The Unterseeboots

Did you know that the Kriegsmarine, the navy of of Nazi Germany, sunk 20,448,074 tons of Allied ships and cargo? U-boats were the better fighting machines than the flimsy Allied destroyers. In 1942 alone, the Germans sunk over 4 million tons of Allied cargo. Would you have liked to be on one of those forsaken ships? If the Allies used better armor on their ships, they could of won the war quicker.

This was not the case The German U-boat, or the unterseeboot, was the better fighting machine due to the ability to surprise and attack quickly. “During 1940, the Germans sunk a total amount of1,616,00 tons, or 249 ships.” (Daniel V. Gallery’s U-505, page 301, paragraph 2.). Statics like these are unbelievable when you know more about unterseeboots.

German Submarines during world war 2 held 24 torpedos, at most. Considering 2-3 torpedos were needed to sink a ship, one U-boat could only sink 8-12 ships during its 3 month deployment. What is even more incredible is that while the unterseeboots were sinking all of these Allied ships, only 23 u-boats were sunk. Ship sinking ratios were 1 German U-boat to 11 allied ships. In addition, German manufacturing was in high gear. For every 1 unterseeboot sunk 8 were ready to take its place.

Another reason the U-boat was a superior fighting machine, was due to its encrypted communications. Unterseebootsused the Enigma machine to send encoded messages throughout their command. Without the code changing every day, the Allies would of cracked it sooner. The Enigma had 3 dials and a board of letters with wires on it, so you could change the code every day. Allied freighters had one main problem, the armor was too weak. only one type of freighter was actually hardened enough to sink under about 4 torpedos, this freighter was the liberty class freighter.

For ships if one little part is left out, the ship itself can sink. The thing is that the American manufactures were not in high yet. The Kriegsmarine had better tactics, weapons, and ships. If the allies had only used that tiny bit of armor left on the side, there could of been more reinforcements. So now you know that the allies lost 20,448,074 tons of cargo and ships in world war 2, the unterseeboots had better communication tactics, and the allies needed better armor.

In the end, the u-boats were the better fighting machine, they ran from the first day of the war, to the last day of the war.