Minimal amount of (non-nuclear) modern military tech required to win WWII

In My Humble Opinion
1

Suppose you could jump back in time and be the commander of the military forces of any World War II nation you chose - USA, Britain, France, Nazi Germany, China, Imperial Japan, the Soviets, etc. The time is January 1942, so, just a few weeks after Pearl Harbor.

The thought-experiment is to win the war using the absolute bare minimum of modern (non-nuclear) military technology possible, which you get to take back into time with you. You can have the logistics chain for any weapons systems, an essentially unlimited supply of ammo, and the necessary fuel and pilots/technicians for it (people who understand how to use the weapon).

**
Japan:** ISTM that a pair of modern nuclear-powered submarines, such as the Seawolf-class or Virginia-class, in the hands of the Japanese navy, could turn the tide in the Pacific. It would be able to operate with virtual impunity against US aircraft carrier groups, and also the American fleets trying to land troops at Iwo Jima, Okinawa, etc. It would have to be two, not one, because one would have to be back in port getting re-armed and switching in a new crew with supplies, etc. while the other was out hunting at sea - and even if both subs were in the Pacific, the Pacific is a vast ocean to cover. But the difficulty for the Japanese would be, how do they find the American fleets in a vast expanse of Pacific?

**Germany: ** Submarines wouldn’t make much difference for the Nazis; the U-boat campaign still failed to starve Britain and the land war was of much greater importance for the Germans. I would think a dozen AC-130 gunships could make the crucial difference to win the tank battles at Kursk and also the urban fighting to capture Stalingrad, Moscow, Leningrad, etc., and then, later on, defeat the D-Day forces at Normandy. They could loiter high enough in the sky to be out of range of flak, and/or attack the enemy at night time using night vision. However, these AC-130s might be vulnerable to attack by enemy fighters, so they might need a few modern fighter jets to serve as air escorts.

**Soviets: ** Probably same as the Germans. The Russians won the Eastern Front but a dozen AC-130s could have made it happen easier and more quickly.

**Americans: ** Having a B-2 bomber, and also a KC-10 tanker, to enable global strikes might enable assassination of Hitler, Mussolini, the Japanese emperor, other key figures, and key targets to speed up the war’s victory. Although…again, the issue is that there is no satellite intel or GPS mapping or other high-tech eyes to assist the B-2 in this sort of mission.

2

I would generically (good for any nation) go with a modern missile system or possibly guided bombs. Yeah, they had a sort of primitive version in WW II, I believe. But tech has come a long way in the years since then.

3

Hercules gunships would be dead meat against any WW2 fighter. If your interest is killing tanks and the like, then why not go for the Warthog?

And I thought you were excluding nuclear technology?

4

The critical battle for Germans was the Battle of Moscow, so whatever weapon system you’d give them should be something that was useful for that battle. I’m not at all sure if it would be the best choice but I might try giving them a number of M270 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems.

Artillery is often overlooked when talking about war but it has been one of the main killers in modern wars. I was reading about the Battle of the Bulge earlier this year and the use of the new proximity fuzes was mentioned several times as one of the factors helping the US to win their fights. And that’s just a contemporary tech improvement - I imagine having M270s would have far more of an impact.

5

How about a space station with telescopes? This would be principally to report the weather, but the telescopes could see large-scale stuff on the ground, which the crew would then report by radio.

6

Non-nuclear as in, no nuke weapons. Nuclear reactors are OK.

7

Two things. Either by themselves could do it but together would be devastating. Sincgars radio which would allow completely encrypted, uninterceptable voice communications drastically increasing the ability of to transmit sensitive information without any chance of the enemy listening in.

The second thing is Predator drones. This would all but eliminate the fog of war on the battlefield. Knowing exactly what your enemy is doing in a way that is all but impervious to period radar plus able to launch hellfire missiles without risking a pilot would be decisive.

8

For the battle of Moscow, period improvements could have turned the tide: cold-winter gear for the soldiers, maybe starting the invasion a month earlier. Also, not killing people, but making a real appeal to the Russians. The murder squads did a lot to stiffen resistance.

For Japan, yeah, you need to throw in a fantasy element. And, yeah, a couple of modern submarines would be hell on wheels…um…dive planes. Sinking the U.S. aircraft carriers would certainly change the tone of the war, especially when it’s done right outside San Francisco Bay.

