[Gammelpreusse]

Originally Posted by tater

So the argument is that better radar gear would have been wasted? That is likely true, but it doesn't change the fact that the radar itself was fr more primitive.

Radar of course becomes the analog of active sonar on subs, a no-no since it broadcasts your position.

This goes to the overall failure of the u-boat since it faced a more advanced opponent. It's dangerous to use radar, so your search diameter is tiny (shears to masts or smoke of target... So doctrine then becomes lines of boats, but to make this work, the boats have to call home. Trouble is that the call home is just as detectable as using radar and gets DFed. U-boats had a tough time, really. If you operate alone like a Fleet Type and use radar, you run a grave risk. If you operate in the "chatty" way they actually did, you get detected from that (not even counting code-breaking) and run a grave risk.

It was one of those times in history where technology was "in between" sort of like the US Civil War, and doctrines needed to evolve. The USN boats were more of a true "silent service" which I think helped them a great deal (the IJN had excellent DF capability, for example, even though it took them a long time to get radar detection gear going at all). I imagine that the u-boats would have been less successful in tonnage doing it that way, but also would have sustained fewer losses.

Excellent post and lots of good points. Nothing to add, really, as the rest goes too much into speculation.