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    Type VII U-Boats
    Type VII U-Boats
    Type VII U-Boats
    Ebook141 pages36 minutes

    Type VII U-Boats

    By Roger Chesneau

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    About this ebook

    The ShipCraft series provides in-depth information about building and modifying model kits of famous warship types. Lavishly illustrated, each book takes the modeller through a brief history of the subject class, highlighting differences between sister-ships and changes in their appearance over their careers. This includes paint schemes and camouflage, featuring colour profiles and highly-detailed line drawings and scale plans. The modelling section reviews the strengths and weaknesses of available kits, lists commercial accessory sets for super-detailing of the ships, and provides hints on modifying and improving the basic kit. This is followed by an extensive photographic gallery of selected high-quality models in a variety of scales, and the book concludes with a section on research references books, monographs, large-scale plans and websites.This volume is devoted to the largest class of submarines ever built, the Type VII, which formed the backbone of the German effort in the critical Battle of the Atlantic. A pre-war design, the Type VII was developed as the campaign progressed and was still in frontline service in 1945. All the major variants, as well as minor changes to equipment, are covered here. With its unparalleled level of visual information paint schemes, models, line drawings and photographs it is simply the best reference for any modelmaker setting out to build one of these famous boats.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateJan 20, 2012
    ISBN9781473820005
    Type VII U-Boats

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      Book preview

      Type VII U-Boats - Roger Chesneau

      A new Type VII boat leaving the shipyard for sea trials, late 1940.

      SHIPCRAFT 4

      TYPE VII

      U-Boats

      Roger Chesneau

      Copyright © Chatham Publishing 2005

      This edition published 2012 by Seaforth Publishing,

      An imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd, 47 Church Street, Barnsley,

      S Yorkshire S70 2AS

      A CIP data record for this title is available from the British Library

      ISBN 978-1-84832-123-6

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced

      or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

      including photocopying, recording, or any information storage

      and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing of both

      the copyright owner and the above publisher.

      Typeset and designed by Roger Chesneau

      Printed in China through Printworks Int. Ltd.

      CONTENTS

      Design

      Careers

      Model Products

      Modelmakers’ Showcase

      Schemes

      Appearance

      Plans

      U 995: Last of Many

      Selected References

      Design

      IN common with all naval construction of World War II, the design heritage of German warships and combat craft can be traced directly to the experience garnered during the first great conflict some twenty-five years earlier. Unlike the rest of the world’s navies, however, the overbearing influence of the inter-war years was not the Washington Treaty of 1922 but rather the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, the harsh terms of which not only bred resentment within the German naval heirarchy but also brought about a clandestine industry determined to keep alive the technical expertise built up during 1914–18.

      In March 1935 the British National Government published a White Paper entitled Statement Relating to Defence, which in effect discarded the terms of Versailles and recognised the right of Germany to rearm; three months later Ramsay MacDonald’s ministers signed the Anglo-German Naval Treaty, one of the most important provisions of which was that permitting Germany to build U-boats once more, nominally up to a strength of 45 per cent of the British submarine fleet but perhaps, ‘in case of danger [from Russia]’, to par—in effect, a blank cheque.

      This treaty, castigated by some writers as signalling the end of all hopes of peace with Adolf Hitler, in fact did little more than recognise officially what was taking place and inevitably would continue to take place—the build-up of the German military machine. What it did not acknowledge, nor probably did it tacitly understand, were the overbearing single-mindedness of the German leadership to nullify what were construed as the injustices and indignities of the Treaty of Versailles and Hitler’s arrogant determination to achieve unparalleled German hegemony.

      Four-fifths of the Type VII U-boats built, their hull numbers emblazoned in distinctively styled white numerals on the conning towers and—as can just be seen at the foot of the photograph—on bow plaques. The ten vessels of this flotilla are often referred to as ‘Type VIIA’ U-boats in order to distinguish them from the many derivative designs that followed.

      U 32 at the time of the Spanish Civil War, and wearing neutrality stripes down the conning tower (red forward, white and black). The arrangement of drainage holes along the hull of the Type VII was radically modified in later sub-types, and a further distinguishing feature was of course the above-water torpedo tube at the stern. Screening appears to have been draped here and there over the deck guard rail in this photograph. The initial gun armament layout of single 8.8cm forward and single 20mm on the main deck aft is shown here also.

      LATENT TECHNOLOGY

      The Germans’ desire to continue the development of their U-boat fleet was expressed not long after the imposition of the ban on the construction of further submarines that was enshrined within the terms of the Treaty of Versailles (Article 19) when, in 1921, the Argentine Navy invited three former U-boat technical experts to provide assistance in the construction of a new class of submarines. This opportunity was seized eagerly, and within a year, with Reichsmarine backing, a front organisation, N. V. Ingenieurskaantor voor Scheepsbouw (IvS) was established in The Hague.

      In the event, this collaborative project came to naught, as did a similar approach made at around the same time by the Italian Navy and another, in 1924, by the Spanish. IvS languished for some months, until in 1926 it became involved in the design and construction of two boats being built for the Turkish Navy: based on the German Type UB III of World War I, these

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