9

I took a look at the numbers and if the speed and operational max altitude are correct, the drones would be easily shot down by WWII era fighters. Just because they wouldn’t be visible on radar doesn’t turn them invisible to human eyes and they are fairly big. If you want eyes in the sky spy satellites or U-2 planes would be impervious to WWII era weapons for sure.

10

Agree with kopek in post #3: AC-130s could not survive the AAA over a WWII battlefield much less the WWII fighters of any nation. They are awesome against defenseless targets. A WWII armored division was far from defenseless.
My thoughts:

Many modern weapons give impunity to the attacker. Fast jets, high altitude bombers, silent SSNs, impenetrable MBTs, etc. But …

WWII was a vastly larger affair than modern weapons systems. Quantity not quality is needed to carry the day.

If you pitted the entire modern non-nuke USAF against the Nazis in the opening days of Barbarossa the carnage would be tremendous. But the numbers on the German side were so large we simply don’t have the numbers to prosecute all the targets. They’d bring a thousand vehicles and 5000 men as against just one of our aircraft. You’d wear the jet out, even given unlimited munitions, before you’d plinked even 10% of the assaulting force.

Sorta the inverse of the old saying that “nine women can’t make a baby in a month”: a vastly outnumbered force can’t be everywhere it’s needed even if one-on-one it’s vastly superior.

If, *a la *the Nimitz versus Pearl Harbor scenario, you also grant the modern force the power of clairvoyance, to know how the battle really unfolded the first time, well you’re just engaging in teenage “I’m an invincible bully” scenarios. Assuming the actual fog of war you don’t know where or when the enemy will do what.

Which brings me to my proposal for the ultimate devastating modern innovation. Modern EW / ISR.

Bring our modern ELINT networks, satellites, son-of- SOSUS, etc. And don’t bother with anything kinetic at all. Not a single round of 5.56 or anything to shoot it from.

Now we can read all their cable traffic, listen in on every radio call, and selectively prevent 100% of their radio traffic at will and spoof the rest. Clog their teletype circuits with both junk and deliberate misinformation. We can watch their forces assemble, provide accurate maps, detect large scale movements in real time, etc.

Then funnel all that info to whichever high command or tactical unit we want to win. Back Hitler, Stalin, Tojo, or Churchill as you choose.

So in effect you become the modern computerized brains and leave the WWII guys to be the brawn. The vastly more numerous brawn.

11

For the OP: does this mean the number of different technologies or the total amount (however one might parse that) of high tech gear? Because as others have implied, weapons which rely on air supremacy along with weapons that create it would have a multiplier effect larger than just one of them alone. So I’d rather have 6 modern jets with copious AA missiles and 2 anti-ground aircraft than 10 fighters or 4 AC-130’s/whathaveyou alone.

That said, the answer is clear for the Americans even if you want to limit the numbers of different tech: you’d want as many general-purpose fighter-bombers as possible. The Pacific front would be no problem at all, and they are small enough that you could transport them / fly across the sea to Europe where they could establish air supremacy and then start assisting the ground war (including in Russia.)

With Russia/Germany, I’d want to depend on tech synergies as said before. I think as a general rule I’d want to pair up 1 modern MBT with 1 multipurpose fighter with 1/4 ground attack aircraft (in modern warfare of course this scale does not hold but there would still be a lot of other infantry and lesser tanks to hold the ground in place of the MBTs). Scale up until it enough to win the war. Probably 100/100/25 or so would be enough to turn the tide on either side.

12

Yes a SR-71 would be able to get all of Europe in a few hours and be all but invincible to period defenses but a drone would be much cheaper to operate and could be used by field units who would be able to get the information in real time. Plus a drone operated at night would be all but invisible.

13

Nighttime-only operations might do it, with the AC-130s using night vision and the WWII forces not.

14

Agree that night would work far better than day. But …

At night they’re real hard to see until the open fire. Then they’re real easy to see. Lots and lots of WWII AAA battles were largely illuminated by the light of exploding shells and exploding bombers.

15

Plenty of night fighters during WWII. You might get away with using them during the early war vs Germany but they’d hardly be invulnerable even then. A lot of US toys require complete air superiority to work well, something you wouldn’t have in WWII in any battle that mattered.

