WWII Submarines

[GrauGeist]

The weird thing is he held no rancor for the Germans. When he joined the U.S.N. and was subjected to kamikaze attacks, but wasn't sunk, he held a hatred for all things Japanese until the end of his days.
Go figure.....

Both my Mom's older brothers served with the USN in the Pacific, one aboard Destroyers, the other (mentioned above) served aboard Subs. My Uncle Fred, the submariner survived his sub being sunk and never had an issue with Japanese. My other Uncle had his destroyer sunk during the battle of the Solomons and later survived kamikaze attacks aboard other destroyers. He, unlike his older brother, disliked anything Japanese for the rest of his life.

 

[meatloaf109]

Anything and every thing even remotely Japanese.

 

[Messy1]

I saw that boat many years ago during a small family vacation. I was in 1st or 2nd grade at the time. And it was sitting outside. Looks like they have done a remarkable job restoring it and bringing it inside.

Attempting to finish up a good book about submariners in WW2. The Depths Of Courage by Flint Whitlock and Ron Smith. Pretty good book, not a lot of technical details, but a very enjoyable read. Check it out of you get a chance.

 

[mikec1]

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Greetings DerAdlerIstGelandet;





Nice post, and an excellent set of photos ..............




Mike
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[mikec1]

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Greetings Folks;



Some photos of the capture of U-505.


After the U-boat was depth charged and forced to the surface the crew abandoned
the boat. Before they left they opened the Sea Cocks in an attempt to sink the
boat.

Capt. Gallery, ((In the US Navy) a Captain is equivalent to a Colonel in the USAF), other personnel boarded
the boat to search for classified material. In the mean time the sailors had secured the Sea Cocks and done
a quick estimate of the damage done to the U-boat. It was determined that with emergency repair work, and
by using portable pumps they might be able to keep her from sinking.

As a bonus they recovered the Emaga message coding machine, maps, and two large sacks of classified material.
With the Emaga the US Navy could un-code the messages that where sent to, and from the German Naval
Command.

Note: in these photos how close the U-boat came to sinking ............


Photographs............ US Naval Archives



Enjoy,


Mike
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[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

ENIGMA coding machine...

It also was not the first Enigma coding machine that was captured by the allies.

 

[mikec1]

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........ Correct, the British already had one. But this was still a great recovery for the United States
Naval Intelligence.



Mike
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[redcoat]

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........ Correct, the British already had one. But this was still a great recovery for the United States
Naval Intelligence.

The British and US had been able to read the codes of the naval 4 wheel rota Enigma since the capture of a machine and code books on the 30 October 1942 from the U-559.
The capture of the U-505 actually caused the code breakers a few sleepless nights as they feared the Germans might find out and change their codes
Admiral King at one point considered court marshaling the commanding officer of the destroyer group who captured her for bringing her back to port, instead of sinking her after the removal of any valuable code material and equipment.

 

[Wurger]

The British and US had been able to read the codes of the naval 4 wheel rota Enigma since the capture of a machine and code books on the 30 October 1942 from the U-559.

To be honest it isn't exactly true. British have been able to read the Enigma codes because they had received it from Polish MI before the war started. Also I agree with DerAdlerIstGelandet's post #106 above.

 

[fastmongrel]

To be honest it isn't exactly true. British have been able to read the Enigma codes because they had received it from Polish MI before the war started. Also I agree with DerAdlerIstGelandet's post #106 above.

They didnt get the Naval 4 rotor Enigma from Poland. They got an Army 3 rotor machine iirc from the Polish via the French.

 

[Milosh]

Does Wiki need some corrections?

The Navy was the first military branch to adopt Enigma. This version, named Funkschlüssel C ("Radio cipher C"), had been put into production by 1925 and was introduced into service in 1926.[27]

The keyboard and lampboard contained 29 letters—A-Z, Ä, Ö and Ü—which were arranged alphabetically, as opposed to the QWERTZU ordering.[28] The rotors had 28 contacts, with the letter X wired to bypass the rotors unencrypted.[9]

Three rotors were chosen from a set of five[29] and the reflector could be inserted in one of four different positions, denoted α, β, γ and δ.[30] The machine was revised slightly in July 1933.[31]

By 15 July 1928,[32] the German Army (Reichswehr) had introduced their own version of the Enigma—the Enigma G, revised to the Enigma I by June 1930.[33] Enigma I is also known as the Wehrmacht, or "Services" Enigma, and was used extensively by German military services and other government organisations (such as the railways[34]), before and during World War II.

The major difference between Enigma I and commercial Enigma models was the addition of a plugboard to swap pairs of letters, greatly increasing cryptographic strength. Other differences included the use of a fixed reflector and the relocation of the stepping notches from the rotor body to the movable letter rings. The machine measured 28×34×15 cm (11 in×13.5 in×6 in) and weighed around 12 kg (26 lb).[35]

By 1930, the Army had suggested that the Navy adopt their machine, citing the benefits of increased security (with the plugboard) and easier interservice communications.[36] The Navy eventually agreed and in 1934[37] brought into service the Navy version of the Army Enigma, designated Funkschlüssel ' or M3. While the Army used only three rotors at that time, the Navy specified a choice of three from a possible five.[38]

In December 1938, the Army issued two extra rotors so that the three rotors were chosen from a set of five.[33] In 1938, the Navy added two more rotors, and then another in 1939 to allow a choice of three rotors from a set of eight.[38] In August 1935, the Air Force introduced the Wehrmacht Enigma for their communications.[33]

A four-rotor Enigma was introduced by the Navy for U-boat traffic on 1 February 1942, called M4 (the network was known as Triton, or Shark to the Allies). The extra rotor was fitted in the same space by splitting the reflector into a combination of a thin reflector and a thin fourth rotor.

