War becomes a cruel examiner for the armies' weapons system. It happens that those types of weapons and military equipment, which were not promised much success, pass the exam better. Of course, funds and efforts were spent on them, but much more attention was paid to others. And they were wrong.
The Japanese aircraft carrier Akagi (pictured above) was originally designed as a battle cruiser, but in 1923 it began to be rebuilt into an aircraft carrier. The Akagi was launched on April 22, 1925 and became one of the first strike aircraft carriers in the Japanese fleet. It was "Akagi" who led the raid on Pearl Harbor, and among the first echelon planes were nine A6M2s from its air group. It was in this form that the Akagi took part in its last battle - the Battle of Midway Atoll in early June 1942.
Initially, the Akagi had a three-level flight deck: upper, middle and lower. The first was intended for takeoff and landing of all types of aircraft. The middle flight deck began in the area of the bridge, from which only a small biplane fighter could take off. Finally, the lower flight deck was intended for the takeoff of torpedo bombers. The flight deck had a segmented structure and consisted of a sheet of steel 10 mm thick, laid on top of teak sheathing on iron beams attached to the ship's hull. The lack of functionality of such a layout of flight decks led to frequent accidents and catastrophes of aircraft, therefore, before the war, the additional flight decks were removed and the main deck was extended to the entire length of the aircraft carrier. Instead of the dismantled decks, an additional completely closed hangar appeared. After reconstruction and before her death, the Akagi had the longest flight deck of any aircraft carrier in the Japanese fleet.
The aircraft carrier had two, and after modernization, even three aircraft lifts [1, 2, 3], as well as an aerofinisher. At first, it was a 60-cable experimental model of an English design, and since 1931 - a 12-cable aerofinisher designed by engineer Shiro Kabay.
The aircraft carrier's air group consisted of three types of aircraft: Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighters, Aichi D3A Val dive bombers, and Nakajima B5N Keith torpedo bomber. In December 1941, 18 Zero and Val and 27 B5N aircraft were based here. Three hangars of the ship accommodated at least 60 aircraft (maximum 91).
In the late spring of 1942, a new American carrier-based attack aircraft entered the arena of air battles - a diving reconnaissance bomber SBD-3 Dauntles, which had protected fuel tanks, crew armor, bulletproof glass in the cockpit canopy, a new Wright R-1820-52 engine and armed with four machine guns. At the same time, in order to reduce the weight of the vehicle, all equipment for keeping the aircraft afloat when landing on water was removed from it. It was the "dauntles" in the Battle of Midway Atoll in June 1942 that destroyed four Japanese aircraft carriers, including heavily damaged "Akagi", which was later sunk by the Japanese themselves.
Much has been written about the significant role that submachine guns played during the Second World War. Meanwhile, the role of the main automatic weapon submachine gun (in the Red Army it was called the submachine gun for short) took almost by accident. Even where considerable attention was paid to its development and development (as, for example, in Germany and the USSR), it was considered an auxiliary weapon only for certain categories of fighters and junior command personnel. Contrary to popular belief, the German Wehrmacht was not entirely armed with pistols and machine guns. Throughout the war, their number (mainly MR.38 and MR.40) in the Wehrmacht was much less than the magazine carbines "Mauser". In September 1939, the Wehrmacht infantry division had 13,300 rifles and carbines and only 3,700 submachine guns in the state, and in 1942 - 7,400 and 750, respectively.
Contrary to another misconception in the USSR at the beginning of World War II, and even more so by the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, when the experience of battles with the Finns on the Karelian Isthmus was already behind him, submachine guns were not "neglected" at all. But the main attention was paid to the self-loading rifle. Already in the first period of the war, the attitude towards the "machine gun" changed significantly. According to the state, for the same 1943 year, the Soviet rifle division was supposed to have 6274 rifles and carbines and 1048 submachine guns. As a result, during the war years, 5, 53 million submachine guns (mainly PPSh) were delivered to the troops. For comparison: in Germany in 1940-1945 a little more than a million MP.40 were produced.
