could the strategy used towards their use of U-Boats been better ?

comments

I think so

they should have concentrated on the escort ships rather than the supply ships at first

Should have decided no russia(at all, just fucking turn Poland into a shitstorm minefield covered with 88s in 39,40,41,42-on).

Build EVERYTHING in Planz FAST:
And also when it was clear Britain and the Commonwealth would not back down - build a shit load of amphibious craft, train 2(or more) divisions for a Calais crossing, build med range A/C(and MANY Dornier Navy planes) , Fire Goring and put the whole thing in Rundstadt/Raeder control and fuck Britian up severely.

ahh I see

and this has to do with the German WW2 Navy strategies because ?

I think they should have built more U-Boats right from the get go. Showboats like the Bismarck are snazzy looking in the propaganda film reels, but even in WW1, when the Germans were closer to the Brits in Naval strength, they still only dared send out all those battleships a couple or 3 times until Jutland scared the shit out of them and they hid the things away in port until the end of the war. It was the German subs that did so much damage that even "Iron Balls" Churchill was worried that Perfidious Albion would have to throw in the sponge. Imagine if Germany had had twice as many in 1940-41...

Ya but battleships are handy in amphibious assaults.

Also some of the most successful cargo killing kings were surface raiders. A mission they intended for Bismark. It was a national effort(The UK pretty much did nothing else except operationally try to get her as soon as she was on the high seas) to take out Bismark and they just about didn't do it. Imagine if she got away that first time...we'll never know the answer fully.

The German Navy had about 80 Subs at the beginning of the war..

They launched about 700/800 during the war..

They lost !!..

Against he worlds " Largest " and best Navy.. Operating in ALL the seven seas and five oceans..

America was forced to face up to reality in LATE 1941 ...
They became the worlds largest Navy.. ( Still second Best )..

No matter what theatre of war ..Land.. Sea.. or Air.. The second world war was over before America came into the picture..

Operation Barbarossa ...

Just like WW1.. The Americans came in with front line troops 6 months before Armistice day.

Doughboys..

The United Kingdom has paid back all the money borrowed to fight WW2..

Will America pay back all the money borrowed to fight to days war on America's Overspending.. Obesity.. Obama...

Hitler could not have won the Naval War.. He could not have won the land war.. He did not win the Air War..

So why keep bring up.. " Could he have done this.. Could he have done that..

What would have happened IF..

It did not " Happen "..

Good men stood up ..

That is all it takes..

Yesterday was REMEMBERENCE DAY in Europe..

As usual America is one day behind.. :-)))

I think there were four primary failures of German Naval Strategy in WWII.

First, failure to operate naval based carriers which would have allowed them to project air power well beyond their borders. Instead, they invested heavily in battleships.

Second, they failed to view naval warfare as a battle group activity, teaming together various types of ships to form battle groups. Instead they chose to fight as individuals rather than as coordinated naval teams.

Third, they failed to respond to improvements in technology (e.g. use of radar to detect submarines).

Fourth, is kind of an accumulation of the three previous failures. The failed to create an effective amphibious attack force. Their naval thinking was to local and too traditional not accounting for advancements in technology.

Until a handfull of bombers or torpedo planes come along...


Besides, invading Britain would have been a waste. All the Germans needed to do was bomb the shit out of the place while cutting off the same 90% of every vital material brought in by merchant shipping which they would have been stuck providing for if they'd managed to pull off Operation Sealion and take over Foggy Isle... ...unless they planned on just walking away after "winning".

Yeah - but a battleship built to take on merchantmen ?
Seems kinda silly.

Besides, I wager the dozen plus U-Boats they might have built out of what was put into Bismarck would have sunk a lot more tonnage.

Well first off was the supreme ignorance in Hitler in thinking that the enigma was... an enigma...

If there was a turning point in antisubmarine warfare, it was the allies cracking the enigma. after that, subs were screwed.

Also, the Germans should not have even tried to fight a naval war, the fact is that any way you look at it, we could outproduce everything we wanted to, from ships, to aircraft. Hell, the Bismark was destroyed in a German port, that means the allies could sink the German ships at any place they wanted to.

As sad as it is, the Germans could not have played an offenssive war with what they had at hand.

They should have used the resources to fortify the sea wall. And make more tanks, if they had, had tanks and large coastal guns at D-day the allies wouldve had problems.

Hell, imagine those 16 inchers on the beaches, they could nail those tranport ships from a long distance away.

They should have also included more aa support and more artillery.

I would have sacrificed the navy for defences and weapons any day.

Scharnhorst and Gneisenau managed to last longer than Bismark and cause a lot more damage than their weight...many times and many engagements. Fact is, Battleships were tremendous offensive weapons, used properly and with some balls. Yes they are a gamble, particularly if you, like Germany totally ignore the role of long range naval planes. THAT's what they REALLY should have made, forget both Battleships AND subs.

