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The German Navy Accoustic Torpedo (or GNAT) was introduced into use in September of 1943 in OTL.

So - What If the German boffins had accelerated work or made a breakthrough in this technology a little earlier than they did?. (We can also hand-wave in that they fix the early teething problems with the magnetic exploders as well, if desired).

Let us posit that the GNAT is available in useful numbers in, say, early 1941, or ~2 years earlier.

1940 had been a bad year for the convoys chiefly it looks like from a lack of escorts, but in 1941 the number of escorts was rising and so allowing a better fight back on the U-boats and some escorts being concentrated into hunter-killer groups.

GNAT was chiefly used to deal with escort vessels in OTL. It probably would only be available in low numbers so is likely to remain as an escort killer. (Unless mass production allows firing at merchants.)

Would having this weapon a few years earlier have any real effect on the convoy battles - and by extension, WW2 itself. Is it enough of a force multiplier for the U-boat fleet to be a significant factor?. Does the 1941 year of the convoy battles revert to the 1940 level of merchant shipping losses.

Or would the British simply introduce the foxer decoy system that bit earlier? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxer or is the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T11_torpedo simply going to come on stream early as a result?
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