What was so attractive about a submachine gun? After all, even such powerful pistol cartridges as 9-mm parabellum or 7.62-mm TT, did not give an effective firing range of more than 150-200 meters. But the pistol cartridge made it possible to use a relatively simple automation scheme with a free shutter, to ensure high reliability of the weapon with an acceptable weight and compactness, and to increase the wearable ammunition load. And the widespread use in the production of stamping and spot welding made it possible to quickly "saturate" the troops with light automatic weapons in war conditions.
For the same reason, in Great Britain, where on the eve of the war "they did not see the need for gangster weapons," they launched into mass production a hastily created, not very successful, but very easy-to-manufacture "Stan", of which more than 3 million were produced in various modifications. In the United States, after their entry into the war, the issue of the submachine gun also had to be resolved on the go. A simplified "military" version of the Thompson submachine gun appeared, and they were looking for among other models. And closer to the end of the war, the M3 model went into production with widespread use of stamping.
And yet the most successful combination of manufacturability with excellent combat and operational qualities was shown by the Soviet PPS.
After the Second World War, the submachine gun as a military weapon began to disappear from the scene. The main direction turned out to be automatic weapons chambered for intermediate power. It is worth saying that its development also began on the eve of the war, and the beginning of the era of new weapons marked the emergence of the German "assault rifle" MR.43. However, this is a somewhat different story.
The British Stan 9mm submachine guns made up a whole family. Shown here from top to bottom:
[1] extremely simplified Mk III, [2] Mk IVA, [3] Mk V, [4] Mk IVB (with stock folded)
Tanks are gaining weight
The leading role of medium tanks in the battles of World War II seems obvious. Although by the beginning of the war, experts had no doubt that anti-cannon armor tanks were needed on a modern battlefield, preference in most countries was given to vehicles located at the junction of the light and middle class in weight. They were separated by a line of 15 tons, corresponding to the power of the engines available then, which would provide the car with good mobility with armor protection, opposing anti-tank guns of 37-40 mm caliber.
In Germany, two tanks were created - the Pz III (Pz Kpfw III) with a 37 mm cannon and the Pz IV with a 75 mm gun, both with armor thickness of up to 15 millimeters. The Pz III of modification D weighed only 16 tons and developed a speed of up to 40 km / h. And until 1942, the lighter Pz III was produced in larger numbers. However, having received armor 30 millimeters thick in modification E, it "grew heavier" to 19.5 tons, and after re-equipping with a 50-mm cannon (modification G, 1940), it exceeded 20 tons. "Light-medium" tanks were turned into medium ones.
In the new tank armament system, created in the USSR in 1939-1941, an important place was given to the light T-50. The 26-ton T-34 was still considered too expensive to manufacture, and the “light anti-cannon armor” tank seemed to be a more successful solution to a mass vehicle both to support the infantry and to equip tank formations. With a mass of 14 tons, the T-50, put into service at the beginning of 1941, carried a 45-mm cannon and armor up to 37 millimeters thick with rational angles of inclination of the armor plates. Speed up to 57.5 km / h and a cruising range of 345 kilometers met the requirements for a "maneuverable" tank. And literally on the eve of the war, the T-50 was planned to be armed with a 57-mm or 76-mm cannon.
Even in the first months of the war, the T-50 remained the main "competitor" of the T-34 in the plans for the production and equipping of tank units. But the T-50 did not go into a large series, the preference was rightly given to the T-34. The reserve for modernization laid down in it made it possible to strengthen the armament, increase the security and power reserve, and the increase in manufacturability gave record volumes of production. In 1944, the troops went, in fact, a new T-34-85 tank with a long-barreled 85-mm cannon.