But for the long range raiding, the Surface raiders were best until the really long range subs became available. Short range raiding should have been done by naval A/C...not to mention destruction of escorts possibly. Sub could have actually only been used to attack A/C carriers, which they actually were particularly vulnerable too, esp during a naval melee'.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_...er_Scharnhorst

Your points are well taken and of course correct by most historical reasoning. Pound for pound subs are much better because German high command didn't really bother with an anti-west naval grand strategy...I mean honestly, they didn't really put any effort into it, but some small scale operations....outside sub ops. Hitler had his hard on for Russia and ground operations mostly. My point is, if you are at war with England then you take out England. Best chance was amphibious assault in 1940 when all the Brit hvy equipment was still at Dunkirk and they were armed with donated American Rifles and whatever they carried off the beach.(which shouldn't have happened as you probably know, Guderian could have captured them all).

I digress. My point is Surface raiding was successful, was arguably more effective at long range (at least till late 43'), and the problem with the Battle for the Atlantic, is the Germans choose to not engage the royal navy and punish them with port attacks like they did to Germans(how they got most German ships) and to engage on the high seas with planes(some notable exceptions).

More ships like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_...uiser_Atlantis

So most people say don't build the battleships, build subs! I say build em both but build even MORE naval planes. Obviously i'm not for Germany attacking russia(and I don't know who is, if your in Hitler's shoes in 1940-41). Thing is, perhaps you don't want to build battleships, but WHEN? They really didn't know carriers were more effective UNTIL Bismark got hunted down by MULTIPLE carriers. The Hulls were built long before that and you might as well put the guns on...in for a penny in for a pound. Oddly, I think they decided to not finish the Graf Zepplin(A/C Carrier) because they SHIFTED To sub production. So they actually DID what historians are saying they SHOULD do (or should have done). No one really could make the argument before 1939 to switch to sub production. As soon as Germany was at war they decided which hulls to put guns on(Bismark and the like) and what to scrap and go for Sub production. They built as many as they could and still go to war with Russian(which again everyone knows was a mistake).

But they had to - in a way - because even if they weren't going to invade Russia, they were already at war with Britain, and the only ways to knock 'em out are either cut off the shipments of goods which allowed their society to function and/or blow their war industry off the face of the Earth, or actually invade the place and impose Der German Vill on 'em. Either option requires some kinda naval involvement.

No... ...the Bismarck was sunk at sea. Perhaps you're thinking of the Tirpitz.


Can't shoot down bombers with 'em, though.


Heck, there were over 10,000 88mm flak guns alone in service by mid-1944.

The 88mm are great for flak, but Im talking about point defence, like 20mm quad mounts, 88mm are near worthless for fighters straffing beaches or bombing at low altitudes.

The Germans should not have wasted their money on three dozen random experiments that 90% of them didnt work.

The battleships were a massive waste of money, they could be outnumbered by the allied warships. And were neigh worthless against aircraft

Should have just secured their atlantic wall. They could have made that thing impenetrable.

If I were them, I wouldve had more tanks around the area of Normandy, some massive coastal guns, lots of 20mm quads, maybe a dozen 88mm for anti air, and maybe 40 around the coast as anti landing boat guns. On wake Island during the japanese invasion, a single 5 incher on the beach decimated the landing party.

Impressive stats for "the ugly sisters", but compare to the U-Boat "Hall of Fame" Here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...oat_commanders

I mean - the top 2 guys together sank over half a million tons of shipping, and the loss of a sub is replaced a lot faster than a battleship. Scharnhorst sat on her butt for a year being repaired in 1942-3, and Gneisenau was effectively "put up on blocks" for good in 1942.

Your point about aircraft was taken... ...I was looking 'round the German inventory for anything that would fit the bill, though. Seems like the Ju-88 is about the sole contender for the job outside of perhaps some flying boats and prototypes that never made it into production. Range with 3,300 lb. (1500kg) bomb load - or two 2,200 lb. (1000kg) torpedos - is 1,360 miles (2160 km), plus it could dive bomb, which would probably come in handy for attacking ships. Any other suggestions short of an all-new design ?


The thing is, as you said about not knowing before the war started that there'd be a need for more subs - which to me just shows the nazis to be poor students of history. Look at WW1: lots of German battleships... ...which mostly hide out in port after that one big incident at Jutland, whilst German subs continue to prowl the Atlantic - see the above link for the WW1 U-Boat "Hall of Fame" - before it became obvious that Britain was going to have to be genuinely knocked out of the war instead of just browbeaten into a settlement, there was no reason for Germany to focus already stretched resources on the development of an amphibious force to invade them.
I agree that "Jolly Herman" should have never been given his chance to share in the glory of the defeat of the BEF by failing utterly to blow the evecuation fleet to smithereens. Bereft of this force, perhaps Britain would have come to some terms with Germany.


I think they Germans didn't attack British naval ports because - as with their attacks on other British targets - they would have gotten their asses shot off due to lack of fighter cover !




