Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Riley
Who in their right mind would even question German quality and efficiency anyway?  |
During WW2? Many people. 'Awesome design, shoddy build quality' tended to be the norm. To make things worse, the 'awesome' often got in the way of efficiency.
The type XXI is a good example of this. While the design was considerably ahead of its time, too many concessions had be made to make it mass-producable in inland facilities hopefully out of reach of allied bombers. The modular build process proved to be beyond the ability of companies who had nothing to do with ships before.
In the end, over 100 were built and they never sank anything because only a handful were combat-worthy by the end of the war. Considering more conventional production could have seen them in action from 1943 on, this is a lot of wasted potential.