The future of Submarine simulations

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by Julhelm

Writing in the 1970's Admiral Gorshkov identified one of the primary causes for the failure of the U-Boat campaign as the inability of the germans to support their submarines with surface units and aircraft, thus giving the allies free reign to hunt down the subs with specialized hunter-killer groups. Interdicting these would have been a much better use of the pocket battleships than trying to use them for merchant raiding. But the ultimate reason for the failure of the U-Boat campaign must surely be Hitler's hybris in declaring war on the Soviet Union and the United States in the same year.

Huge factor in why using U-boats as an offensive weapon in the war was grossly inappropriate! And the Germans could not produce enough surface units to control the Atlantic, no matter what, even if they sacrificed every piece of land weaponry ever built.

Their only path to victory was to focus on one adversary at a time, keeping all others at arms length until each one was defeated in turn. That would have required discipline that Hitler did not possess. And even that would not have guaranteed a win.

The best way for Germany to have won would have been not to fight the war at all, to pay off the British and French, then make them dependent nations to superior industrial and management skill.

And Germany should have accepted the Jews as major contributors to their efforts in WWI, proven patriotic citizens who would sacrifice for the good of Germany. The Jews had indispensible talent to contribute and Germany squandered all of it. They thoroughly deserved to lose and defeat looks much more like victory today than victory would have at this point.

But they were led by a delusional madman, worshiping himself, sacrificing his own nation on the altar of insanity.

[Julhelm]

All of the german heavy surface units constructed after the Deutschland class were bad designs that were entirely inappropriate to operations in the North Atlantic, mainly because the steam machinery limited their range.

The invasion of Norway only accelerated the defeat of the kriegsmarine by robbing them of several surface units that could not be replaced.