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This is the place to discuss general issues related to the U-boat war or the war at sea in WWII. 
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RE: Becoming a U-Boat commander
Posted by: J.T. McDaniel ()
Date: August 07, 2001 09:27PM

<HTML>The US didn\'t -- and doesn\'t -- have a lot of options in this, since there is no separate engineering branch, and Annapolis is, for most practical purposes, an engineering school. Other navies separate line and engineering officers early in the career path, so that engineers are unlikely to ever command a ship -- and may not even know which end of a sextant to look through -- but know everything there is to know about the mechanics of a ship, while line officers become accomplished seamen and tacticians. The downside of this system was illustrated in one of the most horrible movies of the last couple of years -- in the US system, the surviving officers would have known how to fix the engines, and we\'d have been save from that particular travesty.

I\'m not so sure that the early WWII US skippers were really lacking in aggression. They were saddled with a doctrine that said \"never expose the periscope; attack with sonar,\" along with torpedoes that ran too deep, and more often than not didn\'t explode even if they DID hit the target. (Not a unique situation, of course.) Just as the German Navy was, for a long time, inclined to underestimate the danger posed by radar equipped ships, the US was inclined in the opposite direction. (Despite an enemy, in the Pacific, that was generally operating without radar.) And the XOs, of course, were also engineers. It was as much a change in tactics based on the reality of the situation rather than theory, as well as fixing the torpedo problem, that got the commerce war in the Pacific on track.

J.T. McDaniel</HTML>

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Subject Written By Posted
Becoming a U-Boat commander Robin 08/03/2001 01:06AM
RE: Becoming a U-Boat commander parade 08/03/2001 07:31AM
RE: Becoming a U-Boat commander David W 08/05/2001 12:43AM
RE: Becoming a U-Boat commander MPC 08/05/2001 06:07PM
RE: Becoming a U-Boat commander J.T. McDaniel 08/05/2001 10:36PM
RE: Becoming a U-Boat commander David W 08/06/2001 10:10PM
RE: Becoming a U-Boat commander J.T. McDaniel 08/07/2001 09:27PM


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