Stupid question, that I've been pondering for some time...
Has anyone done any serious analysis on what would have happened if all sides had used subs as primarily offensive minelayers in WWII? If, instead of engaging convoys and their escorts at sea, U-boats had simply mined all major Allied harbors and their approaches, each boat running out and back as rapidly as possible, could they have won the Atlantic by default? Likewise, if we had focused sub design and operations on minelaying, could we have effectively blockaded Japan during 1942, bringing the historical supply disaster forward a couple of years?
I am certainly no expert, but I would think that the immediate effect of increased mine-laying would have been the rapid expansion of mine-sweeping and similar related technology. Mine-sweeping does not require major vessel support and it strikes me that sweeping them out of American harbors by local vessels could have been done much faster than laying them from Germany.
Big D, a problem is that submarines had limited cargo capacities. They only fired torpedoes when they had a target. But mines would (conceivably) need to have been laid across large areas. So, for efficiency of torpedoes (1 or 2 per ship sunk) vs Mines (many needed to block a harbor), torpedoes win.
Second, there are only so many areas that you can mine effectively. The big thing about Submarines was that they could stalk and attack their targets at any time, anywhere. With mines, a submarine would have to locate a bottleneck to trap, and then stay there laying mines continuously- presumably eventually being destroyed by Anti-Sub forces that now know where to look.
The latest issue of Aviation History magazine has an article on the Japanese I-400 series aircraft carrying subs. Fascinating stuff.
A big advantage of aircraft carriers is the relatively high speed of aircraft. An aircraft at 300 knots can get in 10 sorties in the time that a surface ship makes one. Conventional submarines in WWII made 19 knots on the surface and perhaps 9 submerged.
And the 9 submerged was only for a couple of hours at best b/c of limitations in battery tech. Nuclear subs wouldn't have this issue, but...
And sonar signature? how about Magnetic Anomaly Detector signature....
Commenting by HaloScan
