Quote:
Originally Posted by GoldenRivet
quite unrealistic i should think.
i think in real life, the DD would have likely suffered some damage... perhaps even moderate damage and manageable flooding.
however in the process it would have sliced through your U-boat like chainsaw through a stick of warm butter.
You're boat would have probably been so severely damaged that it would need to be abandoned... or it would have simply sunk altogether.
think of the mass and inertia.
assuming the DD was lining up for a Depth Charge run, he would have been moving about 2500 tons at speeds upwards of 30+ knots.
that would have completely steam rolled over the 800(ish) ton U-boat which was probably moving at 4 knots or less.
the effect this would have had on your boat would have been catastrophic and irrecoverable to say the least.
i would estimate roughly - that perhaps 10-20% of your crew would have been killed in the immediate collision, about that percentage again would have suffered serious injuries some of which would have rendered many of them more or less useless for activity of any sort.
the boat... much of the conning tower would have likely been crushed causing immediate flooding in the control room at a rate of several thousand gallons per minute.
such damage probably would have been almost universal from the conning tower forward.
the aft compartments probably would have emerged mostly unscathed.
the boat would pretty much be a total loss.
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Delete the word "quite" at the beginning and insert the word "totally" and I fully agree.
There are numerous instances where escorts rammed U-boats and received damage as a result meaning they had to head to port for repairs....one even got its propellor shafts entangled in the U-boat rigging/rails, but very few if any ever came off worse.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GoldenRivet
that spikey thing is a "net cutter" if memory serves.
it was also more or less useless if memory serves again 
the movie you are referring to is probably Jules Vernes
, the submarine in question was the quite fictional and quite heavily armored with iron and steel "Nautilus" which was in fact slicing through slow moving wooden sailing ships while the sub itself was traveling at high speed.
any German U-boat foolish enough to ram it's target would have probably been a total loss as they were actually quite sensitive to those types of impacts... a number of u-boats were severely damaged or completely lost due to collision with even small merchants.
U-505 was even stuck in repairs for several days because it brushed a jetty or pier of some sort - the minor damage sustained in the low speed collision rendered it completely unable to dive. |
Agreement x2
The outer hull was little protection for the pressure hull....any hole or crack etc meant the U-boat was no longer able to submerge and the escort skippers and kaleuns were very well aware of the potential consequences of ramming/collision...hence the eagerness for escorts to ram at almost every opportunity.