Quote:
Originally Posted by Armistead
Not about records, think if they had double the numbers what the effect and possible outcome could've been.
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Then instead of sinking a little less than 1% of total Allied merchant tonnage during the war they would have sunk something less than 2%. The U-Boats were not a factor. The fact that the first quarter score was in their favor only encouraged them to waste more resources in a losing strategy.
There is no scenario where the U-Boats in any quantity, sinking neutral shipping on an ocean they could not control under skies that they could not control could attain victory in the Battle of the Atlantic. Period. Read Admiral Daniel Gallery's
U-505 to see the casual way in which the U-Boats were swept from the sea by hunter-killer groups centered around jeep aircraft carriers. They could operate in an almost leisurely way, controlling the ocean surface and the skies above completely and securely. It was like killing fire ants in your lawn. Nothing strenuous.
Any particular reason to
believe a public statement by Churchill regarding the U-Boats? He certainly was bright enough to lie when the results of the lie would be to build more German coffins.
At the beginning of the war Donitz said that they did not have anywhere near enough U-Boats to win the war. He tried as hard as he could to postpone the starting kickoff for another four or five years in order to have the number necessary. Of course, the war was not begun with a rational plan at all and no effort by higher authority (see how nice I am there?) to determine what requirements for victory were. The corporal was blind, convinced he had x-ray vision and nobody could see what he saw. Therefore he listened to no assessments, whether from the army or navy. He was superior to the war professionals, therefore they were wrong.
See how that worked out?
Donitz wanted about three times more boats than he had. And he planned on keeping the US and other neutral countries out of the war. I don't know how he planned to do that. Either he sank the tonnage and sucked all neutrals into the war against Germany or he did not sink the tonnage and Britain won anyway. The number of boats was irrelevant. The only possible way would be to subdue Britain so quickly that nobody could come to her aid.
But the British government was already ready (read
A Man Called Intrepid) to run the British government out of a skyscraper in New York City. Any defeat would have been very temporary as the resulting US entry would still have ensured the defeat of Germany. You cannot sink tank factories in Detroit. Or wheat fields in Kansas. There was no way Germany belonged in a war with the United States. But with the U-Boats in play, how were they to avoid it?
The U-Boats were inappropriate for German use and should have been all scrapped in 1938, except for a small coastal defense fleet.