What Is the Difference Between a U-Boat & a Submarine?
- The first submarine device used in war was called "Turtle," developed at the time of the American Revolutionary War. It floated with just 6 inches of it's upper hull above water. The single man inside powered the device by hand-driving a propeller, and would attach a clock-work timed explosive charge to his target -- the targets were the British ships blockading New York Harbor.
- "U-boat" is how English speakers translate the German term "U-boot," short for unterseeboot. Unterseeboot translates directly as "undersea boat," but refers in fact, in the vernacular and in the popular imagination to the military submarines Germany used primarily to blockade Great Britain in World War II. Although the U-boats enjoyed considerable success attacking destroyers and battleships, their main purpose was to stop supplies from North America from reaching the British Isles. Germany's ambition in this was that attrition would make the British easier to beat.
- The most successful of Germany's U-boats was the Type VII C design, first launched in 1941; more than 600 were built. The Type VII C is what defines "U-boat" in the popular imagination: 220 feet long and displacing approximately 770 surface tons, the boat had a range of around 6,500 miles maintaining an average speed of 12 knots. The fleet penetrated the hitherto secure harbor at Scapa Flow to sink the battleship Royal Oak, costing 833 lives; it sunk 1.6 million tons of shipping between June and November of 1940 alone; after the U.S. entered the war in late 1941, 21 U-boats in the Caribbean and stationed along the eastern seaboard sunk more than 500 ships.
- The difference between a U-boat and a submarine -- in any country that was not part of the Third Reich -- is one of popular perception. Both are autonomous, crewed cylindrical watercraft able to operate independent of surface support, but only U-boats were wolf-pack killers of the Allied forces through the Battle of the Atlantic. All U-boats are submarines, then, but not all submarines are U-boats.
This crisp definition is somewhat muddied by location, however, because in Germany all submarines are U-boots.
