What if Germany built 100 Type VII U-boats instead of Bismarck and Tirpitz?

Alright... after years of not writing a lenghty, well-thought post in this forum... I am going to mention the first two visceral impressions Devil's response has made:

1) Smartass!!!
2) My WWII knowledge has gotten rusty... and I'll take off my hat to you, Devil, as far as Atlantic naval expertise goes!

It's certainly not very pleasant to get your ass kicked in your first post after years of absence, mister... specially since I was just spitting out some thoughts. But it's OK. That's the toll veterans are supposedly used to take!

By the way, I used online education for the figures... It's probably the head which is not all that well!

 

I'm sincerely sorry if I offended you, that was not my intention, I just wanted to clarify some of the facts that you presented. Actually, I believe some of my points tend to support your position better than your numbers (the number of U-boats actually available at the beginning of the war and the number of destroyers loaned to Britain). I realize there was also some confusion of events, such as the fact that German U-boats were not able to operate off the West coast of the US, but were able to patrol off the East coast; I did not mean to embarrass you, only wanted to correct that error.

I also tried to avoid being a "smartass" by using matter-of-fact language and avoiding any personal references; I guess I was not successful and I apologize for coming across as smug or superior; I'll try to be more careful in the future.

Please accept my apologies for posting what you obviously perceived as a personal attack. I will certainly attempt, in the future, to be more sensitive in my choice of language.

Regards,
DA

 

Don't worry, mate! I wasn't offended at all. I'm just having a laugh at my own expense. I'll properly respond to your post carefully later. But you were certainly not being smug or superior or anything, just plain right. You know your stuff, I didn't. I was posting by memory alone. I referred only to the bizarre feeling of posting again for the first time in ages and having my ass kicked in a discussion... (I mean, in the old good days, I used to be the sarcastic smartass who kicked ass ). By any means, you behaved in such rough way. And I thank you for that.

P. S. Pay attention to the little yellow faces. At least, in my own posts, they're always a remark on ironny and mockery.

Regards, Devil!

 

Rösslers books on U-boats (which i think are one of the most comprehensive at the moment available) lists a 1943 price for the type VII as 1 983 000 RM per U-boat for the cheapest producer (Blohm und Voss). Note that this must have been alot cheaper than older production boats, the author does not give exact numbers on the cost of pre 1943 boats but they must have been higher because the mumber of work-hours for the u-boat construction was diminishing over time. So in july 1942 the worst builder (flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft) used 300 000 working hours. In june 1944 the best builder B&V used about 220 000 hours. This doesnt take into account the pirce of basic materials which i guess must have risen over time.

The final version of the Z plan lists a goal of 249 boats in 1947

Aglooka

 

it wouldnt matter the us and allis had superour air power and the u-bout are defenslis ageanst plane so we would quickly seek out and destroy the plus u-bout dont have multiply weapons sistemes so the do shit agenst land targest but say hitler position them at the allid landing the would do massive damage and could hinder the allied envasion and would/could stop the us and end there part in the war

 

I'm not quite sure what you said but I think I disagree with a fair amount of it. If you are suggesting that the Germans use the uboats to try and prevent or defeat Overloard that would have been an incredible blunder resulting in the destruction of a large number of uboats to little gain while the convoys moved unhindered across the Atlantic.

 

I agree.

Actually, the KM did try to deploy U-boats against the Normandy landing forces; it was an unmitigated disaster for them since the Allies had anticipated the move and sealed off the landing area with massive ASW air and surface forces. Only one or two subs managed to fire torpedoes at Allied ships and the resulting damage was negligible considering the scale of the landings.

The biggest problem was that WW II subs still needed to recharge their batteries fairly frequently to remain operational. It was necessary to either surface or deploy a "snorkel" to accomplish this; the Germans thought that snorkel-equipped subs could recharge their batteries without much chance of being detected. But Allied ASV radar equipped planes, employing centemetric radar were able to detect even the small snorkel device at a considerable distance and call in surface vessels and additional aircraft to pin down the sub until it was either destroyed or forced to surface and scuttle. It was a very demoralizing experience for the U-boat crews.

 

Prehaps an interesting alternative would have been for Germany to negotiate the Anglo German Naval Treaty with a clause that Germany would not build any Battleships/Battlecrusiers BUT would be allowed to allocate its tonnage any way it saw fit amongst ships/submarines smaller than BB/BC's. The RN would have actually been happy with this as it would have not challanged their capital ship fleet and a KM building U-Boats would probably not frighten them overly (as they thought that ASDIC had the submarine menace defeated). Then have Germany build its 100 submarines within its overall tonnage allocation + Destroyers and various other small surface craft.

 

That's an interesting suggestion. I'm sure Britain would have gone for it, as you suggest, because it did not threaten her capital ships unduly. Britain, prior to the war, was more or less complacent about Germany's U-boats because of it's confidence in ASDIC and ASW technology in general. But Donitz also had a problem in that there was a significant school of thought in the KM high command which shared these views on the efficacy of British ASW.

But the fact is, Germany pretty much ignored the limitations in the Anglo-German Naval Treaty on U-boat tonnage, first invoking the clause which allowed parity with Britain's 70,000 tons of submersibles, and then adopted the Z Plan which envisioned 249 U-boats for about 200,000 tons. The Z Plan was well in excess of anything embodied in the treaty.

 

Well Doenitz was not really fully in charge of the U-Boat arm until well into WW2. Prior to the outbreak of WW2 he was not responsible for either the design nor the force composition of the U-Boat arm. He was just the operational commander, it was the KM naval staff that set force levels and composition. Doenitz would have prefered all Type VII's (or at least the majority of the tonnage allocated to these boats) and would probably not have built the minelaying U-Boats.

