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Originally Posted by Dantenoc
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Stoli
Allied Air Superiority over the Atlantic trumped any modern advancement in U-Boat Technology Mass production of the XXI would of equaled more dead U-Boat crews.
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Of course. A what if can be countered with another what if very easily, and as things stand today, building a high-tech sub is very expensive and technologicaly complicated while droping an acoustic guided torpedo from a plane or helicopter to kill it is relatively quite cheap and easy to do. Good bye XXI. |
Not so fast, literally. The FIDO had a speed of about 12 knots, far below that of the Type XXI. But you don't even have to be FASTER than the torpedo, just not significantly slower.
The FIDO couldn't really go much faster, given the technology, and still have been reasonably air-droppable. That would mean a much bigger battery, lengthening the torpedo, making it much heavier, and making it less manueverable.
Also, the FIDO had only a 27% success rate against the slower Type VII and IX boats. Of all of the 'hits' a FIDO made on submarines in WWII (about 55), fully 1/3rd, or 18, only resulted in damage to the sub, not a sinking.
Also, it would not have taken too long to develop countermeasures. First and foremost, simply crash diving at flank speed to maximum operational depth would take care of it.
For the slow boats like the VII and IX, a simple bouy that transmitted the sound of a u-boat at high speed, coupled with running at silent speed, would have nullified almost all FIDO attacks. Even for a slow boat like the VIIC/41, crash diving to 200 meters would probably prevent a FIDO from successfully attacking given enough distance from the point it was launched: They were set to search at 50 feet initially, and it was later set to 150 feet. Surfacing, while it would get you out of danger from the FIDO, would mean you would have to deal with the aircraft that dropped it.
While it isn't really stated anywhere that I have read, I suspect that the Germans knew about the FIDO near the end of the war, as the Type XXI was to be equipped with a special passive sonar receiver in the conning tower specifically tuned to listen for torpedoes. The only real reason to have something like that is to be able to counter a weapon like the FIDO. When you couple that evidence along with the fact that several boats were merely damaged, and not sunk, in FIDO attacks, BdU must have known *SOMETHING*.
But what we have here is the continual battle of measure, countermeasure, and counter-countermeasure. I'm not sure if any of us can say how it would have played out with any certainty.