What could they have done?

Uncle Goose · 10-15-09, 05:22 AM

The main problem was that Hitler wasn't very fond of the sea, this meant he saw the Kriegsmarine as something of a sideshow and this resulted in less materials to build submarines. Another problem was lag in technological viewpoint, especially in Radar and developing new types of submarines and torpedo's. Too much resources were spent in near useless projects like V1 and V2's. Furthermore, Dönitz had little access to Hitler in the first years since he was only a low level Admiral at the time and many people close to Hitler were overseeing who got in contact and when. People like Göring refused to give Dönitz airplanes to do searches on sea and when he finally did none of the pilots he handed over to the Kriegsmarine had any experience with navigation on sea. Also, while the Type XXI would have been the key to success it had serious delays, one of them being caused by the ever increasing bombing raids but the other part of the delay was caused by the fact that the XXI was a complicated machine and there was a lack of skilled workers to build them. Since the XXI was build in parts it was common issue that several parts did not fit and had to be send back to the factory causing massive delays. And then you had to breach in the enigma code, Dönitz thought about the fact that the code could have been compromised but experts claimed it was impossible. When Dönitz actually found out after the war that the code was broken he was quite surprised and said he had been to confident with those experts.

Dönitz was no one-trick pony, he knew what he was doing but it was a difficult job.

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10-15-09, 05:22 AM	#6
Uncle Goose Torpedoman Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Belgium Posts: 113 Downloads: 1 Uploads: 0	The main problem was that Hitler wasn't very fond of the sea, this meant he saw the Kriegsmarine as something of a sideshow and this resulted in less materials to build submarines. Another problem was lag in technological viewpoint, especially in Radar and developing new types of submarines and torpedo's. Too much resources were spent in near useless projects like V1 and V2's. Furthermore, Dönitz had little access to Hitler in the first years since he was only a low level Admiral at the time and many people close to Hitler were overseeing who got in contact and when. People like Göring refused to give Dönitz airplanes to do searches on sea and when he finally did none of the pilots he handed over to the Kriegsmarine had any experience with navigation on sea. Also, while the Type XXI would have been the key to success it had serious delays, one of them being caused by the ever increasing bombing raids but the other part of the delay was caused by the fact that the XXI was a complicated machine and there was a lack of skilled workers to build them. Since the XXI was build in parts it was common issue that several parts did not fit and had to be send back to the factory causing massive delays. And then you had to breach in the enigma code, Dönitz thought about the fact that the code could have been compromised but experts claimed it was impossible. When Dönitz actually found out after the war that the code was broken he was quite surprised and said he had been to confident with those experts. Dönitz was no one-trick pony, he knew what he was doing but it was a difficult job.