Doenitz Wins -> All U Boat, Policy pre WW2

The submarine building process could have been certainly made much faster prior to Type XXI. US fleet submarines, for example, were strongly utilizing premade parts. Additionally, shipyards can be built and construction crews trained. There's also the Soviet / US option of utilizing inland shipyards as German water transportation network was extensive.

From "The Wages of Destruction", Adam Tooze, talking about the Type XXI programme (pp616-7):

"The U-boat construction experts at Blohm & Voss had doubted from the start whether inexperienced, inland construction firms with limited naval experience would be capable of delivering U-Boat sections with sufficient accuracy for them to be assembled into pressure-tight submarine hulls. They were right. In the hull sections delivered to the assembly yards, there were deviations of up to 3 centimetres. There were persistent leaks both around the transmission and the snorkel. Imprecision in the assembly of the complex steering system led to repeated rudder jammings. Most seriously, and most predictably, when the prefabricated sections of the outer hull were subject to extreme pressure, unevenness in the welding resulted in potentially lethal fractures. These sections could be trusted only after extensive testing and fixing. Altogether, the U-boats, which had taken 175 days to manufacture, required another 120 days of repairs before they could be passed fit for action."

Producing a submarine hull is a completely different procedure from building a cargo freighter, or a canal barge, or a steam locomotives. Expanding production in shipbuilding firms with submarine experience is difficult enough, let alone outsourcing production to inland companies- inland companies using precisely the sort of skilled workers you need in other areas of armaments production. Even if we assume that production needs can be met entirely from existing shipbuilding resources, the complete structural failure of the welding in Bismarck's stern during her capsize would seem to bode ill for the quality of their worksmanship.
 
From "The Wages of Destruction", Adam Tooze, talking about the Type XXI programme (pp616-7):

"The U-boat construction experts at Blohm & Voss had doubted from the start whether inexperienced, inland construction firms with limited naval experience would be capable of delivering U-Boat sections with sufficient accuracy for them to be assembled into pressure-tight submarine hulls. They were right. In the hull sections delivered to the assembly yards, there were deviations of up to 3 centimetres. There were persistent leaks both around the transmission and the snorkel. Imprecision in the assembly of the complex steering system led to repeated rudder jammings. Most seriously, and most predictably, when the prefabricated sections of the outer hull were subject to extreme pressure, unevenness in the welding resulted in potentially lethal fractures. These sections could be trusted only after extensive testing and fixing. Altogether, the U-boats, which had taken 175 days to manufacture, required another 120 days of repairs before they could be passed fit for action."

Producing a submarine hull is a completely different procedure from building a cargo freighter, or a canal barge, or a steam locomotives. Expanding production in shipbuilding firms with submarine experience is difficult enough, let alone outsourcing production to inland companies- inland companies using precisely the sort of skilled workers you need in other areas of armaments production. Even if we assume that production needs can be met entirely from existing shipbuilding resources, the complete structural failure of the welding in Bismarck's stern during her capsize would seem to bode ill for the quality of their worksmanship.



XXI construction was in the last year of the war under very difficult circumstances....like supply of steel was cut in half and yards were being bombed all the time. Under less pressure earlier in the war or even prewar, it certainly could have been done . The manhours to build the first XXI was 425,000 hours while the new construction Type IXC in these 'other yards' started at 1/2 million. However in the second year manhour requirements fell to 70% of the first year levels while third year fell to 60% of the first year levels.


The fact remains that with incentive based contractiing [fixed price multi year] the longer a firm produces an armament the easier it becomes and the less marterrial is wasted in the process...The companies find what corners they can cut. So each year each firm can produce more with the same labor funding and resource base.
 
XXI construction was in the last year of the war under very difficult circumstances....like supply of steel was cut in half and yards were being bombed all the time.

Except that these are quality control issues, not problems of scarcity. Raw steel production was about the same in 1936 and 1944 (19,216,000 tons vs 18,318,000 tons); electrically smelted steel is 1,512,000 tons in 1944 vs 380,000 in 1936. By 1944, Speer has an economy geared to war production (no need to produce for civilian consumption) and a far wider pool of skilled labour to draw on in order to build the Type XXIs; what he ends up with is mass-produced rubbish.

Furthermore, nobody seems to have questioned the human aspect of this expansion programme: that expanding the arm so quickly without any kind of benefit of operational experience is likely to have a vastly detrimental effect on the quality of the average U-boat captain. We're talking about training crews for 225 boats rather than 57- the equivalent of the expansion of the British army during World War One. And the Germans won't have the ability to drag veteran sergeants and colonels out of retirement to train their new troops.
 
