You can largely thank operation Gomorrah for that, it doubled the production time for u-boats in the main production centre (Hamburg, where roughly a third of all boats were made).

Nope. You can directly say thanks to Hitler. As with the Me262, he didn't realize the advantage of the new technology and postponed the production and development until it was too late for those to really be effective. In the weird mind of Mr.Hitler, it was way more important to launch those rockets over to England and send out more medicore submarines, planes and tanks, to hope for a surrender.

Military speaking, Hitler was a complete idiot. :88)

I agree with your assessment of why the XXI wasn't available. From what I've read, they had the XXI perfected on paper in early 1943 but didn't actually put it into production as soon as they could have since they figured the war would be won by the time it went into production and they wouldn't have needed it.

I do disagree with your earlier post though. True they had "put it all together" in terms of existing sub developments and didn't come up with anything that wasn't thought of before. But I think if you look at it in a historical context instead of comparing it to modern subs, or even Cold War subs, it was indeed a breakthrough compared to what was considered "state of the art" in the sub technology of the time. But hey, I could be wrong. Looking at two sides of the same coin I guess. ;)

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yet the subs he was producing and the advanced ones he finally did make all had their production time doubled by Op Gomorrah.

A very big part of the delay in sending out the Type XXI into action was the training time needed. It took an averge of 6-7 months to train a crew on the type, given that a whole new set of attack tactics had to be taught and perfected before going out to sea. This, as well, was a problem as well with the Me 262 - flying and fighting in a jet fighter was a totally new thing for German pilots. Combine in the fact that a lot of these submariners in 44-45 would have been relatively inexperienced, and it becomes more clear why the Type XXI barely made it into combat before war's end.

American subs had air search radar sets almost from the begining of the war and got better ones as it progressed. Being able to pick up aircraft with plenty of time to spare to dive probably killed much incentive for exploring alternate underwater propulsion methods. Plus, we never had to face the sort of saturation aircover the Germans did in the Atlantic.

I friggin love your sig :rock::up:

Whoo...Man thats cool. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...ie_winner1.gif

Thanks you two! :cool: Think I'm gonna have to shrink it a little. Big and obnoxious as always :oops: