Best German Weapon for the Japanese

I really like shooting the Mp40.

It’s easy to control during burst, aim, lightweight to carry, and is relatively accurate for a sub-machinegun.

I approve.

I think Panzerkampfwagen VIII Maus would have been a best fit for Japanese Army on the most Islands.
It is a rolling fortress and didn’t need to cross important bridges.
It could suffer a lot of hits and still move on to knock out any targets in range, combined with Imfantry for support a dangerous enemy in defence.

What German weapon system would best help the Japanese? was the question to what I replied and I still think it is a huge Tank like the Panzerkampfwagen VIII Maus.
The Japanese Army could have dugged those huge Tanks into the mountains or into the ground and use 'em as Artillery as well as an overall Protector of narrow Gateways and Key positions on the Islands.

But if the question is more on the possible best use, it would have been a tie between Subs and PzKw III chasis.
I think the PzKw III chasis would have best served the Japanese Army because it could have been utilized of many variations.
As: Stug III, StuH 42, Stug III Flamethrower etc…whatever would have suited best for the Japanese Army.

@aequitas:

The Japanese Army could have dugged those huge Tanks into the mountains or into the ground and use 'em as Artillery as well as an overall Protector of narrow Gateways and Key positions on the Islands.

I think that a reinforced concrete bunker housing a heavy artillery piece would have been much cheaper and quicker to build while providing the same level of protection and firepower.  There’s no point in giving a 188-tonne weapon all the complex engineering – the tracks, the engine, the transmission and so forth – that makes it a moving vehicle if it’s simply going to be dug into the ground and used as a static fortified gun battery.

As for using the Maus as an actual mobile tank, the best response on the Allied side would have been to hit it from the air with rocket-firing ground-attack aircraft, or with naval dive-bombers carrying armour-piecing bombs.  The Maus had massive frontal armour, but its top, side and rear armour wasn’t as thick, so it was more vulnerable from those directions.  The main and secondary turret guns on the Maus were powerful ground-combat weapons, and it had submachine-gun loopholes for defense against troops, but as far as I know the Maus had no anti-aircraft protection of any sort.  It could barely crawl and it was very big – so to borrow a phrase applied to the LST [Landing Ship (Tank)] vessel type, the Maus would have been regarded as a “Large Slow Target” by Allied tactical aircraft pilots.

Better yet, napalm against those dug-in Maus-es.

Don’t need to be pinpoint with napalm, or even penetrate anything; just send a 4-bird formation of napalm-toting Corsairs against every one of those emplacements. Lather, rinse, & repeat.

Rob.

@MauserBob:

Better yet, napalm against those dug-in Maus-es.  Don’t need to be pinpoint with napalm, or even penetrate anything; just send a 4-bird formation of napalm-toting Corsairs against every one of those emplacements. Lather, rinse, & repeat.

Good idea.  A napalmed steel tank would get awfully hot on the inside, with results ranging from a baked crew to a detonation of its ammunition load and its fuel tanks.  And as you say, napalm can affect a large target area so it doesn’t require precision bombing, even against a moving Maus.

The best piece of German hardware that came out during the war was the StG44.  Rockets and jet planes are pretty, and can be effective, but they cost a lot.  88’s did serious damage and were ahead of their time, but they are only artillery.  However if you give the standard soldier an assault riffle and his enemy only has a bolt action riffle… the war is over.

Thank God Hitler liked his flashy big weapons and forbid the Sturmgewehr from being mass produced.

Nice post Zooey72!

