www.uboat.net

[Commie]

Originally Posted by msxyz

Impressive, indeed. But the proverbial german quality went down the drain. Blame the shortage of critical materials (ie they switched from bronze to steel for the propellers for type XXI), blame the logistic nightmare of dispersing production to avoid offering large targets to the RAF bombers but this increase in production often translated in lower standards which caused a lot of mishaps. The German industry increased also the number of planes produced but most of them spent more time in the hangars for repairs that in air, much to the Luftwaffe dismay.

I was merely pointing out that 118 uboat commissioned is impressive but most of them were nowhere near a true operational status. Their rushed production meant that they were a collection of small and big defects waiting for causing some kind of trouble. If you're interested, I'd recommend reading

"Design studies of former German submarine XXI"
http://www.uboatarchive.net/DesignStudiesTypeXXI.htm

A post war analysis made by an US team describing the boat in great detail.

You forgot to add that using slave labour for everything resulted in poor workmanship, quality and even sabotaged parts. Blame the Nazis for screwing up their own war effort with their ideology that insisted on not having women in the factories as happened everywhere else.

Even so, it was possible to build small electroboats like the XXIII. Would be nice to see them modelled in a game as they actually sunk something. Germany should have just tried to make those a bit more militarily useful by modifying them to carry more torps rather than sticking to the restrictions to make it rail transportable. Would have been quicker than trying to get the XXI into service.

[janh]

Originally Posted by Commie

You forgot to add that using slave labour for everything resulted in poor workmanship, quality and even sabotaged parts. Blame the Nazis for screwing up their own war effort with their ideology that insisted on not having women in the factories as happened everywhere else.

Even so, it was possible to build small electroboats like the XXIII. Would be nice to see them modelled in a game as they actually sunk something. Germany should have just tried to make those a bit more militarily useful by modifying them to carry more torps rather than sticking to the restrictions to make it rail transportable. Would have been quicker than trying to get the XXI into service.

As far as I know, POWs were not used in U-Boat production or its direct supply chains. But of course the quality lost some of its prewar standards in 44-45, due to shortages and logistic problems. Whether it was significant is written on a different sheet of paper, however. There were always issues like you described in complex machinery, even in peacetime. Even just think of the last three years, how many ships and subs did the USN not accept after extended sea trials due to major flaws?

So some flaws are surely a normal phenomenon for a complex machines, especially for the Type XXI or Type XXIII, which were the first production versions and surely had not matured yet.