I’m watching a ton of WW2 documentaries and can’t help but think why they didn’t make a counter to the German Uboats other then depth charges and the hedgehog. Surely with the money and resources the US or other countries could of made a sub during that time.
In: 12
The Americans did use unrestricted submarine warfare in ww2 (on Japan), and the UK and other allied countries did have submarine fleets.
But submarines are slow and not very good at sinking things. They are also quite vulnerable to aircraft. At least in ww1 and ww2.
The allies had capital ships that mostly controlled the Atlantic and Mediterranean, and so the axis basically didn’t have any shipping to sink except from Norway to Germany and from Italy to Libya, and Vichy France to French Algeria. So the central powers and axis powers didn’t move huge amounts of cargo unless they could escort it with capital ships because the allies would have obliterated it very easily.
The Mediterranean and Norwegian coast mostly have solid air cover, so aren’t hugely suited to submarine warfare for the allies.
Japan on the other hand never seemed to regard the security of their cargo ships as worth doing much about. Which both at the time to the allies and in hindsight makes no sense. The japanese would have solo unescorted ships running resources from what is today Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia etc, back to Japan. And the Americans basically started hunting them ruthlessly. Now the logic here might have been oil, and fleet concentration. Dividing up their fleet to spend oil to escort convoys might have been something they didn’t think they could risk, or they just didn’t take the threat seriously until it was too late. After all a submarine from Australia, Sri lanka/India or Hawaii had a long way to go and so they might not have thought the Americans had enough subs to worry about. They were wrong.
The military supply convoys were escorted by the Japanese and were not hugely vulnerable to submarines. But cargo, pows.. Not so lucky.
In terms of anti submarine warfare, tools like asdic (SONAR) aircraft patrols, fast surface ships with depth charges and wargames (the western approaches wrens) were ultimately what dealt with submarines.
At the start of the war most of the allies didn’t even really have effective anti submarine weapons. So the Germans had an advantage in 1939 that was least partially gone by the time the Americans joined the fray in 1941. The weapons the allies (and Japanese had) might have been good against a 1918 submarine but a 1930s one that was faster and could dive deeper, those were a challenge.
Latest Answers