Quote:
Originally Posted by Ford Prefect
Being out of radio contact would have also made them harder to find since the naval codes had been broken and wolf packs could be intercepted or avoided. If there's no communication relaying positions then there's nothing to decode. Had they come in earlier or the war started later, they would have likely found a way around the lack of radio contact by using some deployable antenna or some such.
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Perhaps. But Erich Topp himself states that the type XXI was very much a "lone operator". Its design allowing it to work better alone, than to co-ordinate a pack attack or work in a pack.
He himself state that the trials, of which he took part in for the type XXI, showed the boats apparent "weakness" in pack operations. Also, a deployable radio antenna would likely be detectable by the Allied radar, as the Snorkel head i've read could be detected when it was raised above the surface so I'd imagine a radio antenna would suffer the same problem, that and potentially revealing the boats location when transmitting messages.