Germany's Midget U-Boats
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 ก.ย. 2022
- For most of World War 2, Germany had enjoyed having the largest and most advanced fleet of submarines at its disposal. The fierce U-boat wolfpacks terrorized the Atlantic for months forcing the Allies to play defensive games with convoy systems.
Being the undisputed king of submarine warfare, the Kriegsmarine saw little use in developing midget submarines like other nations were doing, with the British and the Italians leading in creating miniature submersible ships.
But as the Allies cracked the German Enigma Code and their ever-evolving Navies began to hunt down enemy U-boats while shifting the balance in the Battle of the Atlantic, Germany lamented not pursuing the technology earlier.
With an Allied invasion looming over the horizon, limited resources, and a weak Navy, Germany then threw everything in its power to develop its own midget submarines in a desperate effort to use them against the incoming assault.
The result was the Biber submarine, a tiny one-crew torpedo-armed submarine that would have to face the most impressive amphibious operation in history…
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In the 70s I was a junior officer on subs based at Groton, CT. Outside Submarine School there was a captured Seehund (Seal) type sub on a concrete display stand. I'm surprised the video didn't address that class of min-sub.
I have a German cousin who is a retired Bundesmarine pilot. On one visit he took me to the German War Memorial outside Kiel. The submarine memorial resembles our Vietnam Wall Memorial and has the names of all the WWI and WWI sub crew members killed in action. Very somber to see all those wasted lives.
They probably consider the seeeHund a post-war sub, not a mid-war sub like the Biber
That has to be some kind of record that the biber class sub destroyed 10 times as many friendly subs than enemy subs.
I never enjoyed Justin Bieber musik
subs almost never destroyed enemy subs.
You had me at Midget U-Boats
One of the first submarines is a wreck just off the coast where I live, the Resurgam 2, built 1879, 45 feet long with 10 foot diameter.
Das Boot was a very good movie , 1981
So midget submarines were very much a thing in WW2, with varying success and usefulness... outside of research ventures AFAIK they aren't really a thing anymore military wise. Suppose that's one of the things that makes WW2 such fascinating era, so many things thrown out and used that didn't exist before or after
I'd say the modern equivalent are the underwater drones being operated and developed.
They didnt really matter much.
The drug runners operating semi-submersible boats have interesting & similar craft. But no torpedoes...
I don't know what would qualify as a midget sub in modern days.. I mean compared to LA class and Typhoon Class many of the new Electric submarines can possibly be considered midget subs haha.. Other than the drone subs of course..
The cartels sure love them!
Anything with MIDGETS IN IT ..IS COOL...
...especially on a bowling alley!
I love these videos. Keep up the great work.
I WISH I HAD A SMOOTH VOICE LIKE THIS DUDE…..JEALOUSY.
as always, great stuff!
Excellent as usual
I never knew of this German mini subs , thanks for posting.
It is quite significant that only the USA decided not to develop mini/ submarines. They had defective torpedoes, which discouraged development of midget subs. Just as well.
That is interesting. The X-1 is the only us minisub I can think of.
That may have simply been a matter of operational range. Short range submarines were useful (in theory) along the European coastlines. Less so in the Pacific (with some exceptions).
Midget submarines are useful for two types of missions: clandestine attack and point defense. For the first, the US didn't really need such things except for highly specialized insertion operations (Navy SEAL, CIA agents); and the second is practically unimaginable when America's naval defense since the 1930s is based on world-girdling air and submarine forces designed to take the fight to the enemy, not sit and wait at the Golden Gate.
Again, superb!
The Biber in the Royal Navy Submarine Museum, was returned to working order bya UK TV programme called 'Salvage Squad'. The programme is, I believe, available on TH-cam.
Because of your comment, I found the video on TH-cam. Thank you. I enjoyed it very much.
