The remainder were either on passage out (or home) or refitting in Germany. Ww2dbaseIn 1939 Admiral Dönitz, Hitler's flag officer of U-boats, had only 26 submarines capable of operating in the North Atlantic, of which just one-third could normally be kept on station at the same time. In 1944, many of the surviving boats were retrospectively fitted with a snorkel device in 1944 which allowed the use of their diesel engines whilst submerged. These later boats which now carried fourteen torpedoes (some externally) had a good percentage of reserve buoyancy which when matched to the effective layout of their air-tanks allowed the boat to become submerged in less than 30 seconds. Speed and range of all were essentially the same. These first submarines were quickly developed further through the VIIB, built between 19, which was slightly faster than the VIIA, and had two rudders for greater agility, to the VIIC which differed only in the addition of an active sonar and a few minor mechanical improvements, making it 2 feet longer and 8 tons heavier. With a surface range was 4,300 nautical miles at 12 knots these boats were really only capable of conducting patrols in the eastern Atlantic. Just 64.5 metres in length, they displaced 745 tons submerged, and carried 11 torpedoes. Ww2dbaseThe first ten units, U-27 through U-36 (designated Type VIIA) of the class were completed in 1936-37. During the 1914-18 war German submarines had used a double hull design - the single hull with saddle tanks, as incorporated in Second World War U-boats accelerated and simplified construction but conversely made the boats more vulnerable to depth charge attacks. This design, began before the expiry of the Versailles Treaty, was later "stretched" to become the basic Type VII (note that Type IV to VI were abandoned as designs) which would ultimately become the workhorse of Karl Dönitz's submarine fleet, with over 650 being completed before construction ceased in 1944. Thus, what might be termed the "father" of the later U-Boat, as used in Adolf Hitler's war, was the so-called Project CV707 - a single-hulled design, with saddle tanks for the Finnish submarine Vetehinen. These included the setting-up of design bureaus abroad to undertake design tasks for friendly "client" states. Ww2dbaseIn order to keep their design teams together the German Navy, between the wars, adopted a number of devious ways to circumvent the restrictions. ![]() Ww2dbaseFollowing the near defeat of Great Britain by starvation during World War I the Germans were prohibited under the terms of the Peace Treaty from building submarines (U-boats). This article refers to the entire Type VII-class it is not about an individual vessel.
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