Well, the german's are the one's that decided to design a boat to go underwater....if they didn't want to be depth charged they should have stayed on the surface and fight with the rest of us. I'm sure the allies would have had an alternative, more convenient way for them to die if they didn't want to be depth charged on the bottom.... I mean what did they expect? the allies were going to use fishing hooks or shiney lures?

Uboats were a problem to shipping...and depth charges were the answer to it....All the servicemen made decissions....and they chose to attack ships in a "machine that operates underwater" and would "lead to all to a HORRIBLE watery grave" if the "slightest mistake was made" that my friend is brain washing at its finest. You don't have to be a nazi in order to be brainwashed...all you need to do it just tell a group of guys to climb into a hot, stinky, cramped up vessel that would dive to 200+ meters under the ocean...and then tell them to go out and actually shoot things with it...these guys knew what they were getting into. The technology had been around since WWI. So the way they died was noithing new.

I don't understand the arguement of how a person dies whether its fast or slow determines if they are elite or not....that statement doesn't make sense to me...anyone that serves to defend their country is an elite.....whether you are in charge of supply or sweeping the floor...everyone is needed to get the job done....take for instance the guy that sweeps the floor. If he didn't sweep the floor and pay attention to crucial detail...and say he missed a spot.....and general patton came in and slipped and hit his head and killed himself...he wouldn't be around to kick the germans from one end to the other....so if you see the guy that sweeps the floor actually saves lives....countless lives.....This job does not get recognized in story books, movies, and others forms of drama focusing on slow deaths and fear of being depth charged...that is for the passionate people to read and get emotional about later after the war is over...or after reflecting on a personal experience they went through....but, everyone from all walks off life were dying during the war...and they are all elites for striving to live through it....

Well actually it was an American named David Bushnell who designed the first working (in the modern sense) combat submarine (Turtle, 1775). Bushnell was followed by another American, Robert Fulton, who built Nautilus (c. 1800). Nobody in Europe wanted it, so Fulton came home and wound up building the Clermont (and was probably happier for it in the long run :) ). Later, it was yet another American, H.L. Hunley, who really developed the first *effective* sub, for the South during the Civil War. I say the C.S.S. Hunley was the first effective sub because it sank the Union ship Housatonic - first time a sub sank an enemy warship.

Germany came along later; she was the last major power to develop a fleet of combat subs.

Not trying to torpedo your post, just pointing out. Cheers. :)

I read about "Hunley".
Didn't it have a large harpoon type spike out the front which it used to puncture the hull of the ships?

Hunley had a spar mounted at the bow and a single cannister "torpedo" (which originally meant simply a mine) slung at the end of the spar. A lanyard ran back to the sub, which would indeed ram the spar into the ship below the waterline, pull the lanyard as it reversed, and detonate the torpedo.

Basic info and links: http://www.charlestonillustrated.com/hunley/#