We have looked at the changes and continuity’s in many different sports, hobby’s and profession during this project. Interestingly though we have yet to talk about the changes from the 1950s to 2021 regarding the way we fight wars. This is especially interesting because world war 2 marked the biggest change ever in the way wars are fought. 

The first aspect of war I want to talk about is planes. Since ww1, having air superiority is the biggest factor that decides wether one side wins or loses. An example of this in ww2 is when the Luftwaffe was strategically destroying British air fields and fighter jet supply lines. Without their planes the British could do almost nothing to the Germans in the sky. But when hitler made the call to start bombing city’s, the British could repair their planes and eventually match the Air Force power of Germany. The importance of air superiority is a continuity from WW2 as it is the second most important part of a country’s power in war today.

The f-22 raptor is the USAs modern day air superiority fighter.

A major change in war though is with the navy. In WW2 the biggest and heaviest battle ships to ever exist dominated the seas. Thick armoured halls and massive armaments were used to destroy smaller fleets. This slowly changed at the end of the war, specifically in the pacific, and that change has carried on to today. Despite Japan having the biggest and most powerful battle ship, the Yamato weighing in at over 65,000 tons, the usas aircraft carriers took down the Japanese fleet. Today a country’s naval power is mostly judge by their aircraft carriers.

The Yamato battleship.

The biggest change in war started in the end of the pacific war, when the bomb little boy was dropped on Hiroshima, followed by the bomb fat man being dropped on Nagasaki. These two nuclear bombs were incredibly power full and devastated the Japanese moral, ending the war at the cost of the tens of thousands who died in the explosions. Nuclear bombs continued to be built and improved as all the major powers of the world, namely Russia and the USA raced to make the biggest and best of these powerful weapons. It was on October 30, 1961 that the biggest nuclear bomb to ever be made was dropped by Russia. The 50 megaton (meaning 50 million tons of TNT would be equivalent to the explosion) Tsar Bomba was over 3300 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. These new bombs caused new types of wars like the Cold War, and gave country’s the ability to ensure the destruction of each other, know as mutually assured destruction.

The tsar bomba.

These were just a few changes and similarities we have seen in war since WW2. As technology progress so will the ability for country’s to defend and attack each other.