Battle of the Atlantic

ps1scw wrote:

I watched and I enjoyed....can I still get the eel?

SHOCKING.....!!!!!

Another good source of information is

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/rep/ASW-51/index.html

Not really brought to their knees. The submarine wars had been fought in the first world war, and as a result in the second the U-boat wing was wiped out. Despite all this wishful thinking about this up that, the Germans had no meaningful  air power to protect their surface operations, the Allies had massive formations of transports, various navies and countermeasures.

Attack submarines are a technology that maybe lasted one generation; doomed forever by 1945. Oh, sure the one ever cold war sinking, and the Belgrano, but otherwise a hoary dream.

I've loaned out most of my references, but I read somewhere that, depite high local losses,  something like 99.5% of the cargo shipped across the Atlantic made it to the destination. The Germans might have been better off putting U-boat production into making tanks instead.

The war experience of my friend Willie is more instructive than some computer game. He was assigned to a new boat in 1943.  They went on work-up exercises in the Baltic, where he lost a few fingers in an accident.  He left the boat in Kiel before they went on their first and only combat cruise. They never came back. Only recently Willie found out that the boat was torpedoed by a British sub off Narvik and lost with all hands.  Probably the British knew where they were going and just waited for them.

bondoman wrote:

Not really brought to their knees. The submarine wars had been fought in the first world war, and as a result in the second the U-boat wing was wiped out. Despite all this wishful thinking about this up that, the Germans had no meaningful  air power to protect their surface operations, the Allies had massive formations of transports, various navies and countermeasures. Attack submarines are a technology that maybe lasted one generation; doomed forever by 1945. Oh, sure the one ever cold war sinking, and the Belgrano, but otherwise a hoary dream.

By the way, I was on patrol last night and sank a Passenger Liner (not a troop ship) with one torpedo in rough seas...it was my last torpedo and I was kinda surprised it went down so fast ...huge ships: 24,000 tons...what does it mean if it had the funnels painted white with green "X's" on them???  

onyxman wrote:

They never came back. Only recently Willie found out that the boat was torpedoed by a British sub off Narvik and lost with all hands.  Probably the British knew where they were going and just waited for them.

I believe that by this time, The Enigma Code was broken and Britain basically had a blueprint of all U Boat operations.

bondoman wrote:

Not really brought to their knees.

 Up to 1943, things looked very dark for England. During the first half of 1942, If my memory is correct, U Boats sunk over 400 merchantmen in the 100 mile stretch of Torpedo Alley off North Carolina. By late 1943, the tide was turning and as the show stated, the hunters became the hunted.

Willie's boat was U-644, a type VIIC. Her combat career lasted all of one week.  Sunk on 7 April 1943 by HMS Tuna.

http://www.uboat.net/boats/u644.htm

"Attack submarines are a technology that maybe lasted one generation; doomed forever by 1945. Oh, sure the one ever cold war sinking, and the Belgrano, but otherwise a hoary dream."

Well, it seems to me that this might be overstating the case just a WEE bit!  While the Battle of the Atlantic certainly demonstrated what could be done to defeat the U-boats, the U-boats certainly 'had their day' as well.  Thousands of merchant sailors met their end as a result of U-boats, and particularly so in the early days of the war (before the US was a direct participant), and again after the US was drawn in.  Certainly the coast of New England, and particularly Cape Cod was spoiled for years after WW2 because of all the oil washed up on the beaches from sunken merchant ships!

Secondly, it seems we are forgetting just how effective the US attack submarines were in dealing with the Japanese merchant fleet, virtually wiping the very large Japanese merchant marine from the seas, along with a large portion of the IJN!!!

searat12 wrote:

Secondly, it seems we are forgetting just how effective the US attack submarines were in dealing with the Japanese merchant fleet, virtually wiping the very large Japanese merchant marine from the seas, along with a large portion of the IJN!!!

So not to do the Devils math, but it would take a U-Boat loss to sink a Victory ship.

USN lost about 50 boats and sank 4.5 M tons, conservatively, so that works out to about 90 K tons per loss, or say 1/2 dozen Japanese ships.

But it is fair to say this was all ended after 1945.

Of course, nuclear powered attack subs may prove to be a whole 'nuther kettle of fish.

Also, now and in the future, our economy is more dependent than ever on timely arrival of manufactured goods, and such cargos are carried on fewer and bigger ships than Liberty and Victory ships.

Let's not give attack subs another try.

Hmmm... I think if you just look at the overall numbers in one whack (i.e. all the u-boat losses for the whole war, versus the amount of shipping sunk in the whole war), that really doesn't give a clear picture of the situation.  Much better to look at discrete periods of time, and the effects thereof.  In other words, yes, the U-boats in the last year or 18 months of the war were being sunk so fast, even the octopuses were being choked by the diet of drowned U-boat sailors, but that was not the case in the early or middle portion of the war, not by any means!

