So nobody thinks that unlimited submarine warfare by the Germans was inappropriate and could progress in no fashion but to lose the war for the Germans?
They were operating on an ocean where Allied ASW forces were completely unapposed. They had no effective air cover or spotting because the Allies controlled both the air and the surface. Once they were detected they were a dead duck with escorts and aircraft free to engage without any outside interference at all. That Atlantic was an Allied lake.
Then the ultimate stupidity of firing that first torpedo out of a U-Boat and declaring unlimited warfare. Across the Atlantic was a country mired in isolationism. The American people were almost unanimously of a mind to let Europe go to hell without them. Had Roosevelt been discovered helping the British as much as he did, letting Churchill set up a government in exile in case of Britain's defeat, allowing the British Secret Service to operate from the US, Roosevelt would immediately been impeached and there wouldn't have been much debate about it.
Yet, how could an unrestricted submarine warfare in the Atlantic progresss in any other way but inevitably to bring the US into the conflict. Can submarines attack a factory in Kansas? Surely they could torpedo all the railroad cars crossing the state of Utah! In fact, they couldn't touch the US in any meaningful way! It was nothing less than an act of suicide which resulted directly in the demise of the Third Reich.
Nothing nationalistic in anything I've said. Each point is a fact. In my first post, what is nationalistic? Calling names isn't sufficient to disprove anything, just makes the name-caller look silly.
I have equal fun playing U-Boats or fleet boats in the games, SH4 and SH3. I admit I tend to play the U-Boat with American leaning strategy, never engage aircraft, avoid diving deep, always look for a way to regain the initiiative thinking "why shouldn't I go to periscope depth NOW and dish out some punishment." I also play the fleet boat with German tactics emphasizing constant bearing techniques and shooting from extreme close range. In fact the genesis of the Dick O'Kane attack was discussions with SH3 U-Boat jockeys.
There are many other items that made the U-Boat inferior than what I pulled quickly off the top of my head in my first post. The most important was the lack of training for the too many boats. A huge proportion of U-Boats were sunk with zero or one kills. I don't think that was a reflection on the capability of the boat itself, but on the frantic turning out of incompetent new crews. It's like baseball. When you have too many players you dilute the talent pool and lower the effectiveness of your game.
The handwriting was on the wall as early as 1942. The U-Boats were rampant but they failed to sink enough tonnage to offset new ship building. The Battle of the Atlantic was effectively over even before Allied ASW techniques got so good. From a strategic point of view the U-Boats could be almost ignored.
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