Iron Coffins

[Oneshot/Onekill]

Originally Posted by nikbear

While I agree to an extent,the problem with large scale wars is that they rely on large numbers of enlisted men,men who really have no place on a battle field,who are not natural soldiers and who are scared stiff regardless of training,A true warrior is a totally different beast,they have conquered they're fears and are cool,even when all about them is going to hell in a hand cart,very few people are like that,to detach themselves from carnage and still carry on they're duty takes a special person and there are just not enough to go round.They are a different breed,a breed apart

I agree. But from my limited understanding, didn't the U-bootwaffe have a very stringent screening process for selecting volunteer's for service?

I mean they didn't draft men like the Wermacht, did they? And if they didn't then those men and officer's should have sent up red flags well before they ever set foot on U-570.

[Oneshot/Onekill]

Originally Posted by jimbuna

I certainly agree with the latter part of your post.

Cowards should have no place on the battlefield....they are not only a danger to themselves, but also to those around them who may find themselves dependant on them.

Absolutley jim. Couldn't have said it better myself.

From your experience in your profession, look at the disaster that could happen if you had to depend on your partner in a critical moment and he froze beacuse of fear, or indecision.

Trust me, we had a few of these type of people in our battalion and when they were identified they were either given more emphasized training if you know what I mean, or they were washed out if they couldn't hack it.

[mookiemookie]

I'm in the middle of "Neither Sharks Nor Wolves" by Timothy Mulligan and it points to the U-570 incident as the consequences of the shortened training schedule of u-boat crews. Losses were beginning to mount and the u-boat arm needed warm bodies. As far as U-570, the book said they were only together for two months before being pushed out on their first patrol.

Mulligan goes on to propose that Prien may have been lost at sea due to the inexperience of his crew. In order to make up for the shortfall of experienced men, veteran crews were being broken up and transferred to new boats. When Prien was sunk, he had none of the officers and only 7 of the original crew of seamen from the Scapa raid.

[Torplexed]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

I'm in the middle of "Neither Sharks Nor Wolves" by Timothy Mulligan and it points to the U-570 incident as the consequences of the shortened training schedule of u-boat crews. Losses were beginning to mount and the u-boat arm needed warm bodies. As far as U-570, the book said they were only together for two months before being pushed out on their first patrol.

Mulligan goes on to propose that Prien may have been lost at sea due to the inexperience of his crew. In order to make up for the shortfall of experienced men, veteran crews were being broken up and transferred to new boats. When Prien was sunk, he had none of the officers and only 7 of the original crew of seamen from the Scapa raid.

Sounds like another good read.

Before the war, it took no less than five years training before the young men would report for their first tour of duty. However, By 1941 the need to expand the U-Boat fleet was so so great that in an effort to rush crewmen into combat, the training time was shortened and standards were lowered, resulting in a less qualified crew. In the end it pretty much diluted the U-Boat crew quality to the point where it took far more boats in 1943 to achieve the same results as one U-Boat had in 1940 especially when up against with superior Allied ASW tactics.

[timwatson]

Yes, having read Iron Coffins, many thoughts have come and gone about the young men who later in '43-'44 had heard enough to know when they missioned, they likely would not return. Shame on those who had the opportunity to increase hull thickness by 9mm in '41 to enable dive depths of 250m +..... and not to forget they knew "snorkel" technology thanks to the Dutch, but did nothing until too late.

I'd like to hear more from you after you've finished the book.

Oberleutant z. s. Rolfe Hass

[Kapt Z]

Originally Posted by Hitman

By romantic I meant the idea of brave and capable men fighting in terribly inferior conditions for their country. According to the report about U-570, they were mostly not brave, nor capable .

But I think it is hard to make a generalization about u-boat crews from the interrogation of one boat's crew or a film about one fictitious crew.

Certainly not all boats had incompetent crews(heck look at the losses they inflicted!) just as not every kaleun was a 'ace'.

