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Originally Posted by U-96
AVGWarhawk.
Oh don't get me wrong, I never meant to convey that the Americans had it easy. Especially against a country where it's Navy got most of it's country's military resources (that being Japan). I just meant to say it was different and the lore, the technology and frankly the mentality of the German Kriegsmarine with their U-Boats interests me more then their U.S. counterparts. However the Pacific and the Atlantic were very different theaters of operations. Would German U-Boats have been more successful against the Japanese? And American Subs suffer the same losses were they in the German's situation in the Atlantic?
They were just very different was all I was trying to show, But the U-Boats simply interest me more then the American Submarines.
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I did not take it in the wrong way. No issue here. Both fronts for the subs/Uboats had very different challenges. Admittedly the Uboat ASW was absolutely devastating once the Allies got their heads together. It is a well known fact that the Japanese got onboard with effective ASW very late in the game. The most effective tool IMO was the radar. Targets were picked up miles away and tracking for the kill commenced. We must also look at were each skipper had to take their boats to meet the enemy. Uboat afforded the open ocean in most if not all instances. Submarines had the open waters for a while but then resorted to raiding ports and having to stay close to the shores as the merchants began hugging the coastline for protection. A very hair predicament for a sub in only 80 fathoms of water. We can say one thing for sure, both German skippers and US skippers had a large set of nuts to do what they did and with the tools at hand to accomplish what they set out to do. If the Germans had the radar set up as the US subs one can only wonder if English would have been brought down. There are more factors in that statment to consider such as how many keels Donitz requested to be layed and how many he was given. Things of that nature. The Atlantic is vast and Donitz realized that. He never had the amount of boats patrolling as he would have wished. Possibly yet another military blunder on Hitlers part not to listen and provide what Donitz requested.
Do I believe the Uboat would have been just as effective in the PTO, hell yes. These men like most adapt and change to meet the problem. Certainly no slackers in the bunch.