I guess a better question would be, would technological advances have advanced faster without war. Which would probably only be shown by technology advancing during peacetime vs wartime.
Or maybe another way to phrase it, “What is a more powerful force for driving innovation, capitalism or war?”
tomndebb disagrees, writing: “In fact, when I set out to show the great advancements that WWII had brought forward for aircraft use and production, the only actual invention or development that had not been retarded by WWII was the jet engine. Every other feature associated with aircraft development had already been developed before the war or was put on hold during the war.”
Regardless of whether or how much the jet engine has contributed to air travel moving out of its infancy, I would argue that WWII contributed greatly to the development of air travel in another way. It provided, as soon as it ended, thousands of pilots, aircraft mechanics and other personnel essential to the airline industry. Several airlines were started, in fact, by demobilized military pilots. How long would it have taken for the airlines themselves to find the enormous resources needed to train all the pilots, mechanics etc. needed to run an airline had WWII not dropped a boatload of such people in their lap.
From this website
http://www.ginettatoolbox.org/tech/other/other.history.fuel.injection.html
“Bosch then lead in the fuel injection field dated back to 1912 when Robert Bosch began experimenting with the concept. In time for World War II, the company had developed a direct injection system which enhanced the performance of German military aircraft.”
I think it allowed them do fly upside-down without stalling.
Was this in preparation for the war, or just a happy coincidence?
Regarding mrblue92’s and Yeah’s (fairly mild) challenges to my original post:
I would never claim that development came to a complete halt during wartime (and mrblue92’s points regarding stress and structure may have, indeed, been enhanced through WWI–my research was concentrated on WWII). I only contend that the general development of aircraft was not enhanced by military applications.
Regarding the boon to the commercial aircraft world following WWII, I would add that a huge number of people who might have shunned flying prior to WWII, accepted it after WWII simply because they had been shoved onto airplanes under orders and found that the planes did not generally crash.
However, I took the OP to ask what things were developed because of warfare. When viewed from that particular perspective, the number of inventions/developments/advances falls short in the aircraft industry. (For example, WWI also provided a bumber crop of pilots, mechanics, and unused airplanes, but may have actually slowed aircraft development because the public associated “aircraft” with dogfights and falling, flaming, from the sky.) Curtiss and Martin actually continued trying to develop commercial aircraft for the first couple of years of WWI (since the U.S. was not involved), but had a hard time selling their wares as the public looked on aircraft as terribly dangerous.
The fuel injection mentioned by pweetman was sought by the commercial industry as they tried to develop a plane that could fly above most bad weather. Pressurized cabins served the same end. (The Boeing 307 was operational in 1938–using the same wings, tail, and engines of the B-17–but was intended to fly in conditions that would ground other airliners. Boeing did not bother pressurizing the B-17, itself, waiting for the B-29 to adapt it for the military.)
Laminar flow design, monocoque construction, supercharged engines, and a host of other applications were developed for commercial aircraft. Even on those occasions when the first application was made on a pursuit plane (as, my aging memory suggests, happened with monocoque skin), the smaller plane was used simply to test the application, not because there was a military need for the development.
RADAR and LORAN, on the other hand, which are essential to the use of airplanes, today, were specifically military applications. Again, the point is not that nothing advances during times of war, only that war is not the general “advancer of civilization” as held by many 19th century pundits.
Heh, this reminds me of one of the stories in the Man-Kzin Wars series of books. The basic premise is a few hundred years from now humanity has done away with war and most violence, and has actually rewritten history with all warfare left out. Since people are taught that warfare and civilization are mutally exclusive, when they encounter an alien race they assume that they are peaceful, as no warlike race could ever develop spaceflight. They get a nasty surprise.
The aliens believe the opposite - that no peaceful species would ever achieve spaceflight, as there would be no motivation to advance technology in rocketry and ballistics. When they encounter mankind, a starfaring race which believes that their last wars were at the dawn of history, they immediately realize the truth - that they were warlike at one time but have covered that up.
I couldn’t help but think of Sid Meier’s Civilization series of games when I read the OP. “Bronze Working” leads to “Iron Working”, and with “Invention” you can get “Gunpowder” and so on…
As to developments spurred by wars… OK, so we got nylon, tampons, and the jet engine, plus practical submarines, rockets, and gunpowder…
How about armour (of any kind, but bulletproof vests specifically)? I’d argue that there really isn’t much civilian need for such personal defenive measures unless you plan to be attacked, and just this month, we’ve had no less than three police officers here in the DFW area whose lives were saved by the more modern kind of body armour.
There’s always been a race across time to come up with a counter-measure to protect one’s body in battle from the “slings and arrows” of the enemy - stone or bronze weapons vs. hides or bronze armour, then iron, then longbows and muskets, then rifled weapons and steel plate, and now composite plastics and ceramic or alloy plates, plus maybe depleted uranium as the end-all-be-all of fortification.
With the invention of gunpowder, personal armour really took a hit - no pun intended. I’m sure Cromwell’s “New Model Army” was the last of its kind, as men in plate armour really only fare well if the other guys are (mostly) armed with pikes and swords, too - it won’t stop a musket ball.
In fact, with the exception of the steel helmet, I’d wager that really practical personal armour was probably not feasible again until maybe the 1930’s, when more modern materials were availabe to protect targets larger than a man’s head.
Now, if I could just come up with a way to make practical Marauder suits… but somebody would probably invent an Arachnid just to spite me! 
Pete
Long time RGMWer and ardent AOLer
Originally posted by TomH:
But how could they have destroyed civilization at all without war?
And what about Eastern Europe?
Nylon was actually invented before the war for the civilian market. But it was so useful as a war material (parachutes mostly, I think) that virtually none was allocated to the civilian sector. As a result, there arose a mystique during the war about how much better nylon stockings were than silk. (Being a non-consumer of sheer stockings, I don’t know whether this had any basis in reality.) So I think you can remove nylon from the list of things invented or even improved because of a war.