Except that these are quality control issues, not problems of scarcity. Raw steel production was about the same in 1936 and 1944 (19,216,000 tons vs 18,318,000 tons); electrically smelted steel is 1,512,000 tons in 1944 vs 380,000 in 1936. By 1944, Speer has an economy geared to war production (no need to produce for civilian consumption) and a far wider pool of skilled labour to draw on in order to build the Type XXIs; what he ends up with is mass-produced rubbish.

Furthermore, nobody seems to have questioned the human aspect of this expansion programme: that expanding the arm so quickly without any kind of benefit of operational experience is likely to have a vastly detrimental effect on the quality of the average U-boat captain. We're talking about training crews for 225 boats rather than 57- the equivalent of the expansion of the British army during World War One. And the Germans won't have the ability to drag veteran sergeants and colonels out of retirement to train their new troops.


No the problem was the guy they got to run the programme manufactured cars. Given a year they would have Ironed out these problems. In the last years of the war the monthly allocation to the KM was on the order of 150k tons, by the end of 1944 with the collapsing economy, the deliveries to the yards were reduced by 1/2 and closer to 1/4 of previous levels.

Training is not the issue people make it out to be. In the last 5 years before the war the Germans train millions of troops for Army and Luftwaffe. The KM had a more modest programme transition from 15k to 75k. When the war began the navy quickly doubled its size to 150k. A couple of years later it was 1/2 million troops, but most of the increase were coastal divisions manning guns.

It was simply a question of allocating more of the budget resources and and personnel slice to the Navy over the Army. If the focus includes the UK, instead of some lame Hitler notion that 'the leopard could change its spots', then its completely possible to expand the KM further in place of the slightly smaller army. Then when war begins the navy could double to 1/4 million.
 
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Tellus

Banned
Everyone mentions that too much of a uboat effort is both impractical and unlikely.

But maybe the Germans could just scrap a few grand vessels like the Tripitz, the Bismark, and the aborted aircraft carrier - and for their trouble have 100 submarines to go to war with - maybe a few less. Nothing to alarm the British too much, but still enough to cause alot more damage than their diminutive early war uboat fleet.

Maybe enough to make a summer 40 peace attracting to London.
 
Except that these are quality control issues, not problems of scarcity. Raw steel production was about the same in 1936 and 1944 (19,216,000 tons vs 18,318,000 tons); electrically smelted steel is 1,512,000 tons in 1944 vs 380,000 in 1936. By 1944, Speer has an economy geared to war production (no need to produce for civilian consumption) and a far wider pool of skilled labour to draw on in order to build the Type XXIs; what he ends up with is mass-produced rubbish.

By 1944 the problems were far more manifold than in 1938 and XXI program was technologically ambitious and taken in very great hurry.

Furthermore, nobody seems to have questioned the human aspect of this expansion programme: that expanding the arm so quickly without any kind of benefit of operational experience is likely to have a vastly detrimental effect on the quality of the average U-boat captain. We're talking about training crews for 225 boats rather than 57- the equivalent of the expansion of the British army during World War One. And the Germans won't have the ability to drag veteran sergeants and colonels out of retirement to train their new troops.

In 1939 no U-boat crewmember had no operational experience. Ditto for entire IJN in 1941 (bar SNLF and naval aviators). Still they managed fairly well. Combat not only trains, it's also very consuming in human aspects due to sheer stress. Top u-boat commanders (as well as their British and American counterparts) were top notch for only a quite short period. Afterwards the stress level had accumulated so high that they had to be transferred to training or management duties. Otherwise there was a risk that they made far more mistakes.

In expansion scheme the first effort will be far smaller which means a great deal more U-boats can be devoted for training.
 
No the problem was the guy they got to run the programme manufactured cars.
So who exactly do you expect to run this 1936 outsourcing programme? After all, the shipbuilders are going to have exactly the same objections to it as they do in 1944, which means bringing in an outside expert. You may not have noticed the irony that, while you decry the ability of a car manufacturer to build U-boats, the people who are managing your inland supply chain probably aren't even going to have experience of manufacturing anything as complicated as a car. That is, unless you propose to take manufacturing capacity away from the army (more capacity, rather, since the German economy is already dramatically over-committed by the late 1930s).

Training is not the issue people make it out to be. In the last 5 years before the war the Germans train millions of troops for Army and Luftwaffe.
And you'll note the vast number of clandestine ways in which the skills required are maintained during the 1920s and 1930s (glider clubs, "gymnastics societies", the Stahlhelm, the SA, the Treaty of Rapallo). You can take commercial pilots or veteran infantry soldiers and have them pass on their skills: there aren't any commercial submarines, and dragging the few remaining World War One veterans out of retirement makes about as much sense as getting A7V veterans to train Panzer crews.

