# Today vs WWII military power **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 19, 2004, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-vs-wwii-military-power/255828 "2004-07-19T15:08:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-vs-wwii-military-power/255828/61 "2011-04-14T04:12:11Z")
> [@mac\_bolan00](#): > > a nuclear powered sub will have to work hard to sink an iowa with torpedoes though, especially if the BB has supporting forces. Are we still talking about _Iowa_-class battleships back in WWII with WWII-era supporting forces, or a BB of the modern era with modern ASW air support? If it’s the former, the _Iowa_-class is toast. WWII-era ships had no submarine detection equipment worth mentioning. The modern sub is also much faster than anything on the surface, and has unlimited range. It might take as many as four MK-48 ADCAP torpedoes to sink it, but the battleship probably won’t be making much headway after the first hit anyway, so there’s no rush. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-vs-wwii-military-power/255828/62 "2011-04-14T04:23:55Z")
> [@Mr.Excellent](#): > > Does that matter, though? My understanding is that the primary use of modern American subs is to either carry nukes, track (and potentially engage) other subs carrying nukes, track/engage enemy warships, and to launch cruise missiles. We don’t really do merchant raiding any more. It doesn’t matter today, but that’s not the point of this whole thread. From the six-year old OP: “If everything in the US right now, including territorial waters was transported back to just before pearl harbor, how quick could we win WWII?” I was comparing the effectiveness of a modern sub against a WWII enemy to the effectiveness of a WWII sub against a WWII enemy. With respect to taking out small WWII-era merchants, the modern sub is at a disadvantage because it lacks a deck gun. There were lots of small merchants back in WWII that would not be worth the expense of a modern guided torpedo. > [@Mr.Excellent](#): > > You may want to rethink that - your Iowa is never even going to _see_ a modern carrier. It’ll see very fast, very heavily-armed planes, sure - but the carrier is never going to be in gunnery range. Why would it? > > Sure, if a carrier were so foolish as to stray within range of a BB’s guns, it wouldn’t last long. But the carrier can strike from hundreds of miles away, and can outrun almost any modern surface ship, let alone a 70-year-old clunker. I think that **mac\_bolan00** was comparing the survivability of an Iowa-class battleship to an aircraft carrier when attacked by a nuclear sub, not a battle between the two surface ships. ---
**Author:** ![Otara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a88e4f/32.png) [@Otara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otara)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 7:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-vs-wwii-military-power/255828/63 "2011-04-14T07:38:46Z")
Modern surface craft could easily take the role of ww2 submarines instead though, easily able to avoid surface threats via radar and sonar, and counter air threats. You wouldnt have to sink every convoy after all, once the first few got annihilated they’d have to stop. Otara ---
**Author:** ![Gray\_Ghost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c0e974/32.png) [@Gray\_Ghost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gray_Ghost)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-vs-wwii-military-power/255828/64 "2011-04-14T15:13:07Z")
> [@Hypno-Toad](#): > > A related question here: How much more powerful are the military explosives now than in WWII? Apart from the accuracy issue, that is. If one were comparing a 500 pound iron bomb from WWII and an identical bomb casing filled with modern stuff, how much more BOOM would the new one have? You might find interesting the following site that deals with unexploded ordnance, (UXO). [This subsection](http://uxoinfo.com/uxoinfo/ordfillers.cfm) gives a brief introduction to different types of explosive filler. Comparing apples to apples, [this site](http://www.skytamer.com/AN-M65.html) claims the WW II era AN-M65 1000 lb. GP bomb was filled with 595 lbs of Troytl or Amatol explosive. ([This site](http://www.303rdbg.com/bombs.html) has a list of WW II U.S. aerial bombs, but no info on the explosive composition, just mass) From the [wiki, troytl](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinitrotoluene) is just another name for TNT, while [Amatol](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amatol) is TNT mixed with ammonium nitrate. Amatol is about 17% more effective than TNT, [from this chart](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_effectiveness_factor). For a modern GP bomb, let’s look at the[U.S. Mark 83.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_83_bomb) It too, is a 1000 lb. bomb, filled with 445 lb. of [Tritonal.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritonal) Tritonal is an 80/20 TNT/Aluminum powder mixture. Per the wiki, it’s 18% more effective than TNT, or about as effective as Amatol. How small and how dispersed the Al is, I don’t know. No doubt there are stabilizers and markers within the compound as well. As there are numerous metrics for evaluating the strength of explosives (see the Power, Performance, and Strength section of [this wiki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosive)), Tritonal may be much better on some of them than Amatol, and that’s why it’s used for those bombs. My WAG is that it’s much more stable, longer shelf-life, and less prone to cook off than an Amatol-filled bomb or shell. So, you’d get more boom from the WWII bomb, but my guess is that you’d have much more shrapnel and hence overall destruction from the Mk. 83. The Mk. 83 is also going to be much lower in drag—that was the whole point of the design, after all—than the WW II bomb. Don’t know why they don’t use [PETN](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PETN), [RDX](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RDX), or [HMX](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMX) instead of Tritonal. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-vs-wwii-military-power/255828/65 "2011-04-14T15:21:47Z")