The main enemy of the "thirty-four" was the German Pz IV, the chassis of which withstood repeated upgrades with increased armor and the installation of a long-barreled 75-mm cannon. The Pz III left the scene in the middle of the war. The division of tank guns into "anti-tank" and "support" (for fighting the infantry) lost its meaning - now everything was done by one long-barreled gun.
A system similar to the German system of two medium tanks - "combat" armed with an anti-tank gun, and "support" with a larger caliber gun - has developed in Japan. By the beginning of World War II, the tank regiments were armed with two medium tanks on the same chassis - a 14-ton Chi-ha (Type 97) with a 57-mm gun and a 15, 8-ton Shinhoto Chi-ha with a 57 mm cannon, both with an armor thickness of up to 25 millimeters. These relatively weakly protected, but mobile vehicles became the core of the Japanese tank forces: due to both industrial capabilities and the conditions in which Japanese armored vehicles were used.
The British preferred heavy armor for the slow "infantry" tanks, while the maneuverable "cruiser" in the Mk IV, for example, carried armor only up to 30 millimeters thick. This 15-ton tank developed a speed of up to 48 km / h. It was followed by the "Crusader", which, having received enhanced booking and a 57-mm cannon instead of a 40-mm, also "overcame" the 20-ton line. Having suffered with the upgrades of cruiser tanks, the British in 1943 came to the heavy cruising Mk VIII "Cromwell", combining good mobility with armor thickness of up to 76 millimeters and a 75-mm cannon, that is, in addition to a medium tank. But they were clearly late with this, so that the bulk of their tank forces were the American M4 "Sherman", created after the beginning of the Second World War and taking into account its experience.
The rapid development of anti-tank weapons changed the requirements for the combination of the main properties of tanks. The boundaries of the light and middle classes in mass shifted upward (by the end of the war, machines weighing up to 20 tons were already considered light). For example, the American light tank M41 and the Soviet reconnaissance amphibious tank PT-76, adopted in 1950, in a number of characteristics corresponded to the medium tanks of the beginning of the war. And medium tanks, created in 1945-1950, exceeded 35 tons - in 1939 they would have been classified as heavy.
Soviet 7, 62 mm submachine gun mod. 1943 A. I. Sudaev (PPS) is rightfully considered the best submachine gun of the Second World War
Rocket and jet
The revival of combat missiles began in the 1920s. But even their biggest enthusiasts could not expect the rapid progress of the 1940s. Two poles can be distinguished here: on one there will be unguided rockets (rocket) shells, on the other - guided missiles for various purposes. In the latter area, German developers have advanced farthest. Although the practical use of these weapons (long-range ballistic and cruise missiles, anti-aircraft and aircraft missiles, etc.) had begun, they had little direct impact on the course of the war. But rockets played a very significant role in the battles of World War II, which was not expected from them before the war. Then they seemed to be a means of solving special problems: for example, the delivery of chemical weapons, that is, poisonous, smoke-forming or incendiary substances. In the USSR and Germany, for example, such rockets were developed during the 1930s. High-explosive or high-explosive missiles seemed less interesting weapons (for ground troops, at least) due to their low accuracy and accuracy of fire. However, the situation changed with the transition to multiple-launch multiple launch rocket launchers. Quantity turns into quality, and now a relatively easy installation can suddenly fire projectiles for the enemy with a rate of fire inaccessible to a conventional artillery battery, covering an area target with a volley, and immediately change position, getting out of a retaliatory strike.