The KM had a more modest programme transition from 15k to 75k. When the war began the navy quickly doubled its size to 150k.
But these are overwhelmingly surface ships, not submarines. The German Navy has been operating surface ships throughout the 1920s and 1930s, so has a pool of reservists with experience to draw on to leaven the new crews with. This explanation even ignores the plain fact that it's far easier to take a helmsman from a commercial cargo ship and turn them into a destroyer helmsman than a member of a submarine crew.

To put things in perspective for you, here's the actual number of new U-boats added to the fleet annually:
1935: 14
1936: 21
1937: 1
1938: 9
1939: 18
1940: 50

Perhaps you'd like to suggest an alternative annual building programme, calculate the percentage increases required over the historical one, then explain again that this won't entail any decrease whatsoever in the quality of crews, let alone the quality of boats, which are churned out.

Top u-boat commanders (as well as their British and American counterparts) were top notch for only a quite short period.
So now let's imagine Prien's sortie against Royal Oak. He's still got the same defences to face, and he's still got the same innate ability. However, this time he's got a helmsman with just over two weeks training, a leading engineer who learned his trade on the Emden's steam turbines and a torpedo team who haven't fired a live round together because production isn't sufficient to allow for training. His bosun and executive officer were promoted a few days before setting sail, to fill gaps in other U-boat rosters. Because the hull sections were manufactured in a factory that formerly specialised in corrugated iron sheeting and welded together in a shipyard that was running behind, the entire boat leaks as soon as it goes below ten metres and is so hydrodynamically mis-shapen that it can't reach over five knots when submerged.

I've argued this sort of thing before, and I can already see the same sort of knee-jerk Third Reich-fanboyism creeping into the discussion. Never mind the fact that U-boat batteries require the very raw materials- copper, rubber, lead- which Germany is running out of even before 1939. Ignore the fact that Doenitz doesn't even start calling for an all-out effort in submarines until November 1937, and isn't in a position to influence policy until well after the start of the war. Assume that Chamberlain will still be happy to reach an accommodation at Munich with a country which is building a submarine fleet which can only be aimed at attacking Britain. Assume that Roosevelt and the American people will ignore the fact that the Germans are quite clearly planning a repeat of the campaign that brought America into the First World War.
 
Assume that Chamberlain will still be happy to reach an accommodation at Munich with a country which is building a submarine fleet which can only be aimed at attacking Britain. Assume that Roosevelt and the American people will ignore the fact that the Germans are quite clearly planning a repeat of the campaign that brought America into the First World War.

Umm, I didn't propose a pre-war buildup, but rather pre-war mobilization build up to ensure quicker production and training of U-boat crews after the war has started. In 1940 it was already clear for the US that Nazi Germany would be more grave threat than Imperial Germany.

As for the training, keeping more boats for training duties during early part of the war means more training resources available, doesn't it?
 
So who exactly do you expect to run this 1936 outsourcing programme? After all, the shipbuilders are going to have exactly the same objections to it as they do in 1944, which means bringing in an outside expert. You may not have noticed the irony that, while you decry the ability of a car manufacturer to build U-boats, the people who are managing your inland supply chain probably aren't even going to have experience of manufacturing anything as complicated as a car. That is, unless you propose to take manufacturing capacity away from the army (more capacity, rather, since the German economy is already dramatically over-committed by the late 1930s).


And you'll note the vast number of clandestine ways in which the skills required are maintained during the 1920s and 1930s (glider clubs, "gymnastics societies", the Stahlhelm, the SA, the Treaty of Rapallo). You can take commercial pilots or veteran infantry soldiers and have them pass on their skills: there aren't any commercial submarines, and dragging the few remaining World War One veterans out of retirement makes about as much sense as getting A7V veterans to train Panzer crews.


But these are overwhelmingly surface ships, not submarines. The German Navy has been operating surface ships throughout the 1920s and 1930s, so has a pool of reservists with experience to draw on to leaven the new crews with. This explanation even ignores the plain fact that it's far easier to take a helmsman from a commercial cargo ship and turn them into a destroyer helmsman than a member of a submarine crew.

To put things in perspective for you, here's the actual number of new U-boats added to the fleet annually:
1935: 14
1936: 21
1937: 1
1938: 9
1939: 18
1940: 50

Perhaps you'd like to suggest an alternative annual building programme, calculate the percentage increases required over the historical one, then explain again that this won't entail any decrease whatsoever in the quality of crews, let alone the quality of boats, which are churned out.

.

