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Originally Posted by Platapus
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Some of Blair's criticisms are, well, unfair.
Don't forget, while US and German subs were a product of their times, so was Clay Blair. One problem that I have with Volume II of "Hitler's U-Boat War" is that he denigrates the Type XXIII as being too small to accomplish anything. Yet in 1945, they had the best record of any u-boat class, sailing on 10 missions with 5 ships sunk to their credit and 0 operational losses.
Having read both volumes of "Hitler's U-Boat War" now several times, I get the impression that Blair was kind of biased towards big fleet-type boats like the ones he served in during WWII, and that this bias creeps up from time to time.
Some of his criticisms:
Underpowered Diesel Engines
The new model, six-cylinder diesels were fitted with superchargers to generate the required horsepower. The system was so poorly designed and manufactured that the superchargers could not be used. This failure reduced the generated horsepower by almost half: From 2,000 to 1,200, leaving the Type XII ruinously underpowered. Consequently, the maximum surface speed was only 15.6 knots, less than any ocean going U-boat built during the war and slightly slower than the corvette convoy-escort vessel. The reduction in horsepower also substantially increased the time required to carry out a full battery charge.
This would be a major problem for a fleet-type boat, designed to spend most of it's time on the surface. The Type XXI was designed to basically spend *ALL* or most of it's time underwater, either on batteries or schnorkeling. While the battery recharge time is an issue, surfaced top speed really isn't. From a tactical standpoint, it doesn't matter that much.
Even the increased recharge time isn't a major issue, because while schnorkels and periscopes could be detected on the centimetric radar used late in WWII, it was at a much reduced range compared to a surfaced boat.
Imperfect and Hazardous Snorkel
Even in moderate seas, the mast dunked often, automatically closing the air intake and exhaust ports. Even so, salt water poured into the ship’s bilges and had to be discharged overboard continuously with noisy pumps. More over, during these shutdowns, the diesels dangerously sucked air from inside the boat and deadly exhaust gas backed up, causing not only headaches and eye discomfort, but also serious respiratory illnesses. Snorkeling in the Type XXI was therefore a nightmarish experience to be minimized to the greatest extent possible.
If you are using the schnorkel, that means you are running very noisy diesel engines, so running noisy pumps isn't really a problem. Schnorkels were problematic in the beginning, but that doesn't mean they weren't going to be used. In fact, in Blair's own work (last half of Volume II) you can see the difference in surviveability between boats with and without schnorkels. The boats with schnorkels, and that used them, had a much better chance of surviving. Fixing the issues with the schnorkels was an engineering issue, not a fundamental problem with schnorkels themselves. I'd point out that *ALL* submarines today, even the nuclear ones, have schnorkels.
Again, this shows that Blair is a product of his experiences (as are we all).
His points about the hydraulic system and hull integrity are well taken, however.
One other point I would like to make is that the US boats never had to face an opponent equal to that faced by Germans, especially late in the war. The reason that the US Navy could keep the same basic design throughout the war with the only real improvements being to the electronics and diving depth is because they didn't face the same ASW pressure that the Kriegsmarine faced.
Consider what the losses would have been like in the Pacific if the Japanese were able to:
1. Develop and field centimetric and millimetric airborne ASW radars.
2. Decode traffic between boats and their control back on shore.
3. Keep the naval resources to "hunt to exhaustion" a submarine contact.
4. Develop more advanced SONAR, and to deploy them in great numbers.
5. Develop an ASW homing torpedo like the Mark XXIV FIDO.
6. Develop ASW weapons like the Squid and Hedgehog.
Those are just some of the things I can think of off the top of my head that the Germans faced in the Atlantic, that weren't an issue for the US in the Pacific. One could argue that the real reason for US successes in the Pacific was more because Japanese ASW doctrine and technology was woefully neglected compared US/British practice than because the US subs so technologically superior.
By the way, my criticism of Blair shouldn't be read to invalidate the main thesis of his work. It stands as a monumental and never equalled summary of the U-boat campaign in WWII.