alternatehistory.com

One of the greatest mysteries of WW1 was the complete failure of the German Navy to appreciate the possibilities of the recently invented submarine. Although the Navy was dominated by gunnery officers, the neglect of submarines cannot be entirely or even mostly attributed to conservatism. Indeed Germany was the leading developer of mine warfare during the period and its innovations such as the magnetic mine had a huge impact on WW1. Germany was also the leading developer of motor torpedo boats, initially only rivalled by Italy although the British necessarily responded during WW1. No, the neglect can best be explained by the unfortunate incompetence of a few designers and officers who destroyed the morale of those trying to create a potentially war winning instrument. The memoirs of one of the survivors of Germany's submarine programme noted, "There are many dangers in operating a submarine and we encountered all of them: floods through jammed hatches and torpedo tubes, buoyancy tanks that failed to empty, miscalculations of the centre of gravity or defective hydroplanes that sent the submarine too deep, miscalculations of the crush depth or defective construction, chlorine fumes or explosive hydrogen from batteries, endless engine failures punctuated by fuel explosions together with the normal dangers of collision or grounding encountered by all ships." The result of this sad history was that the only serious contribution of German submarines to WW1 were the activity of a few transport submarines constructed in 1916-8 which did fulfil the useful function of transporting a limited quantity of goods such as rubber from the USA or Brazil.
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