Schnellboot Hull.

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davebender

1st Lieutenant
6,446
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Jan 18, 2009
Michigan, USA
It's my understanding Germany used wood planks over an aluminum frame.

1930s Germany was the worlds largest aluminum producer. Why didn't they just build the entire hull of aluminum?
 
I agree with Buffnut. Additionally Id say cost and labour. Using wood in ship design requires a skill set not required to work aluminium. Relatively easy to build a frame in aluminium....harder to fashion a skin that was waterproof. You also need rolled sheet to fashion the skin, which may well have been a production bottleneck or required added factory space and cost that the germans did not want to pay.

as a rough gneralization, it is far far chaeaper to build ships huls out of wood than it is out of steel, including aluminium.
 
There are some applications in which wood is better than metal. High speed-light weight hulls maybe one of them. The wood planking is more resilient. It stands up to the pounding a bit better for the same weight. If the Aluminium plating is too thin it "dishes" between the frames causing turbulence and drag. It may also have a tendency to "oil can" as the boat crosses waves at 30kts plus and fatigue crack. You can bust up a wooden boat by over driving them in bad seas too. Heavier plating can solve some of these problems but you do have to watch the weight. 0.1285" aluminium is 1.812lb per square foot. 0.1620" aluminium is 2.284lb per square foot. 0.2294" aluminium is 3.235 lb per square foot. The sides can a be a bit thinner than the bottom but how many sq ft in an Schnellboot Hull?
 
The methods used to build the plywood Mosquito fuselage - concrete forms over which the plywood was shaped (using steam ..?) were very conducive to mass production and "distributed" sub assembly .... as the DeHavilland Canada operation proved ... it was adapted to boat hull production after WW2 IIRC.
Marine plywood is wonderfully strong and resilient .... and you can screw into it/bolt into it easily.

MM
 
That was my guess too.

Schnellboot are small warships and therefore subject to rough service. A hull made of aluminum sheet metal would probably be more delicate then a hull made of wood.
 
I have seen a few modern Grumman boats dished badly from pounding across rough water.
The problem hasn't gone away!
 
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