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Zantham · 03-24-08, 04:46 PM

Yes as Ducimus said they were underwater bombs... H2O2 is very unstable and explosive.

However the Walther boat didn't have to outrun the escorts or HK groups, they just had to go fast enough that the destroyers couldn't use their sonars to track them. Imagine chasing one of these things that had gone deep (possibly 900 feet deep?). Now its moving away from you at over 20kts. You can hear it, but when you try to catch up to it your sonar guy goes deaf. So you have to slow down again to get a bearing in case the wily uboat captain changed course, dropped a decoy, or whatever. Remember he can go 200kms at 24kts. And at any time he thinks he lost the escorts go back to regular battery propulsion to go silent. By the time he has to surface (or snorkel?) hes over 300kms away!

So it would not have been quite so easy to catch as the regular uboats. It would have brought another happy time in 1943 maybe, but its very likely the Allies would have adapted their tactics and eventually started sinking them again, tho maybe not as easily as they caught the regular uboats.

I remember reading somewhere of an XXI captain doing an attack on an escorted group. As he closed he dropped some decoys that the destroyers picked up, and they could hear the XXI going, but they had no idea what they were dealing with, and because of the speeds the uboat was making they dismissed it as an unexplained phenomenon. The XXI did get into position, and would have fired, except the war was just over at this point. He then broke off and continued to wherever, never having come under attack.

03-24-08, 04:46 PM	#9
Zantham 中国水兵 Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Canada Posts: 283 Downloads: 63 Uploads: 1	Yes as Ducimus said they were underwater bombs... H2O2 is very unstable and explosive. However the Walther boat didn't have to outrun the escorts or HK groups, they just had to go fast enough that the destroyers couldn't use their sonars to track them. Imagine chasing one of these things that had gone deep (possibly 900 feet deep?). Now its moving away from you at over 20kts. You can hear it, but when you try to catch up to it your sonar guy goes deaf. So you have to slow down again to get a bearing in case the wily uboat captain changed course, dropped a decoy, or whatever. Remember he can go 200kms at 24kts. And at any time he thinks he lost the escorts go back to regular battery propulsion to go silent. By the time he has to surface (or snorkel?) hes over 300kms away! So it would not have been quite so easy to catch as the regular uboats. It would have brought another happy time in 1943 maybe, but its very likely the Allies would have adapted their tactics and eventually started sinking them again, tho maybe not as easily as they caught the regular uboats. I remember reading somewhere of an XXI captain doing an attack on an escorted group. As he closed he dropped some decoys that the destroyers picked up, and they could hear the XXI going, but they had no idea what they were dealing with, and because of the speeds the uboat was making they dismissed it as an unexplained phenomenon. The XXI did get into position, and would have fired, except the war was just over at this point. He then broke off and continued to wherever, never having come under attack.