Couple of Das Boot questions...

Weiss Pinguin · 12-08-09, 11:13 AM

So while on vacation last month I picked up Das Boot when I visited the USS Pampanito (Btw if you find yourself in San Francisco and haven't yet seen her, do it!), and I found it to be so good that I'm reading it again

2 questions though:
A) Partway through the book the Old Man mentions homing torpedoes and the subsequent British countermeasure, however, the book takes place in late 1941, and according to every source/article/etc I've read it wasn't until mid-1943 that the first homing torpedoes were deployed, along with the decoy Foxer. Was this just a slip-up by the author, or were there really early homing torpedoes that I haven't heard of?

B) For the first 1/3 of the book all the various UA/UX/UF/etc acronyms confused me, before I realized they referred to various U-boats. Were these codenames assigned to U-boats, a naming system, or just something Buchheim came up with for the book?

(Btw, sorry if this is in the wrong section, but as Das Boot is about U-boats I figured the SHIII section might be better than the general 'Submarine books' section)

12-08-09, 11:13 AM	#1
Weiss Pinguin Ocean Warrior Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: Auburn, Alabama Posts: 3,333 Downloads: 101 Uploads: 0	Couple of Das Boot questions... So while on vacation last month I picked up Das Boot when I visited the USS Pampanito (Btw if you find yourself in San Francisco and haven't yet seen her, do it!), and I found it to be so good that I'm reading it again 2 questions though: A) Partway through the book the Old Man mentions homing torpedoes and the subsequent British countermeasure, however, the book takes place in late 1941, and according to every source/article/etc I've read it wasn't until mid-1943 that the first homing torpedoes were deployed, along with the decoy Foxer. Was this just a slip-up by the author, or were there really early homing torpedoes that I haven't heard of? B) For the first 1/3 of the book all the various UA/UX/UF/etc acronyms confused me, before I realized they referred to various U-boats. Were these codenames assigned to U-boats, a naming system, or just something Buchheim came up with for the book? (Btw, sorry if this is in the wrong section, but as Das Boot is about U-boats I figured the SHIII section might be better than the general 'Submarine books' section) __________________