Hi Indy!
I was wondering why the Axis powers never/rarily copied allied equipment when it was better than their own. I heard that captured M3 Stuart tanks in the Japanese Army were considered superior to their own tanks. Why didn’t they decide to ship one back to Japan and copy it? Same goes for other Axis powers like Italy with the British Matilda II and Cruiser tanks once they got help from the Afrika Corps.
They did, but not often very well. The biggest ‘copy’ was the new German field uniform in 1944 which was clearly inspired by British Battledress, down to the anklets instead of high-sided leather boots.
The Panther tank was inspired by the T34, though it was not a direct copy.
The German copied the British Mosquito fighter but never fielded it; mostly because the war turned against them and it was too late.
The Japanese tried to copy the M1 Garand but this actually wasn’t necessary, the Japanese Army had its own semi-automatic rifle design developed but it was never fielded. The prototype were very reliable, though.
The biggest reason there aren’t more copies is that designs have to fit into the doctrine and training of an organization and each army had enough of its own unique style that this was neither possible nor desirable.
The Nazis copied the Bazooka iirc.
They did on simpler items, as mentioned in the thread already. Larger, more complex machinery just takes more time than the Axis powers had. You’d need to determine what everything on the tank did, measure everything in your measurement system, specify all the parts for as many manufacturers as required (for a tank, lots of different factories may be needed), set up the jigs and fixtures for mass production, begin manufacturing, test the first batch for functionality, incorporate any fixes or changes to the design, start cranking them out of the factory, ship them to a training unit to get the trainers familiar with the new tank, train the first batch of actual combat crews, and load them and the tanks onto ships/trains and get them to the front lines. Even with the very best of luck, that’s a multi-year process and it assumes you have available technicians for the evaluation, measurement, and specification phases and perhaps most importantly, factories capable of taking on the work with factory capacity and workforce availability.