In the prewar era the standard production method was annual contracts with cost plus financing that put little burden on the companies to produce cost affordable weapons. Hitler was against mass production from the start and he was also against stockpiling for war or progress towards total war economy capability. In 1936 he hyjacked the German military economy to expand capabilty via a limit war economy at the expence of 'total war economy'. It would take several years of war to correct that mistake and a couple of more years after that to ramp up production.

There was zero incentive to produce more with less and thats why they had insufficent Uboats produced prewar.

When it did the UBoat manhours to produce were cut in half in 4 years [1940-44] ,allowing twice as many Uboats to be built for the same industry labor pool. And that was before the XXI time. You just apply the same reduction in manhours to the prewar naval economy and you can see similar benifits.

Personnally based on the historical allocation of resources and labor to the various types of naval vessels , I would have focused building exclusively Type II uboats prewar to train as many as possible and develope the Type VII, to then be put into exclusive mass production when war begins. But of late I've been thinking a smaller run of Type IX might have been better suited to way in which the Uboat war switch theaters so quickly based on emerging events.

In any event by war time you could have twice as many Uboat personnel trainned, just based on adjusting historical builds.

The difference between the experienced crews of the start war and the mass produced boats of the mid war period was a difference of 2 enemy ships sunk per UBoat at sea , per month comparied to average of 4 enemy ships sunk per Uboat at sea ,per month. But a good deal of this difference could also be the enemies efforts to counter the Uboat threats.


BTW 40 German divisions were raised in the first year of the war using WW-I vets as a strategic reserve. One year later they were disbanded since they were not needed. Its entirely possible to have drafted WW-I Uboat crews to help train the new generation of UBoat crews when the actual war begins.
 
esl, Germany should bring in middle aged men who haven't served in twenty years and whose technical knowledge is equally obsolete to train crews for subs which haven't been built yet and which the instructors have no knowledge or experience of?

Somehow the results don't strike me as likely to be wonderful.


As for mass production you note that it took four years for the results to pay off so when is this going to be done? If prior to the Anglo-German treaty of 1936 then Germany has committed suicide as they have ended all chance of a peaceful relationship with the British, triggered earlier British rearmament and are likely to have advanced the war. None of these things are good for Germany. Any later date means the increased production arrives in 1941 or 1942, assuming that it arrives as fast as OTL while under much less pressure.
 
By the way, how about another U-boat what-if? Type IX as a building block instead of Type VII. While Type IX was larger (by roughly 25%) it had the same number of crew. It also had very significant strategic advantage: range. Late-war Type IXD's could roam even into Indian Ocean. This will cause the convoy escort effort to be more distributed than OTL. Even if 3/4 number of U-boats can be built, I think it might be worth an effort. Of course there will probably be earlier Allied counter-efforts, but still, the dispersal might be worth the effort.
Longer range would have slowed down the build time, and to not much point. The North Atlantic was the main artery for the UK, a few boats in teh Indian ocean simply wouldnt have found enough ships to be worthwhile. The atlantic was a much better bet,a s the routes weer far more predictable
Actually, building Type IXs as standard would have been very beneficial to Germany. The added strain on RN/RCN escorts (& USN, presuming DoW OTL) would've been considerable. OTL, U-boat attacks in South Atlantic were negligible, due to the Type VII's short range; Type IXs make it much more probable, so SoAtl convoy routes have to be much better protected, & there were few enough escorts for NAtl. It'd also improve on station time, meaning convoy routes are under threat longer. Add Type XIVs, you make RN headaches into migraines. And it all has synergy: spread escorts thinner makes convoys easier targets makes British losses greater & U-boat losses lighter makes...? Just to avoid the usual one-sided argument, though: it might help persuade Winston to demand 2-3 squadrons of Stirlings from Bomber Command, for ASW in Newfoundland, & 1-2 in Bermuda or somewhere...
So now let's imagine Prien's sortie against Royal Oak. He's still got the same defences to face, and he's still got the same innate ability. However, this time he's got a helmsman with just over two weeks training, a leading engineer who learned his trade on the Emden's steam turbines and a torpedo team who haven't fired a live round together because production isn't sufficient to allow for training. His bosun and executive officer were promoted a few days before setting sail, to fill gaps in other U-boat rosters.
If Germany has 50 U-boats in service in '37, they've got enough core crewmen for 100-150, IMO; no job aboard is done in isolation, & training is constant. So Prien uses his rookies en route & very carefully avoids all hostile contact, & puts his first team on duty when he gets to Scapa.
Assume that Chamberlain will still be happy to reach an accommodation at Munich with a country which is building a submarine fleet which can only be aimed at attacking Britain.
Actually, the Brits allowing Germany to build up U-boats did essentialy that OTL, & they didn't seem too worried. There were 2 presumptions: ASDIC had U-boats handled, & RN could build escorts fast enough after the war started. Both proved fallacious, but I see no reason the fallacies would be revealled prewar TTL.
Assume that Roosevelt and the American people will ignore the fact that the Germans are quite clearly planning a repeat of the campaign that brought America into the First World War.
I am so tired of this one. Lusitania was not causal. Unrestricted submarine warfare was not causal. Germany offering to help Mexico take back Texas was causal.
 
