German U- Boats and the Battle of the Atlantic
By Madan, 16th Nov 2011 | Follow this author
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The U Boats were German Navy's answer to the Royal navy, but after an initial success they lost
U Boat Warfare
The First World War was the start of the German Navy’s love with the u Boats. The U Boats were submarines which moved in the Atlantic and the North Sea to counter the British blockade of Germany. The British had a preponderance of surface ships and could enforce a blockade. Germany had comparatively fewer surface ships like battleships, cruisers and Battle cruisers and to off set the British superiority in Surface ships the Kaiser Wilhelm II laid stress on U-boat warfare. Though the Germans lost the war the concept of U Boats to fight the German war on sea gained credence and German admirals and naval strategists like Von Hipper and Scheer opined that in a war the U-boat would be the more decisive weapon.
Rise of Hitler and the U -Boat
When Hitler was voted to power and formed the government he was aware of the German weakness in surface ships to counter the British Navy. In addition Germany as per the treaty of Versailles (1919) was also forbidden to build large ships of more than 10,000 tons dead weight. Hitler called his engineers and designers and the concept of the Pocket Battleship was honed. Germany built an array of pocket battleships, which were lethal but again they could not match the super heavy battleships of the British navy. Hitler reexamined naval theory of warfare and plumped for a large submarine fleet to counter the Royal Navy.
German naval architects set to work to design bigger and more lethal submarines which could be at sea for at least 3 to 4 month without returning to refuel. They thus had a longer range. Admiral Raeder the German Chief of Naval staff was given the task of fine tuning the German submarine fleet. Hitler and the German naval staff pinned their hopes on a large U-Boat fleet that would enforce a quarantine of the British Isles and bring Great Britain to its knees.
The Initial Success of the U Boats
With war clouds hovering over Europe in 1939, the Germans began to deploy their submarines in the North Atlantic and the North Sea. The Germans perfected the tactics of submarines operating in groups which came to be popularly referred to as ‘wolf packs’. These wolf packs were already in position once war broke out on 1 sept 1939.
The German U boats during the war years of 1939-42 achieved tremendous success. Thousands of tones of allied shipping were sent to the bottom of the sea in the Atlantic. In 1942 the high point was reached as the losses due to attrition by the U Boats mounted and began to have a crippling effect. The British navy’s conveys to Russia also suffered grievously as the German navy made the waters of the North Sea and the arctic unsafe with their wolf packs. Hitler was delighted and he was of the opinion that England would soon be on its knees.
Packs of German U Boats scoured the North Atlantic and once they were out of range of British and American aircraft they had a field day. The British began to send ships in conveys which were closely guarded by destroyers and frigates equipped with anti submarine depth charges and torpedoes. But the battle still shifted in favor of the German U boats. 1942 was the high pint of German success as about this time the Allies developed the Radar to some perfection and could then track submarines as and when they surfaced for recharging their batteries.
Defeat in the Battle of the Atlantic
This invention changed the face of naval warfare as the German U boats when out in the Atlantic had no air cover as the Luftwaffe did not have any long-range aircraft. They were thus at the mercy of the Allies air forces who scoured the seas on an 24 hour basis and aided by radar could pin point the submarines. The tide began to turn from 1943 and the losses of the U boats increased. By 1944 the losses had become prohibitive and the German U boats could no longer operate for any length of time in the North Atlantic. In addition the allies began a systematic attack on the German U-boat manufacturing pens in Hamburg and Kiel and the production slowed down to a trickle. By end 1944 the Germans had lost the Atlantic war and their submarines mostly operated in waters close to the ports under German control.
Hitler as a last gamble appointed d Grand Admiral Doenitz as the naval chief. Doenitz a submarine commander however could not stem the tide and the U Boats became all but extinct by March 1945. Doenitz succeeded Hitler as German chancellor after the death of Hitler, but his was the last post as Germany was defeated.
Conclusion
The reasons for the German defeat in the U-boat war in the Atlantic can be summed up as follows
a) Lack of air cover. The cardinal principle of Douhet regarding control of the air was absent as the U boats operated without air cover
b) The advent of the latest techniques of radar in tracking U boats resulted in their positions being pinpointed and they were thus easily picked up by RAF aircraft
c) Germany ignored the need of surface ships and relied excessively on the submarine. This was not conducive to success in the Atlantic.
d) Germany had no support bases outside their ports in Europe and hence the operations by the u boats were severely handicapped.
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