What impact did u-boats have on the WW2?
Background: The first submarine used in warfare was the “Turtle”, It failed to sink a British warship in New Yotk Harbor during the American Revolution. The first submarine to sink an enemy warship was the CSS Hunley, sinking the USS Housitonic outside Charleston Harbor in 1864. Work on submarines continued, with the Spanish developing the first practical submarine capable of firing torpedoes while submerged in 1888. All this to let you know that the Germans did not invent some singularly diabolical device for conducting marine warfare. The German Unterseeboot (U-boat) gained prominence in WW I, first striking the British naval cruisers at Scapa Flow. With the German High Seas Fleet bottled up, the submarine became their commerce raider, a role originally envisioned for cruisers. Range limits restricted most of their activity to the waters around the British Isles, including the sinking of the Lusitania on May 7, 1915. Because the ship was a passenger liner, even though it carried carg