Looking at WW1, 47% of the U-boat arm was in fact sunk by the end of the war, and they sank over 11 million tons of shipping.  However, when you look at the figures more closely, it turns out that the UK ALONE lost over 2,000 merchant ships, and 14,000 merchant sailors, and during the month of April 1917 alone, one ship in four bound for the UK was sunk by U-boats, and the food reserves for the nation were down to only six weeks!!!

Looking at WW2, when war broke out in September 1939 against Britain, Germany only had 56 U-boats in commission (of all types), and by the end of March, 1940, had sunk 199 merchant ships and lost 18 U-boats in exchange, plus a carrier (HMS Courageous), and a battleship (HMS Royal Oak), and this was during the so-called 'restricted' submarine warfare stage!  In 1941 alone, the UK had lost over 2 million tons of shipping, representing 432 ships, (and another 800 ships were sunk by German planes, mines and surface raiders).  And in 1942, over 6 million tons of shipping was sunk by U-boats alone, accounting for some 1,600 ships!  And this, with a U-boat force that still only consisted of 91 boats at the beginning of 1942, and although by years end, 87 U-boats were lost, new construction meant over 200 U-boats in operation by the end of the year.  That's pretty good odds in exchange, if you ask me!  And while the U-boats subsequently got a real pounding by the technology of the allies, the incredible technological advances made by the Type XXI's could have thrown the whole thing back again, if these had been put into production a year earlier....

In the Pacific, the numbers are even more staggering.  At the beginning of the war in December 1941, Japan had some 2,337 registered merchant ships, but only 231 at the end of the war in 1945, versus a loss of only 60 US submarines lost, and of course that is not counting the MANY IJN warships lost to US attack submarines.  As Japan was required to import 20% of its food, 24% of its coal, 88% of iron ore, and 90% of its oil, those kind of shipping losses represent a real stranglehold that cannot be ignored....

How does that impact the use and effectiveness of attack submarines today? That is an interesting question that might be a good subject for debate.  The current submarines are so stealthy, and so fast, I wonder if they might not be able to achieve similar results to the submarines of the past.  However, so far we have all been lucky enough not to find out!

We had some experience during the Iran-Iraq War with modern supertankers and modern anti-ship missiles. I think they fared rather better than the WWII tankers because of inert gas systems etc. Not pleasant for the crews though. I saw a tanker after it had been towed to Singapore back then. The Silkworm had drilled a neat scorched hole right about where the Captain's cabin would be.  The oil cargo wasn't touched though.

Containerships would be a whole other matter. Big radar target and very flammable:

onyxman wrote:

That's all true searat, but it's kind of like saying General Custer had a very successful career ....until he arrived on that bluff above the Little Big Horn.

Subfixer, the mission of the modern attack submarine is to kill her equal before she kills the Boomers, correct? The Boomers after all represent the end of life as we know it. The modern equivalent of the WW2 U-Boat is most likely a net geek bound and determined to disrupt international monetary transactions, living at home in his mother's basement.

The treatise that saved the world:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Kahn

The war you fought was the only true victory since 1945, and thank you for that. I must have driven by "Horse-Cow" 500 times, never knew what it meant. (CIA Bar in Vallejo, CA)

(Begins)Just to restate my argument before I retire to bed. The German submarine service in WW2 lost out so emphatically, so badly, that at the end all they could claim was a 1:1 up to 1:2 ship kill ratio. Highly trained naval mariners lost in sudden deaths against merchant ships that had a good chance of crew survival, plus a 4:1 up to 40:1 replacement ratio (the ships) vs the subs.

(end of argument)

Hey Subfixer, I wasn't in the Navy but my pop had a best friend who wore Dolphins. I could share a few stories about being a little kid at Pearl Harbor, Newport News and Mare Island (dad had airline passes) if you care to PM me.

I very clearly recall when Mom got a phone call from her girlfriend to let us know that the USN had lost a sub (much later revealed as the Thresher) but her husband Jim wasn't the XO, or even on board.

Bill

I would think the reason the US subs were so successful in comparison to the Germans was that the Japanese just didn't have the anti-submarine technology that the Allies had.

On top of that toward the end they didn't even have the air superiority to patrol much of their sea lanes.

By the way, that picture of the burning containership was an accidental engine room fire that went out of control and got into the containers which, among other things, were stuffed with fireworks!

Speaking as a former SSN (read Fast Attack Submarine), the statement that attack boats outlived their usefulness by 1945 seems somewhat ignorant of the capabilities of modern attack submarines!  The most effective weapon against the former Soviet submarines was the SSN force.  Searat12 points out that these boats are fast and stealthy; they are also armed with Tomahawk and Harpoon cruise missiles as well as Mark 48 torpedoes.  They can hear surface craft before the surface ship can hear them.  In other words, there is no real comparison between today's attack submarines and U-Boats.

By the way, although the aircraft carrier got all the glory in WWII, the American Submarine Service was responsible for sinking over 75% of Japan's Merchant Marine and over 55% of Japan's surface Navy.  So much for having outlived its usefulness!

Bill Morrison