[seafarer]

I remember reading a Canadian Artillery officers assessment of German military technology. If I remember the piece right (it was many years ago), he used the breech mechanism of a 25 pounder versus an 88mm (same calibre field weapons so I guess he saw it as a fair comparison). He described the 88's breech as a thing of engineering beauty - many small finely and precisely refined parts all working together in an intricate manner. In comparison, he described the 25 pounder's breech mechanism as a simple erector set of relatively far fewer parts - a bit crude and simple, but it worked.

It could also be produced far cheaper, faster, with less material and the breech of any 25 pounder in the allied armies could be interchanged with parts from anyother. The 88 however, had a higher failure rate, and often required that specific parts be machined anew to repair the breech, as the intricate nature of the many parts meant that they could rarely be swapped out with any other part from another gun (especially as they wore together in field use).

He also made mention of the Tiger tanks - wonderfully conceived machines, but vastly over-engineered under the circumstances. Despite their many failings, our inferior M13's carried the tank war in Europe because we made about 55,000 of them, to the few hundred Tigers Germany was able to churn out (and okay, we weren't being bombed to blazes while we made them either).

His argument was that German/Prussian military mindset emphasized engineering perfection, while the Allies' attitude tended to be more pragmatic - things just needed to work and no more.

I remember another article about the STEN gun, when a decision was made to even further simplify the design to boost production. Some worker commented that the damn things wouldn't last 5 years they were so cheap. Minister Lyttelton, Minster of Production, commented back that if they still needed them in 5 years, they were doomed anyway as the war would be lost. He didn't care if they only lasted a month or a year - he just needed lots of them ASAP.