Quote:
Originally Posted by Stealhead
I would say no because the V boats had horrible diving times and they also had horrible submerged handling.On top of that they where huge and had a massive profile to sonar.
The other reason the navy did not bother was because they already had developed the fleet boats and these clearly worked well.No reason to speed a lot of time and money working on the V boats to try and improve them to have better surface speed.
The V class boats just where not ideal designs really the cruiser submarine was never really a very good concept in the first place.The size of the boats is what really hurt them there simply where no engines powerful and reliable enough to power them at fleet boat speeds.
Dont get me wrong the V class boats are very interesting from an engineering stand point.
From a feasibility standpoint there is not one because there where no good power plants available for a V boat(especially at the time point you are talking about) and the navy simply would not have put the effort into developing the V class into a "uber fleet boat" because for the cost on one you could have two or three fleet boats that did work well in their role.
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While all of those reasons make sense and were likely the reasons why it was not done, the one issue there that I am most interested in is the claim that there were simply no engines available that could have offered an improvement, as my question is not exactly why didn't they do it but could it have actually been done.
If you are correct, then not only was it not efficient to even attempt, but, given time-specific technology available, it was likely impossible.
Still, despite these boats' obvious shortcomings, it is interesting that both of them racked up enviable wartime records.