Submarines and their Weapons - Aircraft of World War II

Above: A 'Marder' ('Marten') midget submarine being
launched by crane. The nature of the craft-it was no
more than a torpedo with a small crew compartment
replacing the warhead - is obvious.
Below: The 'Molch' ('Salamander') was slightly more
sophisticated than the 'Marder'. It carried two underslung
torpedoes and around 400 were built The 'Molch' was
used against Allied shipping in the Scheldt.
SUBMARINES AND THEIR WEAPONS
THE SCHNORKEL
There was one more way to keep the boat submerged
with its engines running, of course: let it breathe
through a tube. This may seem an obvious solution,
and indeed, the very earliest submariners had adopted
it, but in a large boat travelling even at only 5 or so
knots, a breathing tube was very difficult indeed to
maintain in operation in anything but a flat-calm sea.
The practical problems were largely solved, however,
by about 1936, and in a somewhat unlikely quarter:
the Netherlands. When the German Army invaded in
May 1940, examples of submarines with functional
extensible induction masts (as the breathing tubes are
properly known) were captured intact, but were never
copied, and those fitted to Dutch submarines which
the Kriegsmarine put into operation were removed.
German submarine commanders 1 policy was to
remain on the surface as much as possible, and only
submerge to avoid escape or to make a particularly
risky attack. As a result, U-boat commanders had no
use for the snorting mast, at least, not until the dark
days of 1943, when they were regularly being forced
to dive by anti-submarine patrols, and when a
research programme was put in hand to replicate the
135