Which sub force was better in WWII (USA or German)

[mdiehl]

If you check I think you find that with half as many subs the USN sank as many ships/tons as the German U-boats. And they did it in half the time.

That does not sound ballpark correct to me. If I remember right the USN subs accounted for *something like* 5M tons give or take 2M. And again if I remember right the Kriegsmarine accounted for some 17M tons, give or take a couple million. That's merchant vessels of course. USN subs were far more effective against warships than German subs or anyone else's for that matter in gross tonnage sunk. Ship per ship I'd be surprised if the German subs did not sink more tonnage of all kinds than the US subs... if for no other reason than that by late 1944 the US subs were running out of merchant targets.

[mdiehl]

Im not saying they were estatic, but considering their circumstances their morale was hgiher than what you would think it would be.

Fair enough. But morale did affect aggression. By late 1943 German sub skippers were alot less daring and crews were starting to get pissed at skippers deemed to be taking irrational chances. The aggressive close in night surface attack went away. The tendency to hang around for follow up shots went away. Crews were becoming despondant because they were pretty sure their number was up. U505's penultimate voyage was almost a mutiny IIRC.

[mogami]

Hi, No I phrased it wrong. I should have just left it at ships. The Allied ships tended to be larger then the Axis ones.
In WW2 the Axis sank 5150 Allied ships 21million tons (from all causes not just subs)
The Allies sank 5137 ships 8 million tons. (from all causes not just subs)
The ship totals sank by submarines are pretty even but yes the Axis has the tonnage.

[Tiornu]

German subs sank about 3000 ships, including almost 15 million grt of merchant shipping. American subs, according to JANAC, sank about 1400 ships with about 5 million merchant tonnage. I have given approximate figures, and the method of accounting can skew things. For example, JANAC was looking only at vessels of 500grt and up, so you can probably add some trawlers in there if you really want. And if a U-boat sinks a transport loaded with LCVPs, do all the landing craft get included in the tally?
Germany had a "better" submarine force in that they had about four times as large a force. The points of comparison beyond that start to fall apart. The boats were designed for different arenas, and the opponents differed so drastically--they could hardly have been more different.
Has anyone mentioned the micro-management of U-boats and the degree to which this mangled their operations.

[hithere]

I pretty much agree with Tiornu (and some others earlier that mentioned it). they were for diff reasons. Its like asking which is better, a Thompson or a M-1.

One thing that i think is that the Germans did have alot harder time (late) than the US did. Esp when the US started better transport tactics, in addition to ASW. I have not read alot on the Japanese tactics, but a couple of Navy sub officer books suggested that mostly the japanese ships were 1 to 3 ships, many times without escort. that would make a pretty easy target.

[Oliver Heindorf]

Does anyone said the gemran U-Boats were ready for war ? Or did I understood something wrong ? Germany had in August 1939 only a handful North Atlantik cacaple submarines ( 12 or so, cant remember the exact numer ). Most of the german subs in 1939 were only able to operate in the baltic sea and had short legs, a good number was in the shipyards...no, the U-Boats were far away from being prepeard for war. given the limited resources germany spent on the first 2 years on subs, their performence is immense.

But honestly, I am happy who won the war.

[DrewMatrix]

I don't know any way to rate the German U-boats, independent from their opposition (Allied ASW) or the USN subs independent from their opposition (the Japanese navy and merchant marine).

The US subs were enormously more effective than than the German ones. By 1945 the Japanese didn't have a merchant marine left, while the Germans were losing 80% of their boats _per sortie_ (see article in this month's US Naval Institute Proceedings). But does that mean the US subs were better or that Japanese Navy/Merchant marine were worse? The German boats were defeated, not by US submarines, but by US aircraft (mostly).

There is an authentic Roman proverb:

"A great victory like Cannae requires not only a genius like Hannibal on the winning side but an utter fool like Terentius Varro on the losing side."

It is pretty hard to judge the quality of a combatant except in the setting of "vs that other combattant"

[byron13]

The Americans were clearly better because they were . . . well . . . American! [8|]

[mdiehl]

The US subs were enormously more effective than than the German ones.