There was also a large, eight-rotor printing model, the Enigma II. In 1933 the Polish Cipher Bureau detected that it was in use for high-level military communications, but that it was soon withdrawn, as it was unreliable and jammed frequently.[39]

The Abwehr used the Enigma G (the Abwehr Enigma). This Enigma variant was a four-wheel unsteckered machine with multiple notches on the rotors. This model was equipped with a counter which incremented upon each key press, and so is also known as the "counter machine" or the Zählwerk Enigma.

During World War II the Abwehr used these machines to control and report the locations of submarines in the Atlantic and to pass information about bombing raids, the movement of military units, and the location and cargo of military supply ships. Before Enigma Britain was in danger of being starved into submission and after it the roles were virtually reversed. The British moved one step ahead of the Germans and began sinking submarines faster than they could be built.

 

[silence]

with all those options and changes no wonder it was called "enigma"

 

[GregP]

The German Kriegsmarine U-Boats came very close to bringing the Allies to their knees. They lost 75% of their boats during the war.

The US Navy, on the other hand, had a total of only 311 submarines or so and only lost 62, or 17% during the war. While they may not have been brilliant at the start of the war, that loss rate is among the best of the war, and they operated in all oceans.

I'll certainly grant we weren't anywhere near the head of the class at the start of the war, but either our our luck was phenomenal (unlikely) or our skippers were good but inexperienced at attack and attack strategy. They seem to have been among the best at self-preservation and evasion.

Of course, it could also be that the Japanese didn't have very good sub-hunting abilities for most of the war. We already know there weren't many German ships at sea in the Atlantic hunting our subs. So, it is possible the opposition was simply not equipped to hunt our subs very well and we DID have extraordinary luck.

 

[Shortround6]

It is a combination of everything. Part of the early war problem was unrealistic training in the pre-war years.
The Umpires in the war games/exercises were biased against the submarines and declared them "killed" or knocked out at a very high rate which breed extreme caution in commanders. Getting your boat sunk repeatedly even in war games didn't do much for promotional chances. Likewise the damage the submarines were estimated to do was under played.
It took almost wholesale replacement of the commanders in charge at the beginning of the war to get an aggressive command mind set. Of course the whole torpedo debacle placed a premium on escape and evasion, trading a Fleet boat for dud torpedo bouncing off a small freighter was never a good trade

The Japanese never came up to the western standards of anti-sub warfare ( granted they started several years later and didn't have any WW I experience to speak of). This was due, in part, to the size of the Japanese industry. They just couldn't build the numbers of escorts needed although they tried with a late start.

 

[parsifal]

Enigma was a critical element in the end to allied victory over the uboats, but in the end it was just one part of the victory and for quite long periods it was quite ineffective.

At the beginning of the war, the intelligence advantages were firmly in favour of the germans. it was they who had access to Royal Navy transmissions and advance warning of allied intentions. It was a gradual process for the allies to firstly seal off the intelligence leaks in their own camp and then be able to read those of the Kriegsmarine.

After March 1941, there was never a period where the allies could not read KM communications, its just that it took time to decode messages, and Allied resources were limited. if codes were hard to read, it took longer to decipher them and only a small percentage could be read. If the codebreaking was easy, a larger volume of traffic could be read and information obtained more quickly.

Moreover, sigint was not found to be of great help in sinking uboats, rather its main advantage was found to be re-routing convoys away from known concentrations of enemy uboats. a Uboat was a relatively stationary hunter, except if it could travel on the surface. its a misnomer to call WWII subs a "submarine", better to describe them as "submersibles". Enigma enabled convoys to be re-routed, air cover denied uboats the ability to surface and relocate. Between them, these elements denied the uboat much of its offensive capability.

What caused the sinking rate of Uboats at the hands iof the allies to increase? Greater and better escorts, improved weapons and detection systems, radar on the escorts, better and dedicated ASW warfare training. The realization that it is best to form and keep together escorts as tight knit escort groups. the formation of mobile reserves, the so called hunter killer groups, roaming freely to suppress Uboats and reinforce convoys that needed it. The Leigh Light, ASV radar, effective long range air cover to give plenty of warning about approaching wolfpacks. Ahead Throwing weapons, radar with sufficient high resolution to detect even just a snorkel or periscope, but earlier at least the conning tower of a surfaced uboat trying to penetrate to the inner screen of the convoy. And most importantly, the production capacity to swamp and overwhelm the sinking capabilities of the uboats

Victory over the uboats simply cant be attributed one event or time. It was a painful slow and multifaceted process and each element really was vital to that victory. moreover, without a victory over the Uboats, nothing else was possible. It was the decisive battle of WWII. no other battle, not Midway, or Coral Sea, Alamein, Stalingrad, battle for Germany, came anywhere near it as far as importance was concerned. The losses being suffered in the Atlantic also had the potential to affect the US almost as badly as it could the UK. It is a battle underappreciated and misunderstood today as ever, I suspect because it was unglamorous and without a single decisive moment or turning point (although the March 1943 battles do come close).