16

AC-130’s operated against fairly robust enemy AA capabilities at night over Laos, with some losses but not prohibitive. They also used electronic countermeasures against radar directed AA, to the extent that would apply in WWII (depends on the adversary). The big problem at night in WWII would as mentioned have been late WWII night fighters particularly German, or Anglo/American, but I guess the assumption here is generally the Allies would have these post WWII weapons. The USAAF itself, though the RAF obviously much more, experienced this in WWII. US B-24 units which specialized in night supply drops to partisans in occupied Europe suffered losses to German night fighters, and in July 1944 the 9th AF experimented with night bombing by B-26’s over occupied France. A formation of 322nd BG a/c ran into German night fighters and 9 B-26’s were quickly shot down and two others shot up, though they shot down two night fighters in return. The German pilots weren’t believed at first when submitting their claims: who ever heard of B-26’s at night? The ‘nachtjagd’ ca. 1944 were extremely dangerous in their element, and didn’t decline in effectiveness as fast as the German day fighter force did, though the night fighters also took a beating from USAAF fighters when misused in daylight.

Against the Soviets by the Germans, AC-130 types would be more viable, but searchlights directing AA and non-radar equipped fighters would still have been a serious hazard.

But the original AC-47 gunship concept would actually have been feasible in the Pacific with then existing technology. The airplane itself obviously, but also AC-47’s mainly found targets with flares and early on ca. 1964 when there weren’t enough 7.62mm gatling guns for all of them some used batteries of M2 .30 cal aircraft machine guns left over from WWII. Japanese infantry usually attacked at night like ground opponents in Vietnam, and relatively seldom did they bring along AA guns much of a threat to AC-47’s at night. Also their limited night fighter efforts were mostly in defense of rear area bases and the Home Islands, not field forces.

17

To take down the AC-130, you have spotters on the ground tell you it’s approximate location when it’s doing a gun run. Once you get close, you won’t be able to miss it from all the flashes from it’s guns. If it doesn’t have modern fighter escorts, it’ll be helpless to a gun-armed ww2 fighter. It might be able to outrun one in a straight line, but not while it’s simultaneously doing a support mission, and it doesn’t have radar or anything to even see enemy fighters closing in. Any flares or anti missile defenses are useless against plain old machine guns or cannon.

And if you try to escort it with period interceptors, they will have a lot of difficulty stopping a swarm of fighters in a mass attack, all trying to get a single firing pass on the irreplaceable AC-130s.

Also, the Russians could upgrade their flak batteries - add rocket assistance - to be able to hit the AC-130 at any altitude it can fly at.

The Seawolf class, OTOH, have the issue that while they can go deep enough and silent enough to basically be immune to ww2 ASW weapons, they can only carry a finite number of torpedoes.

I suppose that if you could tell via passive or active sonar which ships in an American fleet are carriers, and use your torpedoes on them exclusively, you could really turn the tide.

Per this : Grim Economic Realities

You need to sink 141 aircraft carriers. Maybe you only need to sink 2/3 of them. Sink enough, and it’s going to be a slaughter in favor of the Japanese because it turned out that all the other naval warships almost never got into combat range. Carriers were the only ship worth having. (well, you needed escorts and mission ships but for fighting other navies, carriers were the king)

18

Good suggestions above, previous threads on sending an M1A1 Abrams back (it would eventually be rendered immobile), an AC-130 (the Luftwaffe makes mincemeat out of it), a Reaper drone (not enough gun, gets perforated by AA) and the USS Missouri SSN-780 (complete ownage in either the Atlantic or Pacific due to her detection capabilities, can target enemy capital ships with impunity).

In other words a modern sub would be a good choice, but for other suggestions reading through Churchill’s memoirs one of the things he frequently bemoans is lack of sufficient LSTs to invade mainland Europe, so for rule of cool give him as many of these as possible. Agree with sending a few B2 Spirits with escorts given to the Eighth Air Force, direct them for night bombing of the Ploesti oil fields.

19

I gotta go with the intelligence assets. Satellites may not kill the enemy but better location information - and weather, as mentioned above - would turn the tide. Absolute knowledge of enemy location and movements would get the job done.

20

Here’s an off-the wall idea: could we send back enough heavy construction equipment to build the Chunnel and use that for a focal point of an invasion? Per Wikipedia, it took 6 years to build and you’d probably wind up bottled up and wiped out before you could establish a large enough force in Europe, so I’m guessing it’s out. The idea intrigued me though.