Type XXI (1944) On someones special wish Kappa
U 2511 lies between two other type XXI U-boats in Bergen. On the left is a type VII, 1945
You can consider these as the first modern era submarines. We have here a U-boat with 2 hulls and with high underwater speed, but the Walter-Turbine is not integrated in this type. The first Submarine of this type,
U 2501, entered service on 17th June 1944 and later around 1300 submarines would be under construction. Many parts of these submarines were precasted, which allowed a faster development. As you can see, we have here now the typical modern submarine design which looks like a drop. This reduced the water resistance and helped increasing the underwater speed along with a new system of Diesel and E-motors, which made this U-boat actually faster underwater than surfaced. The XXI-class also now had a snorkel which allowed air conditioning and battery charging underwater which lead to the possibility of staying very long submerged. Also, a maximal depht of over 300m was now possible.
You can see the two hulls in their detail on the right and they are black marked on the left.
These U-boats were designed for operations who took at least 5 month, which also explains the huge range of this type. A improvement was also the usage of several radar equipment now along with a high sensitive unterwater listening device with 48 microphones. For better escaping out of dangerous situations the type XXI-class also could emit foam confusing the allied destroyers by creating fake echos. New is also the fact that the torpedo tubes on the rear are gone now, instead there are 6 tubes in the bow. With some torpedo improvements in the late war (which I will write about too), we have here a U-boat which is fast underwater, silent due to the new E-machines and a special "creeping mode", hard to catch and with the abillity to detect targets who are extremely far away. Another special thing is that the allied sonar was ineffective when the U-boat was faster than 12/13 knots underwater. This lead to this situation on 30th April 1945:
U 2511 dives directly under a brithis Sullolk-class cruiser and is not detected by the surrounding destroyers (the germans decided not to sink the ship since the war would be over soon). When the war ended 1 week later, the german commander looked for the captain of the cruiser and told him about this. The british were astonished about the capability of the type XXI and captured some of them. The captured submarines were divided: for the UK, USA and France. Only one submarine returned to Germany:
U 2540, also know as
Wilhelm Bauer. You can still see
Wilhelm Bauer in the port of Bremen. These submarines could have dealt a lot damage to the Allies, but the development took way to long to be effective.
U 2540 or Wilhelm Bauer in Bremen
Data
- crew: 57
- shipyard: Blohm & Voß, Hamburg; Deschimag AG Weser, Bremen and F.Schichau, Danzig
- displacement: 1621 ts surfaced and 1819 ts submerged
- length: 76,7m
- width: 8m
- depth: 6,2m
- maximal depht: 330m
- fuel: 250 ts
- fastest submerging: 18 seconds
- engine: 2 Diesel MAN; 2 E-machines plus 1 for "creeping"
- engine performance: 4000ps surfaced, 4200 - 4800 ps submerged + 226 ps creeping
- speed: 15,5 knots surfaced, 17,5 knots submerged and 3,5 knots when creeping
- range: 15500 sm at 10 knots surfaced, 110 sm at 10 knots submerged
- armament: 6 torpedo tubes in the bow (533mm standart caliber) + optional mines and 4 X 30mm flak