Best U-Boat Captain

Who do you think is the best submarine captain of WW2 , I personally think it's Otto Kretschmer. :kill:

 

for me gunther prien, u-47

 

Yeah, he was good, although Schepke (sp?) was also good.

 

Dudley "Mush" Morton or Richard O'Kane.

 

According to the topic header, canambridge, this topic is about the best U-boat captain. Otherwise, I agree with you, although I'd also add Malcolm Wanklyn of HMS UPHOLDER to the list.

 

I agree the header says "U-boat", but CSP's preamble says "submarine captain", so I decided to interpret things to my way!

I don't want to see another Nazi hero worship thread starting.

 

Good point. And Mush Morton was a real character, to boot!

 

mush

he was the father of the US sub offensive is sprit if not in fact. he was not only one he** of a commander he trained O Kane and several other top skippers. this is perhaps the reason he deserves the top spot. the others mentioned were top skippers but did they leave behind a group of people trained to replace them and do just as well? the unspoken question on the mind of a lot of US commanders was "what would Mush do here?". he was the reason the US fleet subs were used so aggresivly and so well.

 

Re: mush

It must be borne in mind, however, that the US sub force suffered throughout the war from a chronic shortage of experienced, aggressive commanders. It got worse when some of the best skippers, interested in eventually reaching flag rank, were told by BUPERS that the best (if not only) way to do so was to leave the sub service and seek positions of greater responsibility in other sections of the Navy. Needless to say, those officers often followed this advice.

 

Ive heard that a u-boat captain from WWI sunk the most ships, but I cant prove it, ill try if i can get his name.

 

Do you mean Kptlt. Lothar von Arnauld de la Perrière, 194 ships sunk?

 

von Trapp (of Sound of Music fame) was a very successful WW1 U-boat captain...

 

Yes, he was a submarine ace for the Austro-Hungarian Navy. He made himself very troublesome to the Italians.

 

Günther Prien, the man behind the sinking of the prize British battleship Royal Oak.

 

I like Kretshmer (sp?) and Schepke better, of the German sub commanders.

ROYAL OAK was not exactly a "prize battleship". She was one of the R-class ships, which were, AFAIK, not considered successful. Prien's feat of getting into and out of Scapa Flow without even being detected is still, of course, most impressive.

 

Tell that to the average pleb in the street, who believed that Royal Oak & Hood were the epitomy of Engish naval might.

The sinking of Royal Oak was a great prize - in propaganda terms.

Although it would have been worse for us if she had been sunk by gunfire in the same manner as Hood, I think

 

Well, R-class battleships were best battleships RN had for North Sea fighting during WW1. Unfortunatelly they didn't have enough margin to grow and therefore lacked many upgrades which QE-class ships got. Also, R-class ships had original design lifetime of 15 years. These all and the fact that RN didn't actually had too much money at interwar period made R-class battleships least modernized RN capital ships at 1939.
KGV-class battleships were scheduled to replace R-class ships but start of war meant that R's weren't scrapped as every ship was needed.

 

Of course, to be fair, the presence of even an R-class ship with a convoy was enough to deter any German surface unit from attacking that convoy, so they did do some useful work. And one of them, ROYAL SOVEREIGN, was handed over to the Soviet Navy in 1943, IIRC, where she was renamed ARCHANGELSK. The ship was returned to Britain after the war and scrapped.

 

the best submarine commander ?no question otto the grey wolf kretschmer :smok:

 

In terms of tonnage sunk, one has to agree. I have the first volume of Clay Blair's two volume "Hitler's U-boat War" (an outstanding work, BTW!), and I did a little math last night. Kretschmer, Schepke, and Prien between them sank almost 615,000 tons of shipping during the war. When one remembers that the careers of all three ended rather abruptly in March of 1941, their achievement becomes even more impressive.