Bullwinkle58 -> RE: HOW TO REFUEL SUB AT SEA? (7/26/2010 6:11:20 PM)
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ORIGINAL: Ametysth Germans did do refuelling operations before milk-cows, which become operational only later half of 1942. They usually topped the tanks of VII type subs arriving to patrol areas from larger, longer range type IX subs. U-194 did two such operations I'm aware of and U-547 received fuel from non-milk cow at least once. All of these were needed to allow Type VII operate in US East Coast. A Type IX was a milch cow in function, if not in name. Same idea. The USN didn't have the disparity in design sizes to allow this. Nor were we stupid enough to employ the baby-sitting radio comms needed for mid-ocean meet-ups when using manual star-sights to navigate. Again, Pacific=big. And we trusted our COs to be lone hunters. They didn't need to phone home every day so SubPac could wipe their noses. Carpenter's Locker is another name for DC locker. So US boats do have one (name doesn't mean there is only wood inside). The USN calls DC lockers "DC lockers." Subs don't have them. DC equipment is stored in the operating spaces. I qualified in subs in 1982; my father qualified in 1960 on a WWII Guppy-modded boat that is in AE. I spent time aboard as a child. I think I know a bit about submairne DC. Germans were perhaps better equipped to handle the torpedoes (they had deck canisters), Yes, EXTERNAL stowage of reloads demonstrates the German lack of respect for the lives of their crews, as well as air power changing ASW. Lunacy. but they most certainly weren't designed to transfer them on mid-ocean either. Claiming that USN couldn't have jury-rigged similar system if truly wanted/needed to do so is just silly. Especially if one remembers US armed forces reputation of ad-hoc equipment and improvisation when needed. You can't s**t a crane in mid-ocean. A MK14 weighs about 3000 pounds, and is pretty sinkable. Not to mention wave action and the HUGE diameter of a torpedo-loading hatch, and the reserve-buoyance-killing volume of the forward TR. Flooding it was a non-recoverable event, and fleet boats had no free-board. In perfectly calm seas, maybe. In any sort of sea-state, no. Not to mention, again, the exposure to airborne ASW. The conundrum for the USN was that doing torpedo transfer far enough forward to matter exposed two boats to unacceptable risks of a multi-hour surfaced operation. We had no torpedo shortage after the first months. We had tenders. We had Seabees. We built our subs to be fast and long-range (the Type VII was used far against its design parameters range-wise.) We didn't need to do risky torpedo transfers--or carry the gear to do them 12,000 miles out and back--because we had mobile submarine support, and set up new bases as we went forward. The Germans didn't and couldn't. Oh, and about ranges; 500 nm from France? Think again. We are talking about type VII subs operating in Gulf of Mexico, Lesser Antilles and on entrances of Galveston. 70 days patrols in boats originally designed to operate around British Isles. Ranges are about the same as US fleet boats faced, if not more. Snort. Yeah, for a few months. For the majority of the U-boats' short, exciting career, they operated in mid-Atlantic. Then they died, by the hundreds. When the German navy conducts a SUCCESSFUL submarine campaign, get back to me. They've had two tries, and failed miserably both times.
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