German submarine

Usage examples of u-boat.

There were Big Boys and U-Boats and Alcos, Baldwin diesels and Budliners.

In antisubmarine warfare, air search proved so valuable for locating and destroying U-boats that every effort was made to extend and enlarge the coverage.

In the spring, when the nights became shorter and the ineffectiveness of our antisubmarine warfare had been demonstrated, the U-boats became bolder and attacked in broad daylight, even surfaced.

The Organization of Antisubmarine Warfare Having described the havoc wrought by the U-boats during the first six months of the war, we may now relate some of the principle countermeasures adopted, which bore fruit in the latter half of the year and in 1943.

The U-boats, which had by August begun to work from Biscayan ports, took severe toll of our Atlantic convoys without suffering many losses themselves.

They have new systems for locating our boats and are inflicting heavy losses on us, fifteen to seventeen U-boats a month.

According to Rohwer an increase to around 300 boats could not have been achieved by 1942 within the framework of the accepted peacetime restrictions, even with a trash programme of U-boat construction.

The little U-boats pitched and rolled, and played at standing on end, while everyone inside clung on desperately to pipes and steel projections a foretaste of how these boats would behave in the heavy storms of the North Atlantic.

Meanwhile, as though in peacetime, I had become a trained and experienced U-boat commander, and a whole year had passed Later, when there were more new boats but also more losses training time was curtailed and this would have its consequences.

If, despite everything, a U-boat did succeed in latching onto a convoy, it was not itself allowed to attack but had to maintain contact and report position, course and speed by radioed short-code signal to the C-in-C U-boats, who would call up all the boats within reach.

Then British patrol boats and a destroyer appeared, whose machine-gun fire wounded half a dozen U-boat men and prevented scuttling.

The disposition of the boats now deviates in numerous points from the plan originally laid down for the U-boats.

That touched us U-boat men to the quick, seeing that we would have to hand over our boats to the Anglo-Americans without a fight, whether they were at sea, in Norwegian harbours or in home bases.

And all the other commanders in the home ports did the same, so that, as far as could be ascertained, 15 U-boats sank in Wilhelmshaven in the first week in May, 1945, in Hamburg 10, in Travemiinde 31, in Kiel 26 and in Flensburg 56.

The warrants triangulated, using a sender at Tobruk and another at the Gambia, and a flight of Lancaster bombers had been sent to investigate a possible U-boat nest.