The German Fleet took big losses during the Norway operation 1940. What if the German torpedoes had worked up to 60-70%, would that change anything?

http://uboat.net/history/torpedo_crisis.htm

April 15 Gunther Prien of U-47 arrived at Bydgenfjord and spotted three large British transports (some 30,000 GRT each) and several smaller ones disembarking troops in fishing boats. Immediately the Raging Bull fired 8 torpedoes with impact pistols at the stationary and overlapping targets, but all of them missed.

The previous day, Kapitänleutnant Herbert Schultze of U-48 had attacked the Jutland-veteran battleship Warspite without success near Westfjord.

April 19th Gunther Prien closed in on the Warspite and lobbed in a salvo of two. Those, too, were failures.

The next day Prien sighted a convoy south-west of Westfjord, but refrained from attacking because he had lost all faith in his torpedoes.

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Some examples there. Wonder if anyone has examined the allied position if the U-boats had succeeded better? Any figures?

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That serves them for buying American torpedos

http://www.ww2pacific.com/torpedo.html

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The question is where they actual misses or did they strike the target and fail to go off?

This is very interesting..... To be honest I never even considered the possibility.... I guess I will have something to thing about.


Thanks for info Kai!!

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The war against Russia will be such that it cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness. -Adolf Hitler

The Germans had the Type One driven by gas which could be seen from the surface but more reliable than the Type Two electrical which suffered guidance problems and premature detonation which was not sorted out until late 1940.

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Me in my U-47 saying hello to KM Deutschland. SH3/Grey Wolfs 2.1
Regards, Richard

Something here. Not totally sure about the figures but definitely the Germans were shocked by the poor performance of their torpedoes....

http://www.uboataces.com/articles-wo...orpedoes.shtml

By April 9 1940, Germany invaded Norway. In the largest amphibious assault in German history, Operation Weserubung saw the deployment of the entire U-boat Force into Norwegian seas. A total of twenty oceangoing boats and twenty-two coastal boats were deployed to the confined waters of the Norwegian sea. Their mission was to repel an Allied amphibious counter invasion and to sink any Allied warships or troopships which were certain to be in the area.

As expected, the Norwegian seas were filled with Allied ships. Almost immediately, the U-boats began attacking. Every day and every hour, U-boats were attacking warships or were being attacked themselves. Day in, day out, night after night, the U-boats fired their torpedoes one after another, relentlessly against their targets. Not one of them exploded. Their efforts remained completely fruitless. Worse yet, when the data was analyzed back at BdU, it was found that four attacks were launched on the battleship HMS Warsprite, fourteen on cruisers, ten on destroyers, and a further ten on transports – yet only one transport was sunk. Discounting marginal attacks, Donitz concluded that had the torpedoes not failed, the U-boats would have “probable sinkings” of one battleship, seven cruisers, seven destroyers, and five transports. In summary, about twenty enemy warships had escaped certain destruction because of torpedo failures.

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I've been reading a book on the sinking of Lusitania during WWI and (where they got the info? Schwieger's log?) it says that "More than fifty percent of torpedoes could be counted on to misfire."