What's the biggest failure of the uboat service?

Steeltrap · 11-05-08, 06:10 PM

A few things:

* The fact the KM was 'unprepared for war' was in no small part due to the fact that Hitler had assured them there would be no war until 1945 at the earliest.

* The lack of an effective invasion plan for England was a reflection of the point above. Hitler did not believe that England and France would honour their commitments to Poland. His view was there was no strategic reason to justify it, hence they wouldn't do it. Clearly the idea that one might honour a treaty because that's the point of them wasn't in his nature....quite revealing.

* Technology killed them. The fact that the Brits 'broke' enigma (and they had the hardest time with the u-boat version, and didn't get a lot of 'real time' intel until later in the war) wouldn't have mattered one little bit had the u-boats had a technological advantage. In other words, knowing where they were would not have helped, other than in terms of evasion, if you didn't have an effective means of killing them once you found them. The fact that they could kill them meant the use of sigint to find them was adding insult to injury....

Consider the fact that the operational XXI patrol in progress at the time the war ended succeeded in getting into a firing position on a Brit task force, and had observed evasion was almost easy due to superior depth and, especially, speed abilities of the XXI, and you can see where superior technology might have got them.

They were defeated because they became too easy to locate AND SINK (from around May 1943 they lost 1 u-boat for every merchant sunk...). Allied radar, sonar/asdic and weapons, plus aircraft equivalents, simply overwhelmed them as the u-boat's technologies did not advance in any really effective manner prior to the introduction of schnorkel coupled with the XXI.

** Another way of answering this is by answering a different question: as a u-boat, what's the ONE thing you would deny the Allies were you able to do so? My answer would be RADAR of any kind. Why? Because it was radar that forced u-bpats to abandon surface attacks. That meant they were severely limited in their ability to manoeuver, tactically AND strategically, making them much easier to locate and destroy. Had you been able to conduct night surface attacks throughout the war the situation would have been considerably different....

View Poll Results: What's the biggest mistake?
Fail to test the torpedoes thoroughly before the war.	6	6.74%
Fail to institute un-restricted warfare from the get go.	3	3.37%
Fail to introduce electric Boats earlier (XXI/XXIII)	17	19.10%
Fail to co-operate better with the surface fleet and Luftwaffe	13	14.61%
Fail to discover/suspect a breach of the enigma code	27	30.34%
Fail to institute radio silence	5	5.62%
Continual insistance that uboat should fight aircraft.	0	0%
Fail to copy the "longlance" from Japan (longer, faster, no bubble)	3	3.37%
Continue sending more boats after 1944 when prospects were dim.	3	3.37%
Other	12	13.48%
Voters: 89. You may not vote on this poll

11-05-08, 06:10 PM	#22
Steeltrap Grey Wolf Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: Sydney, Australia Posts: 818 Downloads: 3 Uploads: 0	A few things: * The fact the KM was 'unprepared for war' was in no small part due to the fact that Hitler had assured them there would be no war until 1945 at the earliest. * The lack of an effective invasion plan for England was a reflection of the point above. Hitler did not believe that England and France would honour their commitments to Poland. His view was there was no strategic reason to justify it, hence they wouldn't do it. Clearly the idea that one might honour a treaty because that's the point of them wasn't in his nature....quite revealing. * Technology killed them. The fact that the Brits 'broke' enigma (and they had the hardest time with the u-boat version, and didn't get a lot of 'real time' intel until later in the war) wouldn't have mattered one little bit had the u-boats had a technological advantage. In other words, knowing where they were would not have helped, other than in terms of evasion, if you didn't have an effective means of killing them once you found them. The fact that they could kill them meant the use of sigint to find them was adding insult to injury.... Consider the fact that the operational XXI patrol in progress at the time the war ended succeeded in getting into a firing position on a Brit task force, and had observed evasion was almost easy due to superior depth and, especially, speed abilities of the XXI, and you can see where superior technology might have got them. They were defeated because they became too easy to locate AND SINK (from around May 1943 they lost 1 u-boat for every merchant sunk...). Allied radar, sonar/asdic and weapons, plus aircraft equivalents, simply overwhelmed them as the u-boat's technologies did not advance in any really effective manner prior to the introduction of schnorkel coupled with the XXI. ** Another way of answering this is by answering a different question: as a u-boat, what's the ONE thing you would deny the Allies were you able to do so? My answer would be RADAR of any kind. Why? Because it was radar that forced u-bpats to abandon surface attacks. That meant they were severely limited in their ability to manoeuver, tactically AND strategically, making them much easier to locate and destroy. Had you been able to conduct night surface attacks throughout the war the situation would have been considerably different.... Last edited by Steeltrap; 11-05-08 at 06:16 PM.