PS: Asking for tickets at the beginning of the month ...... ^_^

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For a period of time after the end of the war, many military fans wondered why the German submarines were so awesome and coaxing, after the Chinese fleet participated in the convoy, they were intimidated? Even after October 1919, there was no movement at all.

Strictly speaking, there are many reasons for this, but one of the most important reasons is that the anti-submarine capability of the Chinese Navy is too much of a bunker, so that the German submarine force has suffered heavy casualties and cannot afford the losses. One of the parties at that time, Captain Carl Dönitz, the captain of the U-68 submarine, wrote a memoir after the war that recorded the experience of the Atlantic war at that time - "The Atlantic War I Experienced".

Here is an excerpt from "The Atlantic War I Experienced":

...... The war is now in its fifth year, and the international environment is becoming increasingly unfavorable to our empire. Yes, precisely because the United States and China, the two former neutral countries and the two largest industrial countries in the world, have been getting worse and worse since they joined our hostile camp.

Since the United States entered the war, our imports have decreased a lot, but at that time we still had China as a big supplier, and the Eurasian railway was a really good thing, with which we could get a lot of supplies even if we didn't have the Atlantic route. The Chinese, like the Americans, are very good at doing business, and as long as they have to pay, they sell everything.

The empire's trade with China received huge quantities of supplies, not to mention civilian goods, everything from food, clothing, household appliances to medicines. The same is true for military materiel, ranging from light weapons such as pistols, rifles, submachine guns, and machine guns, to heavy weapons such as combat vehicles, artillery weapons, and airplanes, as well as ammunition of various calibers. Even our navy has ordered many light ships and submarines from China, and there are even two cruisers, the heavy mine-loaded cruisers Pilau and Elbing, which have made great achievements in Jutland.

Of course, this was before the war. After the outbreak of the European war, the procurement of our navy in China basically stopped, and only the purchase of some submarines could still be carried out, because the sea route was blocked by the British, and surface ships could not return to China. There was also a very small torpedo boat, which they called the S-16 torpedo boat in the Imperial Navy, but in private we were more accustomed to calling it "trout". The "trout" has a full load displacement of only 50 tons, a length of less than 25 meters, and a width of more than 6 meters. They were small enough to fit onto a train car, the hull and superstructure were separated, and three flatbed cars could carry two torpedo boats.

Of course, it had to be a broad-gauge train of China's, and it would not have been able to be transported by an imperial standard train. Luckily, the Eurasian railway was built to Chinese standards, and even more fortunately, it went all the way to the port of Hamburg. The torpedo boats we bought from China were sent all the way to the port of Hamburg by the Guò railway.

These small torpedo boats have a unique feature that is very easy to recognise because their entire hull and part of the superstructure are made of aluminum! It is unbelievable that aluminum, a metal more expensive than gold during the Franco-Prussian War, could be used to build ships. I don't know what the Chinese think, but my colleagues and I were very surprised. Of course, aluminum is not so expensive now, but it seems to be about 7,000 marks per ton (translator's note: 100 marks at that time ≈ 47 Chinese dollars), and it must be admitted that there are only two companies in the world that can use aluminum to build ships, and even if the cost is not considered, the aluminum production of other countries is not enough to be allowed to be used for shipbuilding, even if it is such a small ship.

"Trout" is small, but its performance is very good, it is equipped with 4 torpedo tubes, which can fire 4 600 mm torpedoes at the same time, this kind of torpedo tube in China is very interesting, its inner diameter is adjustable, it is only necessary to replace a different inner tube, you can fire torpedoes with a caliber from 600 mm to 450 mm, I think this is a great design. In addition to the torpedo, it had a 20-mm cannon and a 13-mm anti-aircraft machine gun, and it had two deep-shell slides behind it, which could carry 8 depth charges.

The weapons I'm talking about are just its original equipment, and after we get the "trout", we usually add a variety of different weapons to it according to our own usage habits and mission needs, from 8 mm Makqin to 57 mm short-barreled guns.

The most striking thing about the "Trout" is its speed, which is very fast because it uses a hydroplaning hull instead of a traditional displacement hull. It can reach speeds of up to an astonishing 40 knots, like flying.

The Imperial Navy and the Austro-Hungarian Navy bought a lot of such excellent small ships, as well as the Italians, Turks and Poles, who also liked this small and powerful ship, and almost all the navies of the Central Powers bought it. After the end of the war, I heard that the navies of at least 20 countries had purchased such ships. But I knew it wasn't cheap, so the Chinese introduced a cheap version that replaced aluminum with cheap steel. I also heard that the Japanese also copied a cheaper wooden-shell version of the "Trout", which sounds like a good idea, but it is a pity that the Japanese underestimated the huge water pressure brought by high speeds, and their wooden-shelled "Trout" simply did not dare to drive above 33 knots, otherwise it would disintegrate.

