World War II has gone down in the books as the first high-tech war, and a passing look at many of the military tools used between 1939 and 1945 will bare that out to be true. It was not only the the first war in which jet engines and atomic bombs were used, but also the first war to deploy walkie-talkie radios, rockets, radar and the Norden bomb-sight. These columns concern what the U.S. Department of War classified as a weapons system just as revolutionary as the atomic bomb: the VT fuse artillery shell (a.k.a. the time proximity fuse). This weapon was used with great success in various theaters: anti-Kamikaze in the Pacific, anti-personnel in the Ardennes and anti V-1 in defense of Britain.
This is a short article that goes into greater detail outlining the successes listed above and explains how the system worked; it also is accompanied by a diagram of the shell.
Click here to learn about the timing fuses designed for W.W. I shrapnel shells.
Click here to read about one of the greatest innovations by 20th Century chemists: plastic.
