And here goes the next apples and oranges thread.
@RockinRobbins
Is there any source that indicates an incident where a German crew has not been able to perform it's duty because of the lacking luxuary on a German sub? I've never heard of German crews being unaffective let alone much more uneffective than American crews.
@all
Let's play a little game. We pretend Germany stole the Gato - class blue prints and started to build them themselfes in let's say 1943.
The much bigger Fleetboats surely required much more ressources than the smaller German subs. Ressources Germany didn't have, so they only build a handfull of them and are therfore not able to cover the entire Atlantic (which already was impossible with dozens of German subs).
The superior radar technology is rendered useless by the ability of the British to detect radar radiation, so the moment you switch it on it will give away your position to the enemy. With the SD switched off you can only hope for enemy planes to use radar that you can detect and dive because of the slower emergency dive time compared to German subs (IIRC the war reports of USS Drum indicated a dive time of about 46-47 sec. while the German dive time of the Type VII was around 30sec. [stated by the German Wikipedia article about Type VIIs, the English article does not feature any dive times I'm afraight])
German subs could be depthcharged and hedgehoged to death in 200m depth and deeper. Now imagine how a big Fleetboat (which also resembles a big target) at 400 feet would do against British vessels.
The only advantages that could be put to use are the higher number of torpedoes and torpedo tubes (but what good are they if you can't survive an attck against a British convoy?) and the higher speed.
The Fleetboats also lacked the agility of German subs which makes evasion of escorts more difficult.
The American TDC was definetly ahead of the German one but still they could sink a lot of enemy ships too so this doesn't seem to be a major disadvantage for the German subs.
We see for Germany the Fleetboat would have been useless.
Let's turn the table and send a German sub to patrol in Japanese homewaters operated by American crews from Pearl Harbour.
Well I guess we get several problems now. The range of the German subs was not as high as that of the Flettboats so that the patrols would be shorter (although ships could be used to resupply them, but that only comes at the risk of sending a ship close to enemy waters). The amount of torpedoes is also smaller than that of the Fleetboat. The crew suffers from the missing ventilation system and missing fridges (remember German subs where not designed to operate in the Pacific). The maximum dive depth gives the u-boat a greater survivebility while beeing chased by angry escorts but finding targets to make escorts angry is somewhat more difficult without a radar (that the enemy has problems to detect in this theatre) and the crew will curse every plane that appears out of nowhere envying there friends in the Fleetboats who would have been alarmed several minutes before by the (hopefully properly working
) SD (at least they know the have the better dive time...).
So we see both types of subs were optimal for there theatre. I surely would not want to take on British convoys in a Fleetboat. On the other hand German subs would have needed much more time to clear the Pacific ( finding the targets without radar, having not as many torpedo tunes and torpedoes and lacking the range of the Fleetboat). Maybe so much time that the Jpanese would have developed better ASW vessels and technology. (on the other hand maybe they would have done the job even quicker by simply having greater numbers fielded, but that is getting philosophically.:hmm
