How to Make More-Technologically Advanced World War 2?

How to change the tech development so that in World War 2, there will be:
1. Standard/widespread use of assault rifle instead of bolt-action and SMG weapons
2. Standard/widespread use of light/heavy tanks from the start of the war (blitKrieg time using heavy tanks for example)
3. Supersonic flight or rocketry for at least at 1941
4. Suborbital flight by 1945
5. BONUS: freight and transport dirigibles/zeppelins trhoughout the war :D

Thanks in advance! :D
 
1.
Button Rifling - (1950s)
Could be invented decades earlier as there were no technological barriers. Rifle and machine gun barrels could be made at a fraction the time and cost as traditional cut rifling. Could be a big deal in the war of production that was WWII.
Idea by tallwingedgoat

3.a
Cheap/Good Solid Rocket Fuel

The combination of asphalt as an appropriate binding agent with potassium perchlorate as its oxidizer could have beend discovered even before the 20th century.
Also nice for JATO

3.b
Threads René Lorin & René Leduc Ram Jet
Solid state propulsion: a ramjet aircraft WI
Bonus points for launching it from a Zeppeline (might count as 5.)

2./4./5.
I have no idea about tanks and suborbital flight seems to advanced for anything resembling WWII, airships are cool thou.
 
anw_rev said:
How to change the tech development so that in World War 2, there will be:
1. Standard/widespread use of assault rifle instead of bolt-action and SMG weapons
Wider success of personal automatic weapons in WW1 would provide impetus.
anw_rev said:
2. Standard/widespread use of light/heavy tanks from the start of the war (blitKrieg time using heavy tanks for example)
Why would anyone want to build tanks essentially two generations ahead of everyone else? The British and the French don't because of the cost. The Germans and Italian can't because they are still building up from tankettes. The Russians have the T34 in the pipeline. The USA don't have any use for one.
anw_rev said:
3. Supersonic flight or rocketry for at least at 1941
Now we are talking about three generations ahead. Read "Superiority" by Arthur C Clark.
anw_rev said:
4. Suborbital flight by 1945
Suborbital flight would be as useful for victory in WW2 as chocolate teapots. In fact the latter would be more useful because you could get them into service before the end of the war and feed troops on them.
 
Supersonic flight or rocketry for at least at 1941.
If you want more advanced rocketry just give Robert Goddard more funding and resources pre-war, along with Tsiolkovsky and Oberth he's considered one of the fathers of the field.


Cheap/Good Solid Rocket Fuel: The combination of asphalt as an appropriate binding agent with potassium perchlorate as its oxidizer could have beend discovered even before the 20th century. Also nice for JATO.
For liquid rocket fuel high test peroxide (HTP) is another good option since it's fairly easy to store and use in comparison to some of the other more volatile fuels of the period whilst it decomposes into oxygen and steam of a high temperature if it comes into contact with a catalyst. All it takes is for someone to make the discovery that silver plated nickel mesh makes for a good catalyst to pump the HTP through and turn it into steam and oxygen and you can leave it as that monopropellant or pump kerosene into the chamber where its ignited by the heat of the steam to increase the thrust as a bipropellant. Post-war the British produced a Rocket-Assisted Take Off (RATO) booster in the de Havilland Sprite which used just HTP as a monopropellant and developed it into the Super Sprite which added kerosene as a bipropellant.

Considering that they used cordite rockets to test their early proximity fuze prototypes until they could develop them to resist the forces exerted on them by being fired out of a gun I've wondered off and on about the Allies developing a first generation surface-to-air missile. We're talking fixed launch sites and probably only useful against large aircraft like bombers but HTP/kerosene provides the propellant, Goddard had done successful work on three-axis control and steerable thrust to control its flight, and the fuselage isn't too complex. Radar to track the target and guidance could be either basic line-of-sight beam riding guidance (LOSBR) or stick a small beacon on the missile to track it and use command guidance in the form of semi-manual command to line-of-sight (SMCLOS) where the controller guides the missile to intercept the target or semi-automatic command to line-of-sight (SACLOS) when it's handed off to an analogue computer to guide the missile close to the target where the proximity fuze detonates it.
 
I doubt it'd have been actually useful for the war, but if the V2 (or something like it) was around then Ralph Smith’s 'Megaroc' might have sent someone out of the atmosphere before 1950.
OK it wouldn't have been an actual orbit, just a high parabolic trajectory, but apogee could have been ~300km. This could have sparked an earlier interest in space flight.
 
Checking the Ramjet wikipedia page and similar one provide many ideas:

  • ramjet assisted ordnance (very high speed anti tank or very long range a-la Paris gun)
  • supersonic V1/Okhas, uninterceptable by anything, even jet fighters
if the war goes on for some time

  • long range antiaircraft missiles similar to Talos or Bomarc
  • intercontinental range cruise missiles like the Burya
  • improved V2s similar to air-augmented missiles like the Gnom
 
A slightly longer WW1 might see the introduction of more SMGs, and Semi Automatic rifles

For example had more weapons like the MP18s, Fusil Automatique Modèle 1917 and Farquhar-Hill rifle made it into combat then combat experience might drive the need for an Assault rifle.

Had the 'Establishment' in Britain or a Major Private sponsor (ie RR) taken notice of Whittles Jet engines in the 30s and not allowed his Patents to lapse....and guess who picked them up?

Had this been done and developed through the late 30s we might see Jet engines in much greater numbers earlier (ie Higher British and then US mass production)

I don't really see Supersonic flight as being possible until the late 40s after lots of trial and error.

And sadly unless it was some sort of vanity project I don't see Zepps being used - there is little that they can do that a twin triple or 4 engined aircraft cannot do better by the 2nd WW

Maybe as an early AWACS? The Hindenburg disaster never happens

It can stay on station for several days allowing for very good coverage?
 
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