Arguably, the greatest contribution of the Welman was to cause the Germans to build the Bieber. The USN showed very little interest in midgets, apparently figuring if the opportunity arose, the RN could take care of it. I think the attitude was justified, given the record in other navies. The IJN devoted large resources to its midgets. One managed to put a fish into an old, anchored British battleship, but she was easily repaired. The Kaiten was an underwater kamikaze which managed to sink one ship, a US oiler moored at Ulithi. Those, were the sole Japanese triumphs. The RN X craft were designed to place multi ton, time fused charges on the sea floor under the target. Their most successful exploit was when the crippled the battleship Tirpitz, but all were lost either going in or attempting to escape. The Italians had a manned torpedo called the "Miale" or "Pig" whose two man crew rode the thing. and planted a charge under the target. Two managed to cripple two RN battleships, which were salvaged and rebuilt, serving until the end of the war. The Italians were most successful at Gibraltar. where they operated from an "interned" merchant ship moored in the "neutral" Spanish port of Algeciras. It took a long time for the British to figure out why merchant ships were blowing up in the Commercial Harbor.
Bieber as in Justin Beiber?
"A Beiber fired a torpedo into other beibers accidentally"
Love these videos. USS Texas next?
I live and was brought up right next to general dynamics shipyard that built liberty ships and later LNG tankers, today the yard is quiet, but the USS Salem is moored in the yard for tours, they also have a midget sub here, Quincy, Massachusetts.
The amphibious German mini sub tank. And the flying Japanese submersible desine were very interesting.
The main reason the English mini subs were captured, was that the English stopped and had Tea and was captured.
Awesome story
You forgot the Seehund, the last iteration of the midget submarines, that was an effective weapon.
the era of the robot sub is upon us
One torpedo sank 11 midget submarines? Were they all lined up in a row or something?
Moored at the dock , in a row. The hulls were extremely thin skinned, not meant to do more than barely submerge.
Eleven sank with one torpedo has to be some type of record.
there was one of these at hms ganges nr ipswich before it closed.
The most famous biber operator was Justin Gettin, biber captain. He was a reluctant hero.
Knew a German sub vet back in the 70s. Said they were stationed in Norway. They were more afraid of their own ships running them over. Also said they were waiting to surrender and the Americans were great. Said after 4pm they were released to go into town to see friends and girl friends. Only rule they had to be back at camp at 10 pm for bed check.
Too bad for that story that the British, not the US, liberated Norway
"however, the development of what would be known as the booba-"
excuse me?
"beeba"
..............carry on o.O
I adore the Biber class. It looks just like a U-boat only smaller. If I could I would want a replica Biber to play around in the river
I want one too but not until it gets a new name.
If you didn't submerge, guess you wouldn't have to worry about CO poisoning
Vlissingen, the Netherlands, has a restored Bieber, that washed ashore after the war... You can't toch it, but it lives at seaside, close to uncle beach. In a glass container so open to visitors 24/7
If you want to die at early age
Hopefully a biber with safety updates and better craftmanship
WOW
I had to laugh at that accidentally fired the torpedo and sunk 11 of the other submarines well that's the only thing they're good at is taking themselves out
The only thing more accurate than enemy fire is friendly fire
Hopefully he saved 11 of his company who we’re not able to board the sunken vessels.
I wonder if he drew the short straw from his squad, to be the one who sunk their sea coffins.
I'd expect a hull made of 0.3 millimeter steel and aluminum alloy might give way if a pregnant hummingbird landed on it.
I'm supposing it was 3 mm (1/8 in). Thick enough for shallow water, but gawd help you if anything explodes nearby.
@@kpd3308 7:40
@@michaelmichael4132 yes I think he is mistaken.
No sauerkraut and sausages before missions. Large Nefarious emissions would explode the sealed hull, smaller ones would be blamed on CO accumulations to save ass, I mean save face.
@@kpd3308 Yes, I think.
The last sub in the video is a Japanese midget sub. It's at the New London Submarine Base now.
Surprised they weren't made of wood
I wondered how the war would have ended if the Enigma code was never broken
I do question that the "accidental" torp launch wasn't on propose... Unless those other subs were already "crewed" .
The irony of krauts being gassed in the minisubs is... Palpable. 😆
Can you make a video about HMS Neleon
wow they are bloody death traps!
As the Krauts found out - but they died for der Fuhrer!
The men who drove those miniature death traps are braver than I have ever been.
Not exactly a "Do we have any volunteers?" kinda situation.
No, they were fanatics dumber than a box of rocks
10:40 Nice Japanese submarine!
So the only thing these mini submarines blew up was a bunch of other mini submarines how ironic
The big problems with Nazi Germany's midget submarine program were in many ways just variations of those of her other Wonderwaffe programs: too much faith, too little time, too few resources.