Ironically, the torpedo boats sold by the Chinese also caused a lot of trouble for themselves. On June 17, 1919, the Italian Navy dealt a heavy blow to the Allied fleet with a whole brigade of the original Chinese "Trout", when the Allied fleet was attacking the Gulf of Taranto, the Italians ambushed the torpedo boat in the harbor, covered it with camouflage nets, and evaded the aerial reconnaissance of the Allied countries, it was too small to be easily hidden.

Subsequently, the Entente fleet was ambushed by Italian torpedo boats. Because the distance was so close, the Entente simply did not have time to react. The Chinese Fuxi and Nuwa were at the front, and they were the most attacked, hitting at least 10 torpedoes and almost sinking on the spot. To say that the most unlucky were the British, who sank three ex-dreadnoughts and severely damaged two. Later, the Chinese made great efforts to repair the two hapless super-dreadnoughts, but it seemed that the damage was so fundamental that they could no longer be restored to their best condition, so they withdrew from the front line after the war, used as training ships, and later transformed into a battleship museum.

The level of weapon design and manufacturing of the Chinese is quite high, not inferior to the empire, and it is hard to imagine that this country was so weak that even Japan could not defeat it 20 years ago. I don't know much about the equipment of the army and the air force, but our navy has adopted a large number of Chinese designs and ideas, and even directly purchased finished weapons, the "trout" torpedo boat I mentioned earlier is just one of them, and the largest amount we have purchased is submarines, we have purchased nearly 200 submarines in China, and there are even more that have purchased production authorizations.

For example, my submarine U-68 is an authentic Chinese cargo, the Chinese call it Type 901, and after arriving in the Empire, this submarine was named U-21 by the Admiralty. I like this submarine very much, to be honest I think they are the best submarine in the world, there is no one. The Imperial Navy relied on this advanced submarine to achieve unimaginable results, and at one point almost completely suffocated the British.

Although the Imperial submarine force is not as glamorous as the High Seas Fleet, I think our contribution to the Empire is no worse than that of the High Seas Fleet. Thanks to the hard work of the officers and men of our submarine force, we achieved a total of more than 38 million tons of victories during the entire war, sinking nearly 10,000 merchant ships and more than 400 warships. The U-68 submarine alone, which I commanded, scored 15 before it was sunk. With a result of 50,000 tons, among the imperial submarines, our results were not the best, and we were not even ranked in the top ten. But we were honored to have sunk the dreadnought, and I think it will be the pride of my life.

But after March 1919, our submarine forces encountered the greatest crisis, and the Chinese navy entered the war! Since their entry into the war, the losses of the Imperial submarine forces have been rising day by day, and in December 1918, the empire had nearly 600 submarines. By June, before I was captured, and at the time of the last sortie of this world war, the Reich had only 250 submarines left. By October, our submarine losses had reached a jaw-dropping level, our productivity could no longer keep up with the losses, and the lost officers and men could not be replenished, and finally the Admiralty had to cancel the submarine breaking engagement. Of course, I was already in a prisoner of war camp for the Chinese during this time.

On June 2, 1919, we received a sortie, and that afternoon my submarine U-68 sailed out of the Kiel naval base with other submarines. The Submarine Command informed us that another large merchant fleet of the Allies had left New York, USA, and that they were destined for France and England, and that our task was to take them out.

We weren't as excited about this mission as we used to be. Since last year, the anti-submarine capabilities of the Entente have become more and more powerful, and we have one more formidable enemy - aircraft. Although I like submarines very much, I am also very aware of the weaknesses of submarines, and we submarines are almost powerless to fight back against opponents in the sky such as airplanes. Since the United States put a large number of aircraft into the escort, there are no longer the good days of the past. With planes watching from the sky, it is difficult for us to find an opportunity to attack, but if we are not careful, we will be discovered, and the losses will be much greater than before.

But that's not the most unfortunate. I have always believed that the participation of the Chinese Navy in the war was the biggest factor that really made the imperial submarine forces withdraw from the war. Beginning in March 1919, when the Chinese Navy joined the escort, the Imperial submarine forces suffered unimaginable losses, and at the same time, the results of the battle were greatly reduced.

The results in April were less than 400,000 tons, and we lost 38 submarines. By May, the situation was even worse, and the results of our army had dropped further to 200,000 tons, while we had lost 59 submarines, and as many as 112 submarines were damaged, a third of which were damaged, and I am afraid that we will no longer be able to carry out our mission. Such an exchange ratio is really unpleasant.

The examples of the previous months reflect the strength of the Chinese Navy's anti-submarine capabilities, and the most terrifying thing about them is that they can detect and find us at night, and they can no longer provide us with security at night. Prior to this, the Navy Staff and we had repeatedly discussed privately what methods the Chinese used to find us. Naval Intelligence has also made great efforts to find out, but unfortunately they don't have a clue either. Although we had cooperation and technical exchanges with the Chinese Navy before the war, it was clear that they did not have this capability before the war.

