem was, the role envisioned for the airplane could also be fulfilled by the current Hurricanes and Spitfires, leaving the Defiant as an oddity that was only fielded as a matter of impetus. The production of the aircraft had already come too far to be stopped, and the production process could not be reversed without causing unacceptable delays in the production of new aircraft.
It's a harmless exercise to sit and argue about "what might have been", but the truth is, the Defiant was always going to be a failure, or at the least ineffective. It was designed and built at a time when far superior aircraft were already rolling off the assembly lines, and was designed for a role it was never actually used for in active service.
Dear Comrade SLIM! At first thank You for posting such an extensive answer!
And I have to agree about the harmlessness of argumentation about such a topic. Nevertheless I want to put straight some things. 1) In my former post I didn´t say the Roc would have been successful. I only answered that there were more planes with a rotating gun turret as the Boulton Defiant. Therefor it was named point a). In point b) I referred to the Boulton fighter - the Defiant. Not the Roc.
2) I posted only the link about the Roc because You said that You know not more as the Boulton Defiant who had to fly in front of the enemy to attack him. Following that thought of You (even it wasn´t thought in the first by the producers) the Roc had as well to fly before the enemy. And so I posted no Defiant related link. What is most interesting how detailed the Wiki thread concerning this topic is if You choose the english version. So here it is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulton_Paul_Defiant
And here a abridgement:
Defiant night fighters typically attacked enemy bombers from below, in a similar manoeuvre to the later successful German Schräge Musik methods. Defiants attacked more often from slightly ahead or to one side, rather than from directly under the tail. During the winter Blitz on London of 1940–41, the Defiant equipped four squadrons, shooting down more enemy aircraft than any other type.[21] The turret-fighter concept was not immediately discarded and the fitting of Defiant-type turrets to Beaufighter and Mosquito night fighters was tried to enable these aircraft to duplicate these methods, but the effect on performance proved drastic and the idea was abandoned.[22] The Defiant Mk II model was fitted with the AI Mk. IV Airborne Interception radar and a Merlin XX engine. A total of 207 Mk II Defiants were built.
To its time it seemed to be not so useless. And the question of this thread was "...most useless weapon of WW2". So I still can´t agree with You concerning the Defiant. And only because a weapon is obsolete that means not necessarily it is useless. I think it is very difficult to find a weapon what was really useless.
Greetings
And I have to agree about the harmlessness of argumentation about such a topic. Nevertheless I want to put straight some things. 1) In my former post I didn´t say the Roc would have been successful. I only answered that there were more planes with a rotating gun turret as the Boulton Defiant. Therefor it was named point a). In point b) I referred to the Boulton fighter - the Defiant. Not the Roc.
2) I posted only the link about the Roc because You said that You know not more as the Boulton Defiant who had to fly in front of the enemy to attack him. Following that thought of You (even it wasn´t thought in the first by the producers) the Roc had as well to fly before the enemy. And so I posted no Defiant related link. What is most interesting how detailed the Wiki thread concerning this topic is if You choose the english version. So here it is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulton_Paul_Defiant
And here a abridgement:
Defiant night fighters typically attacked enemy bombers from below, in a similar manoeuvre to the later successful German Schräge Musik methods. Defiants attacked more often from slightly ahead or to one side, rather than from directly under the tail. During the winter Blitz on London of 1940–41, the Defiant equipped four squadrons, shooting down more enemy aircraft than any other type.[21] The turret-fighter concept was not immediately discarded and the fitting of Defiant-type turrets to Beaufighter and Mosquito night fighters was tried to enable these aircraft to duplicate these methods, but the effect on performance proved drastic and the idea was abandoned.[22] The Defiant Mk II model was fitted with the AI Mk. IV Airborne Interception radar and a Merlin XX engine. A total of 207 Mk II Defiants were built.
To its time it seemed to be not so useless. And the question of this thread was "...most useless weapon of WW2". So I still can´t agree with You concerning the Defiant. And only because a weapon is obsolete that means not necessarily it is useless. I think it is very difficult to find a weapon what was really useless.
Greetings
S
SLIM
Guest
Sempai,
I had realized after writing my post, I had misread your own. My apologies.
I regards to the Boulton Roc, the fact it was retired from combat after only a few sorties proves it was obsolete before it was finished being built. When I try to think of a useless weapon, I think not about weapons that were obsolete before being fielded. I'm sure we could all come up with a few examples of weapons that would have been better off never being built in the first place.
The reason I am adamant about my opinion of the Defiant, is that it was built and fielded, was seen as a good weapon at the time, but ended up having no practical effect on the course of combat operations during it's service. It did shoot down a few planes, and was in service for a couple of years, but when you look at the overall picture the Defiant had almost no impact on the war at all. Thus by definition, the Defiant was a useless weapon.
I think we might agree to disagree. Greetings!
I had realized after writing my post, I had misread your own. My apologies.
I regards to the Boulton Roc, the fact it was retired from combat after only a few sorties proves it was obsolete before it was finished being built. When I try to think of a useless weapon, I think not about weapons that were obsolete before being fielded. I'm sure we could all come up with a few examples of weapons that would have been better off never being built in the first place.
The reason I am adamant about my opinion of the Defiant, is that it was built and fielded, was seen as a good weapon at the time, but ended up having no practical effect on the course of combat operations during it's service. It did shoot down a few planes, and was in service for a couple of years, but when you look at the overall picture the Defiant had almost no impact on the war at all. Thus by definition, the Defiant was a useless weapon.
I think we might agree to disagree. Greetings!