On April 27, 1945, the Red Army invaded Berlin. On the 28th, the Red Army arrived at Potsdamer Platz, which was close to the Imperial Chancellery. On the night of the 28th, Hitler, in his bunker, declared Admiral Karl Dönitz his official heir.
On April 30, Red Army soldiers planted the red flag on the roof of the Reichstag. At 3:30 p.m., Hitler shot himself.
Hitler
On 7 May, Dönitz announced Germany's unconditional surrender and sent a German representative, led by Marshal Keitel, to sign the instrument of surrender in Berlin at 12:00 p.m. on May 8 with representatives of the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. On the same day, Dönitz ordered all German submarines to surface and surrender to the Allies. The "Battle of the Atlantic" (1939-1945), the longest and largest in human history, also came to an end.
Germany surrendered
In this war, German submarines and their "wolf pack tactics" became a lingering nightmare for the Allies.
Late on the night of October 4, 1918, the German submarine UB-48 took the usual approach and once again launched a surprise attack on the unsuspecting British fleet. After the sneak attack, the 27-year-old captain, Karl Dönitz, discovered that the submarine had malfunctioned and had to surface.
In this way, Dönitz ended his career in World War I and became a prisoner. However, Dönitz, who stayed in the prisoner-of-war camp, was not at ease, and he firmly believed that submarines would play a huge role in future maritime operations.
Therefore, Dönitz, who was transformed in the prisoner of war camp, still studied various submarine tactics, and the "wolf pack tactics" had already taken shape during this period. After being repatriated, Dönitz continued to serve in the German Navy and advocated submarine warfare.
Carl Deniz
In general, the development of submarines is indeed more in line with Germany's national conditions than the development of battleships, cruisers and even aircraft carriers on the sea. As a land power country in Europe, the navy has always been a weakness for Germany, and even within Germany, the navy is in a "weak" position in the navy, army and air force.
Compared with surface ships, submarines are small in size and have a short production cycle, which can quickly increase the strength of the navy and make up for "quality" with "quantity". Moreover, with the existing strength of the German Navy, it was unrealistic to want to compete with the Royal Navy of the British Empire.
But even so, the development of German submarines has not been smooth. Hitler was still a supporter of the "giant ship cannon" in his bones, believing that battleships and cruisers were the main force in naval warfare.
Submarines are always just "supporting roles" and can only play an auxiliary role. In order to let the submarine get the attention of the Fuehrer. Dönitz decided to speak in terms of "record".
German Navy cruiser
On September 17, 1939, a German Navy U-29 submarine cruising off the coast of Ireland spotted the carrier-based aircraft carrier Brave, which was undergoing carrier-based aircraft recovery operations. And it was precisely when the German submarine discovered the brave carrier, the escort ship responsible for escorting the brave carrier was not there, which left the U-29 submarine with a golden opportunity, the captain Of Captain Schuchhart immediately ordered the U-29 to launch a torpedo at the brave aircraft carrier, after being hit by two torpedoes in succession, the hull began to tilt badly, and the sinking was inevitable.
After 20 minutes, the Aircraft Carrier Brave completely disappeared from the sea. Of the 1,202 crew members of the ship, all but 688 were rescued, and the remaining 514 (including the captain) were all buried on the seabed. The battle suddenly gave Germany a shot in the arm, and everyone suddenly realized that the submarine could have such a great power.
German U-29 submarine
Commander-in-Chief Dönitz decided to strike while it was hot, and in October he gave the then 31-year-old ace captain, Major Plainn, an order to sneak up on the British army's important port, Scarpa's Harbor. To this end, Dönitz, after obtaining a lot of information about the port, devised a very clever route for Plain, which could avoid the shipwrecks and anti-submarine nets at the entrance to Scapa Bay.
Late on the night of October 13, 1939, under the calm command of Major Plain, the U-47 submarine sneaked into Scapa Bay. At about 1 a.m. on the 14th, the submarine launched the first wave of attack on the heavy battleship in the harbor: the Royal Oak, but due to a misalignment, it caused minor abrasions.
When Plain ordered it to be reloaded and three more torpedoes were fired, the power of the torpedo explosion tore open a large hole in the Armor of the Royal Oak with a diameter of 30 feet (9.1 meters), and a large amount of seawater poured into the hull, causing a series of explosions inside the ship, and the 30,000-ton ship immediately began to capsize. 13 minutes after Plain fired the torpedo for the second time, the Royal Oak completely disappeared from the surface of Scapa Bay.
When the Royal Oak exploded, more than a thousand officers and men on board were forced to jump into the sea, and eventually more than 800 people were buried in the belly of the fish. Scarpa Bay thus became a huge naval cemetery.
German submarines attack the Royal Oak
On 17 October, when Prime Minister Churchill officially announced the sinking of the Royal Oak, Plain and his crew had returned to Wilhelmshaven and were treated like heroes. The Nazi propaganda apparatus immediately trumpeted the victory.
Hitler sent his private jet to take Plain and the crew to Berlin, and personally awarded Prieen the Knight of the Iron Cross, a huge victory that almost completely reversed Hitler's impression of submarines, and naval resources began to tilt more toward submarines. Seeing that the time had come, Dönitz decided to begin implementing his "wolf pack tactics".
