I caught the tail-end of a WWII documentary the other day which mentioned some new German U-Boats discovered by the Allies during the final days of the war. The documentary stated that these subs were very tough and had they been introduced earlier in the war they could have had a dramatic effect on the naval battles. It seemed to be a case of too little too late. Unfortunately I didn't catch the whole programme -anyone know anything else about them??

The type XXI-the sub upon which most post WWII subs were originally based upon.

Look up Walther propulsion sometime - that bit has never been redone. Would make diesel electrics look tame (although DE boats are quieter).

Longer battery life for farther & faster underwater cruising. They also made use of a schnorchel for running the diesel engine while submerged close to the surface. These boats were meant to operate mostly submerged, which meant they were much less susceptible to air attacks than prior classes.

Also queiter and with equipment for blind firing and faster loading of torpedoes.

The XXI actually went faster submerged tha surfaced-a first.
It also had radar (though primitive).

Radar was used on American and British submarines beginning in 1942.

If the type XXI had been available in large numbers in the summer of 1943, it might have prolonged the war by a year or two. The Allies were working on new technology at the same time, which would have partially offset the XXI's advantages, but, most importantly, the XXI would have had no effect on the Manhatten project!! If it had delayed the invasion at Normandy, the Western allies would have used the first A-bomb on Berlin instead of Japan!

If anyone is interested, there is a site called Uboat.net that has an extensive amount of detail on U boats in general, and the Type XXI in particular. (this link doesn't seem to work, but if you type it in the address block, it will work.)

If anyone is interested, there is a site called Uboat.net that has an extensive amount of detail on U boats in general, and the Type XXI in particular.

:goodjob: Nice link mate, cheers.

If the type XXI had been available in large numbers in the summer of 1943, it might have prolonged the war by a year or two.


Gee. Thats a big call!

Desite the hype, the German Elektro Boats were probably the worst naval vessels mass produced in WW2. There are two main reasons for this:

Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, the technology they used was imature and incredibly unreliable, and as a result the boats spent most of their time under repair. While the first Elektro Boats were comissioned in mid 1944, almost none of them had been brought up to a state in which they could perform a war patrol by the end of the war.

Secondly, by the time the Elektro Boats entered production the German economy no longer had the capacity to build them to the necessary standards. The upshot of this was that they were pre-fabricated in seperate shipyards with no prior experiance of building submarines, and the end products were unacceptably shoddy and wouldn't have stood up to combat conditions, especially given the Allies large array of anti-submarines weapons manned by highly trained and experianced crews.

The poor quality of the subs is demonstrated by the fact that while the Allies captured dozens of intact Elektro Boats at the end of the war, none of these subs was commissioned into their navies for anything other than brief testing and evalution trials. The lessons learned from the boats were initally applied by upgrading the Allied WW2-era subs, which continued to make the mainstay of the Allies submarine fleets until the 1960s.

In his definitive work on the Battle of the Atlantic 'Hitler's U-Boat War' Clay Blair is utterly dismissive of the Elektro Boats. Given their fatal flaws, it's hard to see how they could have had any impact on the war.

Radar was used on American and British submarines beginning in 1942.

But I believe the Germans didn't install it until fairly late, end even when they did, frankly, it did more harm than good.
Originally, the radar had a small sweep, of only directly to the front of the U-boat, and the radoio waves would often give the position away to aircraft and ships.

But I believe the Germans didn't install it until fairly late, end even when they did, frankly, it did more harm than good.
Originally, the radar had a small sweep, of only directly to the front of the U-boat, and the radoio waves would often give the position away to aircraft and ships.

Generally radar is stands a much greater chance of being detected by a distant source than being able to detect that distant source.

In the eighties US naval strategy involved leaving radar off (either completely or part of the time) until decisively engaged and attempting to locate enemy ships through passive means such as radio intercept, visual sighting or radar emission detection.

Case, these boats had problems like each new technology. However there were many type XIII boats in action, several with successes. And also 2 XXI, one of them nearly sank HMS Norfolk. And the British only knew something after they spoke to the the commander, Adalbert Schnee, who did not fire because 2 hours before Dönitz gave the order not to shoot. He should have been very furious when leaving the scene...
Also 1 type XXI boat, U 2540, was still serving in the German Navy until 1980! These boats were outstanding and would have changed the situation on the Atlantic dramatically.

Adler

Im not sure, but generally submarines use sonar not radar for underwater. That is use sound waves instead of radio waves. radiowaves does not travel well underwater.

Also 1 type XXI boat, U 2540, was still serving in the German Navy until 1980!

The German Navy used a few salvaged Elektro Boats as training vessels only. Seeing as a number of 'Guppyised' US WW2-era subs were in service with the USN until the 1980s and Greece, Turkey and Taiwan until the 1990s, duration means nothing. The allies certainly didn't bother trying to keep any of the subs they captured in service, which sits rather awkwardly with the claims that the boats were a full generation ahead of Allied submarine design.

These boats were outstanding and would have changed the situation on the Atlantic dramatically.

As the boats were anything but outstanding (unless your definition of outstanding is 'leaky and completly mechanically unreliable') it's hard to see how they could have possibly achieved more than they historically did, especially as it was technically impossible for them to have been introduced into service earlier. As it was, they were introduced into service about 5 year before the technology was mature enough to be useful in combat circumstances - the timeframe was so tight that the Germans didn't even build any prototypes of the Elektro Boat designs before commencing their mass production!

Im not sure, but generally submarines use sonar not radar for underwater. That is use sound waves instead of radio waves. radiowaves does not travel well underwater.
Yeah, submarines only used Radar when surfaced, if at all.
Underwater, they used sonar. The standard one used was Passive sonar in the form of hydrophones (i.e a microphone mounted on the submarine that could turn to pick up sound in a certain direction, connected to headphones inside). Passive sonar was good in the sense that it wasn't detectable, but the boat had to stop, or run slowly, oterwise the engine would interfere too much, as well as the speed.
Active sonar (the "pings") were introduced later towards the war, and while more accurate, gave the U-boat away, which was a bad idea if there were any warships around.

Well, if the boats were so bad, why nearly all at least conventional boats built after ww2 were basing upon them???

Adler

They weren't 'based upon them' - they developed the Elektro boats positive design features and put them into new mechanically reliable and sturdy designs. The Soviets came the closest to copying the Elektro boats with their truely awful Romeo and Foxtrot class subs.