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Originally Posted by LukeFF
Dave,
Thanks for the reply re: S boat construction. You are indeed right about the time and circumstances surrounding the development of the S class. When I made my remark about the poor workmanship, I had this quote in mind from Norman Friedman:
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Designed for the Atlantic, the S-boats entered service just as U.S. naval attention turned to the far vaster Pacific. Despite their poor wartime workmanship and obsolescent designs, they were the only existing U.S. submarines likely to be useful to a Pacific battlefleet. Most were completed just as U.S. naval funding collapsed after the Washington treaty, so many of their deficiencies were not even addressed.
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(Page 133, U.S. Submarines Through 1945) |
Luke,
I too rely on Friedman quite a bit, but I have learned to read between the lines in his stuff. His writing style is very choppy and sometimes hard to interpret. It is true that the S-boats had some construction problems, but so did all yards that built subs from one time or another. Cramp Shipbuilding in Philadelphia built some fleet boats during WWII and ran into some serious quality control issues for a variety of reasons. Several of their boats had to be towed away and finished at Navy shipyards. Even the mighty Electric Boat Co. has taken criticism at times. The construction problems with the S-boats were not pandemic and I will stick to my assertion that most of the issues with these boats were design related. Friedman is completely correct, however in stating that the boat's basic deficiencies were not corrected due to the gutting of the fleet following the Washington Naval Treaty.