The initial aim seemed to pack as much punch in as small a platform as possible, so that there were many solo operator submarines armed with two torpedoes, under the impression that Germany could get twice as many subs crewed by a certain number of qualified submariners than designs that used two crew members. However, even for short-range missions, the strain put on solo operators trying to navigate, patrol, get into attack position and shoot usually spelled exhaustion and mission failure. Also, the very simple designs for Biber, Marder, and Neger designed for quick construction meant that these craft had to rely on either pure electric battery power (very short endurance) or gasoline internal combustion engines (carbon monoxide poisoning from slipshod construction).
Germany did eventually develop the Seehund two-man diesel-electric midget u-boat that compared favorably with the British X-craft, but as usual for Nazi Germany it was a matter of too little too late.
On top of that Hitler wasn't the brilliant supreme commander he thought he was. His way of thinking about military power was pretty much "bigger is better", which is why crazy projects like the Porsche Maus tank/mobile land base got his support instead of things like mini-subs.
Imagine if a few dozen of these were waiting off the coast of Normandy?
Then the ussr would’ve eventually conquered all of Europe
did you not listen to the video? They were a disaster and could sink shit.🤔
@@sawyerflechsig7329 yeah imagine how many more 10s of millions of them would have been deleted.
The last words of your story truly expressed what is the mental state of the Nazi Empire - Desperation. It is also an expression of the condition of the mental state of all Anti-Human empires when the empire crumbles - Desperation, Disregard and a Deathwish to destroy their enemies but all would Boomerang; whether Nero, Attila, Magar, Napoleon 1 out of Russia, Napoleon 3 and Prussia, Kaiser, Hitler & USSR - all ended on the bodies they had consumed.
Is it a biber submarine that's on display at the submarine museum at HMS Dolphin in Gosport Hampshire (UK)?
He left out the German Mini 2 man sub that was highly successful & that they had Electric & homing torpedoes.
I expect that the midgets did not have a TDC (Torpedo Data Computer). This would require manually aiming the torpedo, a significant handicap if trying to attack a moving target. PT boats had the same issue.
Keerect
Honestly, they just seem like a terrible idea. "Let's send ONE guy out, alone, for multiple hours in a tiny tub with explosives attached, in a submarine so small, stretching their legs is a chore!"
Surely some mistake? 7:36 "It had a hull divided into three sections and covered by a sheet of .3 millimeters steel and aluminum alloy..." As the average kitchen tin foil (or aluminum foil, if you prefer) is .64 millimeters thick it would be very surprising to find a submarine made with material less than half its thickness.
Well, they WERE stretched thin on ressources by that time😂🤣
That last clip shown was a Japanese midget sub. Not a German one
And why wasn't the submarine Seehund (Type XXVII) mentioned???
That type of submarine was the best midget submarine of the entire war
The British found out about them by accident, they had no way of detecting them at sea because of their size and the material they were made of
236 of them were built and they sank 120,000 tons of ships luckily the war ended before they all became operational
😢
Aloominum 🙄🙄
There is a Mini Sub on display @ Key West Lighthouse & War Historical Museum but , its Japanese.
Leave it to Beaber
what about the sea hund?
Which was hated more, the mini sub or the Canadian pop star?
80% of German submariners died in WW2. Serving in German submariner service became suicidal
Wats the music
The Kriegsmarine failed at what the US Navy in the Pacific succeeded in doing. Gato class and it’s follow ons had extreme range, and twice the firepower of German submarines. They’d leave Hawaii and operate all around Japan and the Philippines and more. There was virtually no Japanese merchant marine left by the end of the war.
What about the third one, the Seehund (type XXVII)?
I don't think that was a midget sub.
@@scottmccloud9029 Look it up and come back to me.
@@albixx3893 I sit corrected. I'd stand but my back won't allow it. You are right. I was wrong. Glad you taught me something today.
@@scottmccloud9029 I wondered why he did not mentioned it
@@albixx3893 Agreed.
4:45 "...5 miles an hour." To be fair, it sounds like they didn't have time to install the fast, and therefore only had the slow.
5:09 "...no room for anything else." Shit, the British would have installed a library, smoking room, and a kitchen.
Crystal ~ these things fundamentally sound great. However, you have to consider the source they're coming from.