The greatest success was achieved by Soviet designers, who created in 1938-1941 a complex of a multi-charge installation on a car chassis and rockets with smokeless powder engines: initially, in addition to chemical and incendiary projectiles, they planned to use high-explosive fragmentation ROFS-132 created for aviation armament. The result was the famous guards mortars, or Katyushas. From the first volleys on July 14, 1941 of the experimental battery of BM-13 high-explosive and incendiary missile launchers at the Orsha railway junction and the Orshitsa river crossings, the new weapon demonstrated its effectiveness for striking concentrations of manpower and equipment, suppressing enemy infantry and received during the war rapid development and widespread use. There are shells with increased range and improved accuracy, 82-mm installations BM-8-36, BM-8-24, BM-8-48, 132-mm BM-13N, BM-13-SN, 300-mm M-30, M-31, BM-31-12 - during the war, 36 designs of launchers and about a dozen shells were put into production. The 82-mm and 132-mm RS were very effectively used by aviation (for example, Il-2 attack aircraft) and naval ships.
A striking example of the use of multiple launch rocket systems by the allies was the landing in Normandy on June 6, 1944, when the LCT (R) missile ships were "working" along the coast. Approximately 18,000 rockets were fired at the American landing sites, and about 20,000 at the British, supplemented by conventional naval artillery fire and air strikes. Allied aviation also used rockets at the final stage of the war. The allies mounted multiple launch rocket systems on jeeps, towed trailers, battle tanks, such as the 114, 3-mm Calliope launcher on the Sherman tank (Soviet troops tried to use RS launchers on tanks as early as 1941).
German medium tanks Pz Kpfw III modifications, which have already exceeded 20 tons in weight:
[1] Ausf J (issued 1941), [2] Ausf M (1942) with a long-barreled 50 mm cannon, [3] "assault" Ausf N (1942) with a 75-mm gun
Sunset battleships
The main disappointment of the admirals in this war was battleships. Created to conquer supremacy at sea, these giants, armored up to their ears and bristling with numerous guns, were practically defenseless against the new scourge of the fleet - ship-based aircraft. Bombers and torpedo bombers based on aircraft carriers, like locust clouds, swooped down on detachments and formations of warships and ship caravans, inflicting heavy, irreparable losses on them.
The command of the navies of the leading countries of the world did not learn anything from the experience of the First World War, when the linear forces of the fleets for the most part showed themselves as passive observers. The parties simply saved their armored leviathans for a decisive battle, which in the end did not take place. In an intense naval war, battles involving battleships can be counted on one hand.
Regarding the increased danger from submarines, most naval experts have concluded that submarines are good mainly for disrupting enemy merchant shipping and destroying individual warships that are unable to detect and effectively counter enemy submarines in time. The experience of their use during the First World War against the linear forces was considered insignificant and "not dangerous." Therefore, the admirals concluded, battleships still remain the main means of conquering supremacy at sea and their construction must be continued, while, of course, battleships must have high speed, enhanced horizontal booking, more powerful artillery of the main caliber and necessarily strong anti-aircraft artillery and several planes. The voices of those who warned that submarines and carrier-based aircraft pushed the linear forces into the background were not heard.
"The battleship is still the backbone of the fleet," said US Vice Admiral Arthur Willard in 1932.
In 1932-1937 alone, 22 battleships were laid down on the stocks of the shipyards of the leading naval powers, while there were only one more aircraft carriers. And this despite the fact that a significant number of dreadnoughts were received by the fleets in the previous two decades of the twentieth century. For example, back in 1925, the British launched the lead of a pair of Nelson-class battleships with a total displacement of 38,000 tons and armed with nine 406-mm main guns. True, they were able to develop a move of no more than 23.5 knots, which was no longer enough.
The views of naval theorists on maritime warfare in the late 1930s led to the golden age of the linear forces.
As one of his contemporaries accurately noted, "for many years a battleship was for admirals what a cathedral was for bishops."
But the miracle did not happen, and during the Second World War 32 went to the bottom
battleship of 86 that were in the composition of all fleets that took part in it. Moreover, the overwhelming majority - 19 ships (of which eight are of a new type) - were sunk at sea or in bases precisely by ship-based and land-based aircraft. The Italian battleship "Roma" became "famous" for being sunk with the help of the newest German guided bombs X-1. But from the fire of other battleships, only seven were sunk, two of them are of a new type, and the submarines recorded only three ships at their own expense.
