Many new small arms were developed during World War II, the most notable being the new improvements on the machine gun. Both Axis and Allies developed scores of new weapons to meet an ever-growing demand. In World War I, it had been shown that heavy machine guns could be successful against tanks; however, "by 1939 most tank armor had become thick enough the be proof against even the largest machine guns (the firing bullets approximately a half inch in diameter) and a majority of the great powers lost interest in the big guns" (Kirk and Young, 292).

The major exception to this was the United States. American soldiers used the heavy Browning .50 caliber M2 in almost every aspect of fighting. The Army used the M2 primarily as a defensive weapon of its infantry forces. The armor divisions used it as a second armame

The Mustang was an extremely versatile fighter. Designed primarily for bomber escort, it was later discovered that the Mustang was ideally suited to all forms of combat. In March of 1944, P-51's escorted mass formations of B-17 Fortresses and B-24 Liberators to Berlin and back. The days of the German Luftwaffe interceptors taking out bombers beyond the range of escorts were over (Kirk and Young, 31-3).

The above paragraphs and descriptions display only the tiniest portion of the weapons used in World War II. There were hundreds of other planes, guns, artillery, and ships developed and produced. These weapons paved the way for future wars, and how they would be fought.

American troops also used the smoothbore 81mm. mortar to great advantage. This mortar, consisting of a 51-inch barrel, bipod, and base plate, was simple to set up and used a three-man team to operate. Hundreds of these efficient mortars, firing finned high-explosive shells, were used in the Battle of the Rhineland to neutralize Germany's west wall of fortifications (271).

The most famous and powerful of all U.S. fighters, indeed of all the fighters of WWII, is the North American P-51 Mustang. The Mustang, ironically, was designed at the behest of the British. Early in 1940, the Royal Air Force (RAF) asked the U.S. to provide a new fighter. The P-51, under pressure of great need, was designed and built in only 117 days, and tested within seven months of the original request (Grove, et. al., 136-7).

The British counterpart of the Browning M2 was the 15mm. Besa machine gun. This massive gun was hardly used except as secondary armament on tanks. The Besa was originally a Czech design, so the Germans had a similar weapon (293).

Germans used small 50mm. mortars of a more classic design. Infantry troops used these in close combat at 100 yards or less.

On July 16, 1945 the first atomic bomb was tested south of Los Alamos, the installation where the A-bomb was created. The resulting blast was equal to 40,000 pounds of dynamite-more than 2,000 time the destructive force of any other bomb existing at that time. "On July 26, …Allied leaders issued the Potsdam Declaration, threatening 'complete and utter destruction' of Japan if it did not unconditionally surrender. Days later, Japan declared that it would continue the war, and on August 6, … the United States dropped a uranium bomb, nicknamed Little Boy, on Hiroshima. Three days later, Fat Man, a plutonium bomb, was dropped on Nagasaki. On August 10 Japan announced its intention to surrender, and it did so formally on September 2" (Compton's).

Extremely simple in design, the "knee mortar" was actually closer to a grenade launcher than a true mortar. It fired a small projectile to a range of 700 yards when the lower plunger was pushed in. The small mortars were introduced dur

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