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esl, .


As for mass production you note that it took four years for the results to pay off so when is this going to be done? If prior to the Anglo-German treaty of 1936 then Germany has committed suicide as they have ended all chance of a peaceful relationship with the British, triggered earlier British rearmament and are likely to have advanced the war. None of these things are good for Germany. Any later date means the increased production arrives in 1941 or 1942, assuming that it arrives as fast as OTL while under much less pressure.



It didn't take four years for the switch to pay off. Hitler mandated the switch to 'fixed price multi year contracts' in the summer of 1941, however Reich Minister Todt had no luck getting the companies to adopt the more stringent contracts. I gather that when Speer agreed to take off the position after Todt's death, one of his main demands of Hitler was more power to inforce decisions no matter what the companies complained about. After that it only took a year or two to switch over and ramp up production.

From peace time I can see 4 years between 1935 & 1939 building up but since the Wehrmacht only started out with 10 divisions a 1000 machine gun tanks and a few hundred plan airforce, no ones going to be in a position to complain until the end of that decade. By then their is little that can be done.

For example RN contracts are locked in after 1937 and could not be changed until 1940 for ships that could not join the fleet until 1942/43. Besides given that KM was allowed 35% by treaty and only had something like 20% , Britain would look really bad if they reacted against Germany just building what was already agreed in treaty.

From what Ive read most prewar politics was anti Stalin not anti Hitler until Munich 1938/39 woke every one up to the nature of the treat. By then their was little that could be done. Most Europeans welcomed German rearmament since they believed it would be a wall against Soviet espansionist dreams. So Britian stirring up trouble in the mid 1930s over Germany doing what they were 'allowed' and expected to do, would look bad and that could make it harder to convince American to join or even believe in the British cause.
 
From the No Washinton Treaty Thread

So WI ?In 1936 Germany goes for all U Boats? [OK maybe a couple dozen Destroyers for use in the Baltic's] If Doenitz has his 300 U Boats in Septembre 1939, ?How goes the Battle of the Atlantic?

I haven't yet read further, but I can say the following.

You CANNOT make a change in history (even a reasonable one) in 1936 and then say 'How does the war differ from 1939', without also asking what is going to change in the 1936-1939 period.

The United Kingdom, hell, France as well, is going to see that Germany has abandoned it's capital ship programme for U-boats. The RN will react accordingly with sharply worded memos landing on the Admiralty desk with words like 'U-Boat numbers expected to be 300', 'Britain starved', 'Recommend building lots of destroyers to blow them out of the water'.

The war will be different, but the Germans will still lose.
 
The United Kingdom, hell, France as well, is going to see that Germany has abandoned it's capital ship programme for U-boats. The RN will react accordingly with sharply worded memos landing on the Admiralty desk with words like 'U-Boat numbers expected to be 300', 'Britain starved', 'Recommend building lots of destroyers to blow them out of the water'.
As the POD is in 1936, ships such as Bismarck & Tirpitz, H&I, Graf Zeppelin & F.T.B and the Hippers can be cancelled, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were launched in 1936 and will probably be completed. The Italians are also building 4 battleships and the Japanese are building the Yamatos. The British might have decided to abandon the KGVs and Lions if they chose to avoid war with Japan and Italy. However, 1936 is quite late to make that choice.
 
As the POD is in 1936, ships such as Bismarck & Tirpitz, H&I, Graf Zeppelin & F.T.B and the Hippers can be cancelled, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were launched in 1936 and will probably be completed. The Italians are also building 4 battleships and the Japanese are building the Yamatos. The British might have decided to abandon the KGVs and Lions if they chose to avoid war with Japan and Italy. However, 1936 is quite late to make that choice.

Whats more the process of treaty had a negotiation clause allowing Germany to increase tonnage in one area at the expense of the other. It would take time to work that process. The Admiratly might cringe, but it may have made little difference. They believed their prewar ASDIC destroyers were able to deal with the UBoat threat, so no undue panick. Anyway no one has projected 300 Uboats by war time.

All that has to happen is cross the line after 1937 and their is little materially the UK could do prewar.
 
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