Not-Invented-Here: Successes and Missed Opportunities

Some of the discussion on the "No MV22 Osprey"thread got me thinking about some the "Not Invented Here (NIH)" devices.

What historic successful NIH devices were there? I think of the Lewis Gun, invented in the US but used all over the place, and very little at home.

What were the missed NIH opportunities that could have had a big impact, had decision makers had a more open mind? The US & the Leopard 1 as a possible example?

This doesn't need to be confined to military equipment either.

Fire away...

Cavity Magnetron in Germany, it was invented in the first type in 1935 and then not developed. The field effect transistor too, but in 1925. We could argue the Atom Bomb/Nuclear Fission in Germany but for driving out its best physicists. Arguably modern digital computer technology could have been heavily pursued in Germany if the Nazis had recognized the massive achievements of Konrad Zuse and supported him.

Driftless said:

Some of the discussion on the "No MV22 Osprey"thread got me thinking about some the "Not Invented Here (NIH)" devices.

What historic successful NIH devices were there? I think of the Lewis Gun, invented in the US but used all over the place, and very little at home.

What were the missed NIH opportunities that could have had a big impact, had decision makers had a more open mind? The US & the Leopard 1 as a possible example?

This doesn't need to be confined to military equipment either.

Fire away...

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I get the impression that there was a bit of NIH WRT the Merlin powered Mustang on both sides of the Atlantic. Perhaps we could have had those sooner than we did.

The adoption of the .280 Enfield after the 2nd WW

The British and Canadians (and Germans) had recognised the need for an intermediate rifle cartridge based on all their WW2 combat experience and settled for a compromise short or kurtz round - that was useful at all realistic battlefield ranges and controllable when fired on full automatic.

This they argued would allow the British military to replace all Rifles, SMGs and Carbines with a single weapon.

In their case the EM2 or one of the early FN FAL rifles (4th and 5th rifles)




The US ignored all of this data including their own findings and instead opted for a slightly less powerful .30 round that we now call 7.62mm NATO.

In the late 1940s, the USG went to

In the late 1940s, the USG went to Curtiss-Wright and said "hey, you know how to develop high performance aircraft engines for commercial service; we'd like you to take on some of the intellectual property regarding jet engines developed and acquired during WW II and lead the way to commercializing these designs for airliners."

Curtiss-Wright's management said, essentially, thanks but no thanks; "we know radials, we like radials, developing them is the obvious path forward for commercial aircraft, and we think jet engines will remain a niche market, largely for high performance military aircraft."

And so, GE and Westinghouse et al did their thing.

Curtiss-Wright, which in 1945 was the largest US aircraft manufacturer and the second-largest US manufacturing company (after General Motors) and made something like $2.5 billion in revenue that year, only reached the same number a second time in (IIRC) the late 1990s or early 2000s, and entirely as a supplier of avionics and related systems to other companies as primes.

So, there you go.

NGC/TRW saying no thanks to the engineering team that developed the liquid-fuelled rocket engines that became the basis of SpaceX's launch vehicles is another one.

I'm sure both decisions made sense at the time to some MBA, but still...

Best,

Regards the Osprey, the CL-84 Dynavert.

I especially like that fourth rifle: the FN rifle with the bullpup stock.

Yes, Americans can be silly NIH when it comes to small arms. Americans may have been one of the first to introduce intermediate cartridges, but when their .30 calibre short M-1Carbine proved not quite powerful enough, they dumped the concept for two decades.
Meanwhile Nazi Germany developed the highly-effective 7.92 x 41 Kurtz (short). Russia copied the short German cartridge when they introduced their 7.62 short cartridge.
After rejecting the British experimental .280 short, Americans eventually adopted their own invention: the .223 short (5.56 mm short). The 5.56 mm-firing Armalite AR-15 rifle (later M-16) was originally developed for USAF Air Police. The M-16 was only rushed I to service after US soldiers suffered heat exhaustion while carrying full-sized M-14 rifles through Vietnamese swamps.

Americans also stubbornly resisted the bullpup concept. Instead they adopted short-barrelled versions of the M-16 rifle, which reduced range and accuracy.

Americans look even sillier when it comes to medium machine guns and rockets. Rather than adopting German or Belgian medium machine guns, Americans wasted billions of dollars on the cumbersome M-60 and adopted the Belgian design anyways.
Americans similarly wasted billions of dollars on a variety of antitank rockets, but eventually adopted the Swedish Carl Gustavo AT rocket for bunker-busting in Afghanistan.
Hah!
Hah!

Would the RAF have been better off with F-15s or F-14s than the Tornado ADV?

If you want to compare 1970s vintage main battle tanks, Americans started the process then stagnated.
At the end of WW2, Americans got one troop of M-26 Pershing tanks into battle. Over the intervening years, Americans up-gunned and up-armoured the Pershing line to produce the M-27, M-47, M-48 and M-60 tanks. The M-60 may have competed numerically with the British Centurion (e.g. same gun) but it was tall and bulky and heavy and an easy target.
Meanwhile, when the West German Army reformed during the 1950s, they received a batch of US Army surplus M-47 tanks. While West Germans appreciated that American tanks were more more reliable than WW2-vintage, they also saw that M-47 presented tall targets.
When West Germany started producing their own tanks, Leopard 1 prototypes looked like lower, lighter-armoured versions of M-48s. The lineage is clear. That lighter armour gave Leopard 1 a mobility advantage over contemporary tanks, but West Germany saw the weakness and increased armour thickness with the Leopard 2.

Bottom line, Leopard 1 matched the numbers of M-60, but presented a smaller target and it's light-weight improved mobility. M-60 marked the end of one line of evolution, while Leopard 1 marked the start of a new line that is still in production.

