Myths of the Battle of the Atlantic

Take a look at Hornet for perhaps an even more impressive performance as far as remaining afloat. Although she also was a hulk long before she went down. ah yes that is also a nice one. and yes i remember that a salvo form the hodd hit the deck armour of the bismark and she was leaking oil and sitting lower in the water but are you sure they scuttled the bismark becasue she was going to sink or because the Germans did not want it to fall into enemy hands? that is more my question i guess. because by the time the ship had sunk all of her main armament had been disabled and she was really only able to fight back with a few secondary weapons. so im kind of interested in what happened. I have looked at photos of the wreckage and it is rather interesting.

 

I was, and remain under the impression that all of the commanders of warships in age of "steel" were under command to scuttle their ships to keep them out of the enemy's hands if the battle was lost, and there was no way it could be reversed.

Loss of the ship to the enemy was not only non-honorable, it might supply the enemy information on your own ships/construction, or in the worst case give your enemy a ship to add to their fleet!

 

Once your ship can no longer accomplish anything but attract gunfire, it is either a prize or a decoration for the sea floor. Scuttling settles the issue.

 

Well put Mr. Worth.

 

118 type XX1 U boats were built between 1943 and the end of the war in Europe. many were available in 1944 for training. The first patrol by a type XXI was in April 1945 and if I recall only 4 boats out of the 118 ever made patrols. Due to the methods used to construct the Boats they were rarely seaworthy when delivered and required alot of repairs to leaks etc. The ideas were good but the implementation was bad.

U-boat Archive - Design Studies - Type XXI

30 Apr 1945. The first type XXI goes out on patrol
U-2511 left the Bay of Danzig on 30 January, 1945, where she completed the usual training as well as many trials with the new equipment. She headed back to the shipyard so that some remaining work on the boat could be completed. On 16 March, U-2511 left Kiel as part of a Front-flottilla, the first Type XXI U-boat to make her maiden voyage. A few days later, she reached the base at Horten in Norway. There the boat underwent deep diving trials. On 18 April, U-2511 set out for Bergen, arriving on 21 April.
On the evening of 30 April, coinciding with Hitler's death in Berlin, U-2511 set out from Bergen for her first and last patrol. The crew served under very experienced U-boat officers like Korvkpt. Adalbert Schnee (Oak Leaves), the former very successful commander of U-201 and afterward for two years one of Dönitz's closest staff members. On board was also one of those rare LI's who had received the Knights Cross, Korvkpt. (Ing) Gerd Suhren, Teddy Suhren's brother.
The destination for that patrol was to be the Caribbean, where the boat would be tested under all conditions. On 1 May, U-2511 made first enemy contact. Three days later, on 4 May, Adalbert Schnee received the cease-fire order. A few hours later U-2511 made contact with the British cruiser HMS Norfolk among some other British warships. The boat approached to within 500 meters of the British warship without any sonar contact from the enemy destroyers.
Schnee had here the opportunity to make an absolutely deadly attack against the cruiser, but left the scene without attacking and headed back to base. U-2511 reached Bergen on 5 May, 1945. There the commander spoke with officers of the HMS Norfolk a few days later, and they found it unbelievable that U-2511 was able to get so close without any sonar contact.

 

1. You fail to note British destroyers lacked the range necessary to cover convoys across the Atlantic. Hence the desperate need to get the long range American destroyers till they could get long range destroyers. The war in the Atlantic was as close to losing as possible and without those destroyers Britain runs out of everything.

2. Look at the Japanese battleships Yamato and Mushai. They took many bomb hits and over 20 torpedoes to sink. Pilots were ordered to only torpedo Yamato on the port side because watertight integrity would keep her afloat. They needed her to capsize to sink. Without scuttling Bismark does not sink.

3. Type XXI were a battle changer. Had the Germans gotten them in 42 they win. Aircraft and RADAR were what turned the tide in the battle of the Atlantic. The Uboats could not attack effectively submerged as they were too slow. In the wolf pack the type XXI could have moved in fast and sunk the escorts, if they had them before we had air cover. As for enigma, look at how the battle changed when we broke it the first time and look at how it changed back in Germany's favor once they added another wheel. look at the battle off the east coast and how the Germans had to abandon it once we had air cover. Uboats could not survive. The big change came when the planes were painted grey and equipped with radar and the uboats could no longer see them in time. In fact when we broke the German code they even stopped using radar dectors for a time because they thought the radar detectors were giving away their positions.

 

Some British destroyers did lack range, the old VW destroyers were heavily modified with some becoming long range escorts. Trawlers were used for escorting across the Atlantic at the start as well. It was not because of a lack of long range escorts it was more a lack of any escorts. The US Caldwell, Wickes and Clemson class Destroyers were not long range escorts, they were needed despite the fact they were not battle worthy when received and required several months of repairs, because they were quicker to repair them than to build a new destroyer and Britain was desperate for anything that could float at the time with a gun (expecting an Invasion).

I don't see what Japanese Battleships have to do with the Battle of the Atlantic, The Bismark was a complete wreck and was sunk either by gunfire or torpedo (or would have been) or it may have been scuttled, either way it was not going anywhere near Germany, it would be a wrecked prize or at the bottom of the ocean. With the damage it received and had it got back to Germany it would not have been back in operation again.