I see, the maus caught allready attention and your about to figure things out how to keep the maus at bay and this is another point of my reasons why I picked it.
Napalm would be a great idea and I agree with CWO Marc with his concerns about:

@CWO:

There’s no point in giving a 188-tonne weapon all the complex engineering – the tracks, the engine, the transmission and so forth – that makes it a moving vehicle if it’s simply going to be dug into the ground and used as a static fortified gun battery. Â

As for using the Maus as an actual mobile tank, the best response on the Allied side would have been to hit it from the air with rocket-firing ground-attack aircraft, or with naval dive-bombers carrying armour-piecing bombs.  The Maus had massive frontal armour, but its top, side and rear armour wasn’t as thick, so it was more vulnerable from those directions.  The main and secondary turret guns on the Maus were powerful ground-combat weapons, and it had submachine-gun loopholes for defense against troops, but as far as I know the Maus had no anti-aircraft protection of any sort.

But since it (MAUS Tank) is still mobil it could retreat deeper into the mountains, or stationed out in the jungles dugged holes ,changing positions.
Napalm dropped over the tree lines in the Jungle would not neccessary kill the problems.
There was so much sand everywhere… :-)

By digging the Maus tank in, I was adapting the way of Japanese Attack.
Letting the enemy getting as close as possible and the start an inferno in there lines, so even their Arty could not help!
The Heavy Gun you see needs mobility for repeating the steps to engage and to retreat in safer area when air or arty strikes.

I don’t think any 1 technology from Germany would have helped at all.
Japan imho lost the war the day they Bombed Pearl.
Why?
Because with all their planning, practicing, hush hush, and training, they forgot the biggest weapon of all…. A amphibious landings on Hawaii.

Their surprise attack had Air and Sea but no land forces.
Just imagine the Technolgy, resources, and military hardware they would have captured had they brought a land invasion w them.

I don’t think anything the Germans could’ve given the Japanese would have helped. I voted for the MG42 though because they never seemed to have a very good machine gun which I believe would have helped them the most out of the choices listed.

The Japanese simply were just too over extended strategically.  Thier weapons while not horrible became outmoded quickly the faster the Allies got up to full production. The Japanese strategy failed when they were unable to stop the USN in a timely enough manner. Thier biggest failure was failing to protect thier precious convoys which further hindered an already stretched logistical process.

The best thing Japan could have done for herself was to not attack the US, bide her time and hope for a German victory. Had Germany won and captured precious oil and resources, she at some point could’ve supplied a rested and more technically advanced Japan against an uprepared and isolationist US. You could argue the US would enter the war in any case. However it may have bought a lot more time for Japan to sit tight and delay a full US entry into the war.

@Gargantua:

@variance:

@Gargantua:

MG34’s (LEGAL) are now for sale at my local gun store!!  It’s legal to hunt with LOL!  Though “plate restricted” to semi auto.  It has no magazine limit because it is belt fed.

For real?Â

Yes.

$5000,

Semi Auto MG34, with a 50 round Non disintegrating belt, + Bipod.  NON RESTRICTED, Legal to hunt with.

Nice Pic GAR

@ShadowHAwk:

@ABWorsham:

I agree that lack of a convoy system made the US tonnage war a turkey shoot. Another handicap the Japanese had was the lack of heavy construction equipment. The US brought bulldozer and trucks into war, the Japanese brought shovels, picks, and Korean Slaves.

Example of this is Pacific air bases, the only two Japanese air bases with concrete airfields and decent facilities were the bases at Clark Field in the Philippines and at Rabaul, both captured from the Allies.

Then again concrete runways are not required, in the UK most airfields where just grass which made them verry hard to destroy. Sure you bomb this part well we just land 50 yards to the left and call that the landing strip :D

In the Pacific, some American airfields were constructed by leveling the ground with bulldozers then laying down hundreds of large prefabricated square metal grids (a bit like installing tiles on a floor) until a landing strip of suficient length and width had been built up.  A quick and effective technique.  If the airstrip got hit by enemy bombs, all that was needed to repair it was to replace the damaged grids with new ones.  As ABWorsham noted, the Japanese – who used manual labour for their airfield construction – were shocked at the speed with which American units like the Seabees could carve an operational airstrip out of a jungle in just a few days, often while fighting off Japanese counter-attacks in the process.  Civilian construction projects in the U.S. routinely used heavy equipment such as bulldozers, so the use of such machinery in the Pacific would have seemed completely normal to the American troops, but it gave a nasty surprise to the Japanese.

