Re-reading Blair's books

[Randomizer]

Originally Posted by John Pancoast

All of 1945, BdU orders boat after boat into the shallow waters of St. George's channel, Land's End, etc.

Of course almost all were sunk with the loss all hands.

A u-boat in those shallow waters would have been a crazy idea in 1940 let alone 1945.

I would disagree and use desperate rather than crazy. Once boats were equipped with snorkels, finding convoys in the open ocean became virtually impossible since the boat would need to be essentially in the path of the convoy in order to intercept at submerged speeds. The Inshore Campaign was intended to place the boats where the traffic was so they would act as semi-mobile minefields.

The casualties were enormous and arguably it shows the bankruptcy of the entire tonnage-war strategy after spring 1943. Agreed that in 1940 operating inshore would certainly have been crazy due to the requirement to surface for battery charging. In the last year of the war there are no other areas where a Type VII can operate and still expect to sink any merchant ships.

One captain had reasonable success. KL Hartmut Graf von Matuschka in U-482 sank five ships on his first inshore patrol in August-September 1944 but was killed in November. Presumably BdU figured that if U-482 could succeed then the thing was actually possible.

The Inshore Campaign as a bad idea? Sure but when you're out of options, choosing the least-worse course of action becomes acceptable especially from the safety of a headquarters desk located in a bomb-proof shelter.

Just $0.02 CAD.

Stay safe everyone.

- C