Youtube link: WWII Uboat-technology
 

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laG5hQ-n2pg

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrFiWZzzq7I

Cool,thanks for that:up:

Interesting stuff in there, thanks Seth.

A visit from the Japanese surprised me! Was wondering about the practicalities of going up in the gyro (or whatever it was called). Not so good if a crash dive is required...

PS I watched them with the sound off so if the above are explained in the videos forgive me.

:up: Tks, real interesting.

Very interesting , Seth, thanks! :D

Danke matey :up: :arrgh!:

That was very cool, thanks. I'd love to watch the whole thing.

Yeah, they mentioned what would happen in that situation. They'd litteraly cut the line and crash dive. The pilot in the gyro thing would simply have to abandon the vessel and "hope" to be picked up later.

Would definitely suck to be him. I also learned today that the Japanese actually had man-guided torpedoes or kamikaze torpedoes. They literally sat in them and guided them on their destination. At first the built a way for the "pilot" to abandon just before impact. Then they did away with that because it wasn't likely to happen anyway. Talk about dedicated to the cause.:oops:

That auto-gyro is insane. All the weird contraptions they fooled with when they could have just been developing radar technology like the allies.:roll:

Seriously. I read some about that and they were working on radar, they just didn't focus on it until towards the end of the war. Guess someone decided there were better things to focus their technology on? :doh:

They didn't focus much of any technological development on the U-boats. What little that was given to the Navy, since Raeder wasn't a Nazi like Goering but a leftover from before and therefore Hitler's close associates had more influence of what happened, was spent on the useless Battleships. The U-boats were finally given heed by Hitler much too late for it to mean anything to them. In fact Hitler uniformly ingored the Navy when moving towards war. Ironically the Navy's building-up project was due to be ready in 1945, so 1939 was too early for them.

They actually built an aircraft carrier, the Gaf Zeppelin, put to see in the mid to late 30s. Never saw combat, and we all know how important air power turned out in naval battles. yeah, talk about priorities.

Look out for her when your leaving port in 39 ;)

By the looks of that gyro-helicopter thing, I don't think they wasted too many funds on R&D for that. That thing looks like it was built out of spare parts by a boy scout. I would have been deathly afraid to be up in the air a 100ft on that deathtrap.