"Why U-Boat Warfare Failed" Topic

"ONE of the first orders which the German Naval Staff received from the Fuehrer on the outbreak of World War II read: "The Naval High Command is to wage the war at sea in such a manner that incidents with the United States are avoided under all circumstances." In September 1939, however, Grand Admiral Raeder was of the opinion that the United States would enter the war sooner or later regardless of how German naval warfare was waged. It is to be assumed that Adolf Hitler held the same view. The objective, therefore, was to delay the entry of the United States into the war until Germany's military position was sufficiently secure. In World War I the German Army High Command believed that its military position was secure after the conquest of Rumania in the winter of 1916-1917, and that the time for unrestricted submarine warfare had therefore arrived. The High Command was wrong. In 1939, the German leaders resolved not to repeat the error in judgment…"
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Amicalement
Armand

Hard to say what the article is saying as it's 'pay to read'.

Submarine warfare was arguably Nazi Germany's best hope & they came within a ace of winning the war twice ('The Happy Times') because in the first, Britain was unready to fight back & in the second because American admiral King made a tremendous blunder.

U-boat warfare failed because Germany didn't deliver the knock out blow when it could have & allowed the Allies to develop & deliver effective counter-measures (Huff-duff, better escorts, Liberty ships, various a-s weapons, and let's not forget Enigma).

A German admiral came up with a "war-winning plan".

Fortunately for us, Hitler didn't wait until the necessary forces were ready for battle. There were far too few German naval vessels and "modern" subs available at the start of the war to have any hope of winning.

to have any hope of winning.

Not so. Winston Churchill once wrote that, '… the only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril'.

During the war the U-boats sank about 2,779 ships for a total of 14.1 million tons GRT. This figure is roughly 70% of all allied shipping losses in all theatres of the war and to all hostile action. The most successful year was 1942 when over 6 million tons of shipping were sunk in the Atlantic. This meant the UK was running out of oil & food. This would have meant some sort of negotiated peace.

And by 1943, Dönitiz, by this time commander of the German Navy, now had 200 operational U-boats & called the shots on their deployment.

Agree!

Amicalement
Armand

Yes, late 1942-43 was a real opportunity for Donitz to win the war. The American Admiral King's almost criminal failure to institute a homeland convoy system & Churchill's pig-headed decision to strip Coastal Command of aircraft for the sake of Bomber Command made for a great killing time for the U-boat captains.

I'm not alone in thinking the Allies ultimately winning the Battle of the Atlantic was every bit as significant as the Soviet's efforts on the Eastern Front.

I get that Churchill was concerned, but given the numbers, and the USA's entry into the war, Germany couldn't have won, at least as things stood in 1939 – 1941.

If they'd had more subs, AND they had been able to bring Britain to surrender before the USA's entry into the war in late 1941, then perhaps…….

At the start of WWII, Germany had only 56 – 57 subs (unclear which is true – saw both numbers) operational, and most of those were of the much smaller, coastal variety. Only 26 subs were true seagoing subs, capable of ops in the Atlantic (only 8 x Type IXAs, supposedly).

Given that, and the fact that even modern subs spend only 1/3rd of their time on station, at sea, you can see how ill-equipped Germany was for a true war at sea using subs. That means they could field about 9 subs at any one time on station, with the others being in dock for maintenance, or traveling to/from their area of operations.

AND (yes, I know you aren't supposed to start a sentence like that – doing so for effect), that doesn't even address Germany's very early war, high torpedo failure rate. Both her contact and magnetic triggers for those were faulty, so essentially, much of the time, their U-Boat force was firing expensive, "high-tech", blanks from their tubes.

In 1939, fewer than 40 subs were being built for the coming war as well by Germany, and production usually took anywhere from 12 – 15+ months.

I thought we were talking about the war…not just a bit of it.

Dönitz estimated he needed 300 U-boats to defeat the Allied convoys and force Britain into submission. When war broke out on 3 Sept 1939 he had, indeed, only 26 ocean going U-boats. The 300 U-boat figure was calculated by him to mean that from this figure 100 boats would be in repairs, rest and working-up, 100 more on their way to and from operational areas – leaving on average 100 U-boats in actual combat areas. This meant about 200 U-boats would have been at sea at any one time, but with the French and Norwegian bases resulting in shorter transit times the ideal figure would be somewhat lower.

In '43, Donitz had 400 subs, with over 50% operational at any time.

I'm fine with discussing the entire war too.

My point is/was, Germany could only hope to actually WIN a U-Boat war if the USA doesn't intervene strongly on the side of the British.

2,800 ships lost does sound like a lot, but that is for almost 6 years of war. That's a lot of tonnage too, but not in the overall scheme of the Allies ability to transport goods at sea.

I will concede that the U-Boats were the greatest threat to the British, of those posed by Germany, but for much/most of the war, the British and her allies were doing quite well against them. That is especially true after mid-1943, when the tables really turned against the Germans.

If Hitler could have waited just a few more years and greatly expanded his U-Boat force, before attacking those in Europe, I suspect things would have been a lot more dire for the British, especially early on.