I've only read one opinion of 'Das Boot' by a actual u-boat man and his feelings were as follows-

1)The depth charge scenes were over dramatised. The submarine would never roll and buck about during the explosions as depicted in the movie. Pipes would burst, lights would shatter, but the whole boat wouldn't move like that.

2)There was no 'screaming' by the crew during depth charge attacks. They were all terrified, but knew better than to say a word.

3)The 'Chief' in the movie was a true superman of his profession. The author(a u-boat engineering officer himself) confessed to still not understading how they got back to the surface after being 'sunk' at Gibraltar. The author commented that they would have lost a lot fewer u-boats in the war if they had more men with the skills of the 'Chief'.

4)The movie was a pretty accurate depiction of day to day life on a u-boat.

Is he lying? Memory failing him? Embelishing the heroism of his companions? Who's to say?

Another place, another time. by Werner Hirschmann

[nikbear]

Originally Posted by Oneshot/Onekill

I agree. But from my limited understanding, didn't the U-bootwaffe have a very stringent screening process for selecting volunteer's for service?

I mean they didn't draft men like the Wermacht, did they? And if they didn't then those men and officer's should have sent up red flags well before they ever set foot on U-570.

Sadly as has been mentioned by others,the need to get crews together for the ever expanding U-bootwaffe led to standards dropping and battle hardened crews being broken up and diluted through the service in a vain attempt to spread experience of those crews,far to thinlyEven at the start of the war the myth that it was an all volunteer service was false,people were put into the service weather they liked U-boats or not and just had to make the best of it,most thought little of it since they had the crazy notion that it was going to be a great BB war with the U-boats being left to mop up what was left(You would have thought they would have learnt from WW1) All in all it points to the usual Nazi setup,to little to late,shortsightedness, a headlong rush to expand and general mismanagement......Thanfully for us,and sadly for the crews,the Nazi higher echelons couldn't organize a pis$up in a breweryApart from Goering of course,thats the only one thing he could do quite well

[von hally]

goldenrivet

just wait till you get to the end of the book....it doesnt end with the boat.......remarkable man!!!!!!!

enjoy mate

[GoldenRivet]

SPOILER ALERTS

I finished the book about 48 hours after my original post.

i just have been to tied up to post much about it.

final thoughts...

World War Two had always been a fascination of mine, mostly because my grandfather was an infantry man who served in every major campaign from Normandy to the post war occupation of Germany... also my Paternal Grandfather was a merchant seaman, too young to enlist until the later part of 44-45.

Their stories of sea and sweat and enemy sightings always intrigued me... it is they who i credit with spurring my interest in the subject.

Silent Hunter III has been a valuable lesson to me.

No "video game" has ever lead me down a path so rich in learning about geography, history and science as SH3 has. In my quest for realism i have read numerous books about the U-boat war written by authors from both sides of the Atlantic.

Iron Coffins - though not professionally or eloquently written by a worldly English scholar - IS a hard look into the true life of the sailors of the U-Boat service.

The book starts with a happy time of glorious and productive hunts on the towering waves of the open Atlantic Ocean and develops into a twisted tale of inexperienced and eager young crewmen who were doomed before they ever boarded their boat.

Because WW2 has intrigued me so much throughout my life, i have watched virtually every war movie i can lay hands on - from Hogan's Heroes to Harts War... from Tora Tora Tora to The Big Red One. But the central theme that bothers me about these movies and some of the books i have read is the picture they painted... that virtually all Germans from 1939-45 were monsterous- murdering NAZIS. - of course this is a point of view that one had to take with a grain of salt.

In reading the accounts written in books like Iron Coffins, and Steel Boat Iron Hearts it has really opened my eyes that these men who served on these U-Boats were really not too different from the grandfathers i idolized as a child.

They may not have been "party members" - but in the end they were men who were doing what they felt they had to do for their country... and i cant fault a man for that. They had girlfriends and wives who loved them, they had families who worried for them, they had friends and brothers serving in various branches on other fronts. it sounds eerily similar to the experiences of my own family during times of war.