The type XXI U Boats may have been a battle changing idea but they were flawed in parts of the design and in construction, the germans actually built 118 of them between 1943 and 45, many were ready for sea by mid 1944. Due to the problems with the boats though only 4 managed war patrols and the first of those was in April 1945. How could they have had them operational in 1942, its like saying the British could have had the Centurion Tank with a 17 Pdr in 1940 (all the tech was there) and wiped the Wehrmacht out, with Mosquitos roaming the skys above.
There were many technologies developed over the course of the war that help to defeat the U Boat threat, as one tech was developed something came along to counter it. Leigh Lights, Asdic, MAD Gear, Airborne depth charges, Airborne Radar, Long Range Aircraft, Escort Carriers/Merchant Carriers etc etc.

 

Is there any evidence that the Germans could have made them in '42? Was the project put on hold for a couple of years?
It would seem that they were developed mid-war to counteract various Allied ASW developments with experience which could probably only have been known after the 1940 & 1941 convoy battles, and the limitations of the type VII had been exposed.

You can also say that about many weapons in WWII, they would have had a huge impact, if they had come out a couple of years earlier.
Suppose the RAF had Typhoons in May 1940 instead of Battles & Hurri mk I's?
Suppose there were Corsairs defending Manila & Singapore instead of P-35's & Buffaloes?
Suppose the Germans invaded the Soviet Union with Panthers instead of Pz II's & Pz 38(t)'s?

Unless there is legitimate reason to think that the type XXI could come out in 1942, it's just pure speculation

You are absolutely dead wrong about that.
Now, the Americans in WWII did indeed have some large, long range destroyers. (Bensons - 6,000 miles, Gleaves 6,500 miles.)
However none (zero, zilch nada) were ever given to the British.
The British got the oldest WWI US destroyers, most of which were handicapped by their short ranges.

The RN/RCN got 31 of the Caldwell/Wikes class, with a range of ~3300 miles which was less than all British destroyers.
They also got 19 of the Clemson class, with a range of 4900 miles is about the same as the 1930 British "B" class, and less than all later British destroyers, except for the short range "Hunt" class.

The

So by September 1940 the British have built:
(all ranges in nautical miles)

42 - V & W = 3,500 miles range (remaining WWI ships)
11 - A = 4,080 mile range
9 - B = 4,900 range
14 - C& D = 5,500
21 - E & F = 6,300
37 - G,H & I = 5,500
16 - J & K = 5,500
27 - Tribal = 5,700
10 - Hunt = 3,500

The distance from St John's Nfld to Liverpool is about 2,500 miles, so range wasn't really a "desparate" need for cross Atlantic convoys, nor were the US destroyers of particular help in this regard

 

Bunch of problems here. Some already noted.
1) The fact that Yamato and Musashi took that many hits before they sank doesn't mean that that many were required.
2) Musashi took tropedo hits on both sides and sunk ... Yamato would have done the same it was just a matter of the effort expended.
3) Bismarck was clearly in sinking condition before she was scuttled, indeed I've even seen some speculation that the scuttlling may have slowed her actual demise by allowing her to settle on an even keel rather than turning turtle earlier. If she had stayed afloat longer the British had more torpedos to make sure of her sinking.

 

Yes, actually Musashi was uncapable of fighting after taking about 5-6 torpedoes - that was the limit Yamato class battleships could take without losing their ability to fight.

Regards,

 

Suppose the RAF had Typhoons in May 1940 instead of Battles & Hurri mk I's?
Suppose there were Corsairs defending Manila & Singapore instead of P-35's & Buffaloes?

Examples like these involve technology like types of aircraft engines that literally were not available a few years earlier, and no doubt this pertained to some of the systems in the Type XXI, but there was nothing preventing the Germans from building a submarine specialized for underwater performance had they recognized the need sooner. Indeed the British had built one in WWI, the R class, actually very similar to the Albacore design of the 1950s used on most submarines today. The Rs were the first "hunter-killers", intended to engage German U-boats underwater. They had a streamlined hull with higher speed submerged than surfaced, minimal superstssructure, no gun armament, and large battery capacity. The hull tapered aft to a single screw with cruciform rudders and diving planes forward of it, just like a 1960s SSN. There was a hydrophone array around the bow and six 18" torpedo tubes since a large salvo was expected to be necessary to compensate for the imprecise targeting by hydrophone. Much like the XXIs the Rs entered service when the war was almost over; only one is reported to have engaged a U-boat, scoring a hit which failed to detonate.

The concept was not pursued because the primary operating mode of submarines was on the surface, submerging only when necessary for attack or evasion. That was how the U-boats achieved their greatest success; their defeat came when aircraft and radar denied them the surface. American subs did most of their fighting on the surface and were able to do so throughout the war.

We could legimately argue that Donitz in 1941 would need a crystal ball to realize that he would need a completely different type of submarine by 1943, but if he had had that realization there was nothing to prevent it being acheived.

p.s. Historically submarines originated as pure underwater craft; part of adapting them for warfare was to make them capable of cruising on the surface, recharging batteries, etc.

 

Hi; One myth -urban legend that I've heard and read about is the one about a uboat captured off a North American port and when the crewmembers were searched they found current theater tickets or night club reciepts in their pockets !! Apparently according to the legend the crew went ashore and had a nite on the town and then went back to their boat and were later captured.. It's one of those my brother's best friend's uncle told me stories that just keeps being retold, there are no doubt other World War II urban legends...