No doubt, the British and others would have increased their forces and tech too, but I suspect Germany still might have been able to outspend and produce them. With the combined weight of a much stronger U-Boat force and Luftwaffe, they might have been able to get the British to surrender, before America could/would wholeheartedly intervene on her behalf.

The knowledge of German secret language.

Not living in an island nation I don't think you can appreciate the profound impact of the U-boat campaign.

If Hitler could have waited just a few more years

You often hear pundits say this. It, of course, ignores the fact that the British would not be sitting on their hands either & that British re-armament was beginning to hit its straps by 1939 too.

"I suspect" etc just doesn't carry much weight with me.

I thought, seeing you have an interest in the topic, I might suggest reading material.

There's a plethora of fine books on the Battle for the Atlantic but if you're only going to read one, try Woodman's 'The Real Cruel Seas'.

There's a BBC doco (on Youtube) if you'd rather watch than read.

Thanks for the book suggestion. I appreciate it.

I have the two-volume, U-Boat War set, which is/was quite comprehensive for its time. A few new finds, and changes/updates have occurred since its printing, but it is an excellent read. Not sure if that is the exact title, or not, but if not, is something similar.

"It is maintained by some historians[who?] that the U-boat Arm came close to winning the Battle of the Atlantic; that the Allies were almost defeated; and that Britain was brought to the brink of starvation. Others, including Blair[2] and Alan Levin, disagree; Levin states this is "a misperception", and that "it is doubtful they ever came close" to achieving this.[3]

The focus on U-boat successes, the "aces" and their scores, the convoys attacked, and the ships sunk, serves to camouflage the Kriegsmarine's manifold failures. In particular, this was because most of the ships sunk by U-boat were not in convoys, but sailing alone, or having become separated from convoys.

At no time during the campaign were supply lines to Britain interrupted; even during the Bismarck crisis, convoys sailed as usual, although with heavier escorts. In all, during the Atlantic Campaign only 10% of transatlantic convoys that sailed were attacked, and of those attacked only an average of 10% of the ships were lost. Overall, more than 99% of all ships sailing to and from the British Isles during World War II did so successfully".

"Unlike the Allies, Germany was never able to mount a comprehensive blockade of Britain. Nor were they able to focus their effort by targeting the most valuable cargoes, the eastbound traffic carrying war materiel. Instead they were reduced to the slow attrition of a tonnage war. To win this, the U-boat arm had to sink 300,000 GRT per month in order to overwhelm Britain's shipbuilding capacity and reduce its merchant marine strength.

In only four out of the first 27 months of the war did Germany achieve this target, while after December 1941, when Britain was joined by the US merchant marine and ship yards the target effectively doubled. As a result, the Axis needed to sink 700,000 GRT per month; as the massive expansion of the US shipbuilding industry took effect this target increased still further. The 700,000 ton target was achieved in only one month, November 1942, while after May 1943 average sinkings dropped to less than one tenth of that figure.

By the end of the war, although the U-boat arm had sunk 6,000 ships totalling 21 million GRT, the Allies had built over 38 million tons of new shipping.[citation needed]

The reason for the misperception that the German blockade came close to success may be found in post-war writings by both German and British authors. Blair attributes the distortion to "propagandists" who "glorified and exaggerated the successes of German submariners", while he believes Allied writers "had their own reasons for exaggerating the peril".[2]

Dan van der Vat suggests that, unlike the US, or Canada and Britain's other dominions, which were protected by oceanic distances, Britain was at the end of the transatlantic supply route closest to German bases; for Britain it was a lifeline. It is this which led to Churchill's concerns.[4] Coupled with a series of major convoy battles in the space of a month, it undermined confidence in the convoy system in March 1943, to the point Britain considered abandoning it,[5][6] not realising the U-boat had already effectively been defeated. These were "over-pessimistic threat assessments", Blair concludes: "At no time did the German U-boat force ever come close to winning the Battle of the Atlantic or bringing on the collapse of Great Britain".

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An interesting but a minority viewpoint. You're still looking at it from a continental rather than an insular viewpoint. I'll make it simple:

As an island nation, the United Kingdom was dependent on imported goods. Britain required more than a million tons of imported material per week in order to be able to survive and fight. In essence, the Battle of the Atlantic was a tonnage war: the Allied struggle to supply Britain and the Axis attempt to stem the flow of merchant shipping that enabled Britain to keep fighting.

Do the maths:
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Winston Churchill later wrote,

"The Battle of the Atlantic was the dominating factor all through the war. Never for one moment could we forget that everything happening elsewhere, on land, at sea or in the air depended ultimately on its outcome."

Because they had no windows and couldn't see what they were shooting at :) Okay, there might have been some other factors, like the closing of the GIUK Gap by air patrol, but the windows would have helped.

Because they had no windows and couldn't see what they were shooting at :)

Indeed, several submerged Uboats were sunk after their captains opened a hatch to get a quick look. Not to mention the attrition amongst the crew who would step outside for a breath of fresh air.

