NEW U-BOATS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 April 1940, Page 6

NEW U-BOATS

GERMANY'S SUBMARINE WEAKNESS PROVISION OF CREWS. EXPERIENCED MEN SCARCE. The time is at hand when the German Navy should be taking delivery of some of the new submarines ordered last summer, writes the naval correspondent of the "Manchester Guardian." From now onwards they have planned a constant stream of new vessels built to one or two standardised designs to facilitate mass production. We can estimate to within a very little what that output, is likely to be. The Nazi propagandists boast, of one new submarine a day are, of course, fantastic. At the best they will, average two new boats a week; in six months the yards will not be able to keep up to that average. In the outcome, it will be surprising to those who make a close study of shipbuilding matters if more than 80 new U-boats are put into service this year.

On the material side alone that calls for an enormous effort, but. there is another factor of even greater importance. and certainly of greater difficulty. 1 The provision of 2800 trained and skilled officers and men to work the boats will tax all the organising powers of the German Admiralty. It is not 1 alone the fact that anything from six to nine years’ experience is required on active service at sea to build competent key men such as the command- ! ing officer and the senior chief petty officers. There is also the factor, not present to anything like the same extent when last Germany was commissioning new U-boats on a large scale, that so many of her skilled men have been lost in the first five months of the operations. Certainly more than a thousand of the men who started their training in submarines five years ago have been lost with the boats that the Allies have sunk. SIGNIFICANT FACT. The significance of this, in its bearing on the events of the last few months, lies in the system under which submarines are manned. The crew is not enrolled as a team. A proportion 1 of the men, and especially the senior responsible men, must be experienced, a portion can be partly experienced—that is to say, they may have done one or two commissions in submarines —and a portion can be men newly

drafted from short training schools. In the last war. when losses of U-boats averaged under two a month for the first two and a-half years of the war. the German Navy built up a numerically large personnel of men with actual war experience by the time she came to her big effort and the commissioning of 87 new boats in 1917. Those men could be distributed into key positions in the new vessels and the remainder of the crew made up from the training flotillas and from the shore establishments. There had been thirty months in which to give thorough training. This time there has not been thirty weeks —and the pool of key-men has been drained. We must not exaggerate the difficulties which this creates for the German

Naval Command, but it is quite evident that they exist, and that they must have an effect on the efficiency of the next onslaught on our merchant shipping. In one important respect German practice differs from ours. The com-

manding officer of a submarine is not. invariably, a trained submarine man. The technical work of running the boat is left to subordinates. He is "the attacking officer.” It is a curious system, and it would certainly not be effective if the main purpose of the U-boats was use as fighting ships. Submarine tactics in such a case arc highly specialised. Attack against merchantmen calls for different characteristics. and as we know from the U-boat men of 1917 and 1918 the degree of accuracy in handling the submarine in such attacks is far lower than we expect from our submarine commanders. The fact, therefore, that Germany has not. been able to give the long training—some eight years all told —that British submarine officers have before they can qualify for command may not seriously hamper her in the actual commands of new boats.

OTHER KEY MEN. When we come to other key men the position is different. Under the German system a great deal of technical responsibility rests on the first, lieutenant, and more still rests on the technical warrant and chief petty officers. and it i s precisely those men| who are lacking. I In our own Navy a volunteer fori submarines is transferred when he has reached the rating ol able seaman, at, the age of about 21. No one younger goes into the branch. He makes slow progress until 'after some six years experience he may qualify as petty officer coxswain, to hold that post in one of the smaller types of submarine. In another three he is due for advancement to i?h.i»f petty officer and may)

take up duty as the captain's responsible hand in one of the large types. Much the same rale of progression obtains in other specialist, branches —as. for example, the engine-room and lhe electrical department. So far as junior officers are concerned. our system does not normally send a young lieutenant on regular service in a submarine until he has done eight months' training, partly in a fully commissioned boat. Then he does three years as a third officer, followed by four years as first lieutenant, before being entrusted with a command. Tie is therefore about 2!) before he takes over full responsibility and has had at least seven years’ sea experience in submarines behind him.