I just don't think you can be too sure of this claim. One *has* to consider differences in the quality of the opposition and we really don't have very good standards for objectifying that. IMO, had German *crews* operated US subs against Japan, Japan's goose would have been cooked after 1943. Had US crews operated against the UK in UBoats from 1939-1941 (in some wierd alternate universe where the US stays 'neutral' but favors Germany instead of Britain...) convoys would have had a very difficult time. Both nations subs and crews were quite effective once given the proper tools of the job. The Germans, however, faced much more talented opposition, on the whole, than the US submariners faced.

To figure this out, I think you'd need an array of stats that makes the F4F vs A6M debate look simple. You'd have to standardize number of shots per salvo, hits per salvo, subs per engagement, ASW per engagement, the year in which the combat occurred, the proximity of land based ASW aircraft, numbers of merchants and subs sunk and so forth. And in the end you might wind up with such different analyses -- principle components or whatever -- that indicate the circumstances were too different to easily compare.

But if anybody has an idea of how to objectify such an evaluation, I won't run the numbers but I will follow the discussion with really close interest.

[madmickey]

A high percentage of Allied ship sunk were against sunk were poorly escorted ship during the 1st happy time.
1940 after France fell against British ship and after Pearl Harbour against the unescorted ships off American coast during 2nd happy time.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/annemariepurnell/can3.html
"In charge of the Kriegsmarine’s U-boat arm was Admiral Karl Dönitz (pictured right) who, in September 1939, had 57 U-boats at his disposal, of which 27 were ocean-going. Until the fall of France the range of the U-boats had been constrained geographically; access to the Atlantic convoy routes necessitating long and risky journeys from the northern German ports around the north of Scotland. With the acquisition in June 1940, however, of the French Atlantic ports of Brest, Lorient, Saint-Nazaire, La Pallice and La Rochelle Dönitz could take advantage of increased dockyard capacity and proximity to the convoy lanes, which enabled him to extend operations into the central and western Atlantic. Previously arbitrary and sporadic U-boat actions were transformed into more regular and consistent attacks on convoys"

[esteban]

It's tough to compare the two submarine forces straight up:

1. Different Oceans. The Pacific was much larger, and had better weather overall. The Atlantic was much smaller, with worse weather and fewer island bases for air cover.

2. Different industrial output. The Germans sunk 2.5X the tonnage that the U.S. did, and never ran out of targets, like the Americans pretty much did at the end. Why didn't they run out of targets? Becuase Germany had to sink more tonnage than was found in the merchant fleets of about 40 combatant nations, plus replacement capacity. The Americans only had to sink more tonnage than Japan could replace.

3. Different ASW forces. The Allied ASW force in the Atlantic was the best in the world. Even before the war, the British government had been preparing it's intelligence and naval forces to fight a repeat of the very costly WW1 sub war. For Japan, ASW forces were considered the bottom of the barrel, where the worst personnel was sent. That didn't change until late in the war.



If you press me, I would have to give the Germans the nod. Operating from Austalia and India, they could still have sunk a ton of shipping in the SRA. Other parts of the Pacific theater would have been very difficult for them though, because of the range.

If the U.S. had to operate in the Atlantic, against the Allied ASW forces, their larger, shallower diving, less numerous fleet boats would have been neutralized pretty quickly.

[Ron Saueracker]

ORIGINAL: madmickey

A high percentage of Allied ship sunk were against sunk were poorly escorted ship during the 1st happy time.
1940 after France fell against British ship and after Pearl Harbour against the unescorted ships off American coast during 2nd happy time.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/annemariepurnell/can3.html
"In charge of the Kriegsmarine’s U-boat arm was Admiral Karl Dönitz (pictured right) who, in September 1939, had 57 U-boats at his disposal, of which 27 were ocean-going. Until the fall of France the range of the U-boats had been constrained geographically; access to the Atlantic convoy routes necessitating long and risky journeys from the northern German ports around the north of Scotland. With the acquisition in June 1940, however, of the French Atlantic ports of Brest, Lorient, Saint-Nazaire, La Pallice and La Rochelle Dönitz could take advantage of increased dockyard capacity and proximity to the convoy lanes, which enabled him to extend operations into the central and western Atlantic. Previously arbitrary and sporadic U-boat actions were transformed into more regular and consistent attacks on convoys"

One could argue the entire Pacific War was a happy time for the USN subs considering the near absolute lack of decent Japanese ASW. If the circumstances were reversed, the Germans come out far ahead. US beter vs warships? Hmmm, Royal Oak, Barham, Ark Royal, Courageous, Eagle, Audacity, Galatea, Hermione etc....and this vs vastly superior Allied ASW and numbers.

