Battle of the Atlantic, in a Fly: Long 2,075 days of War in World War 2 by Edgar Wollstone

Author:Edgar Wollstone [Edgar Wollstone]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-09-11T16:00:00+00:00

The German Missteps

•​ In hindsight, the tactical victory of Germany accrued by the indomitable U-boats seems to be nothing but a fragile stroke of beginner’s luck. The Kriegsmarine’s cachet seems to be on the ebb after its initial burst of victory. Donitz had wanted all available submarines on the sea. He probably calculated to intimidate the enemy with the expansive deployment of submarines at the very beginning in September 1939. But this was not a sustainable effort as the boats needed to retreat to the harbor to re-fuel and re-arm. The climate was not conducive for such repetitive sail of ships, not the least in such large numbers. The unforgiving winter of 1939-1940 froze most of the Baltic ports, thus impeding German ships. Most of Germany’s U-boats were stranded in the ice and effectively useless.

•​ During the early stages of WW2, in the Norwegian Campaign to be precise, the setbacks of magnetic influence pistol in the torpedoes of the U-boats was evident. Torpedo being the principle attack weapon of U-boats, a flaw in its design was tragically crippling for Germany, not to mention how disquieting it was in blighting the spirits of German combaters. The U-boat captains watched with a broken heart how the torpedoes they launched with such precision exploded prematurely or ran under the target without so much of a sputter. The fact that not even a single British warship was sunk in the Norwegian Campaign in more than 20 attacks says how scandalous the flaw in pistol design was.

•​ Germany’s over confidence in their U-boats would prove to cost them dearly. Upon hearing the news of Pearl Harbor attack (7 December 1941) by its ally Japan, a delighted Hitler said that they cannot lose the war at all because they now have an ally that has never been conquered in 3000 years. Though they consistently sunk as many as 3000 ships, Germany failed to sabotage the major war imports en-route UK. German attacks were more or less limited to a tonnage war. It was more or less like the German’s sat on their hands hoping to starve the Empire of Britain out of war, once its ambitious U-boats were deployed. This was nothing short of throwing all their eggs in one basket.

•​ Germans gravely underestimated the ship building abilities of the Allied. Each time Germany sunk ships, more and more surfaced on the Atlantic, with a vengeance. The Germans needed to sink minimum 700,000 GRT (Gross Registered Tonnages) per month to significantly inundate the US ship building industrial regimen. The U-boat campaign was nothing but a race between sinking of ships by German and subsequent replacement by the US.

•​ In spite of all the hue and cry on its U-boats abilities, never during the entire Atlantic Ocean escapade was Britain’s supply lines hindered, even for a short span. Incidentally, only 10% of transatlantic ships were attacked, and among them, only a handful was lost.

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