Earliest Submarine

How much sooner could this be done?


  • Total voters
    25
The I400 are the biggest in WW2 for WW1 but are there any WW1 subs bigger than U151 ?
(U139 maybe the biggest German that took part but its not that much bigger 3000 v 2200 t so only another 1.5x750 so 1125t cargo and you need 53+ of them at 8.7 million marks each so 461M Marks, for comparison Bayern/Baden cost about 50M Marks each, all from Wiki may be wrong as may be my maths)


Er are you not assuming that anybody had working ASW detection equipment in WW1 or any good ahead throwing weapons to use it ?
IMO both of these would be wrong as soon as you have dived and moved from the original position of contact you are in WW1 pretty safe as long as you can stay down for sufficiently long for the hunter to get bored/recalled to convoy/get dark with no radar ......
Heh heh, this post needs and deserves a complete response, but as I should already be in bed, that is going to have to wait till morning.

Night.
 
Er are you not assuming that anybody had working ASW detection equipment in WW1 or any good ahead throwing weapons to use it ?

Just to expand, in WW1 you are pre ASDIC so finding anybody will be hard (not sure but any hydrophones will not have 5Nm detection range unless the Uboat is making lots of noise) and anyway with only DC (even then not many of them only 4 per ship in June 1917 :eek:) how effective is any attack going to be ? (remember with many more better DCs and ASDIC it still was not very good in early WW2)

This is all talking about 1918 in 1914 DC are prototypes as is ASDIC.....

I think all you really need is to be able to quietly walk off till dark and you will be safe from almost all encounters (and anyway apart from breaking out you are very unlikely to meet anybody anyway even on the surface)
 
This is a bit troublesome legally because a submarine can't be inspected for contraband - it probably counts as a blockade runner, and that means it can basically be depth charged at will if discovered.

That said, it's certainly one way to get successful export/import. But it's going to be a very expensive and vulnerable way to do things - and you couldn't import bulk cargoes this way.
It could also lead the entente into some interesting areas, with all sorts of interesting consequences. UASW, anyone?
 
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