Hitler received the crew of the U-47 submarine
Wolf pack tactics, in which multiple squads of submarines are used to take turns to launch underwater attacks on enemy warships and transport ships like wolves. When the German Navy uses the "wolf pack tactic", it concentrates multiple submarines to attack a sea target, and different submarine detachments form a certain angle (usually obtuse angle) between them.
One of the reasons for this is to make up for the lack of shooting accuracy. Because both submarines and Allied ships are in motion, the speed of movement of the two sides is not the same. Therefore, if you want to destroy enemy targets at once, you must form a "crossfire network" like a machine gunner to completely cover the target, which not only improves the shooting accuracy but also ensures that the target will inevitably be destroyed.
German wolf pack tactics
When wolves are on the move, 5 to 6 boats often move at the same time, hunting in the nearby waters and maintaining close contact with each other through the "Poseidon" wireless communication network. When one of the boats spotted the target, it began to track underwater, while notifying the other friendly submarines to pursue.
At the same time, if there is a Luftwaffe base nearby, the Luftwaffe will also send patrol aircraft or other seaplanes to patrol the nearby waters to provide reconnaissance information for submarine forces. Subsequently, a "wolf head" ship will be designated in the formation to direct the unified operation of the "wolf pack". After following for a period of time, the "wolf pack" was basically assembled, and the situation of the enemy army had been discovered. At this time, each submarine began to look for its own best attack position.
What followed was the formal hunting process: the captains of the submarines ordered the firing of torpedoes, one, two, three, and a deafening explosion began in the distance, followed by terrible wailing and roaring from the crew of the target ship. That was the moment when death came.
Once the attack is successful. The German submarines would immediately change from the active attacking side to the fleeing side. Because Allied battleships and cruisers would quickly pursue submarines after merchant ships were sunk, and submarines had a natural disadvantage in speed compared to surface ships. German submarines must immediately dive to a deeper position and turn on radio silence to avoid being "chased" by allied warships.
German Wolf Tactical Submarine
On June 22, 1940, the more than a month-long Battle of France ended. After the German occupation of France, the ports on the west coast of France and the Bay of Biscay were transformed into German submarine bases, and submarines began to be produced at full capacity. "Wolf pack tactics" began to peak in this year, and "wolf pack tactics" were invincible for a while. The highest German submarine set in the year was "sinking 38 Allied merchant ships in two days." ”
In 1942, German submarines sank a total of 471 Allied ships, bringing the total tonnage to 2.2 million tons. Among them, the British suffered the greatest losses. In 1942, the German "wolf pack" sank a new record number of Allied ships: a total of 1,160 merchant ships were sunk in the whole year, with a total tonnage of 6.3 million tons, while their own loss rate was less than 7%. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had to admit: "The only thing that disturbed me in World War II was the German U-boat. ”
However, the honeymoon period of "wolf pack tactics" is not long. At the beginning of the war, the arrogant British Royal Navy did not pay attention to German submarines, but soon the number of losses of merchant ships plummeted, allowing the British to immediately restore the "escort system" of the First World War. But the severe shortage of anti-submarine aircraft and frigates forced the British to step up the construction of corvettes with displacements of less than 2,000 tons and equipped with artillery, sonar and depth charges.
Since 1940, the British army has begun to put into use new weapons such as newly developed MK-VII anti-submarine bombs and airborne ASV-MKII radars, which has alleviated the urgent needs of the time to a certain extent.
In January 1941, British escort ships were equipped with HF/DF high-frequency direction finders and airborne radar ASV X, a new radar that adopted centimeter waves, improving detection capabilities and circumventing German signal receivers. Soon, anti-submarine aircraft equipped with new radars and "Leigh" searchlights also appeared in large numbers, and the "wolves" could no longer act arbitrarily in the dark. The concealment on which German submarines depend is being lost.
British escort
A very important episode is that after the German submarine U-110 was captured by the Allies on May 9, 1941, a complete set of radio transmitters of the "Enniger code" military code machine was retrieved from the submarine, and when the German submarines contacted each other, they were encrypted by the Enniger code, which was called "undecipherable" at the time. Since then, the Allies have begun to take the absolute initiative in intelligence. The bridges that organized the "wolf pack tactics" were completely shaken from the ground.
At the same time, the Allies' radio direction finding and reconnaissance capabilities were improving. In the summer of 1942, high-frequency radio line surveyors began to be assembled in large numbers of Allied escort convoys, which could detect radio waves emitted by German submarines and reverse their location to avoid the attack of wolves.
Radio transmitters
In May 1943, Dönitz's famed "wolf pack" was devastated——— and his submarine force sank more than 30 ships in a single month. Wolf Pack Tactics officially failed. Since then, the power of wolves in the Atlantic Ocean has been greatly weakened, and "submarine warfare" has become more and more inadequate. The destruction of Dönitz's wolves was a foregone conclusion.
Although a cadre of German generals led by Dönitz, willing to wage an unjust war for Hitler, were forever nailed to the column of shame of history. But the outstanding military talents and advanced strategic ideas they showed in the war are what we still have to learn today.
Because victory is not always on the side of justice, and the bad guys are often more enlightened than the good guys.