Actually, in the reports of all subs damaged during the war I read that one of the subs was lost and they believed that not degaussing the sub contributed to its being found and killed by mines. It was stated that it was detected by the mines up to five times stronger than a properly degaussed submarine.
Reading between the lines..... degaussing would be a way to defeat the MAD system, and I'll bet it was used. After all, one third of Japanese coastal planes were fitted with MAD and they got one kill in the war. Doesn't seem a really effective system.
Sounds just like the Type XXI U-boat myth. It would have won the war for the Germans had it been deployed a year earlier you know. Never mind the fact that its reliability was never established and hydraulic systems were completely inadequate. Never mind that there weren't crews to man the things, or opportunity to train them to use the new equipment. Never mind that the same reason Type IXs and Type Viis were unsuccessful, inability to carry enough torpedoes to make a scratch in 1000 ship convoys, operating in an ocean without any friendly aircraft or ships, meaning that jeep carrier hunter-killer groups had unlimited time and range to kill U-boats.
Never mind that the snorkel was the finest radar target known to man. The sub was unable to detect attacking aircraft, but it was lit up like the fourth of July on ASW aircraft radars. The Type XXI was a waste of resources, unable to make any difference in the war. The day of the diesel-electric submarine in the Atlantic was as over as the day of the battleship.
I can't imagine why people are so wistful about the Type XXI anyway. Cheering for the Germans and wishing they would have won the war with a mythical supersub is kind of sick if you think about it. The American Guppy IIs and IIIs were superior in every way to the Type XXI, and they were solid, reliable boats too.
Still, an amazing find about a program I'd never heard of. In the States, it was popular to represent the Japanese as primitive people, resembling monkeys and having the brains of a goose. Nothing could be further from the truth. They were and are a brilliant people with drive, imagination, organization and sacrifice. Those who fought them learned not to underestimate their abilities.
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