Was the XXI pointless???
 

By 1943 all hope of restoring power of the atlantic back to the Germans lay in the devolpment of the new electroboots. However by the wars end only two of the new XXI reached active service. I am suprised that the Kreigsmarine did not consider a radical modrinisation of the existing U-boats........

After the war the Royal Navy and the US Navy completly modrenised their boats adding schnorkels, sonar, a new sail and most importantly streamlining the boat. The Guppy series and the T class are good examples of this. The British T class achieved an Underwater speed of 15kn. This was a remarkable acheivement concdiering the design was already ten years old before the conversion began. The T class remained in service from 1938 to 1956

A much faster boat could be created, with little expence and little tecnical risk.

The manufacture of one XXI boat took over 300,000 man hours, although it could take many more because of bombing raids and intruptions (eg. badly made parts)

The VII boat was a sound design, and modifications could have being made on exsisting boats, therefore reducing the amount of time for new boats to be put in active service.

Cosidering all of these I am confused why the Kreigsmarine opted for more costly, complicated and unreliable XXI (although it was an excellent design in theory). I think if the Kreigsmarine radically modrenised their U-Boat fleet in '43, the outcome in the Atlantic may have being different....

I have often wondered what would have happened if Germany had had some sane top level leaders that were capable of making sound rational tactical descions, but 20/20 hindsight is a sweet thing isn't it.

Electroboots? Are they made by Doc Martin's?:rotfl:

Real historians don't like "what ifs" :p

I think it wasn't all that simple. Firstly, how exactly do you propose to upgrade Type VII's? Secondly, well, is the T class really the same thing? Some WWI boats could do 12kt underwater, but for how long? The only comparable upgrades that brought boats up to something like a XXI would be the postwar Guppy refits - and those would be rather extensive and quite hard to do in wartime.

The Type VIIs were already stuffed. It would be very hard to upgrade them with anything - if you wanted to improve their performance, they'd need a lot more battery power. How do you get the battery power there? The fact is that the XXI did that by using the same exact batteries that the VIIs and IXs had, but it had a lot more of them. The XXI used a lot of the same technology as the other boats, just differently. Meanwhile the VIIs and IXs were already hopelessly obsolete. I think the Germans did an admirable job upgrading them, but they simply came from too old a design philosophy and had no extra room for upgrades. This for example as distinct from the US fleet boats which being a more sophisticated, new-school design with lots of spare room, simply had more capacity to be upgraded and were - and even then after the war and with rather extensive effort being expended on doing so.

Likewise, building the XXIs in sections as they were was a lot more efficient than the VIIs. For all we know, it was perhaps more efficient than upgrading the older fleet.

As for 'what if in 1943...' - well, that was a what-if indeed. The Battle of the Atlantic was very much hanging in balance in early 1943. With the situation having reached a fever pitch for both sides, there is no way the tactics, technology or production priority would be switched then and there. When it was, it was already too late and the U-boats lost the battle.

The XXI was potentially a very dangerous design, but it showed exactly the problems with transitioning to new technology. Of course it was useless, but it wasn't useless by design. If anything was useless by design, it was Adolf's war plans - no XXI would've saved him :hmm:

Though in seriousness, I wouldn't say they were pointless at all, they may have been crap in terms of reliability and use. But, they paved the way for what we have now, they were the first incarnation IMO and my brothers Opinion of the true submarine. Up till the launch of the XXI all the submarines of the world were surface vessels which had the ability to go underwater, they were not intended for extended underwater use, the XXI was.

Yep :D
You can run 15 knots on the surface of water with them :p

It seems the Wehrmacht as a whole, along with Hitler and his inner circle, emphasized the development and production of new "wonder weapons" at the expense of upgrading proven weapon systems. Witness not only the Type XXI but also the Me-262, the Ar-234, the Pzkw VIII Maus, the V-1 and V-2, etc. Some of these clearly were more successful than others, but all drained resources from the production and improvement of older -- but still effective --weapons systems.

Maybe this addiction to new weapons systems was a sign of the Nazis' desperation as the war turned against them, maybe it was a manifestation of Hitler's own psychological makeup... It's worth nothing, though, that the Wehrmacht had wagered on new technologies and tactics before the war began -- e.g., the dive bomber and Blitzkrieg -- and that bet had paid off (at least initially). Perhaps in opting for innovative new weapons systems, rather than upgrading older systems, the Wehrmacht was just staying true to form.

Discuss amongst yourselves... :hmm:

Aren't virtually all new designs? :p

There are only a few fortunate cases of new technology being used most efficiently and not having a huge amount of teething troubles (just think of the US sub fleet in WWII, the pre-war doctrine and its results at the start of the war, and the torpedoes and other stuff - oooh boy! - but in the end those boats were a grand success). The XXI certainly didn't have the time for proper troubleshooting, but I'm sure if it did it would be quite a potent boat. Probably not the almighty uber-boat that some invision, but way ahead of anything of its time.

Hmmm... or perhaps CCIP's more technically-minded explanation is more to the point. Ah, I'm always one to go wool-gathering... :|\\




Edit: Oh happy day, from Bilge Rat to Nub! And a much better-looking avatar!

You also have to take in consideration do you completely stop production of an existing type to make the modifications need to your current production lines? and then upgrade your whole fleet which could put them all out of action for several months at least :down: in war time this often inst a very practical solution.

More of the stock standard and less of the wizzy toys is often whats needed in war time... Germany kinda found that one out the hard way. And if I recall correctly Germany war industry wasn't even working around the clock 24 hours a day till early 43 when they had been at war since 1939!

