Don't mess with Little Hawk when it comes to history! Or Bob Dylan lyrics...

Actually, the outcome of WWII hinged on three inventions: the atomic bomb, radar, and the proximity fuse. The US and England were ahead in developement of all three. The A-bomb is widely discussed, here is a little about the other two inventions.
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WILLIAM WEBSTER HANSEN
Credited with inventing Klystron.
"Born 27 May 1909; died 23 May 1949.
American physicist who contributed to the development of radar and is regarded as the founder of microwave technology. He developed the klystron, a vacuum tube essential to radar technology (1937). Based on amplitude modulation of an electron beam, rather than on resonant circuits of coils and condensers, it permits the generation of powerful and stable high-frequency oscillations. It revolutionized high-energy physics and microwave research and led to airborne radar. The klystron also has been used in satellite communications, airplane and missile guidance systems, and telephone and television transmission. After WW II, working with three graduate students, Hansen demonstrated the first 4.5 MeV linear accelerator in 1947."

The cavity magnetron was the other major building block to the radar. 
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About the proximity fuse...
"The Crosley Corporation was one of five companies that assembled proximity fuzes. A total of eighty-seven different firms using one hundred ten factories were engaged in some phase of production work. Crosley's involvement began in late October 1941 when they were contacted by the Bureau of Ordnance and told that they would be contacted later that month concerning a "top secret, top priority" project. Lewis M. Clement, Crosley's vice-president in charge of Engineering, recalled that Crosley had been selected because they had the required background in electrical and mechanical engineering and in mass production. The letter of intent from the Navy came in late November 1941 and a contract for 500 fuzes in December. The first accepted fuzes came from the production line in September 1942. On January 5,1943 Lt. "Red" Cochrane, commanding the aft 5" battery on the light cruiser Helena, shot down a Japanese Val dive-bomber with the second of three salvos of VT-fuzed shells, near Guadalcanal. The fuzes were manufactured by the Crosley Corporation and this was the first kill of enemy aircraft.

Although primarily a supplier to the Navy for use in the Pacific and the Mediterranean theaters, Crosley fuzes were used with great success by the British against the V-1 buzz bomb, by the U.S. Army on the European continent in the defense of Antwerp against V-1 attacks and in the Battle of the Bulge.

In a post war interview, Lewis Crosley said that fuze production reached sixteen thousand five hundred units per day. The Crosley Corporation employed ten thousand people and worked around the clock, seven days a week. Mr. Crosley said, "We enlarged until . . . we were the largest employer and produced more than anybody in Cincinnati, including any of the other big companies located in Cincinnati at that time. We had some very, very secret and wonderful products that we produced in volume for the Armed Forces and we got a lot of credit for doing it." Bureau of Ordnance figures show that Crosley produced 5,205,913, or 24%, of the slightly more than twenty-two million proximity fuzes manufactured during the war.

The importance of the proximity fuze to the successful outcome of the Second World War is best stated by those who witnessed it's effectiveness.

James V. Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy said, "The proximity fuze has helped blaze the trail to Japan. Without the protection this ingenious device has given the surface ships of the Fleet, our westward push could not have been so swift and the cost in men and ships would have been immeasurably greater."

Prime Minister, Winston S. Churchill was quoted with "These so-called proximity fuzes, made in the United States.., proved potent against the small unmanned aircraft (V-1) with which we were assailed in 1944."

And Commanding General of the Third Army, George S. Patton said, "The funny fuze won the Battle of the Bulge for us. I think that when all armies get this shell we will have to devise some new method of warfare."