Werner really puts it into perspective - and says it they way i have seen it for a long time.

for him the U-boat war was personal - evey day the Allied bomber stream was destroying entire sections of his home town brick by brick.

his mission in his mind was simple... keep bombs and fuel and other supplies from reaching England, for if he could do that - he might save his family or loved ones.

in the end... his efforts were futile - his entire family killed by the bombing raids, his childhood girlfriend and her entire family suffered the same fate as millions of other German citizens had suffered.

By the conclusion of the books final chapters - the German military is swinging wild punches in all directions in a dark room. Confusion has gripped the German leadership.

When the Red Army moved through Eastern Germany into Berlin - German Women suffered the greatest and largest case of mass rape in human history... and nobody could stop it.

I find myself thinking... what if i was powerless to do anything and it was my family and my home which stood firmly in the sights of the enemy? and in the meantime... "duty" traps me into service hundreds or even thousands of miles away.

A question - thankfully i cant answer

German currency was worthless. Entire vast cities lay in ruins, piles of brick and mortar and wood and steel lay strewn about as if Gid had reached down with his fist and smashed the landscape.

from 1939-45 there was untold suffering - unparalleled by probably any other event in history. Concentration camps, displaced citizens, forced labor, conscripted soldiers, refuges, devastated local and global economies, entire towns, cities and nations ceased to exist sometimes after a single attack - entire continents aflame with war... entire family names - erased from the ledger of history... all because of one man's bitter and evil ambitions.

Nothing remained of life for Werner in Germany except imprisonment and the long harsh reality of reconstruction. The only thing worse than losing a war - i would think - is fighting so hard, fighting so desperately with so much sacrifice and so much loss of friends and family and so much heart and tears being thrown into the conflict and... still losing the war.

fortunately things like heart and sacrifice and desperation steered the conflict towards victory for the Allies.

From books like iron coffins we can learn of the U-boat tactics, we can learn of the day to day life and procedures, we can even learn of the history of U-boat war fare.

but i think that the most important lesson anyone can take from such a book is that - even though we sometimes have to stand up against evil... ultimately war is an ugly, bitter, wasteful hell on earth.

[Rockin Robbins]

While there were competent crews and capable captains, I think that over-romanticizing of the U-Boat war has doubtless taken place, covering the entire U-Boat arm with the halo of the few competent men. This is a logical consequence of a strategy of building many, many small boats of small individual effect on the war. From Jak Mallmann Showell's U-boat Commander's and Crew 1935-1945:

Horst Bredow of the German U-boat Archive has records of 1,171 U-boats having been commissioned between 1935 and 1945. If one combines this figure with the famous Churchill comment the the only thing that frightened him throughout the war was the U-boat threat, then it is easy to conjure up visions of hundreds of bloodthirsty U-boat commanders prowling the waters around the British Isles and along the eastern seaboard of the United States. However, the figure of 1,171 boats is grossly misleading, and does not reflect the reality of the war at sea. The number of Allied ships which were attacked and at least damaged can be calculated from Axis Submarine Successes by Dr. Jürgen Rohwer. The details for the Atlantic and North Sea are as follows:

25 U-boats attacked, sunk, or at least damaged 20 or more ships
36 U-boats attacked between 11 and 19 ships
70 U-boats attacked between 6 adn 10 ships
190 U-boats attacked between 1 and 5 ships

This adds up to a total of 321 U-boats. Ships sunk in the Black Sea, Mediterranean, Baltic, and Indian Ocean will make the total rather higher, and one could allow a few more for calculation errors. However the probable total still leaves a staggering gap of about 850 U-boats which appear not to have sunk or damaged anything throughout the entire war. In fact almost all of these, representing three-quarters of the whole U-boat Arm, never came within shooting distance of the enemy. School boats, supply boats, experimental craft, and boats commissioned towards the end of the war which were never in a position to sink ships, could be discounted; but there still appears to be a huge discrepancy between the number of U-boats commissioned and the number which actually attacked the enemy. This makes one wonder why Germany put so much effort and so many resources into building submarines, if the majority never achieved anything other than tying down the vast enemy forces which hunted and destroyed them.

