Axis white elephants in WW2

Anyone who doesn't believe GOD had a very heavy hand in WW2, just read about these Axis white elephants:

The German Schwerer Gustav cannons

These beasts were 2 German railroad guns built by Krupp to destroy the fortifications of the French Maginot Line, then the strongest fortifications in the world. However, the Blitzkrieg made that unnecessary.

One of them was sent to the Eastern Front later in the war It managed to destroy a munitions dump 30 feet underground. The other one was never used.

This monster could fire a 15000 lb. shell accurately for about 20 miles, up to 30 miles inaccurately. However, it could only fire one round every 45 minutes or so, & took a crew of over 1200 men to operate. One airplane crewed by one man could lay a stick of bombs the same weight much-more-accurately. While the Russians respected it, they didn't alter one attack plan one iota because of it, & it never disrupted the Russians at all! It was a costly machine that performed as advertised, but was a monumental waste of resources & no game-changer whatsoever.

The Japanese carrier Shinano

The Shinano started life as the intended 3rd super-battleship in the Yamato class, but, after 4 carriers were sunk at Midway, the brass ordered it to be converted to a carrier. It came out at a little over 68,000 tons displacement. However, it wasn't ready to use until November 1944. its first mission was supposed to transport a load of [/i]Okha[/i] suicide rockets (Called "baka", Japanese for "fool" by the yanks) from Yokosuka to Kure. However, the US sub Archerfish put four torpedoes into her. Her skipper, Captain Abe, wasn't too concerned at first, as he was used to USA torpedoes being much-inferior to Japanese ones. However, unknown to Abe, USA torpedoes were very much-improved by that time, with more explosive & hitting power. Too late, he realized she was fatally damaged, & he tried to beach her, but failed. he chose to go down with his ship, but his executive officer survived the sinking, & the war itself. After the war, he told the Americans the ship's construction hadn't been even nearly finished, but at any rate, it had inherent design defects, including too-thin armor, & would've still sunk, even if completed. That officer said it was junk from the gitgo.

The Japanese wasted a vast amount of man-hours, steel, & resources on a ship that never fired one shot nor launched one plane at the enemy, & would likely not have survived its first battle had it been in one. However, the Yamato & Musashi were excellent ships, misused by the Japanese, who were afraid to risk them in battle til the war was lost. They, as well as the Shinano, were all-but-useless white elephants!

 

The carrier Taiho ended up as a Japanese white elephant as well. She was a well-designed carrier, with an armored flight deck & superior fire-control systems. But on her first mission, she was struck by one American torpedo which ruptured some av-fuel tanks. The damage should've been easily controlled, but the damage-control ordered the internal ventilation system turned on to full capacity, thus filling the entire ship's innards with gasoline fumes. They subsequently exploded, fatally damaging the ship. Thus, another brand-new carrier became a white elephant! At least, she had launched many of her aircraft.

 

He may have, to help the Axis lose more quickly.

 

Another Axis white elephant that shouldn't've been was the Japanese submaring service. The tone was set by the complete failure of the miniature subs in the Pearl Harbor attack. Five were launched from larger subs; they inflicted no damage, with the loss of nine crewmen, with one man surviving & being captured, the first Japanese POW of the war.
Japanese sub crews were rigorously & meticulously trained, with each man thoroughly learning his own job plus one other, before being assigned to a boat. Then, the crew took the boat on several training missions to familiarize the crew with the boat & each other.
Japanese sub captains were very thoroughly trained, taking several years to be considered for command of a boat.
The boats themselves were not vastly inferior to US ones, but they couldn't dive as deep, weren't quite as maneuverable, & never had as good a radar as ours. However, they had two distince advantages over ours: speed, & the Type 95 torpedo, a variant of the Long Lance, & the best torpedo in the world til near the very end of the war. That torpedo ran a straight, true course at an astonishing 49 knots with a max range of 20 miles, & duds were almost unheard-of. The Japanese subs could've wreaked havoc with our supply trains.
Why they became white elephants was because of the fleet commanders' tactics. They ordered the subs to attack only warships, while merchant ships were the subs' natural prey. Those commanders took no lessons from German U-boats nor our own subs which eventually choked off almost all Japanese supply shipping. Then, there was their tactic of stubbornly insisting upon picket lines, which made them sttting ducks, as Allied anti-sub ships could easily find them by merely following the picket line from its flank. In May, 1944, the US destroyer England detected such a picket line & sank six Japanese subs in 12 days by merely flanking & following the picket line.
Before Midway, Japan sent a squadron of old, slow subs to keep tabs on Pearl Harbor, to detect any US carriers leaving there heading toward Midway. Being slow, they arrived too late to catch the US carriers that had left earlier.
Then, there were the giant I-400-class subs, over 400 feet long, easily the world's largest subs at the time. While armed, they were intended for supply vessels, but would've been easily-detectable from the air & been depth-charge fodder. They were quite-costly to make, but all-but-useless for war.
Again, the fleet commanders' poor tactics made the Japanese sub arm a white elephant.