"An interesting but a minority viewpoint. You're still looking at it from a continental rather than an insular viewpoint. I'll make it simple:
As an island nation, the United Kingdom was dependent on imported goods. Britain required more than a million tons of imported material per week in order to be able to survive and fight. In essence, the Battle of the Atlantic was a tonnage war: the Allied struggle to supply Britain and the Axis attempt to stem the flow of merchant shipping that enabled Britain to keep fighting."

- – -

I recommend that you procure Hitler's U-Boat War" (2 vols) by Clay Blair. He lays out the entire campaign against Allied shipping in excruciating statistical detail.

The Axis powers, try as they might, never had any real chance of decisively interrupting the trans-Atlantic supply line. Even in the early period 1939-1941, new merchant/tanker construction was of such volume that the Allied merchant fleet had only been reduced by about ten percent and such supply shortages as there were in the UK were considered to be mostly a function of the shipping delays incurred as a result of full adoption of the convoy system. By late 1942, the Allies were launching new merchant tonnage faster than the Axis was able to sink it and quantitative and qualitative improvements in A/S assets began to take a heavy toll upon the Axis submarine arm. By early 1943 (IIRC) the tactical part of the submarine campaign had been lost by the Axis; the great majority of pre-war trained crews had already been lost through attrition and replaced by less efficient wartime-trained crews. The exchange ratio (merchant ship sunk versus submarine lost) became unsustainable.

B

Thank you, I've read it. Not too bad a source.

By December, 1942, only 300 000 tons of bunker fuel were stockpiled in the UK. Britain used 130 000 tons a month. The response was an all-tanker convoy (TM1). The Uboats sank all but two of the tankers.

We'll have to disagree on "real chance".

Cherry picking an odd piece of isolated data doesn't by any stretch tell the true story.

See Blair, Volume 1, Appendix 17.
From the start of the war in Sep 1939 to 01 Jan 1943 (a period of 39 months – 3+ years), the entire Axis submarine campaign succeeded in achieving a net reduction in Allied tanker fleet capacity by slightly more than 8 percent. One year later, on 01 Jan 1944, the Allied tanker fleet had totally recovered and now slightly exceeded its pre-war tonnage.

After four years and three months of war, the Axis submarine campaign had produced a zero net effect upon Allied tanker capacity and no oil shortage severe enough to materially impact the war effort (it was civilians who bore the brunt of any oil shortage, not the war effort). Great Britain meanwhile managed to fight the Battle of Britain, maintained its Bomber Command Offensive, prosecuted the North African campaign to a successful conclusion, invaded Italy and made a strong start in stockpiling war materiel and supplies for Operation Overlord which launched six months later.

So, indeed, we will have to agree to disagree with respect to any real German chance of achieving a decisive effect upon Great Britain's sea lifeline.

B

Isolated data? A fairly significant piece of data! Here's another inconvenient fact:
1943. The British Admiralty, responding to the attacks on SC122 & HX229, "The Germans never came so near as disrupting communications between the New World and the old as in the first 20 days of March." When the people fighting the battle tell you it's a close run thing, you'd prefer to believe an author, writing 40 years later with a book to sell?

I'm OK, in theory, with revisionism but it has to be based on some evidence. Your remark about how the Atlantic Battle *only* had civilians bearing the brunt (arguably untrue) seems to be woefully one dimensional.

So, yes, we will have to agree to disagree with respect to the real possibility of a German chance of achieving a decisive effect upon Great Britain's sea lifeline.

The British Admiralty, responding to the attacks on SC122 & HX229, "The Germans never came so near as disrupting communications between the New World and the old as in the first 20 days of March."

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This very quote is covered by Winton in his very fine volume, "Convoy" (p.271). Winton, however, goes on to say:

"Significantly, the mood of general alarm and despondency about convoy was not shared by the Operational Intelligence Centre, who rubbed their minds daily against BDU and the U-boat's staff. OIC could sense the underlying unease in BDU's signals, the ever-increasing fear of air attack, about which U-boats captains were constantly complaining, BDU's reluctance to reprove, his readiness to encourage, in his signals to U-boats at sea. OIC saw that BDU was acting not like a victor, but like someone losing his power to control events and knowing it."

In actual fact, the Allies carried on with convoy. The mid-Atlantic air gap was closed starting in April 1943 and, by May, Doenitz felt compelled to withdraw his U-boats from the North Atlantic in order to re-appraise and re-organize.

Quite apart from the isolated cherry-picked German successes you choose to cite, the fact of the matter is that merchant shipping losses, both in terms of number of ships lost and in the amount of GRT lost, in 1943 were less than one-half those endured in 1942. Overall U-boat losses, by comparison, went from 87 in 1942 to 244 in 1943 ….. which is to say that U-boat losses more or less tripled while Allied merchant shipping losses fell by more than half: a reduction in U-boat effectiveness by a factor of more than 6.

There is plenty of evidence to support these assertions, if, of course, one chooses to honestly examine it.

B