[caslug]

How about a slightly different question...

How BETTER could the IJN SUB FLEET have been if their boat & crew were German? Or American? Against the same ALLIED forces in the PACIFIC?

[madmickey]

Ron I was just replying to someonelse who had pointed out that USA had sunk a lot of unescorted ships.

[Ron Saueracker]

ORIGINAL: madmickey

Ron I was just replying to someonelse who had pointed out that USA had sunk a lot of unescorted ships.

I was referring to a number of posts as well. Just quoted your post as a start.[:D]

[juliet7bravo]

USN boats were all basically pre-war designs with incremental improvements, they were under no Darwinian pressure to evolve. By wars end the KM was producing what were very close to being true undersea boats instead of overgrown torpedo boats that could occasionally submerge. That'd be an unfair comparison of course, the USN boats were ideally suited for the work they had. Can't really compare crews, both highly trained and competent. As Mogami pointed out, both sides had boats and captains that never sunk a single ship...the trend appears on both sides (without a detailed examination) to be a few boats/captains with huge scores, a great number somewhere in the middle, and a majority who never sank squat.

You can, however, point to the fact that the USN copied alot of German equipment and tactics and employed them.

"The Americans only had to sink more tonnage than Japan could replace."

It was the "Allies", not the Americans.

[Raverdave]

ORIGINAL: caslug

How about a slightly different question...

How BETTER could the IJN SUB FLEET have been if their boat & crew were German? Or American? Against the same ALLIED forces in the PACIFIC?

The IJN crews were good..........it is more the case that their boats were cr@p. Too large and noisy and slow to dive because of their size. German crews in IJN boats may would have more successes becuase of their tactics, but still would have suffered because of the IJN boat design flaws. Using German boats AND crews would have seen more Allied ships sunk, no question about it, but the German boats had a range problem. American crews in IJN boats? I suspect that the crew would simply sail the boat to the closest scrap dealer and make a fast buck.............go strait to GO and collect $200.[;)]

[Platoonist]

An provocative excerpt from the foreword of Clay Blair's exhaustive and excellent two-volume account of U-Boat operations in WW2, Hitler's U-Boat War

As the reader has doubtless concluded, my assessment of the U-Boat peril--and war--is also quite different from that of most historians and popular writers. In a word, the U-boat peril in World War II was and has been vastly overblown: threat inflation on a classically grand scale. The Germans were not supermen; the U-Boats and torpedoes were not technical marvels but rather inferior craft and weapons unsuited for the Battle of the Atlantic. In contrast to the strategic success of our submarine force versus Japan, the German force failed versus the Allies in the Atlantic. The main contribution the U-Boat force made in the war was to present a terror weapon, a sort of "threat in being," which forced the Allies to convoy, delaying the arrival of goods and supplies, and to deploy extensive anti-submarine counterforces. The myths notwithstanding, only a tiny percentage of Allied merchants actually fell victim to U-boats. Ninety-nine percent of of all Allied merchant ships in the transatlantic convoys reached assigned destinations.

His research does pretty much lay the idea to rest that the U-boats came within a whisker of defeating the Allies.

[juliet7bravo]

That's cutting the IJN boats short IMO. Contrary to popular belief, some of the IJN subs were excellent for their time, were no worse than some of the pre-war US Fleet boats, and had comparable depth limits. Some of their sub classes were, in fact, excellent boats. Their RO class subs, by and large, were little worse than the USN "S" boats...and maybe not as bad. Their "cruiser" type subs were big clunky honkers, but they were built in accordance with their failed submarine doctrine. A doctrine that was failed before the war, during the war, they refused to let it go, and instead of building the attack subs they needed (even for their own doctrine) they persisted in going to extremes and building the 4 largest subs in the world (until the US built Nuke boats) and hundreds of midget subs. IJN subs suffer in comparison to USN subs, but as it's been noted here repeatedly, Allied ASW was brutal...having ASW TF's and USN subs vectored to your position because of intercepted signals didn't help them much either.

[juliet7bravo]

I read Blair awhile back, didn't find his books, reasoning, conclusions, or his figures to bear scrutiny. What I gleaned from it was that he went out of his way to write a "provocative" book in order to make sales; otherwise it would have been "ho hum...another Battle of the Atlantic book".