A staff officer of the Navy's staff put forward a hypothesis that the Chinese had invented a more advanced underwater listening device that could detect and locate our submarines through the noise of guò submarines. This kind of device is not unusual, we also have a similar device, and it was invented before the war, but it can only find out if there are submarines and ships nearby, and their general direction, the imperial submarines are equipped with this kind of underwater phone, but they cannot locate the exact location of the sound source, because it is difficult to distinguish the accurate distance and depth of the sound underwater, and it often malfunctions, often false alarms. If his conjecture is true, then the Chinese are far ahead of the empire in this regard. It was only after the war that I learned that not only China has this kind of equipment, but also Britain and the United States and other countries, and I cannot know the specific performance, but it is certainly inferior to similar products in China, which can be seen from our losses.

None of us captains had much hope for the mission, and after wishing each other well, we sailed out into the Atlantic. Although I was mentally prepared to sacrifice, I didn't expect defeat to come so quickly.

On the night of June 12, we arrived 200 kilometers north of the Azores and waited for the fleet, numbered W15. Because of previous lessons, our location is far from the main route, about 50 kilometers or more. In order to avoid the Entente patrol planes, we did not float during the day, and remained suspended under water in a snorkel state.

At about 6:20 a.m., the listener said that suddenly there were several loud explosions from our port side, under water, and at this time there were no boats on the surface. Almost immediately, it occurred to me that it was the Entente planes that had discovered us, and that the explosion had been dropped by them in depth charges. I hurriedly ordered to put away the snorkel and dive, leaving my current position at full speed

Then, four more explosions were heard behind us, so loud that I could hear them without the listener telling me. At 6:45 a.m. we had driven about 7 kilometers, and by this time there was no longer any unusual sound nearby, so I ordered to stop and float to periscope level.

I kept thinking that if I had made the decision to retreat instead of only, I might have had a different fate.

I was just about to raise the periscope when the listener suddenly said that a strange sound was heard, and I hadn't figured out what he meant. I felt a sudden violent vibration of the submarine, and at the same time a huge explosion sounded, and almost all of us fell. Our submarines, like sausages tumbling in a soup pot, simply do not stand on their feet. Soon, the damage pipe reported to me that there was a large hole in the port side, a lot of water was being flooded, and there were many holes in the ballast chamber. At the same time, the power compartment also reported to me that the batteries were massively broken and that poison gases were spreading. Unfortunately, the mains power supply was also damaged.

In this case, I had to choose to close the battery compartment and continue to float, but fortunately we had already risen to the periscope level, we raised the snorkel with manpower, started the diesel engine, and it took a lot of effort to drain the ballast water and float to the surface. Now our U-68 has lost the ability to dive, and when we opened the sealed door and went out, we saw more than a dozen planes circling over us. When they spotted us, two planes swooped down and machine-gunned the sea near us.

I know it's a warning, a urging us to surrender, and I can see the bombs under their belly. At the same time, I also saw clearly the insignia on their wings, which were carrier-based aircraft of the Chinese.

In this case we have no choice but to surrender, our seriously wounded submarine could not escape the pursuit of a dozen aircraft, we have done our best.

We raised the white flag, and about half an hour later, two Chinese destroyers came and picked us up. I was the last to get on board, and before I got on board, I opened the U-68 and sent the old man who had been with me for three years to the bottom of the sea. Some people may say that it was originally made by the Chinese, and the Chinese must know it better than us, and it is useless to take it. But it is already the property of the empire, and we can surrender, but not the property of the empire to the enemy.

Later I was sent to a prisoner of war camp in Djibouti, which the Chinese renamed "Yanqiu", which means burning mountain. The Chinese are very civilized, strictly implement the Geneva Conventions, and do not have any mistreatment of us prisoners of war, and certainly no preferential treatment. If we were in good health, we had to go to work every day, and only the rank of lieutenant colonel and above was exempt, and unfortunately I was only a captain at the time and I was not injured, so I also had to go to the construction site every day.

The Chinese treated us as road builders, and let us, the prisoners of war, build a road here, a railway to Ethiopia, with Chinese characteristics of 2500 mm gauge. Here I once again experienced the scientific and technological prowess of the Chinese, who used a lot of construction machinery on the construction site, as well as giant airships.

At this time, I received a small preferential treatment as an officer, and the commander of the prisoner of war battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Wang Xinren, summoned our group of German officers and asked us if we would like to learn to operate construction machinery, and he said that there is a shortage of operators here, and if we want to, we can learn, so that we can do the simplest work without the soldiers and blacks. Yes, they had a lot of black prisoners of war here, mainly from the East African Legion, and it can be seen that General Falbeck was in a bad situation, otherwise there would not have been so many black soldiers captured.

Of course I would like to learn to operate construction machinery, how to say that I am also an imperial officer, and I am confident in my intelligence and knowledge. I stayed in this prisoner of war camp for 10 months, learned to operate excavators, bulldozers, road rollers and cranes and other construction machinery, as well as vehicle driving. He joked that if I retired, I would be able to work in China with these documents, which I thought was a joke at the time.

However, after the war, I really went to China, of course, not to operate construction machinery......