I carried the M-1 and M-14; liked them both

riggerrob said:

The M-16 was only rushed I to service after US soldiers suffered heat exhaustion while carrying full-sized M-14 rifles through Vietnamese swamps.

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I carried the M-1 and M-14; liked them both, actually. Still do, in fact. Damn things were carved from the solid, practically, and if you hit "something" with the round, the "something" tended to fall down and not get back up., same as the .45.

The '14 with the 20-round box, and the Italian conversion of the M-1 to a similar standard, meant that all the weapons and the ammunition produced in the 1940s were available as standard. There's always something to be said for using up what's in stock, rather then procuring something new and scrapping what you have...

The best is the enemy of the good, as someone once said.

The Garand and the '14 were pretty good.

The '16 took a long time to get to be as good, and even today, when various and sundry want a round that will definitely do the job at significant ranges, seems like I see a lot more people carrying the M-21 or an equivalent (I don't even know what they designate them anymore, that's how old I am) than the sniper-ish version of the '16.

The '60 wasn't great, but it was useful. Better than the 1917A6, certainly.

Best,

Zheng He said:

I get the impression that there was a bit of NIH WRT the Merlin powered Mustang on both sides of the Atlantic. Perhaps we could have had those sooner than we did.

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The base Allison was just as good as the Merlin, and easier to mass produce.

It's failure was in the USAAF not specifying a two stage, two speed supercharger sooner, like the P-63, sooner

Not the real NIH, like the 280 Enfield cartridge, or FN FAL or the 'failure' on converting the MG42 to 30-06

Think you mean the M-46

riggerrob said:

If you want to compare 1970s vintage main battle tanks, Americans started the process then stagnated. At the end of WW2, Americans got one troop of M-26 Pershing tanks into battle. Over the intervening years, Americans up-gunned and up-armoured the Pershing line to produce the M-27, M-47, M-48 and M-60 tanks.

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Think you mean the M-46.

And the Leopard I was more of a (much) better-protected equivalent of the AMX-30, I think, than the M-60; again, part of the postwar procurement was using product improved designs to ensure a sustainable force; considering the US had to equip (generally) 8-10 "heavy" divisions in the regulars and the equivalent of six or more equivalents in the reserves and Guard during most of the Cold War, plus build enough for the various MDAP programs, that made a lot of sense in terms of procurement.

Better weapons, sensors, and (eventually) powertrains and protection can (almost) always be retrofitted to an existing chassis.

Clean sheet of paper designs tend to lead to things like the MBT-70...

Best,

Given the NIH syndrome just how did the Canberra and Harrier get through?
OK the Harrier was unique and the USMC REALLY wanted it but that doesn't explain the Canberra.

Lindseyman said:

Given the NIH syndrome just how did the Canberra and Harrier get through?
OK the Harrier was unique and the USMC REALLY wanted it but that doesn't explain the Canberra.

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The Marines also use the LAV-25 which is Canadian. I think with the Marines NIH does not apply as much as does for the rest of DOD because the Marines are often at the bottom of the procurement food chain so they will take what they can get.

The B-57 - there are always exceptions...

The alternative, the Convair XB-51

Lindseyman said:

Given the NIH syndrome just how did the Canberra and Harrier get through?
OK the Harrier was unique and the USMC REALLY wanted it but that doesn't explain the Canberra.

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The alternative, the Convair XB-51 was faster, but had substantially shorter range. Remember, it was also an expedited "wartime" order, to the replace the A-26 Invader after Korea. Didn't work out that way, but still...



Best,

There's also the U.S. Army refusing to adopt the 17pdr. (I suppose that makes some sense, since it would've required retooling to produce...& there was a war on.)

There's also BuOrd's refusal to consider a private contractor's (Westinghouse, IIRC) electric torpedo, & screwing around providing technical data, preferring their own... (Need I say, it didn't enter service?)

It's a bit astounding the Merlin got built in the U.S. & Merlin 'stangs got into U.S. service.

phx1138 said:

There's also the U.S. Army refusing to adopt the 17pdr. (I suppose that makes some sense, since it would've required retooling to produce...& there was a war on.)

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Didn't that error ultimately get (partially) fixed (however belatedly and indirectly) with the US licensing of the Royal Ordinance L7 105mm tank gun? One of those rare exceptions to the NIH rule

and then the electric that was built was a copy of a german torpedo

Driftless said:

Didn't that error ultimately get (partially) fixed (however belatedly and indirectly) with the US licensing of the Royal Ordinance L7 105mm tank gun? One of those rare exceptions to the NIH rule

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The US 90mm and 17pdr were almost interchangeable, similar sized ammo, weight, etc.

While keeping the same size cartridge, 90mm performance was increased from improved materials for the tube, better propellant and projectiles, ending up as the M41 that was in the Pattons. A 1943 AP round could be fired in a '60s Patton, even


But while Army Ordnance was playing around with a variety of advanced cannons that never went anywhere(T140),the 20 Pounder was developed into the L7 105mm.

But by the 'mid 60s, the Army couldn't ignore that the 90mm was at its end of usefulness, the 152mm gun launcher was a worthless dud.

The choice was the French 105mm( the HEAT one) or the L7.

and after France left NATO Command and kicked the US out of France, the last player was the L7.

The L7 could have been fitted to any of the Patton series, similar size and weight again. But the Army just didn't seem all that interested in punching holes in Armor, most all of the development on the Pattons was for automotive and fire control, with much time wasted on autoloaders

Successful NIH? The Rheinmetall smoothbore 120mm tank gun. In service all over the place. Even the Americans woke up and upgunned their Abrams.

The Heckler und Koch MP 5 family. 'Nuff said.