The whole military was like that. The US military knew about the performance of the ME109 yet were still buying the P40. Shortly after lend lease started they knew about the short comings of the Sherman tank but the Army decided that being inexpensive and easy to build was more important than building a better tank. When the Navy accepted the F4F Wildcat they knew about the ME109 and had heard whispers about the Zero. About the only decent equipment owned by the US military was motor transport, some of the navy ships, A few bombers, the 1911 and the M1 Garand. Yet when the Philippians were invaded the US force there were still using the Springfield 03A3. The list of faulty, just no good and obsolete equipment was astounding. Fighter aircraft, armor and more cost many Americans their lives because of budget problems and the isolationist movement. Christie trying to cover up the torpedo problems was criminal IMO. But the Army decision to forego developing a new tank was too. Just prior to the US entering WWII all of the Army senior brass was infantry. In 1939 when Germany launched the Blitzkrieg style war our infantry officers though the tank was just a support weapon to help out the infantry. They were as bad as the senior Navy officers who didn't believe aircraft were a threat. We had many young men, who willingly put themselves in danger while being provided with very poor, substandard equipment. Over 3000 died on December 7th 1941 because they were ill-equipped and not trained to meet modern threats. Then guys like Christie ordered sailors into life and death fights with faulty equipment all the while the US military was telling their respective service members that they had the best equipment in the world. Funny thing is, like with the Sherman, just because American industry could build 2,000 a month they could have say built a better tank at 1000 a month still beating Germany's 1200 a year and lost fewer tanks and more importantly crews in the process. Heck we could come up with a build, by the thousands P51's and P47 while also developing the F6F and F4U, building those by the thousands while building thousands of bombers but we couldn't develop a decent tank. The M26, of which about 200 where deployed right at the end of the war, was so poor mechanically that during the Korean war were pulled from service. Why couldn't we build a decent torpedo yet were able to deploy the Fido torpedo toward the end of the war that was very successful in not only sinking surface ships but also allowed us to use them in the Atlantic in anti sub attacks with the seldom heard of US hunter killer groups that we operated at the end of the war. The Fido was an acoustic homing torpedo that zeroed in on a vessels propeller. When the hunter killer groups caught a surfaced sub a fighter would attack to make it submerge and the torpedo plane would drop a Fido in the subs wake. The Fido could also be launched from as deep as 300 feet against say a destroyer trying to find the sub. Basically point the sub in the direction of the target and fire.
Sending people to war with substandard weapons when it's known they are substandard is criminal. The politicians who neutered the US military between the wars and senior brass who refused to at least learn about new developments should have been tried. People like Christie should have been shot. He tried protecting the Magnetic exploder because he was responsible for it's development. That failure may have cost him a promotion or cherry position. His refusal to address the problem and acknowledge that the torpedo was junk all over his future in the Navy was criminal.
Sorry for being long winded but providing training, weapons and equipment for our service members should not be based on the lowest bidder, but based on the best possible stuff they need to fight, win and survive to come home to the welcome they deserve! Someone once said that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
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Today's Featured Article - Gatherin of the Orange - by Rick Nikolich. In July of 1998 I was talking to fellow Allis Chalmers collector Mike Schilling about the annual "Gathering of The Orange" AC show coming up in August of 1999. He got this wild idea that we should get a convoy of AC tractors and drive them from Charlotte, Michigan 105 miles to LaGrange, Indiana.
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