Quote:
Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins
Outdated????? The S-Boat was the first submarine to be optimized for underwater performance, beating the Type XXI U-Boat by 24 years! Smaller and with less power than the later fleet boats, it was faster and quicker handling underwater.
However, not having solved the battery problem, when it was time to design a fleet boat, the designers chose to build a surface raider that could submerge when it actually had to. But the S-Boat absolutely disproves the notion that the Germans were just some kind of alien supermen who designed an absolute breakthrough in the Type XXI because of its optimization for submerged speed. Pure poppycock!
So I'll take that 9 knot surface speed with a smile! The S-Boat was almost 30 years out of date and STILL acquitted itself admirably in WWII. Build some new ones with decent ice cream machines and they would have been good for another 20 years.  |
The principles of surface and subsurface optimisation were well understood before the outbreak of world war one, and several world war one boats were designed for sub-surface optimisation, in various navies.
This was proven to be an ineffective design concept. This goes for the S-boat, in that it is not a boat that is designed to operate effectively for long periods underwater, and the attempts to do so also harmed its performance on the surface.
All other boats were designed to be divable surface cruisers for good reason, with hydrodynamic optimisation focussing on reduced drag when on the surface.
The late war german boats went back to earlier design principles of optimisation for sub-surface operations for they were the first boats designed completely to operate underwater at all times, therefore not requiring efficient performance on the surface.