The California high speed train sounded like a great idea. many years later it's going to cost many times and many billions more than originally expected and many more years before the first train ever runs. it will also never be positive revenue because of all that has been spent on it so far.
let's not overlook all those who dipped into the money train this project created.
all this because it sounded like a great idea a long time ago.
😢no mentions of seehund ?
The inhumanity of evil's desperation: "... Hitler had demanded the accelerated production of the supposed miracle weapons in which he put so much hope. These were new kinds of two-man U-boats, midget submarines and one-man torpedoes. The huge enemy superiority was to be nullified by the tactic of launching numerous small attacks. It was David versus Goliath, albeit less biblical: K-Verbande were seen as the new celebrity units of the navy. Their special operations would be based on surprise effects - on their not being discovered or located. The supposed aim was to creep up on the big enemy ships, ready the torpedo, and attack. Therefore they would have to spend several days and nights uninterruptedly under water - distinctly longer than the forty-eight hours for which a high dose of Pervitin [brand of methamphetamine] would have kept them awake. No special naval training was planned for these life-threatening operations; instead there would be special drugs that far surpassed everything that had gone before." -- Ohler, Norman; Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich; Houghton Miffin Harcourt, NY, 2017; pp 191-92
Midget is blocked if you turn on captions...
The Biber is 3 mm build, not, 03 mm
You should have at least NOTED that the midget sub being raised in the final scenes was JAPANESE from the Pearl Harbor attack on Dec7, NOT a Bieber.
“accidentally” fired a torpedo and sunk 11 of the mini subs lol i would have done the same. what a useless investment
Yes, your statement is completely useless. Fix your caps key too please, lack of proper use makes your utterly useless statement annoying as well.
You’re not allowed to call them that 😡
The Germans had the deepest diving submarines and the toughest. It’s this diving depth (nearly twice the diving depth of US subs) and ability to survive depth charging that made them superior. They also had the best sonar with the GHG array vastly out ranging and exceeding the precision of allied subs.
Is that why they lost 90% of them? Cause they could survive depth charges?
@@djquinn11 Most were lost on the surface or near the surface. They required more underwater endurance so that they could intercept a convoy at speed without surfacing or revealing their presence and to escape the search area after an attack. These Type XXI and XXIII submarines were entering service late in the war. German submarines had to face the most intense array of ships and aircraft ever face by any submarine force.
Honestly, I was always surprised that the Germany didn't create mini-subs for pleasure craft later on. While the Norwegians and others had create a mini-sub that was popular in the 1990s for a while and now the whole Bubble Subs are super-popular instead.
The germans had the best subs, just to late and to few in the war
They had more subs than anyone else! As for having the best - you gotta be kidding! Have a look at the subs the Japanese managed to build - some even carried aircraft.
@@Simonsvids the type XXI and XXIII where the most advanced but came to late and only 6 where operational, they built the most but that where mostly type VIIC's, and japans subs where awesome but where noizier and couldn't go as deep. Read my first comment better
Have another tilt at your title there, chief. There is a cheeky letter 'y' that doesn't belong. You will earn 10K social credit points if you can spot it.
4 miles per hr .. god that’s slow
THAT LAST SHOT APPEARED TO BE A JAPANESE MIGET SUB, NOT A GERMAN.
You're pretty good with your episodes most of the time but saying Germany had a week Navy is complete bogus
Germany had an extremely weak surface navy, which is why their entire doctrine had to be based around hit-and-run tactics, and only engaging equally combat efficient ships when other options are exhausted. Just look at the Tirpitz, a ship that was extremely powerful, but operated alone and was constantly on the run.
Whoa, I heard some country voice come out at 2:37 especially during the word "provide".
So the Germans didn’t have good subs? Seems they had a variety of type 7’s that were doing pretty good plus a few others but true as the war progresses technology evolved to slow them way down but check the statistics of German u boats to any American sub force kill ratio. I’m not in favor of the Germans but statistics from history are accurate as to tonnage sunk. Check it out.
A total disaster is the endgame.Overwhelming ignorant pride is what brought the Germans to an end.
How cool would a mini submarine be though?
If you want to die at a young age
A mini submarine armed and equipped with modern heavyweight torpedoes and equipment can sink a destroyer sized surface combatant. Plus a mini/midget submarine can be built in large numbers.
