Brought it up in another thread, but I'm about halfway through War Beneath the Sea, which compares-contrasts the major (USN, RN, Kriegsmarine, IJN) submarine forces during WWII. Comprehensive but a good read nonetheless, and makes some very interesting observations on how the pre-war doctrines, training, and sub designs panned out once the shooting started.
The author is British, so I expected the usual English habit of "we did it better than anyone else; and if anyone did it better than us, it's because they copied/learned from us," but there's pleasingly little to none of that, and he's very clear-eyed about the goods-and-others of each service. The US and Germans had good boats but their prewar tactics and training turned out to be wrong. The Brits had lousy boats but good morale and improvised quickly. The Japanese had over-specialized boats and never adapted their doctrine (ignoring merchant shipping, for example).
One interesting statistic he cited: of all the USN submarine COs when war broke out, only about 40% were still in command by Dec 1942. Apparently SUBPAC was absolutely ruthless about relieving skippers who weren't sufficiently aggressive on patrol. The abysmal failure rate of US torpedoes certainly has to be factored in...boats were emptying full spreads of fish at point-blank range under ideal conditions and not getting any hits; I'd be somewhat reluctant to go in hard, too...but he makes the point that it's almost impossible to train and select for shooting-war aggressiveness during peacetime.
The author is British, so I expected the usual English habit of "we did it better than anyone else; and if anyone did it better than us, it's because they copied/learned from us," but there's pleasingly little to none of that, and he's very clear-eyed about the goods-and-others of each service. The US and Germans had good boats but their prewar tactics and training turned out to be wrong. The Brits had lousy boats but good morale and improvised quickly. The Japanese had over-specialized boats and never adapted their doctrine (ignoring merchant shipping, for example).
One interesting statistic he cited: of all the USN submarine COs when war broke out, only about 40% were still in command by Dec 1942. Apparently SUBPAC was absolutely ruthless about relieving skippers who weren't sufficiently aggressive on patrol. The abysmal failure rate of US torpedoes certainly has to be factored in...boats were emptying full spreads of fish at point-blank range under ideal conditions and not getting any hits; I'd be somewhat reluctant to go in hard, too...but he makes the point that it's almost impossible to train and select for shooting-war aggressiveness during peacetime.
) downward spike corresponds with my time in the fleet almost exactly. Wonder how much of that is from cracks and how much from other causes.
