Thirty submarines a month, or next to nothing
September 1939. The Kriegsmarine fields only fifty-seven submarines, far too few to strangle Allied traffic in the North Atlantic. Admiral Dönitz, who commands the submarine arm, is betting on wolfpack tactics: groups of submarines descending together on a single convoy.
But the tactic requires numbers. Yet the shipyards of Hamburg and Bremen deliver only six to eight vessels a month, when Dönitz is calling for around thirty.
Should quantity or range be favored? A simple, quickly built submarine, or a more capable oceangoing vessel that is slower to leave the slipways? The choice will shape the entire Battle of the Atlantic.
On which type of U-boat should the Kriegsmarine base its submarine war?
Dönitz makes the Type VII the backbone of the fleet: a submarine of around 750 tons, sturdy, relatively cheap, and quick to build, perfectly suited to wolfpack warfare. Production climbs to about twenty units a month by 1942. The Type IX, with its long range, is indeed built in parallel but represents only a fraction of production. Without the mass-produced Type VII, the German submarine war would have collapsed far sooner.
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