Plural of craft is…craft. NOT “craftS” no s on plural form of craft. This goes for aircraft, water craft, or anything NOT associated with handicrafts. Yep, that one gets an “s”…
I blame the fact that many Americans are descended from people whose first language was not English and they had to learn it (imperfectly).
@@Simonsvids I don't know the the narrator is American or a native English speaker at all. Overall very well spoken, but in many other videos certain word usage and pronunciations seem off a bit. Then again we had a sitting President repeatedly pronounce "Corps" , as in the Marines Corps, as Corpses when referring to multiples of them in a few speeches.
The Last Submarine shown in this video was Japanese.
How many fish, which could feed the starving nations if shared like any valuable resource, were killed by depth charge attacks? I mean schooling fish, like mackerel and smelt, which are the lifeblood of the world wide fishing industry. We know sharks were killed like crazy, because many pelagic sharks have been trained to follow ships as they followed whale pods in times past. How and why? Sharks follow their noses to blood, and ships have been heaving trash, not to mention poop and pee (which contain substantial amounts of blood) over the side since men first went to sea. Depth charge attacks concentrated especially in the attacking ship's wake . . . right where any trailing sharks would be.
That means a serious upset of the ocean ecology took place in WW2. The relevant industries overfished subsequently and the food chain has recently been completely broken thereby.
As for whales, submarines are a source of whale mortality. Collisions used to take place on occasion. They don't so much anymore, simply because whale populations have fallen off as the world's fisheries ruined the ocean ecology.
Not to mention all the polution from damaged and sunk war machines, countless tons!
Take a hike, ‘cousin’
Circle of life
So what were they supposed to do? Human lives were immediately at stake. The destruction of schools of fish had to be ignored at that time.
Stop stealing oxygen from the fish. Only you can solve this problem.
BASICALLY KOMIKAZEE APPARATUSES ; BUT IN THE GERMAN ARMY IF YOU REFUSED TO FOLLOW ORDERS YOU WERE SIMPLY SHOT ; THOSE IN CHARGE HOLLERED " NEXT " AND THE NEXT POOR BASTARD IN LINE LOST HIS LIFE AGAIN WITHOUT A CHOICE IN THE SITUATION.
Gato…pronounced “GAY-toe”
Spanish for "Cat", the USN was running out of fish names
@@colbeausabre8842 nope. Named for the Gato shark
Closed captioning is hilarious. Y tubes SJW captioning A I replaces "midget" with ( - ) every time. How long before they start "editing" the audio?
A brilliant idea, poorly done.
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Problem with leaks etc. I wonder if that was due to the slave labour they employed from the death camps.
i would use it to smuggle drugs into the US.
Why the y? Tiny Awful German Submarines???
You never made a typing mistake?
German, not Germany.
Is that all you have to contribute?
@@colbeausabre8842 When I see poor English, I point it out.
@@paulkirkland3263 Who appointed you to that task?
@@colbeausabre8842 When you see something wrong, and mention it, do you need to have had someone appoint you to the task ? Don't be ridiculous. It's the comments section of a below-par TH-cam channel , so I'm commenting. Don't bother responding; I don't suffer fools gladly, and this discussion is over.
"Midget U-Boats - Tiny Awful Germany Submarines" Just curious, did you make it out of grade school or is English a second language for you?
TH-cam titles are limited in the number of characters they can hold. I see shortened titles like this all over TH-cam.
@@barrybrevik9178 I don't think that was the issue. The proper wording, "German," is shorter than the word used, "Germany." "Midget U-Boats - Tiny Awful German Submarines"
Werent completely awful. Should change title, shows bias. Bias in History obviously aint great.
Neither is a broken apostrophe key...........
How about GAWD AWFUL instead? In March 45 56 sorties led to 42 loses and no dame to Allied shipping. 142 total Seehund sorties for the entire war led to 9 Alled losses in the most target rich environment versus 35 lost Seehunds. Yes, bias in history is terrible and yours is showing. How would you twist the German midget sub program into something other than an unmitigated disaster and yes, completely awful, and a waste of human life?. Somehow, I think if the Allies suffered such losses, you'd be trumpeting how that proves what a failure their nidget sub program was and how stupid the Allies were. Nice try, Wehraboo