Technology and Operations
This forum is for discussing technological & operational matters pertaining to U-boats.
US subs tonnage sunk
Posted by:
kurt
()
Date: December 13, 2005 07:58PM
Robert:
I think you mean that US subs sank ~ 1 million more tons of Japanese shipping than all other allied forces combined.. a roughly correct statement.
The Japanese actually lost only about 1/3 of their Naval shipping to US subs (~570,000 tons by sub, compared to ~1,370,000 tons by aircraft and surface ships). But US subs sank about ~61 percent of the merchant shipping (~5,000 tons sank by US subs out of ~8.2 million tons lost due to allied action)
This means a total of Japanese shipping of ~5.5 million tons for subs, and ~ 4.5 million tons for surface ships and aircraft...about 1 million tons more.
All numbers from the JANAC.
BTW, I know there is a lot of ~~ in these numbers, as both the JANAC is not a perfect document, and there is a mixing of apples and oranges in matching warships (standard displacement) vs merchant ships (volume...etc) definition of tons...
One interesting thing to note is that though the US subs had tremendous success out of all proportion to their numbers, and they were a big part of the naval victory, it is not to the extreme level as with U-boats, who accounted for vast majority of the German's successes on
the high seas.
Kurt
I think you mean that US subs sank ~ 1 million more tons of Japanese shipping than all other allied forces combined.. a roughly correct statement.
The Japanese actually lost only about 1/3 of their Naval shipping to US subs (~570,000 tons by sub, compared to ~1,370,000 tons by aircraft and surface ships). But US subs sank about ~61 percent of the merchant shipping (~5,000 tons sank by US subs out of ~8.2 million tons lost due to allied action)
This means a total of Japanese shipping of ~5.5 million tons for subs, and ~ 4.5 million tons for surface ships and aircraft...about 1 million tons more.
All numbers from the JANAC.
BTW, I know there is a lot of ~~ in these numbers, as both the JANAC is not a perfect document, and there is a mixing of apples and oranges in matching warships (standard displacement) vs merchant ships (volume...etc) definition of tons...
One interesting thing to note is that though the US subs had tremendous success out of all proportion to their numbers, and they were a big part of the naval victory, it is not to the extreme level as with U-boats, who accounted for vast majority of the German's successes on
the high seas.
Kurt