It might be worth adding that these figures were not calculated with hindsight: they were available to U-boat Command at the time, and the only difference between then and now is that we now know that U-boat commanders generally overestimated their tonnage sunk by about one third.

Looking at the same figures from a different angle, one might consider that these ships were sunk by men rather than by machines. Out of a total of about 2450 Allied ships sunk in the Atlantic one finds that 30 U-boat commanders were responsible for sinking just under 800 of these. This means that 2% of the U-boat commanders were responsible for sinking almost 30% of the Allied shipping losses in the central area of the submarine war.

It appears that there were more boats in the U-570 mode than in the glorious U-Boat ace mode by far. Again, this is not the fault of the hastily and improperly trained crews, but of the underlying strategy of putting too many U-Boats at sea for the number of competent sailors available. It was impossible to adequately train enough men to fill all the people tanks being built. So they stuffed them with incompetent sailors. Good boats don't win wars, good men do.

@KaptZ you gotta love that quote about the reading material on board. Are the British funny or what? That was hilarious. Let's open up the crew quarters of a British or American sub and see what we find. Nothing of redeeming character whatever!

[Jimbuna]

An excellent and informative post GR

[kaptkirkU4467]

I really didn't care for his book.I think I put it down at the bottom of my bookshelf,right under Das Boot.*great movie but a real load of krap about U Boat men*

Now if you would like a "real" read,try Operation Drumbeat by Michael Gannon.
All true and no fact stretching...unlike Iron Coffins.

Clay Blair has a nice 2 volume set,Hitler's U Boat War...a little dry sometimes, but it is were most get the facts on the Battle of the Atlantic....I reread them about every 6 months.

[RoaldLarsen]

There is nothing really unusual or surprising about the fact that much of the damage was done by a small proportion of Kaleuns. Neither is it unusual for a significant portion of those under arms to never shoot at the enemy. I am not at all sure that it is reasonable to put this down to any particular problem with the organization of the u-bootwaffe.

This pheomenon is constantly present in wars throughout history. But sticking to the twentieth century, some ridiculously large portion of US infantrymen never fired their rifle in battle in both WWII and Vietnam. Most fighter pilots have 0 kills, in most airforces, in both world wars. Most escorts in both wars never sank a sub. Compare this to Capt. F. "Johnnie" Walker.

I don't have any proof, but I suspect this phenomenon is in part a function of the large-scale employment of civilians in mass-mobilised armed forces. But I also suspect it has to do with the behaviour of large numbers, and is a reflection of human nature.

[clayton]

As a child, that book as well as Silent Victory is what got me interested in Subs.

An outstanding read.


http://books.google.com/books?id=FM1...ns&lr=#PPP1,M1

[Hitman]

There is nothing really unusual or surprising about the fact that much of the damage was done by a small proportion of Kaleuns. Neither is it unusual for a significant portion of those under arms to never shoot at the enemy. I am not at all sure that it is reasonable to put this down to any particular problem with the organization of the u-bootwaffe.

This pheomenon is constantly present in wars throughout history. But sticking to the twentieth century, some ridiculously large portion of US infantrymen never fired their rifle in battle in both WWII and Vietnam. Most fighter pilots have 0 kills, in most airforces, in both world wars. Most escorts in both wars never sank a sub. Compare this to Capt. F. "Johnnie" Walker.

I don't have any proof, but I suspect this phenomenon is in part a function of the large-scale employment of civilians in mass-mobilised armed forces. But I also suspect it has to do with the behaviour of large numbers, and is a reflection of human nature.

Well if soldier on side A doesn't get to shoot, then it's logic that soldier on side B doesn't get also to shoot, meaning neither of them was confronted with the other

But seriously, when we talk about sea warfare, the sea is very large and the fleets are not that much, also travelling by sea is fairly slow (Speeds under 30 knots). So it's logic that many naval combatants didn't ever even make contact with the enemy.