 

A German white elephant was the Tiger tank. While on paper it was a formidable machine, it had many shortcomings & was not effective compared to the German Panzer IV(Panzer means armor, not panther) which weighed less than half of what the Tiger did. (68 tons to 27 tons) The Tiger couldn't maneuver nearly as well, & was slower than American Shermans or Russian T-34s & couldn't bring its gun to bear nearly as fast as those other two tanks. Its turret couldn't rotate as fast as those others.
The Tiger had a range of only 68 miles on a full tank of 120 gallons. Its armor was rectangular, not conducive to deflecting shell hits.And its armor was made of an inferior alloy for armor. The lighter American, British, & Russian tanks quicklylearned to maneuver around a Tiger & fire into its sides, where the armor was thinner & easily splintered.
When the blitzkrieg comes to mind, so does the Tiger. However, it was the Panzer IV used to storm Western Europe & for awhile it was the best tank any side used - til the Russians came out with the T-34, the British with the Churchill, & the USA with improved Shermans. The expensive, fuel-guzzling Tigers were no longer feared by the Allies, & diverted German factories from making more effective units.

 

Japanese super-battleships Yamato & Musashi
These huge battleships were the largest ever built, at a displacement of 73 K tons each, carried the largest guns, 9 eighteen-inchers that fired 3220-lb shells, & the thickest armor, 16 inches at the waterline. They were designed to be the best battleships afloat, & for awhile, were, But for some reason, the Japanese didn't take air power into account, even though they were the world leader in it for awhile with their carriers.
However, the Japanese were reluctant ro send those battleships into battle, afraid of losing them to enemy action. While the Yamato sailed a good bit as Adm. Yamamoto's flagship, it didn't fire one shot an an enemy ship, & was never near the scene of any ongoing battles. And the Mushashi spent so much time in the Kure harbor that it was called derisively, "The Palace of Kure", as it had almost-luxurious accommodations for its crew.
The closest the Yamato came to fighting a battle was during the invasion of Leyte by the USA in Oct. 1944. She fired at some American ships in Leyte Gulf, hitting none.The Japanese squadron commander, Adm. Kurita, believing he was engaging Adm. Halsey's entire 3rd Fleet, turned back, as he knew the 3rd Fleet was much-superior to his own. However, there was only a small group of USA escort carriers & destroyers present, & the Yamato could've brushed them aside easily & destroyed the Leyte landing squad.
The Yamato's end came in April 1945 when she was sent toward Okinawa to attack the American fleet that was landing troops there. She never made it, She was sunk well short of Okinawa, south of Kyushu, by American carrier planes. At least, she proved her toughness, as it took at least 11 torpedo hits & six 1000 lb. bomb hits to mortally wound her.
The Musashi was sunk by carrier aircraft in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, proving she was even tougher than the Yamato; it took at least 19 torpedo hits & 11 hits by 1000 lb bombs to mortally wound her.
Neither ship had sunk as much as an enemy johnboat, although they'd managed to shoot down a few attacking aircraft. However, the USS Iowa looked for the Yamato, hoping to engage her, as it was believed she coulda won the battle, as she was about 4 knots faster, much-more maneuverable, & could bring her 16-in. guns to bear much-faster, with better aim & able to fire many more rounds per hour. However, commanders didn't want to remove the Iowa from more-important duties just for an ego-boosting battle.
But the 2 super-battleships were all-but-useless to the Japanese, as they didn't want to commit them to a full battle til the war was lost, & they were quite-expensive to boot. Not one American battle plan was altered because of their existence.[/I]

 

Maybe not, but I suggest the skeptics read about the "miracle at Dunkirk" & the Battle of Midway.

 

Another Japanese white elephant was the Nambu pistol, the standard service sidearm of the Army. While actually a well-designed weapon in most respects, the wartime production was of poor quality, with frequent failures, in both Types 14 & 94. The Hamada pistol of 1941 was no better. They all suffered from lack of accuracy, & used the underpowered 8mm round.

While most Japanese weapons were excellent, their pistols were not. And in the frequent island fighting, a pistol was often much-handier than a rifle or SMG. In contrast, the famed Browning Model 1911 .45 ACP stopped thousands of fanatical Japanese in their tracks.

While their pistol deficiency might not have lost the war for them, it certainly didn't improve their chances, either !

 

Maybe .45s weren't used en masse as the others were, but I read the story of one CMOH winner on Saipan, who was caught in the last banzai charge the enemy made, which was the largest such charge in the war. His rifle jammed as a swarm of enemies came at him, who were armed with swords & clubs. He rapidly killed six of them with 6 shots of his .45, killing 11 of them altogether before being shot himself.

Of the 1.8 million Japanese casualties killed by Americans of the at least 2.3 million Japanese military deaths, I'd say about 5K were killed by.45s. They were used quite a bit on coral atolls where the enemies hunted each other in gorges & caves where a soldier would want a weapon pointed ahead, but not wanting to show a barrel around a corner. (Our guys preferred sawed-off shotguns for this, but the .45s were handy as well.)

When I was in Tokyo in 1967 with the USN, a former Japanese soldier told me the American hand weapons they feared most were, first the flamethrower, second, the BAR, third on the islands were shotguns, then, the other MGs, then the M! & .45 equally. (The BAR was an automatic 30.06 with greater muzzle velocity than our deer rifles thanx To a longer barrel.)

 

I saw an article about various handguns recently, & the worst-rated one of WW2 pistols was the Nambu. The writers said it was quite-inaccurate, prone to jam, the magazine was hard to change, & it was not too powerful, very short-ranged.

It was designed by Kijiro Nambu (1869-1949) who also designed the excellent Japanese submachine guns. However, this pistol was a major flop. Though well-manufactured, it simply had too many design flaws.

I've never even handled one myself, let alone fired one, so I hafta take their word for it on its shortcomings.