Amount of resources used for German u boats?

Cmyers1980

Banned
What was the total amount of material resources and manhours were spent waging the u boat war against Allied shipping?

What was the cost in resources for building all of the u boats?

And where could these resources be better used?

More tanks? Armored vehicles? What?
 
What was the total amount of material resources and manhours were spent waging the u boat war against Allied shipping?

What was the cost in resources for building all of the u boats?

And where could these resources be better used?

More tanks? Armored vehicles? What?
Lets not forget near suffocation of English supply lines, near shutdown of the American East coast, striking the Russian supply lines.

The U-boat deployments were miserable, their work was magnificent.

There is no better use for those resources. Get Hitler to ignore the Mediterranean and Norway in deployment and the U-boats will do a lot more damage.
 
The U-Boats were fine, the surface ships were a bit of a waste for the most part. However, the Germans could sink enough shipping to overwhelm the building capacity of the British and Americans combined, and after 1943 they were destroying U-boats faster than they could be built.
 
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Lets not forget near suffocation of English supply lines, near shutdown of the American East coast, striking the Russian supply lines.

The U-boat deployments were miserable, their work was magnificent.

There is no better use for those resources. Get Hitler to ignore the Mediterranean and Norway in deployment and the U-boats will do a lot more damage.


Ignoring the Med fres up megatonnes of shipping for the British and Allies - in terms of both shipping not lost and the ability to use the much shorter Med /Suez route more effectively much earlier than OTL
 
Getting them into the Med was a nightmare. They couldn't really achieve a great deal and took resources away from the Atlantic which was the pivotal area for U boat ops.

In the main, ships in the North Atlantic were carrying finished goods, war materials (mainly tanks, aircraft, trucks, machine tools etc) and troops. The UK routed most of their essential goods via the cape ie where the U boats would eventually get a shot at them.
 

Rubicon

Banned
Ignoring the Med fres up megatonnes of shipping for the British and Allies - in terms of both shipping not lost and the ability to use the much shorter Med /Suez route more effectively much earlier than OTL

I think the Italian navy and the both German and Italian air units in the Med had a lot more to do with the rerouting of convoy routes then a very small and ineffective number of U-boats.
 
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