The Uboats failure imho was simply not enough boats at sea in 1939 to achieve the desired effect.

For the Germans it was pointless cause the war ended! If the XXI was cruising the atlantic around 1941 onwards i think the battle would of been decided...:hmm:

Definately not pointless in terms of the development of the first true submarine. Before the XXI U-boats, S-Boats et al were simply submersibles rather than true submarines desinged from the start to operate almost entirely underwater.

In terms of contriuting to the German war effort, well in that they made no significant contribution to that effort so in those terms you could conclude that they were pointless.

If Doenitz could have had the number of boats he wanted to start the war with, at the start of the war, then I think the war would have had a very different ending.

Its a moot point now though. The US, UK and the then USSR benefitted most from the technical advances contributed by the XXI.

I don't know, but I do know that they had electroboots, and mohair suits.

/Read it in a magazine.

Yes the XXI was built in sections, but most of them by slave labour. Therefore they were badly manufactured, ill-fitting and when they got to port they were often missing equipment, which added to the lenght of time for them to become operational.

But If they had being avaible in '41 and in suffficent numbers, britian would not have lasted........ Dont get me wrong the tecnology was there, you only have to look at the jappeneese No. 71 sub (nearly always overlooked by historians).



But i think the blame lay with Hitler, he was always sceptical of his U-boat arm
which left donitz to make the best of a bad situation..................

as for sticking to the oldies but goodies there's a few examples I could mention like the B52 (which has now been in active service for more than half the time we have powered flight as a species :o),or USS Missouri and USS New Jersey and let's not forget they were still using t-34's in the Balkans in the early 1990s

so yes, upgrading the type VII and IX would probably have been better (same goes for pzkfw. IV and VI) but I wouldn't want to have been the officer commanding the British Taskforce when 1 of those type XXIs surfaced right in the middle of them to surrender at the end of the war and they didn't know it was there :oops:, that definitely puts a dent in your promotion prospects.

This isn't as out in left field as it might seem at first. The British R-Class had performance between a Type XXIII and XXI back at the end of WWI. The technology to do it was there, but the doctrine wasn't.

First, on the British side, the R boats were envisioned as anti-submarine submarines. The problem was that sensors, like passive sonar and ASDIC, hadn't caught up. The British never made the doctrinal leap to understand the advantages of using them in a conventional anti-ship role.

Likewise, the doctrine on the German side was stuck in WWI, despite the idea of the Wolfpack. Submarines were primarily surface ships that could submerge if they *HAD* to. They didn't need decent underwater speed or endurance, because they hadn't needed it in WWI.

I actually think that Germany would have been better served if they had looked at the R Class that the British had, and developed the doctrine around high speed submerged boats. They had the advantage of working from a clean slate, it would have been relatively painless for them to do so when starting up the Ubootwaffe in the 1930's. Trying to do it in 1943-44 after several years of war, while you are geared up to make designs that are basically just improved UBIII boats from WWI is much harder.

Adolf Hitler didn't pay much attention to the Kriegsmarine, because he had as his best advisor Fieldmarschall Hermann Goering (they were very close friends back from 1928), who has openly against giving any budget increase to the Kriegsmarine or the Wehrmacht. Just an example to illustrate Goering's way of thinking:
When the british troops were cornered at Dunkirk and the Panzers and Infantry Division were at less than 5 hours, Goering told Hitler to stop them, because his Luftwaffe was more than enough to take care of the british troops. Of course, his Luftwaffe did little or nothing at all and you know the results. This gave the british High Command and Sir Winston Churchill more than enough time to plan and execute the evacuation. Almost the same happened when Goering reviewed the research budget for the u-boats and many other branches of service in the Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe as well. And he stood against it from the beginning. Goering was very selfish and could never have the vision of seeing the 3 forces (Navy, Army and Airforce) working together to achieve a common benefit.
There is the answer to why did the germans neglect the production of more sophisticated u-boats, until it was too late to make a difference.;)
CapZap

I'll get clobbered for saying this on this forum, but the whole U-boat war effort was pointless, nevermind what type of boat. There is no way that Britain could have been starved to death... ever. It just isn't possible.

Besides, Hitler was never betting on starving England out of existence, but rather the original plan was to make it suficiently uncomfortable for the British so that they would just sign a peace treaty where they would basicaly leave Hitler be and have his way on continental Europe. Hitler was betting that the British had only been allies of the French for a short while but enemies for ever (hey, how about that hundred years war?). Of course the whole deal is more complicated than that, but that was the general idea.

He just miscalculated the Churchill factor. I beleive Chamberlain would have signed for peace.

You won't get clobbered by me. I agree with you 100%. They also didn't account for the US to be able to ramp up production as fast as they did, or for British ASW technology/skills to rise as quickly as it did. Donitz was in denial about aircraft equipped with radar until late 42-43, despite the Hudson's that appeared out of nowhere, at night, over the Bay of Biscay as early as April, 42.

Germany just didn't have the production capability to make a dent. I do think having reliable type XXI's as early as 1940 would have had an effect on Allied shipping though. But they didn't have many boats of the Type II/VII/IX class in 1939-40 as it was, so it's a pretty big stretch, almost to the point of asking the Wehrmacht to field Me-262's or, more accurately in my opinion, F-86 sabres during WWII. Gets to the point of science fiction.

XXI pointless for WW2?
yes as they where too late

XXI pointless after war?
no it has been a good jump for the Submarine development:up: