Why So Much Time "Wasted" In WWII U-Boat Training?

So I read this rather interesting, if sometimes overwrought, account of some American scuba divers recovering a German submarine off the New Jersey coast.

Part of the interesting backstory was a history of one German sub’s commissioning, initial crew training period, and launch on its maiden voyage. What struck me most was that this took a year, maybe a bit more, from the time the boat was completed and commissioned, in 1944, to the time it embarked on its first mission.

Now, I’ve never trained for submarine duty, but I know from those who have, especially in today’s subs, that it’s incredibly difficult and time-consuming to figure out just how to get the sub to surface roughly as many times as it dives (as one bit of Navy dive-officer gallows humor apparently has it). And I know that the efficiency and training of the German U-Boat crews, though their boats were obviously not nearly as complex as the ones afloat today, was nothing to be scoffed at, involving as it did elements of surface navigation, underwater armaments training, submerged sailing and evasive tactics, and survival in an insanely dangerous underwater death trap. So I’m not saying it’s easy or should be quick.

It just struck me that by 1944, when Germany was so clearly in desperate straits, subs were being lost all the time, and yet the military was committed to continuing the submarine war to the bitter end, they might have rushed the training a bit more. It’s not just how long the training and shakeout period took; it’s that the surviving crewmen seemed to have a lot of anecdotes about going home for leave, visiting wives and kids, hanging out in the bars of Hamburg, and so forth during the year of preparation – not exactly a 24/7 schedule of racing to sea. Again, easy for me to say, and given the fate that these guys faced, and the tremendous mortality rates that had already taken place in the U-Boat service, maybe it’s not surprising that they were neither eager, nor logistically able, to put together a sea-ready crew (though it’s noteworthy that the crew, though scarily young, seemed to have a good number of guys with U-Boat service; a mixed crew, but hardly greenhorns).

1944 had seens Stalingrad and was approaching the time when the Nazis would be manning the barricades with 14 and 60 year old Volksturm conscripts (though I realize, to be callous, that there was less materiel and investment at risk in sending a kid with a rusty blunderbuss to get killed by a Cossack than in jeopardizing a multimillion dollar U-Boat by sending it out before it was ready).

And it doesn’t rival the somewhat-odd descriptions from, say, the early days of the Civil War, when dashing young cavalry officers were taking time out from battle to squire ladies to the balls of Richmond (as in Henry Kyd Douglas’s excellent narrative of his time on Jackson’s staff. But then, the Civil War, at least at first, wasn’t a “total” war, as WWII had become by 1944.

Am I just unrealistic in thinking that things could have moved somewhat faster in launching a U-Boat, in a war when the U.S. was churning out bomber planes by the thousands each month? Was U-Boat training and shakedown that complicated and time-consuming? Or were there aspects of the war, even in the last days, that moved at such a “comparatively stately” pace out of necessity, inattention, inefficiency, . . . .?

It doesn’t directly address your question, but i’ve read that it took about a year of training in World War II for the U.S. Army to take a batch of raw recruits and turn them into a useful infantry unit.

I don’t know that there is a factual answer other than the fact that Germany, as you say, was in dire need of submarines and if had hadn’t required so long for U-boat training they wouldn’t have done it.

channeling mrAru:

Current submarine training for enlisted is a 3 month process. This is the same as US training length as of WW2. The main difference is that in WW2 German submarine crews were often taken straight from training into a brand new vessel which had to go through its sea trial before deployment. Even at the height of the war, the German Navy was accutely aware of the necessity of sea trials. They ensured that the shipyards that were producing the submarines were providing a product whose dive to surface ratio was approximately 1:1. :smiley:

Currently, sea trials last anywhere from 3 months to 1 year depending upon the number of problems encountered and the number of repairs required before sea trials can recommence. It would not be unusual for a trainee not to go into combat for a full year depending upon follow on training required for their specialty [eg radioman, diesel mechanic, ect] The exigencies of war do not change training and shake-down requirements. One lesson teh Germans learned in WW1 is that if you rush training, the only thing that happens is that your casualty rate increases, and the German Kriegsmarine learned its lessons well. [near the end of ww1, they were cranking out the old form of uboats, there were a few incedents where a new crew ended up sinking their vessels because they neglected to close theirt induction valves…something about diving with a 14 inch hole in the hull and water coming in changes the dive to surface ratio to less than 1:1 … :smack: ]

Interesting to think about the urgency of the time…

Weren’t there also some periods of during that time (near or during 1944) when U-boats were entirely pulled out of Atlantic operations because Allied antisubmarine forces had made the loss rate insustainable?

I have seen the observation made (and have not followed it up to verify it) that Germany never quite grasped the concept of total mobilization. I have read stories of German factories continuing to run a single shift a day (where U.S. plants typically ran three shifts a day, never closing) and of similar practices that we would have considered lackadaisical continuing throughout the war.

I repeat that I have not verified this, but it might be an avenue to pursue when investigating the long lead times.

I don’t think so. I was just watching something on TV about u-boats and they said that towards the end of the war, the planes used to go after the u-boats were planes that would otherwise be dropping bombs on Germany, so the u-boats felt that they were helping out their homeland by continuing to operate even under exceptionally heavy losses. The more planes that went after u-boats, the less bombs got dropped on Germany, or at least that’s how the u-boat guys perceived it.

Of course the history channel perhaps isn’t the most reliable source of info so maybe someone with a bit more knowledge can clarify.

Earlier in the war, u-boats played havoc with shipping because there was a gap in the areas that planes could cover. Once longer range planes were built and the gap disappeared, u-boat attacks on shipping became much less effective. They may have effectively been stopped, but I don’t think they actually stopped operating.

It continued until Stalingrad. Hitler was concerned that putting the German economy on a war footing would be too much strain on the populace. After Stalingrad and the failure to destroy the Soviet Union, the need became obvious to everyone.

This page has information on the aircraft the Allies used against U-boats, and includes the number of U-boats sunk by each aircraft type. Looking at these numbers, it’s hard to tell if ‘a plane hunting U-boats was a plane that wasn’t bombing Germany’. The B-17 Flying Fortress, a very important plane in the strategic bombing campaign, only claimed 11 U-boat kills. But the B-24 Liberator, which also has strategic bombing value, sank 72 U-boats. Many of the planes used to hunt U-boats were specialized aircraft that wouldn’t have any value as strategic bombers. Examples include the PBY Catalina and Short Sunderland flying boats (37/27 U-boats sunk, respectively) and carrier based planes (73 U-boats between the TBF Avenger, F4F Wildcat and Fairey Swordfish). Some antisubmarine patrol aircraft were obsolete bombers that wouldn’t stand a chance in heavily defended skies. Some, though, might have been used as strategic bombers if the U-boats hadn’t been a threat.

Regarding U-boat training, I don’t think the intensity of the training program can be judged by the anecdotes shared by U-boat veterans. 50 or 60 years on, someone is more likely to remember a trip home or nights spent in bars than they are to remember an eight-hour lesson about valves.

One last thing: once it became very clear that the war was unwinnable for them, the Germans began to use U-boat crews and trainees as well as naval base staff in infantry units. (Not quite Volkssturm, though, IIRC.) From anything I’ve read, they didn’t seem to take much care in training them for this purpose.

[QUOTE=Roches]
Some antisubmarine patrol aircraft were obsolete bombers that wouldn’t stand a chance in heavily defended skies. Some, though, might have been used as strategic bombers if the U-boats hadn’t been a threat.

[QUOTE]
Even obsolete and/or specialized aircraft are a drain on limited strategic aviation supplies - fuel, spare parts, trained aircrew etc.

Diving a WWII submarine was a very complex process-virtually the entire crew had to participate. and get to their stations, perform their tasks in the ABSOLUTE CORRECT ORDER, and do it in seconds. It takes a lot of practice for a group of young men to do this reliably. As was pointed out, closing all of the valves in the correct order was a must-the boat would not dive quickly enough to escape a depth-charge dropping airplane, if this was not done correctly. Even the cook had to securehis pots and pans…the crash of an unsecured pot might be enough to betray a submerging sub.
Unrelated point: I’ve read that some WWII German subs used liquid mercury as ballast…and there is concern that mercury leaking from these rusting hulls could contaminate the sea…is this a real problem?

Interestingly, in this same book they told a story of one U-Boat being sent to re-supply some Axis base/ally (near Africa?) with tons of mercury, but it was clear in that case that the mercury was cargo, not (primarily) ballast.

From what little I’ve read, the dramatic decline in U-Boat efficiency (and jump in U-Boat mortality rate, to the point where supposedly 75% of all U-Boat crews commissioned during the war were captured or kiled) from the beginning of the war to the last couple of years had to do not only with longer-range sub-hunting planes, but with vastly improved overall Allied tactics, not least of which was the Ultra intercepts. In fact, in this book, the divers ultimately identified the mystery sub off of N.J. in large part by reading the Ultra intercepts, as the Allies had been intercepting pretty much all of the traffic to/from that (and the other) U-Boats right up till its last days. Radar also played a big role once it came in, as that generation of subs apparently depended heavily on the ability to do most of its sailing un-submerged, and speed and navigability dropped dramatically once they were force underwater for protracted periods.

I agree, the training period is not really portrayed as a picnic even in this books, and even the trips to the bars had to have been, by late '44, more occasional grim sorrow-drowning than careless revelry. I was just surprised that the commander had any time to be heading off home to sail with his son or that the schedule (and the ground-transport logistics!) allowed any of the crewmen, let alone most, the opportunity for visting old school friends in their remote hometowns, as it seems to have done.

I guess overall the whole enterprise was necessarily “inefficient,” once the easy pickings days of sinking entire convoys disappeared. Inherently, sailing a hundred days or however long it took to sneak circuitously from Germany or occupied countries to the New York shipping lanes, only to have a week or two of hunting, at best, before fuel and supplies ran out, would be a dicey endeavor at best.

Well the U-boats were commanded by Karl Dönitz, who was reckoned to be one of the most aggressive and active German high commanders in WW2, and an ex-u-boat man himself. I doubt he would have allowed his crews to waste much time on inessential tasks during their working-up period.

Don’t forget, the Germans were “winning” the battle of the Atlantic up till May 1943 (generally this month is considered a turning point due to the battle for convoy ONS-5).

The B-24 Liberator, mentioned by Roches, was a very important anti-submarine aircraft due to its very long range; in the RAF at least, Coastal Command had a running battle with Bomber Command to release even a tiny number of B-24s for A/S duty- until its introduction, there was a significant “air gap” between the US mainland and Iceland, which the U-boats exploited mercilessly.

The early Liberator models sent to Britain and assigned to RAF Coastal Command were designed with U-boat and surface ship hunting in mind, not land bombing. They had no turbochargers (not needed at low altitudes), no self-sealing fuel tanks (would have taken up fuel capacity and added weight), and far fewer gun turrets (the target can fire back, but not heavily), and they just wouldn’t have survived in defended airspace. There just weren’t that many B-17’s that ever served the role, and it shouldn’t be surprising that the planes that flew most of the missions would get most of the kills.