The Mark IV was only successful in comparison to the Mk. III...the reason the MK. III is barely mentioned in that article is because it was only slightly better than using the MK. 1 eyeball.
Do you have some source about the UK models? The wikipedia article does not say that the British models were ever developed into mass produceable units, only the American developments were.
Western Electric and RCA are American companies BTW. Kind of hard to make them just by themselves without American components...
Yeah...no. The Tizard Mission was to actually turn British lab experiments into produceable weapons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tizard_Mission
Development means turning a production from lab experiment into a mass produceable item. The research sent couldn't be properly developed due to a shortage of resources in Britain.
The Brits had done experiments with their VT fuze in rockets (as had the Germans) and were trying to work toward cannon fired models, but it was the US that actually made it a reality:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximity_fuze#Production
If they weren't serious, why did they prevent deployment before 1944? They were utility to the aircraft prior.
No, the MK. III isn't 'barely mentioned' in the article - it isn't mentioned AT ALL. The MK. IV was not merely successful compared to the MK. III, it was successful, period. Also worthy of note, is that the first US contribution to the AI program was Western Electric's SCR720B, which appeared in December 1942 (one set, for trials)- over a year after the introduction of the solely UK designed & built, centimetric MK. VII.
You know, if you're going to rely on wiki for your attempted rebuttals, you really should take the trouble to read the article to which you so eagerly link first... If you'd done that, you'd realise that amongst the designs taken to the US as part of Tizard's mission, were such items as ASDIC (sonar), gyroscopic sights, self sealing fuel tanks, plastic explosives (various flavours), cavity magnetron etc, etc. I'm pretty sure that even the most simplistic account of the war will reveal that all these things were in service use before Tizard & co left these shores, so rather far from 'laboratory items' by any definition.
Regarding the VT fuse, and again invoking a wiki article you have raised yourself, I'll refer you to the following:
As early as September 1939,
John Cockroft began a development effort at
Pye Ltd. to develop tubes capable of withstanding these much greater forces.
[14] Pye's research was transferred to the United States as part of the technology package delivered by the
Tizard Mission when the United States entered the war.
The British ordered 20,000 special miniature tubes from
Western Electric Company and
Radio Corporation of America, and an American team under Admiral
Harold G. Bowen, Sr. correctly deduced that the tubes were meant for experiments with proximity fuzes.
[3] The details of these experiments were passed to the
United States Naval Research Laboratory and
National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) by the
Tizard Mission in September 1940, in accordance with an informal agreement between
Winston Churchill and
Franklin D. Roosevelt to exchange scientific information of potential military value.
[
As per your assertion that; 'The wikipedia article does not say that the British models were ever developed into mass produceable units' I would also point out that neither did I. To repeat, verbatim, what I actually said in my earlier post was:
'The VT fuse was far from a 'laboratory only' model - they were field tested, with initial batches produced in the UK too. The valve (tube) design (by John Cockroft at Pye) was subsequently improved for mass production by Berkner & eventually incorporated into already extant valves (for hearing aids, no less) produced by Western Electric & RCA. Nothing here is beyond the technical capacity of the UK in a world where the priorities are different.'
Now, the key point here is my final line in the above statement - 'Nothing here is beyond the technical capacity of the UK in a world where the priorities are different'. That is, where the priorities might differ in any alternate timeline, there is no reason - either of manufacturing or the science behind it, why Pye (or any other capable organisation, for that matter - of which there are many), should not produce VT fuses, albeit at the (disruptive) expense of another (presumably deemed less pressing & prescient in an ATL) product, or any other, understood technology as might be required.
Going back to the Meteor, you seem not to have taken on board what I said in my earlier post at all. 'Problems' (of any sort) did not prevent the aircraft reaching service release until 1944, rather, the perceived lack of need, OTL, did. The program was drip fed, if you will, on minimal resources (at least until the first Fi 103's start to appear OTL) simply because those types already in service were adequate (and with comfortably established production routines / tempos) for the then understood threat & operational needs.
Oh, and thanks for helpfully pointing out that both Western Electric & RCA are American concerns, I'd long wondered what 'Made in the USA' meant on the little labels stuck to the back of their products....