Better "quick and cheap" surface raiders prowing around than big flashy battleships that end up bombed in port... ...easier to replace, and don't draw as much attention to themselves.

I'm of 2 minds on the German invasion of Russia...

On the one hand, I can see how it was the proverbial "straw that broke the camel's back" insofar as dooming the 3rd Reich to be crushed under T-34 tracks & whatnot.
On the other, I can't help but wonder if it was more a "socio-political" blunder than a military one. Not sure how much of a difference it would have made to have done in 1941 what ended up being half-assedly done 3 years later in terms of embracing the notion of employing the "Slavic Untermenschen" of the Western USSR in service to the German cause. I don't know much about the combat hostory of non-German Waffen-SS units, for example. I believe they were little more than "bullet absorbers", but can't help pondering what effect having. let's say, a half-million or million or so of the indigenous population on their side instead of against them might have meant. Perhaps nothing, of course. I'm also uncertain of how seriously - if at all - the Russians were about a potential settlement around the "high water mark" of operation Barbarossa at the end of 1941. If it had been my call, I would have taken a "second Brest-Litvosk" and called the gains made at that point a grand triumph.

Can't argue with any of that. Otto Kretschmer was the tonnage king and he was like captured in 41'! My only point is, his kills(for example) are pretty much within 500 miles of Brest. Long range, surface ships were required until 43 or closer to 44'. And long range could have even more effect on supply, particularly on the brits trying to campaign in North Africa, SE Asia, etc. It wasn't ALL about starving England.

Yes Battleships are not cost effective, but hey EVERYONE was building them in the 30s, why does Germany get called out for it ?

I maintain they are still more effective on OFFENSE (As Germany tried to employ them), than defense as Britain HAD to employ them. Again it took ALL UK resources to get the Bismark and they had some tremendous luck, not only in the cripple shot on Bismark, but the fact that Tertiary objectives(including undefended sub attacks and the Prinz Eugens' convoy attack), did not bear any fruit. I suspect history's view on this, is greatly disjointed by this 'Snake-eyes' roll of the dice for Germany.

Germany had a devastatingly good Naval Plane, of course it was not built in numbers, like anything else that might be useful against the west.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dornier_Do_215

Also the Do17 performed very well in anti-shipping. Too bad Goring wasted it in BoB campaigns, no match for land based fighters...

When the west perfected their sub killer tactics, it was over for the German Navy.

True, but all that has to be done to achieve the end of a settlement with England is putting the squeeze on Foggy Isle. To that end, the use of aircraft to supplement submarine attacks on merchant shipping bound for England seems a better notion that relying on battleships to slip through the gauntlet of surveilance and warships in order to reach the actual theater of operations in the Atlantic.


They can't afford the indulgence.



Well... ...it was perhaps bad luck for the Germans, but that's the sort of attention a thing like a battleship draws to itself - particularly when it's own crew has a bit of good luck and annihilates the hoary old pride of the enemy fleet.



Fuck me !

How could I forget the redoubtable Flying Pencil... ...or should I say the "Flying Pencil II".

Still - if you look at the Ju-88 specs, it appears to have been just as good:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dornier...Specifications

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junkers...ions_Ju_88_A-4

Yup. Again I suspect, the only thing we really might disagree on, is completing the Battleships. I would not argue the bad decision to start/keep building them in the 30s(though everyone did). I think this strongly reflects how much Germany did NOT want a war with the west in the 40s and underestimated Britain's chance of political reversal(Churchill) in willing to fight.


Imagine, the UK with ALL it's battleship tonnage used as Destroyers

Which makes them perfect for feint attacks(as Bismark was actually used, the plan was actually brilliant, they should have waited for the rudders to be perfected of course...)


Yeah, but a bit of role playing as OKM might tell you, even Raeder wouldn't try to get that stuff from Goring...

I got the impression that the German battleships were intended as a sort of statement that they were a player on the international stage once again.

Could have sworn that Uncle Adolf mentioned at some point at least the possibility of having to slap France down if they made a fuss over the grand nazi plans for Eastern Europe. So far as I recall, however, he seemed to have this kooky notion that Britain was a sort of "lost Aryan tribe" with which nazi Germany could come to terms.


Ha !

A chain of escorts all the way across the Atlantic...

I can see the rationale of an island nation relying on seabound imports for the resources in requires to function for fielding a fleet of battleships, though.
Not that they did much good against the U-boat threat, of course.


Bad design ?

I thought the Biz was hit by a torpedo in the vicinity of her rudder, locking it so that she could no longer maneuver.



Yeah... ...there was that. Didn't they even debate who was going to be in control of the planes on the proposed German aircraft carrier ?

Was the Dornier intended as a Kriegsmarine aircraft, though ?

Plus, would it really matter which service controlled air raids against British shipping ? I'm sure Jolly Herman would be amenable to any idea which made him look like the proverbial mighty warrior.