Technology and Operations
This forum is for discussing technological & operational matters pertaining to U-boats.
Re: U480 A stealth Uboat
Posted by:
Ken Dunn
()
Date: October 03, 2009 10:33PM
Hi Thomas,
What you are hearing from Blair and company is pretty much just sour grapes and the “not invented here†syndrome. Blair is practically gloating about the problems with the Type XXI in that section of his book.
The Type XXI certainly had its teething problems – just like any major new weapons system but like all new weapons systems that was to be expected. What was needed was time to fix them and that was simply not available. Germany had major shortages of the necessary raw materials and skilled labor, not to mention that they were being bombed around the clock, but that doesn’t make the Type XXI a bad submarine as Blair would have you believe. It was simply too little too late.
The Type XXI boats that were available for examination at the end of the war were simply too new to draw conclusions about whether or not the type was any good or not. Remember that they had not even been deployed in any number before the war ended so their actual performance in combat was unknown. Also keep in mind that most of the worlds submarines produced after the war incorporated features from the Type XXI boats. Whether they were developed in parallel or just copied from the Type XXI isn’t really important. What is important is that the features were good enough to be incorporated.
Basically there was simply no time to work out the kinks in a new boat like this and Germany didn’t have the resources to do it at that point in the war. That’s why it didn’t have an impact on the course of the war – not because it wasn’t a good boat. Whether any impact would have been significant is a “what if†scenario we can’t go into here but suffice to say everything in the U-boat War was about move and counter move. Every new technology or weapon had to be countered and when it was, new technologies or weapons had to be deployed in response.
The Brits weren’t sitting on their hands wondering what would happen when the Type XXI was deployed either. Among other things they modified the British sub “Seraph†to give her a 12 knot underwater speed (for a short time) so they could test their anti-submarine equipment and develop any necessary new tactics to combat the Type XXI when it was deployed. The results of these tests announced in the December 1944 Monthly Anti-Submarine report included:
“Generally speaking the trials proved that present tactics and material are adequate to compete with a fast U-boat. Minor amendments to Asdic operating procedure have been promulgated.â€
And
“It was evident that more use was likely to be made of hydrophone effect bearings, and a means of marking hydrophone effect on the bearing recorder is being developedâ€
Additionally the Allied armaments industries were pumping out new planes, warships and weapons at an amazing rate. They all had radar capable of detecting a Snorkel and the new warships also had Huff/Duff and improved Asdic. Newly developed weapons like Fido, Magnetic Anomaly Detectors, and Sonobuoys were starting to be deployed in large numbers and old weapons like Asdic were being updated. At the end of the war Asdic with all its attachments could hold a target even when they would have been too close to it in the past and it could plot its course and direct the escort on an appropriate intercept course and signal exactly when to launch the depth charges. Additionally with the depth predictor it could determine the depth of the target, pass the depth to Squid and automatically fire the Squid when the escort was in the correct position! Let’s not forget that Enigma was being read rather routinely at the end of the war too. Essentially all of the cards were in the hands of the Allies by that time but none of this means that the Type XXI wasn’t a good boat.
Regards,
Ken Dunn
What you are hearing from Blair and company is pretty much just sour grapes and the “not invented here†syndrome. Blair is practically gloating about the problems with the Type XXI in that section of his book.
The Type XXI certainly had its teething problems – just like any major new weapons system but like all new weapons systems that was to be expected. What was needed was time to fix them and that was simply not available. Germany had major shortages of the necessary raw materials and skilled labor, not to mention that they were being bombed around the clock, but that doesn’t make the Type XXI a bad submarine as Blair would have you believe. It was simply too little too late.
The Type XXI boats that were available for examination at the end of the war were simply too new to draw conclusions about whether or not the type was any good or not. Remember that they had not even been deployed in any number before the war ended so their actual performance in combat was unknown. Also keep in mind that most of the worlds submarines produced after the war incorporated features from the Type XXI boats. Whether they were developed in parallel or just copied from the Type XXI isn’t really important. What is important is that the features were good enough to be incorporated.
Basically there was simply no time to work out the kinks in a new boat like this and Germany didn’t have the resources to do it at that point in the war. That’s why it didn’t have an impact on the course of the war – not because it wasn’t a good boat. Whether any impact would have been significant is a “what if†scenario we can’t go into here but suffice to say everything in the U-boat War was about move and counter move. Every new technology or weapon had to be countered and when it was, new technologies or weapons had to be deployed in response.
The Brits weren’t sitting on their hands wondering what would happen when the Type XXI was deployed either. Among other things they modified the British sub “Seraph†to give her a 12 knot underwater speed (for a short time) so they could test their anti-submarine equipment and develop any necessary new tactics to combat the Type XXI when it was deployed. The results of these tests announced in the December 1944 Monthly Anti-Submarine report included:
“Generally speaking the trials proved that present tactics and material are adequate to compete with a fast U-boat. Minor amendments to Asdic operating procedure have been promulgated.â€
And
“It was evident that more use was likely to be made of hydrophone effect bearings, and a means of marking hydrophone effect on the bearing recorder is being developedâ€
Additionally the Allied armaments industries were pumping out new planes, warships and weapons at an amazing rate. They all had radar capable of detecting a Snorkel and the new warships also had Huff/Duff and improved Asdic. Newly developed weapons like Fido, Magnetic Anomaly Detectors, and Sonobuoys were starting to be deployed in large numbers and old weapons like Asdic were being updated. At the end of the war Asdic with all its attachments could hold a target even when they would have been too close to it in the past and it could plot its course and direct the escort on an appropriate intercept course and signal exactly when to launch the depth charges. Additionally with the depth predictor it could determine the depth of the target, pass the depth to Squid and automatically fire the Squid when the escort was in the correct position! Let’s not forget that Enigma was being read rather routinely at the end of the war too. Essentially all of the cards were in the hands of the Allies by that time but none of this means that the Type XXI wasn’t a good boat.
Regards,
Ken Dunn