The U.S. produced 48,000 military aircraft in 1942, as compared to 9,000 for Japan.* None of the weapons systems, tactics, or strategies discussed in this thread could have solved the problems that production disparity implied.

That said, if I had to pick something from the list; I’d choose radar. Radar might well have allowed the Japanese to win at Midway; thereby lengthening their temporary naval advantage over the U.S. A victory at Midway might, if they were lucky, have bought them an extra year.

In 1944, Japan produced 28,000 military aircraft; as compared to 96,000 for the U.S. Put another way: Japan had tripled its aircraft production; whereas America’s has merely doubled. Given enough time; Japan might have been able to close more of the production gap. But radar alone would have been insufficient to accomplish that.

• Corrected an earlier error. Thanks to Red Harvest for pointing it out.

@KurtGodel7:

The U.S. produced 48,000 military aircraft in WWII, as compared to 9,000 for Japan. None of the weapons systems, tactics, or strategies discussed in this thread could have solved the problems that production disparity implied.

That said, if I had to pick something from the list; I’d choose radar. Radar might well have allowed the Japanese to win at Midway; thereby lengthening their temporary naval advantage over the U.S. A victory at Mkdway might, if they were lucky, have bought them an extra year.

In 1944, Japan produced 28,000 military aircraft; as compared to 96,000 for the U.S. Put another way: Japan had tripled its aircraft production; whereas America’s has merely doubled. Given enough time; Japan might have been able to close more of the production gap. But radar alone would have been insufficient to accomplish that.

I believe your first figure above is for 1942 rather than WWII.

The ratio increase is probably misleading though, as it is difficult to see how Japan could have fielded an even greater number of aircraft even if it could have produced them (pilot training was a major problem.)  The Japanese aircraft industry was largely safe from attack until the last few weeks of 1944 so it might be that they were near maximum production anyway.

The mix had shifted upward to nearly 50% fighters for Japan whereas the US built about 40% fighters during 1944 (heavier multi-engine aircraft like heavy bombers, med. bombers, and transports.)  Japanese tank production peaked at 1200 in 1942 and shrank to only 295 in 1944.  Japanese warship production had been nearly flat since 1941 with a spike in 1944 (unneeded carriers it appears, without planes, and one of the converted Yamato class BB’s as a carrier.)  Together, this indicates that Japanese industry was already tapped out just building aircraft…that and merchant vessels.  Japan had gone from producing 260,000 tons of merchant vessels in 1942 to 1,699,000 in 1944…but lost 4,115,000 tons in 1944 alone.

You don’t even want to see how much the U.S. figures for all the above classes dwarf the Japanese ones.

Just to follow up on my earlier post about metal-grid runways, last evening I checked up on my source, which I was quoting from memory.  It was the wartime documentary Report from the Aleutians (narrated by John Huston).  It shows such a runway being built on Adak.  The grid segments were rectangular rather than square, but the basic runway-building technique was as I mentioned previously.  The engineers started by draining a shallow lake by cutting a channel into it with heavy equipment, then leveled the lake-bed with bulldozers, and finally laid down a million-and-a-half square feet of steel gridwork, each segment being secured into place with steel spikes hammered into the ground.

@ABWorsham:

I don’t believe anyone with even a elementary knowledge of WW2 would give the Japanese even a remote chance of defeating the West in WW2.
When the question came to my mind I was thinking what German weapon if I were leading the Japanese armed forces would I desire in my doomed adventure to fight the US, Britain and Australia.

Most definitely sir. My vote was for the MG. The Japanese from everything I’ve ever learned just never seemed to get thier stuff together when it came to firearms and even more so with the ammunition.