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Any U-Boat fans around here writing targeting tutorials for fleet boats? I thought not.
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LOL I did one ... 3.341 downloads so far
http://files.filefront.com/Simplifie.../fileinfo.html
But I'm admittingly both a U-Boat and a Fleet boat fan
Nevertheless, I don't 100% agree with what you said, RR, with most yes but not with everything.
First of all, anybody who has studied the matter in depth knows that US and german submarines were simply not always comparable. Different machines for diferent purposes AND different enemies and enemy technology. IMHO the only fair comparison can be done between a 1943 Type IX/D2 and a 1943 Balao. And pound by pound of metal, the Balao wins hands down, the only advantage of the U-Boat (And that more theoretical than practical) being a claimed superior maximum dive depth.
Second, it must be recognized that germany suffered the limitations of the Versailles Treaty and hence their U-Boat fleet was built basically upon a reworked WW1 design (The UB-III) with some improvements, so I don't think that WW2 U-Boats represented in any way the pinnacle of submarine technology, nor were it pretended to be that. The US had no limitations and could improve and refine their fleet boat concept as much as they did, the only problem getting in their way being the incredible incompetency of the Bureau of Ordnance to deliver a reliable and good pistol for their main weapon. HOR engines were also a fiasco of monumental proportions.
Where I don't agree completely with you is in that germany should have never started a U-Boat campaign and should have concentrated instead in their Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht. In your views you tend to forget the political situation before WW2, when Britain was the main enemy for Germany (Aside from the Soviet Union, but they planned to take that one on later) and all plans and political considerations called for a only-european war. Britain is an Island nation, and as the experience with Japan shows, a naval blockade is the only effective means of waging war against it, specially if you have a much inferior navy -as was the german case-. Had Dönitz had at the outbreak of the war 300 front ready U-Boats with well trained crews (Instead of the KM having expended huge amounts of resources in building pocket battleships and manning them), a naval blitzkrieg operation of blockaed would have been possible against Britain. In September 1939 Britain clearly had not enough escort ships to protect his convoys, nor had extended radar equipment for all of them, or enough patrol airplanes. A sudden strong blockade by wolfpacks with 100 U-Boats any time in the theater of operations would have effectively strangled Britain in a few months, making it impossible to react on time. It also could have probably caused Britain's surrender before the US public opinion was ready to accept entering another war, and long before Japan decided his Pearl Harbor attack. When the US entered the war, germany was finished. Sooner or later they would be. Period. So any strategy that had defeated Britain before that, would have been a winner.