In such conditions, there was no longer any talk of further development of such a class of ships as battleships, so the designed even more powerful battleships were nevertheless removed from construction by the second half of the war.
[1] Japanese medium tank Type 2597 "Chi-ha" (commander, 1937)
[2] Although the Soviet 9, 8-ton light tank T-70 (1942) "originated" from reconnaissance vehicles, its characteristics were "pulled" to the level of battle tanks by installing 35-45-mm frontal armor and 45-mm cannons
"Floating airfields" start and … win
The naval genius of the Land of the Rising Sun, Admiral Yamamoto, wrote off battleships to stock long before World War II. “These ships are reminiscent of the calligraphic religious scrolls that old people hang in their homes. They have not proven their worth. This is only a matter of faith, not reality, said the naval commander and … remained in the command of the Japanese fleet in the minority.
But it was Yamamoto's "non-standard" views that gave the Japanese fleet, at the outbreak of the war, a strong carrier force that set the heat on the American battleships at Pearl Harbor. With such difficulty and expense, the supergiants Yamato and Musashi built did not even have time to fire a single salvo at their main opponents and were ingloriously sunk by enemy aircraft. Therefore, it is not surprising that during the Second World War, the dreadnought fever was replaced by an aircraft carrier race: on the day the war ended, there were 99 “floating airfields” of various types in the American fleet alone.
It is interesting that, despite the fact that aircraft carriers - aircraft transports and then aircraft carriers - appeared and showed themselves quite well back in the First World War, in the interwar period most of the naval powers treated them, to put it mildly, coolly: admirals assigned them a supporting role, and politicians saw no benefit in them - after all, battleships allowed them to "bargain" in negotiations or to actively implement gunboat diplomacy.
The lack of clear and definite views on the development of aircraft carriers did not allow them to receive proper development - the future rulers of the oceans were at that time practically in their infancy. Special equipment and equipment did not develop, views did not take shape on what dimensions, speed, air group composition, characteristics of flight and hangar decks are needed for these ships, on the composition of an aircraft carrier group and methods of using aircraft carriers.
The first, back in 1922, the "real" aircraft carrier entered the fleet of the Japanese. It was "Hosho": standard displacement - 7470 tons, speed - 25 knots, air group - 26 aircraft, defensive armament - four 140-mm and two 76-mm guns, two machine guns. The British, though they laid down their Hermes a year earlier, put it into operation two years later. And in the last pre-war decade, the Americans were seriously engaged in the creation of full-fledged aircraft carrier forces. France and Germany tried to build modern aircraft carriers. After the war, the unfinished Graf Zeppelin, which we got from the last one, fell victim to Soviet pilots who were bombing it after the war.
With the improvement of ship-based aircraft and technical means of providing all-weather and all-day use, such as radar stations and radio drive systems, as well as by improving the characteristics of aviation weapons and improving the methods and methods of using carrier-based aircraft, more recently "toy" and clumsy aircraft carriers gradually became the most serious force in the struggle at sea. And in November 1940, 21 Suordfish from the British aircraft carrier Illastries, at the cost of losing two aircraft, sank three of the six Italian battleships in Taranto.
During the war years, the class of aircraft carriers was constantly expanding. Quantitatively: at the beginning of the war, there were 18 aircraft carriers, and over the next few years, 174 ships were built. Qualitatively: subclasses have appeared - large aircraft carrier, light and escort, or patrol, aircraft carriers. They began to subdivide them according to their purpose: to strike at ships and coastal targets, to fight submarines or to support the actions of the landing.
And we all hear
Ample opportunities and the rapid development of radar made it one of the main technical innovations of the Second World War, which determined the further development of military technology in three elements.
