Folks,

The Russians also captured the design bureau/construction bureau responsible for the type XXI. The construction of the type XXI was taken out of the navy\'s hands and placed under a section of Albert Speer\'s armaments ministry (i don\'t remember off hand what the design/construction bureau was caled..i\'ll look it up and post it later this week). This bureau was based in east germany and was captured virtually intact by the red army. Despite the paranoia in the west about the Soviets mass-producing type XXI\'s and overwhelming the allies in a re-run of the battle of the atlantic the Russians were actually not that impressed with the type XXI.

Their criticisims of the type XXI included:

Poor insulation of the hull for working at high latitudes.
Awkard main machinery layout.
Insufficient reserve bouyancy.
Poor placement of major equipment components + difficulty of acces and repair.
Insufficient growth margin in the design.

This partly accounts for the dealy between the end of the war and the production of the first Whiskey class subs......the Russian version of the type XXI.

Rgrds

Ger Wallace.

Rainer Bruns wrote:
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Hi Johannes,
You are right, we covered this some time ago. There were plenty sections of the type XXI waiting at Schichau in Danzig to be assembled, when the Russian arrived. In addition they got as per Postdam Agreement their allotment of the surrendered boats from Scotland and No.Ireland. If I recall correctly US, Britain, France and USSR each got 10 assorted boats (some of each type) and the balance sunk in Op.Deadlight. Rgds, RB