O’BRIEN, Phillips

How the War was won

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However, the shift that started in 1940 was decisive. As a whole British World War II munitions production, even with all its shortcomings, is a story of substantial achievement in terms of both quantity and quality. With the exception of the United States, the British ended up building a wider a range of air, sea and land equipment than any other power. Qualitatively British equipment was often superior to that of the Germans, particularly when it came to air defense and the war at sea, which gave them crucial advan tages. In the air, not only did they build one of the best fighters of the first half of the war, the Spitfire, a British-designed engine also ended up powering the best fighter in the war, the P-51 Mustang. The British were able to build and deploy an effective, heavy four-engine bomber, the Lancaster, long before the German equivalent, the HE 177, could enter service. They were even able to design and construct a plane as innovative and important as the wooden-framed Mosquito, which ended up causing numerous headaches for German air defense. On the sea, they built a full range of vessels from aircraft carriers to battleships through to numerous small anti-submarine vessels, as well as submarines themselves. These ships were of high quality, some with advanced design features such as the reinforced steel aircraft carrier deck, and were able to operate in all theatres in the world by 1945. On land, the production of British AFV was always in moderate proportions and their quality is best described as solid but not spectacular. Finally, the British were able to provide technological support to their weapons systems with high-quality radar and radio sets in a way that easily surpassed all but the Americans. The Germans, on the other hand, not only had the aforementioned problems designing a truly effective heavy bomber, they had a limited range of naval construction once the war started, focusing overwhelmingly on submarines. The Germans also could never design and build enough modern radar equipment. The Japanese, meanwhile, almost abandoned the construction of AFV during the war and were themselves also unable to develop an effective heavy bomber.

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