Of course, the development of such a complex and "knowledge-intensive" industry began long before the war. Since the early 1930s in Germany, the USSR, Great Britain and the United States, research and development work has begun on the "radio detection" of objects, primarily in the interests of air defense (long-range aircraft detection, anti-aircraft artillery guidance, radars for night fighters). In Germany, already in 1938, the Freya long-range detection station was created, then Würzburg, and by 1940 the German air defense had a network of such stations. At the same time, the southern coast of England was covered by a network of radars (the Chain Home line), which detected enemy aircraft at a great distance. In the USSR, by the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the RUS-1 and RUS-2 "aircraft radio catchers" had already been adopted, the first single-antenna radar "Pegmatit", the "Gneiss-1" aircraft radar, and the "Redut-K" shipborne radar were created. In 1942, the air defense forces received the SON-2a gun guidance station (supplied under Lend-Lease by the English GL Mk II) and SON-2ot (a domestic copy of the British station). Although the number of domestic stations was small, during the war under Lend-Lease, the USSR received more radars (1788 for anti-aircraft artillery, as well as 373 naval and 580 aviation) than it produced (651). Radio detection was viewed as an auxiliary method, too complex and still unreliable.
American medium tank M4 ("Sherman") with a 60-pipe launcher T34 "Calliope" for 116-mm rockets. Such installations were used to a limited extent by the Americans since August 1944.
Meanwhile, from the very beginning of the war, the role of radio locators in the air defense system grew. Already when repelling the first raid of German bombers on Moscow on July 22, 1941, data from the RUS-1 station and the Porfir experimental station were used, and by the end of September, 8 RUS stations were already operating in the Moscow air defense zone. The same RUS-2 played an important role in the air defense of besieged Leningrad, the SON-2 gun guidance stations actively worked in the air defense of Moscow, Gorky, Saratov. Radars not only surpassed optical devices and sound detectors in range and target detection accuracy (RUS-2 and RUS-2s detected aircraft at ranges of up to 110-120 kilometers, made it possible to estimate their number), but also replaced the network of air surveillance, warning and communication posts. And the gun aiming stations attached to the anti-aircraft divisions made it possible to increase the accuracy of fire, switch from defensive fire to accompanying fire, and reduce the consumption of shells for solving the problem of repelling air raids.
Since 1943, it has become common practice in the country's air defense and military air defense to target fighter aircraft with early warning stations of the RUS-2 or RUS-2s type. Fighter pilot V. A. Zaitsev wrote in his diary on June 27, 1944: “At home” got acquainted with the “Redoubt”, a radar installation … They desperately needed accurate operational information. Now she will, hold on, Fritzes!"
Although mistrust of the capabilities of radar was constantly and ubiquitous, the observer with binoculars was accustomed to trust more. Lieutenant General M. M. Lobanov recalled how in the anti-aircraft artillery regiment, when asked about the use of radio detection data, they answered: “And the devil knows whether they are correct or not? I can’t believe that you can see the plane behind the clouds”. Science Advisor to Prime Minister Churchill, Professor F. A. Lindemann (Viscount Lord Cherwell), spoke of the development of the H2S bomber sight in short: "It's cheap." Meanwhile, the H2S gave the British Bomber Force not only a sight for bombing in limited visibility, but also a navigation aid. When German specialists sorted out the nodes of this locator from a bomber (“Rotterdam instrument”) shot down in February 1943 near Rotterdam, Reichs Marshal Goering exclaimed in surprise: “My God! The British can really see in the dark! " And at this time, the German air defense subordinate to him has long successfully used several types of radars (we must pay tribute, German engineers and the military did a lot for the wide practical implementation of radar). But now it was a question of the previously underestimated microwave range - the allies had begun to master the centimeter wavelength range earlier.
What's in the Navy? The first naval radar station appeared in 1937 in Great Britain, and a year later such stations were on the British ships - the battle cruiser Hood and the cruiser Sheffield. The American battleship New York also received the radar, and the German designers installed their first shipborne radar on the "pocket battleship" "Admiral Graf Spee" (1939).