 

That is true, but he did have significant input as the operational commander of U-boats. It's very probably true also that Doenitz would have preferred the majority of U-boats to be Type VII's with only a handful of Type II's for training and some Type IX's special missions and support. Doenitz did not fully realize the shortcomings of the Type VII's until too late in the war.

 

Gentelmen:

Suppose they had not built the Aircraft Carrier Graf Zepplin to 90 percent compleation and used that for advanced U Boats. I know that is changing the subject but it is good historical speculation,

As Ever,

Walter L. Marlowe

( Airborne all the Way)

 

The original what-if supposed that Germany did not build the Bismarck/Tirpitz class battleships and instead built 100 additional U-boats, (presumably 750-ton Type VII's), so substituting the Graf Zeppelin would not, in terms of tonnage, equal the two battleships; I have seen conflicting data on the GZ's displacement, but the largest figure is about 33,000 tons which would equate to the displacement of only about 44 Type VII's.

Additionally, building 100 additional U-boats would require far more yard space (slips) and skilled labor than building the GZ, and the production of diesel engines would also have to have been increased, so there is really no equivalency between the GZ and 100 U-boats. Then there would also be the manning problem to overcome.

Those are the obvious objections, but it also is likely that building an additional 100 U-boats prior to WW II, instead of a couple of battleships (or a carrier), would very likely have triggered alarms in the naval communities of both Britain and the US. This would have meant both countries would be likely to build far more ASW escorts than they did historically, largely negating the effect an additional 100 U-boats would have on the early stages of the battle of the Atlantic. The RAF's Coastal Command would also have received far more attention than historically.

Even if that didn't happen, if the Germans were somehow able to build those U-boats in secret (an unlikely event), I seriously doubt 100 additional U-boats would have been decisive. It would have meant an additional 33 operational U-boats at sea in 1939, but historical sinking rates per U-boat suggest this wouldn't have been enough to effectively cut the supply routes to Britain. The Germans actually achieved this approximate figure in late 1942 (only about 55 were Type VII's) and still never came close to sinking a decisive number of merchant ships. As Clay Blair points out in his book, "Hitler's U-boat War", U-boats, regardless of their numbers, were never able to sink more than about 2% of the merchant ships transiting the Atlantic, and this was far below the rate necessary to produce decisive results.

 

Some points:no one can deny that the German big ships were useless in WWII;no one can deny that they were useless in WWI ;my conclusion is that the best possibility for the Germans had been no Bismarck etc but U Boats . Would that have been decisive? Maybe,maybe not. We will never known ,but it is certain that with the U Boats the Germans would have had a bigger chance than with the big ships like in 1914.An other point:in 1914 the money for the big ships meaned less money for the army that was not strong enough for the schlieffenplan. Ludendorf wanted more money for the army,but there was not enough and the politicians refused to increase taxes;result:Ludendorf was fired and the Schlieffenplan failed. In 1939 it was the same:not enough money for the army and the Luftwaffe. At the "Hossbachconference" in 1937 Goering was right:the Germans had better done to distribute the money and the raw materials to the U Boats and the Luftwaffe and to the motorisation of the army;the accomplishment of the Zplan was impossible :it required enormous supplies of raw materials and oil which Germany never could buy:U_Boats were much cheaper and maybe effective and the big ships were costly and useless. Conclusion:If I was Hitler ,I had fired in 1935 Raeder and the old gang and had appointed Donitz commander of the KM.Germany's chances would not have been worse .

 

Well, i've got a better idea. What if they built god knows how many stukas to further obliterate British cities? Or what if they developed a landing force that could take Britain? Hmm?

 

The Type VII was really short-sighted on Germany's part. It was designed as a submarine for commerce warfare against one country: Britain. The problem with this was that it really couldn't operate in the mid and Western Atlantic off the US. It was too short ranged to engage shipping in the South Atlantic and outside the Atlantic as well.

What the Germans really needed was a large submarine of the sort the US and Japan were building. That is, one that could travel 15 to 25,000 miles without refueling, carried alot of reloads and could stay at sea for well over a month at a time. By being able to move into the South Atlantic, engage shipping in the Indian Ocean, and elsewhere it gives the British a much larger problem.
First, they have to institute convoy practices in places they historically didn't need them. This slows the pace of merchant shipping dramatically even if it does reduce the losses to submarines some.
Next, the British would have needed far more escorts than they could ever possibly build to combat such a threat. Historically, they were very short on escorts for most of the war just trying to deal with the threat in the mid and Eastern Atlantic. Adding millions of additional square miles of ocean to be covered only makes the whole process of stopping a u-boat war more difficult.
The bottom line is still tonnage. It doesn't matter where it goes down, what should have mattered to the Germans was that it was British. So, sinking ships off Australia or India is just as effective as sinking them off Britian herself.

 

Wrong on both points. They were far from useless. That's not to say there weren't better investments that the Germans could have made with the capital spent on them but they clearly played a significant role in both wars.

 

They were far from useless, they gave the Royal Navy excellent target practice in real-life situations both times!

 

What significant role ? In ww I :the battle of Jutland,if there was no battle,would the result of WW I have been different (from a German or British point of view ) ? In ww II the first time the Bismarck was in action,he was immobilized by British aircraft and then scuttled ;he sank one old British ship ;the British could allow the loss of the Hood. The Tirpitz ....was hiding in a Norwegian fjord. You could say that the Tirpitz was tieing the Home Fleet and that after the end of the Tirpitz,the Home Fleet could be send to the pacific .Good for Japan,but was the mission of the Tirpitz to help Japan . In fact,after WW I for an intelligent naval officer it was obvious that the role of the battle ships was over,but Raeder,who was living in the past,wanted the same navy as in 1914,while the only case the UK was in danger,was in 1917 due ....to the U Boats.