War Beneath the Sea: Submarine conflict during World War II by Padfield Peter

Author:Padfield, Peter [Padfield, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Lume Books
Published: 2020-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

8. CRISIS FOR THE U-BOATS

Dönitz took over as C-in-C of the Navy (ObdM) on 30 January 1943, the tenth anniversary of Hitler’s seizure of power. His first directive to his staff indicated the new focus:

1) It is a question of winning the war …

2) The sea war is the U-boat war.

3) All has to be subordinated to this main goal … [1]

To ensure this he retained command of the U-boat arm himself, combining the post of BdU with that of ObdM, and brought U-boat headquarters to Berlin, where the Hotel am Steinplatz, Charlottenburg, was taken over as accommodation. Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg, who since the outbreak of war had been responsible for U-boat personnel, training, supply and administration, was kept in his post as Admiral Commanding U-boats, responsible for everything except operations, the everyday conduct of which Dönitz deputed to his own long-serving Chief of Staff, Godt, promoted Konteradmiral with the title of FdU – Führer der U-boote . This transfer, inevitable as it was, marked a further stage, begun with the move from Lorient to Paris, in distancing the officers and men of the boats from the headquarters staff and the person of their inspirational chief, whom they knew as ‘der Löwe ’ (‘the lion’), or in mellow mood, ‘Onkel Karl ’.

At first Dönitz intended to scrap the big ships, but he soon came round to the Naval Staff view that this would hand the Royal Navy a major bloodless victory and enable the immense resources tied up by the threat the great ships posed to be deployed on anti-U-boat operations. He had trouble convincing Hitler, but eventually won a reprieve for six months, after which the subject was not raised again. He was less successful in his attempts to gain more steel to increase the rate of production of U-boats. There were too many competing demands from the other services; it was not for some months, after handing over naval construction to Speer, that he was able to step up the U-boat programme significantly.

In retrospect it is plain that instead of continuing to strive for numbers, Dönitz would have done better in these first weeks of power to bend his enormous energy and drive to the development of a new type of boat with enhanced underwater speed, forgoing radical and thus more or less distant solutions such as Professor Walter’s in favour of a type which could be produced quickly with existing technology. The Japanese had already done this: a prototype high underwater speed submarine, ‘Type 71’, had been built at the Kure navy yard as long ago as 1938, and had achieved submerged speeds above 20 knots over short distances in trials. It was not to be followed up with a production series until much later in the war. [2]

The need for a high underwater speed boat to regain the initiative had been obvious from at least the previous September when Dönitz had pointed it out to Hitler at the Chancellery. But, no doubt lulled by work

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