[QUOTE=Raguleader]
I’ve heard a number of neat theories comparing the different ways that the people from each country looked at things. One example is how Americans were more familiar and comfortable with automobiles and machinery than most of the Europeans and British. I’m trying to think of examples that make the other countries in the war sound better than us Americans, but I guess those didn’t come up much in much of my reading.
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Oh, another example that I thought of, Americans built aircraft carriers with the intent to operate them out in the open seas, where their best defense was being able to outrun their opponents and evade attack. The British aircraft carriers were built with the intent to operate them in the English Channel, where the relatively narrow confines would make locating them easier, and thus their best defense would be to armor-plate the flight deck to protect the ship from the more likely attack.
In practice, most of the carrier operations happened out in the open sea, during the Pacific campaigns and the Battle of the Atlantic, and while the American carriers weren’t much more capable at outrunning Japanese aircraft than the British carriers were, they were able to carry considerably more of their own aircraft, since the deck armor on the British carriers required larger structural supports which reduced the usable volume of the hangar decks for carrying aircraft. End result? American carriers were better able to defend themselves and attack their enemies at a distance due to their larger air wings.
Some time during the Cold War, we built the *Midway *class aircraft carriers, which featured armored flight decks for some reason. IIRC, they had some handling problems due to being top-heavy, and of course had more limited space for aircraft. On top of this, it’s been rather difficult for anyone to put a bomb on a US carrier since WWII (experience has shown that we are far more likely to sink one of our own carriers than anyone else is, a la USS Forrestal
Other differences in thought include the Germans building complex, highly capable tanks like the Panzer and Tiger, and the Americans churning out cheaper, simpler, less capable tanks on assembly lines. The Germans supposedly had a saying: “One German tank can defeat ten American tanks. There is always an eleventh American tank.”
