Text 22130, 52 rader
Skriven 2008-10-18 10:10:42 av Ward Dossche (2:292/854)
  Kommentar till text 22091 av Roy Witt (1:397/22)
Ärende: Re: Socialism in the US of A
====================================
RW> Only because of the number of transports involved. 1153 Uboats couldn't
RW> cover the whole area.
 
That was the whole complement. Just a certain number were longe-range boats.
Some were built as mine-layers, some were milk-cows and didn't participate in
operational duties, some were long-range freighters like Germany-Japan ..
 
I don't think, can't be certain of course, that at any given moment there were
more than 75 or so U-boats at sea.
RW>RW>> All Hitler
RW>RW>> had to do was stop those convoys and Britain would have run out of
RW>RW>> materials to fight with. Germany would have won that battle by
RW>RW>> attrition.
 
RW>WD> So why didn't he do that then? The Royal Navy prevented it.
 
RW> Not until the US entered the war and helped them.
 
The peak successes of U-boats started in 1941 and continued into 1942 and then
declined to ineffective levels. The reasons were improved underwater electronic
warfare by the Royal Navy and the early capture of Naval Enigma, also by the
Royal Navy which made the departure messages easy to read. Nobody could read
the encrypted coordinates nor weather reports and other things but the RN knew
exactly when a U-boat sailed and made efforts to track it through its patrol.
 
You see, U-boats were not made to stay underwater long. During the day they
went under as well as during military operations. Otherwide they were on or
near the surface. They were built in a very spartan way.
 
Last July I had the good fortune to be able to visit both the USS Bowfin at
Pearl Harbor and the U-505 in Chicago. Both were an experience, being able to
compare as well.
 
Bowfin was so spacious with indivual messroom for crew and officers, individual
cabin for the captain, officers separated from the crew. 6 or 7 sea toilets, 3
showers, 4 giant diesels, ...
 
U-505 was cramped. Only "hot-bunks" meaning on a 12hr duty roster you slept in
the bunk of someone who vacated it just as there were only half of the number
of bunks available. 2 hotplates instead of a kitchen, no messroom, only the
captain had his own bed and he had a curtain, 2 toilets of which one was used
for storage, no showers, ...
 
Did I never publish my photos here?
 
What I just mean to say is that the living conditions of such a German U-boat
were so spartan you couldn't keep them out too long for crew morale.
 
 \%/@rd 

--- LIGHTHOUSE-DCD.ORG
 * Origin: Many Glacier -o=O=o- Preserve - Protect - Conserve (2:292/854)