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Originally Posted by sandbag69
If you were Karl Donitz how would you have won the Battle of the Atlantic and thus defeated Britain.
Here's how I would have done it.
1. Concentrate on cutting off the British Supply lines by sending U-boats to only the Western Appraoches of Britain. Forget the Med, Indian Ocean, and even the US Atlantic Coast they were side shows and not the main theatre. The main aim of a u-boat is to place an enemy nation under blockade not to just sink tonnage.
This is exactly how the British won WW1. They blockaded Germany until into 1919 and starved them into submission.
2. Tankers were to be number 1 Priority targets. Britian produced no oil in 1939 - 45 and was totally reliant on Tankers bringing it in.
3. Demand Kriegsmarine sorties and feint attacks into the Atlantic. Thus pulling many British Destroyers and search aircraft away from ASW duty.
4. Demand Luftwaffe concentrate on bombing British Ports and Docks rather than City bombing. British Dockers were notorous for taking weeks to unload ships even when the country had introduced rationing. They even went on strike (Damn Commies I bet) many times. A few well placed bombs and they wouldn't have shown up for work at all.
5. Demand Luftwaffe air sorties over convoy routes. Forgot the Condors attacking Convoys they were mostly useless at it.
6. Send special raiding U-boats to attack coastal Oil refineries in Curacoa and then US Coast when the US entered the war. Shell those Oil tanks and blow see em burn.
7. Attack Destroyers and Escorts when possible. Dont just assume that they are the hound and the u-boats are the fox.
8. The most brutal of all would be to sink the Rescue ships in convoys when possible. I know it would be horrendous but to break morale of the merchant seaman it is a must. They would be terrified to come out of port. I would have been hung at Nurnberg for this.
Hindsight is a great thing isn't it.
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counterpoint:
I do believe most of what you said was his intent.
Ill relate my situations to your numbering system
1. this was his original strategy and it would have worked except for the ever broadening world wide campaign in which Germany quested for war materials. Hitler wanted control of the Med and north africa... U-boats were sent there in support of German operations in the areas. Doenitz had little choice - when Adolf says jump you dont ask how high you just fuggin jump hahaha
2. Tankers WERE the main priority of the U-boat arm. A great number of them were sunk off the US east coast nearly choking the northeastern united states out of the war due to fuel oil shortages caused by the drumbeat missions. (most oil came from texas on ships there were no interstate highways back then) Secondary to tankers The Germans knew that there was an ongoing massive stockpile of weaponry being shipped to the British Isles every day so General Merchant Ships were of great importance to haulting the "arsenal of democrocy".
3. There were a number of successful schnell boat attacks on British port cities, also several attempts were made by the Kriegsmarine surface groups to break out into the atlantic most frequently by means of the Denmark Straits. Some of these operations were mildly successful, others were not. Germany had not yet created a navy capable of directly threatening the British Fleet, therefore Hitler was reluctant to send his limited surface groups into the open seas to challenge the enemy.
4. The city wide bombing campaign was a blunder on the part of the luftwaffe, and tied the British and Germans in an ego driven air battle as each one bombarded the cities of the other. In 1940 - 1941 the operation sea lion was a very real possibility, most of the luftwaffe was engaged in preparing for the upcoming invasion by waging the battle of britian.
5. There were some limited convoy interdictions made by the luftwaffe, but the condor was nearly the only German airplane in the Luftwaffe arsenal capable of reaching far out to sea to bomb convoys bound for British ports. Remember... the Bf-109 (Me-109) had a short combat range - even when launced from bases in northern france the fighter only had about 5 to 10 minutes of fighting time before the fuel status required returning to base.
6. This could have been done - and actually was done a few times (though i doubt against the US) relatively shallow water prevented many attacks of this nature - despite the fact that there were relatively few surface units capabale of fighting off a U-boat... there were many many air bases well suited to the task that launced air patrols several times a day. Though this mission would have most assuredly destroyed some port facilities you would have basically been sacraficing U-boats by the dozens in the process.
7. Some limited success had been achieved using this strategy around the war's midpoint. Remember - firing a torpedo at a target moving in a straight line takes several minutes to calculate a solution per shot... escorts around convoys were usually very random and sporatic in their movements and therefore virtually impossible to plot a solution against... unlike the merchants who ran a straight slow course. By the time a commander fired a 4 shot spread in the slim hopes of hitting a fast moving and maneuverable escort he could have easily sunk 3 or 4 merchants.
8. Convoys did not usually send any boats or ships to rescue survivors - this is the harsh brutality of the nature of WW2 U-boat combat in the Atlantic Ocean. The best the convoys could do would be to mark the position of the stricken boats on their charts and radio in for search and rescue. This usually came in the form of a sea plane. most probably a PBY catalina. Rescue might come within hours, it might come within days or it might never come at all. escorts rarely if ever stopped to rescue survivors because they had the job of protecting the convoy - the commanders would have known that rescue ops would make a nice sitting duck out of them... merchants didnt commit to rescue operations because they cannot turn out of the convoy line without disrupting the whole show and for the very reason of becoming sitting ducks.
Given the broad area the U-boats had to cover... given the utter difficulty and impossibility of their situation from day one... given the opposition they faced im surprised that they did as well as they actually did.