In the American Navy, by 1945, more than two dozen radars were developed and adopted, which were used to detect surface targets. With their help, American sailors, for example, detected an enemy submarine on the surface at a distance of up to 10 miles, and aircraft radars, which appeared at the allies in 1940, provided detection of submarines at a distance of up to 17 miles. Even a "steel shark" walking at a depth of several meters was detected by the onboard radar of a patrol aircraft at a distance of at least 5-6 miles (moreover, since 1942, the radar has been coupled with a powerful "Lay" -type searchlight with a range of more than 1.5 kilometers). The very first major success in a naval battle was achieved with the help of radar in March 1941 - then the British smashed to smithereens the Italian fleet at Cape Matapan (Tenaron). In the Soviet Navy, already in 1941, the Russian-made Redut-K radar was installed on the Molotov CD, however, to detect air targets, not surface targets (for the latter purpose, the Soviet Navy then preferred optics and heat direction finders). During the war, the ships of the Soviet Navy used mainly foreign-made radars.
Emitting installation of the SON-2a gun aiming radar (English GL-MkII). On its basis, the domestic SON-2ot was produced. In the air defense forces of the Red Army, SON-2 made it possible to qualitatively increase the combat effectiveness of medium-caliber anti-aircraft artillery
Radar stations were also installed on submarines: this allowed the commanders to successfully attack ships and vessels at night and in bad weather conditions, and in August 1942, German submariners received the FuMB system at their disposal, which made it possible to determine the moment the submarine was irradiated by the radar of a ship or an enemy patrol aircraft. In addition, the commanders of submarines, evading enemy ships equipped with radars, began to actively use small false radio-contrast targets, imitating the submarine's cabin.
Hydroacoustics, on which the admirals did not place big bets before the war, also made great strides: sonars with active and passive paths and sound underwater communication stations were developed and brought to mass production. And in June 1943, the first sonar buoys entered service with the American anti-submarine aviation.
Despite the complexity of the practical use of the new technology, the Allies managed to achieve certain results with its help. One of the most effective and successful cases of the combat use of hydroacoustic buoys is the joint operation to sink the German submarine U-575, carried out on March 13, 1944, in the area northwest of the Azores.
After being damaged by bombs dropped from the Wellington patrol aircraft, U-575 was discovered a few hours later by an aircraft from the naval wing of the escort aircraft carrier Bogue. The aircraft deployed a series of RSL and aimed anti-submarine ships and aircraft with their help on the enemy submarine. An anti-submarine aircraft from the 206th Air Squadron of the Royal Air Force, the American ships Haverfield and Hobson, and the Canadian Prince Rupert took part in the destruction of the German submarine.
By the way, in the US Navy, sonar buoys were successfully deployed from surface ships and small displacement vessels: usually they were submarine hunter boats. And to combat the German acoustic torpedoes, the Allies developed an acoustic jamming device towed behind the stern of the ship. German submariners widely used imitation cartridges, which confused enemy acousticians.
On the other hand, practically throughout the entire war, Soviet submarines did not have radar or GAS. Moreover, periscope antennas appeared on domestic submarines only in the middle of 1944, and even then only on seven submarines. Soviet submariners could not operate effectively in the dark, could not launch periscope-free attacks, which had become the norm in the fleets of other countries, and in order to receive and transmit radio reports, it was necessary to surface to the surface.
And since we are already talking about the fleet, let us remember that World War II was the golden era of torpedo weapons - all fleets used tens of thousands of torpedoes in those years. The submarine forces of the Navy alone used up almost 15,000 torpedoes! It was then that many directions for the development of torpedo weapons were determined, work on which continues to this day: the creation of traceless and homing torpedoes, the development of bubbleless firing systems, the creation of proximity fuses of various types, the design of new, unconventional power plants for ship (boat) and aircraft torpedoes. But the artillery armament of submarines has practically disappeared.
