[ichso]

Originally Posted by RR

Stalin, for all his bloodthirstiness, and for the Communist ideology's central focus on world domination, was certainly a cautious and prudent expansionist.

Ouch.
There never was any communism in this world as it was intended, was it ? I mean, all there was were some cruel dictatorships that tried to establish themselves a relationship to Marx' theories without acting in any way in the sense of the idea of communism (which was neither world domination nor supressing the own people).

I think you need to re-read the things I've written. My contention is that the American fleet boats were a little better in most respects than U-Boats, although there were aspects of U-Boats that were better than fleet boats. I have said that the Americans could have won the Pacific with a fleet of Type IXs. I've said the Germans could have lost the Atlantic with a fleet of fleet boats, even though they were demonstrably incrementally better boats.

True. What often gets lost in such discussions is whether to focus on pure technical issues or whether to take the situation into account to.
The fleet boats were better in most regards. Radar technology was an overall allied advantage and their greater size also allowed for things like more fuel, tubes and torpedo reserves. I don't know about the engines though, whether they were also just bigger or also better in terms of engineering.
If taking the war situation into account, one should consider that in the atlantic the fleet boats might not have been able to play out all of their strengths. Imagine a Gato submarine travelling only a few hundred kilometers to attack a convoy, getting damaged by heavy ASW protection and having to return to port soon in order for repairs. They probably would have carried half their fuel reserves around the sea all the time without ever using it. And their harbour approachings would have been just as frequent as the ones of the U-boats, no matter how much more fuel and torpedoes they could carry.
The U-Boats doctrine was more one of being undetected as much as possible, and smaller size maked them harder to spot, harder to ping by sonar and harder to detect by radar (although that wasn't an issue when the VII's desing was first layed out). And you could save resources by putting as much firepower as possible into as small vessels as possible.

And besides all the tech and war geek talking, I'm just glad that the war turned against germany. I don't want to say that the _good_ guys won, but surely the _right_ side had ended it. A prolonged nazi regime would be the worst thing the world would have faced in it's entire history until today.