So much tech happened so fast in that period. Actually not losing was a pretty close run thing!
The close-run thing that always gobsmacked me in WWII was the Battle of Midway.
Although the US had some major advantages in that (broken radio codes, competent damage control on the CVs, etc), it still basically came down to which sideâs strike wing stumbled into the enemy fleet first. Pretty much a coinflip.
BTW, for tech in the European theatre, check out Netflix for The Heavy Water War. Well made, and packed with famous geekery.
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The German disdain for radar defenses was down to Adolfâs typically stupid and shortsighted micromanagement. Remember, this was the military genius who thought breaking a major treaty and invading Russia before the other Allies were defeated was a clever move. German engineers knew about the principles of radar before WW 1. (They also knew about terror effects â it wasnât an accident that Stukas screamed bloody murder when diving. I doubt the V1 sound was incidental either.)
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Bingo.
Oh certainly, the Germans were working on it, along with the British, French, Americans, and IIRC Dutch. Wikipedia has a pretty good article on the history. But since when did something being known to experts keep it from being Top Secret?
BTW, the massive antennas had an official cover story of being for Radio Direction Finding - locating enemy planes, ships, and subs - which was in fact a very important wartime activity. (See Cryptonomicon for amusing bits on this.)
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That I did not know!
(and I remembered it wrong: Germany used decimeter waves and the British system was in the multimeter range)
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Are all guided missiles âDronesâ now? The V-1 is more akin to a cruise missile. It would seem to me the difference is that drones or âUnmanned weapons systemsâ would be reusable as opposed to munitions that are expended in the course of use.
But i could be wrong.
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No. The author just really really wanted to be able to make that connection.
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âAutonomous UAVâ would cover it.
âDroneâ is pretty much a meaningless term.
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There was an interesting SF novel from the late '80s where IIRC a minor plot point was expat Afghani engineers realizing they could build their own cruise missiles from used small passenger planes + hacked up autopilot software, and using them to attack the Soviet Embassies in a couple countries. (As you might guess from this, it didnât date well in terms of its expectation of future history; the author never anticipated that by the 1990s the USSR would be gone, and by the 2000s, the US would be the first world power foolishly mired in Afghanistan.)
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