Posted on 05/02/2024 3:26:58 PM PDT by Jacquerie
The idea of a target-influenced fuze was not new; similar fuzes for bombs and rockets existed at the outbreak of World War II.
The proximity fuze functions as a small radio station in the shell’s nose. The basic components are a vacuum tube (six inches long and three inches in diameter) a battery, and a radio transmitter and receiver; a small glass tube filled with electrolyte solution acts as the battery. After the shell is fired and begins rotating, centrifugal force pushes the solution to the outside of the tube, where a chemical reaction occurs with small pieces of metal surrounding the tube. This produces an electrical charge which in turn arms the shell and sends out a radio impulse traveling at the speed of light. The return signal, reflected from the target, detonates the shell prior to impact and produces the devastating effects.
Shells with proximity fuzes do not need to be set to a fixed time, which makes them far more effective than conventional time and contact fuzes.
The Germans had been working on the concept as early as 1930; by 1939, the British were involved in research. It was the Americans, however, who did not begin research until 1940, who nearly perfected the proximity fuze.
The proximity fuze project had a top secret security classification, and clearances took time; many civilian workers never knew what they were working on.
The USS Helena (CL-50) is credited with the first proximity-fuzed shell kill against an enemy aircraft—a Japanese dive bomber that had just made a bombing run on the ship on 6 January 1943 off Cape Hunter on the south coast of Guadalcanal. The crew fired three shells with little time to aim, but all three exploded and downed the distant aircraft.
It had taken the National Defense Research Council just 30 months to accomplish what had seemed an impossible task.
Admiral Arleigh Burke, former Chief of Naval Operations, spoke of their effectiveness during a 1978 interview at the Applied Physics Laboratory:
When I went as chief of staff to [Vice] Admiral [Marc] Mitscher who commanded the Fast Carrier Task Forces, all the 5-inch/38 and 5-inch/25 ammunition was fitted with VT [proximity] fuzes and as you well know, those fuzes knocked down enemy planes by the dozens. Had it not been for those fuzes, our ship losses and casualties in the Fast Carriers in the last half of the war would have been enormously larger. . . . That fuze was a magnificent help.
Pacific theater statistics support his statement. The proximity fuze proved three to four times more effective than conventional time fuzes, and night kill-ratios increased by 370%.
They were very cool tech. The trick was making the battery for the radio juice it’s self up on it’s way to the target.
:)
I forget the name of the book. But the brass didn’t allow using these fuses in European combat zones so the Germans wouldn’t get their hands on them. Once the Navy perfected them the kamikazi attacks weren’t effective anymore. Crazy what decisions have to made in war.
Strange, no mention of Harry Diamond. He was the technical driving force behind the proximity fuze.
The proximity fuze project was second in priority only to the Manhattan Project, as a military R&D effort during WWII.
An unbelievable amount of effort was spent to make artillery shells explode a few milliseconds before they struck their target. The increase in effectiveness of those shells made the effort worth it.
Not at all. Unclassified now. Glass ampule full of electrolyte smashed by “setback,” the tremendous Newton’s First Law of motion when the shell accelerates from zero to three or four times the speed of sound in an instant, powers up the battery.
Of course, but for the time it was pretty innovative. It allowed for a much much longer storage life. Storage life was a huge issue at the time.
“The proximity fuze proved three to four times more effective than conventional time fuzes, and night kill-ratios increased by 370%.”
Wow, incredible advancement! I had no idea that proximity fuses were developed in WW II and on such a compressed time schedule.
Like radar and nuclear weapons. The US was a real tech powerhouse back then.
And using centrifugal force to spread out the electrolyte.
Those days are about over but we can sure come up with more pronouns faster than anyone else. We will also be able to actually BE triggered faster than any other military in the world. Top that smart fuse.
Lot of videos on Youboob:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=proximity+fuse
Technical manual:
https://maritime.org/doc/vtfuze/index.php
<>the brass didn’t allow using these fuses in European combat zones so the Germans wouldn’t get their hands on them<>
Not true.
Click the link.
12 Seconds of Silence. By Jaime Holmes.
That tells the whole story - Much, much more complicated than the brief paragraphs above. Tells it of (what little) the Germans actually were able to determine, how little their efforts were along the process. The people - including Van Bush and the scientists on the US practical research and “aim a few hundred “anti aircraft shells directly up so they fall back on your head to test it” realists they were.
French and Brotish practical espionage as well.
12 seconds focuses on the German anti-air campaigns against the V1. Not too much on the Pacific War.
ultimately, Eisenhower was allowed to use artillery VT fuzes during the battle of the bulge ... Ike said they made the difference between defeat and victory ...
ridiculous technical misinformation in this article (e.g.,
single 6”x3” vacuum tube)
here’s a MUCH better article about the VT fuze than the ridiculous one from USNI.org:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximity_fuze
“The US was a real tech powerhouse back then.”
so was the UK ... their aircraft engine technology was amazing ... so was their code-breaking technology ... AND they invented the cavity magnatron, which enabled the allies to quickly build powerful radar capabilities that the japs and germans never achieved ...
but towards the end of the war, Churchill allowed the UK to go socialist, and they entered a death spiral that has continued to this day ...
"Legendary financier, philanthropist, and society figure Alfred Lee Loomis gathered the most visionary scientific minds of the twentieth century—Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, and others—at his state-of-the-art laboratory in Tuxedo Park, New York, in the late 1930s. He established a top-secret defense laboratory at MIT and personally bankrolled pioneering research into new, high-powered radar detection systems that helped defeat the German Air Force and U-boats. With Ernest Lawrence, the Nobel Prize–winning physicist, he pushed Franklin Delano Roosevelt to fund research in nuclear fission, which led to the development of the atomic bomb."
The British voting electorate in July 1945 was hell-bent on change in electing Attlee and his Labour Party with their statist economic reforms. Though Churchill was very popular with the British public, there wasn’t anything he could have done to stem the tide. The voters trusted the Labour Party more than the Conservative Party on economic issues. It was unfortunate but that’s the way it was.
"Those days are about over..."
We've run out of "German Scientists"; now we have "Climate Scientists".
"Republican Candidates Ignore the Biggest Climate-Change Warning Yet"
Quote from "https://www.thedailybeast.com/republican-candidates-ignore-the-biggest-climate-change-warning-yet"
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