General Discussions
This is the place to discuss general issues related to the U-boat war or the war at sea in WWII.
RE: Doenitz, and an outcome tangent
Posted by:
kurt
()
Date: November 28, 2000 10:29PM
<HTML>One of the interesting \'what if\' threads (may the wrath of Tonya be spared us all) is \'what if Doenitz had his 300 boats at the start of WWII - he would have won!\'.
One of the points made in opposition to this argument is that one of the reasons that the British ASW capabilities were so low at the start of WWII was because the U-boat force was not seen as a threat prior to the start of WWII, partly because the U-boat fleet was so small. If Germany had gone on a massive U-boat build-up prior to WWII, this would have probably triggered a large effort by the British in ASW, and the U-boats would not have caught the British navy so unprepared, either in technology or numbers.
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One of the points made in opposition to this argument is that one of the reasons that the British ASW capabilities were so low at the start of WWII was because the U-boat force was not seen as a threat prior to the start of WWII, partly because the U-boat fleet was so small. If Germany had gone on a massive U-boat build-up prior to WWII, this would have probably triggered a large effort by the British in ASW, and the U-boats would not have caught the British navy so unprepared, either in technology or numbers.
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