> [@mac\_bolan00](#): > > i know one weapons type of WW2 technology that will still work today: massed artillery, and the productive capacity to produce guns and ammo in large numbers. > > when the russians launched the final push towards berlin, they had enough artillery to provide one cannon for every 13 feet of front. now what M1A1 abrams or kevlar vest can withstand that? Right. Numbers can tip the balance even when you have inferior equipment or training. If you transported one Abrams tank and a US Special Forces Platoon to the Roman era in an attempt to protect Gaul from Caesar, would you succeed? Regardless of the tools and technology you have, you are hugely outnumbered, and you only have so much ammo and gas and eventually the Roman legions will overpower you. Even if you did succeed, depending on what time-travel worldview you subscribe to, you may wipe out the United States or install a tyrannic dictator in 2011 by doing this. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-vs-wwii-military-power/255828/66 "2011-04-14T17:55:03Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > If you transported one Abrams tank and a US Special Forces Platoon to the Roman era in an attempt to protect Gaul from Caesar, would you succeed? Regardless of the tools and technology you have, you are hugely outnumbered, and you only have so much ammo and gas and eventually the Roman legions will overpower you. > > Even if you did succeed, depending on what time-travel worldview you subscribe to, you may wipe out the United States or install a tyrannic dictator in 2011 by doing this. Heh. And you’d install a tyrannic dictator in 44 BC by NOT doing it. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-vs-wwii-military-power/255828/67 "2011-04-14T18:01:00Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > Right. Numbers can tip the balance even when you have inferior equipment or training. > > If you transported one Abrams tank and a US Special Forces Platoon to the Roman era in an attempt to protect Gaul from Caesar, would you succeed? Regardless of the tools and technology you have, you are hugely outnumbered, and you only have so much ammo and gas and eventually the Roman legions will overpower you. > > Even if you did succeed, depending on what time-travel worldview you subscribe to, you may wipe out the United States or install a tyrannic dictator in 2011 by doing this. An advantage of numbers can succeed but let’s admit that a 10,000-1 numerical superiority isn’t realistic. ---
**Author:** ![myname3000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/cc9497/32.png) [@myname3000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/myname3000)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2011, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-vs-wwii-military-power/255828/68 "2011-11-27T19:33:18Z")
um… no one mentioned that all the ww2 codes would be decoded with ease by modern computers and we have all the native american codes down somewhere in the web? Oh, and I think that nukes are kinda hard to land with B-29s on a mobile army and it’ll probably be shot down before it got there… and america cannot mass produce nukes. The only advantage the WW2 guys had, as stated above somewhere, is that battle-hardened infantry that outnumber the enemy 10000 to 1 will be kinda hard to beat, even with bombings and etc. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2011, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-vs-wwii-military-power/255828/69 "2011-11-27T23:20:25Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > As bump points out, I thik Dunnigan’s point is being wildly misunderstood. > > His point was not that there was any sort of equivalence between 2011 and 1944 armies. There isn’t; the former would annihilate the latter. His point was that combat could be modelled in the same way, which is a very different concept - essentially, that if you are simulating a war, the variables of the simulation of a war in 2011 work essentially the same as the variables of simulating a war in 1944… What I think this means is that there is an overarching model/algorithm/etc that can be used to run a simulation to determine the likely outcome of a war or battle using either a WW2 or a modern setup, but you have to plug the correct numbers in (and the numbers do differ from WW2 to modern times) e.g. (substitute actual quantification) WW2: Troop Count: 20M Tank Count: 5000 Tank Range: 6 Modern: Troop Count: 1M Tank Count: 5000 Tank Range: 20 and you can plug in the numbers and run the model/simulation. Ancient combat may not be well modeled, as, say, Ancient Greece didn’t have very many tanks… ---
**Author:** ![mac\_bolan00](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b3f665/32.png) [@mac\_bolan00](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mac_bolan00)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-vs-wwii-military-power/255828/70 "2011-11-28T06:25:13Z")
serbia’s attack into bosnia? ---
**Author:** ![Tristan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tristan/32/18058_2.png) [@Tristan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tristan)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-vs-wwii-military-power/255828/71 "2011-11-28T14:21:28Z")
Wow, Double Zombie. How neat! The OP postulates the current US, with all it’s production capability, IT and infrastructure. IF it’s 1942, does that mean that US forces that were already abroad STAY abroad? Would we be working to merge a 1940’s navy with our modern one? As for a lack of “fighting men” as we would lose all the men and gear in the MENA region, we would still have national guards and reserve units. PLUS, speaking for my 36 year old self and my friends, if we are suddenly given the opportunity to sign up and actually go FIGHT NAZIS, it’s game on time. No shortage of recruits, I guarantee. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-vs-wwii-military-power/255828.md?page=3)