The German U-Boat
Are you scared of going out to sea? Would you ever venture on a boat? How about being torpedoed by an enemy submarine? Well German U-boats, which is an acronym for Unterseebo-ot (“Undersea boat”) were assigned to torpedo fuel tankers and merchant vessels during the first and second World War. If you have ever read “The Cay” by Theodore Taylor, the German U-boats had represented sharks.
Submarines had been equipped with a periscope that had a clear view of the surface. The periscope was a useful tool for hounding Allied, or enemy, vessels. Just like the shark, which intimidates with the fin protruding out of the surface of the sea, the U-Boat had come to bear a similar resemblance. Sharks attack swiftly and deadly; the German U- boat was just as swift but a hundred times deadlier. The first German submarine was the U-1 and was built in 1905. During World War one, Germany had been the first country to employ the service of submarine warfare in the First World War. During World War 2 Germany had dominated the “Battle of the Atlantic” until the allies developed new anti-submarine tactics. Their targets were usually oil tankers, fuel ships and merchant vessels.
Britain had been a country that aided the Allies’ efforts had depended heavily on imported goods. If the Germans could get to the merchant vessels, Britain might lose the war and the Allies would risk losing everything. Germany had then chosen to destroy fuel ships and oil tankers. If these high priority targets were destroyed, the Allies fuel chain would be severely weakened, thus Allied ships, planes, tanks, and everything else ran by fuel, would be halted to a complete stop. Fuel ships and Oil tankers, which were easy prey for U-Boats, had been vulnerable due to their size, lack of speed, and the fact that they required heavy amounts of fuel, but eventually this changed. The Allies eventually figured how to counter the oppressive U-Boats. The Allies used coordinated attacks, or hunts, that resembled the way medieval England’s navy had searched for pirates.