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enclosed the fuel bunkers and the ballast tanks, made the hull more efficient for surface travel. The heart of the U-boat’s architecture, however, could not be seen: it was the pressure hull, a long, narrow, cylindrical tube constructed of welded high-tensile steel plates 18.5 millimeters thick. This structure, resistant to fifteen atmospheres of waterpressure when submerged, enclosed the U-boat’s crew and its engines, motors, compressors, controls, and torpedoes. The normal crew list of a Type IX included four officers and forty-four ratings, but occasionally, on particularly long patrols, the complement would be increased by one or two officers, additional ratings, and perhaps a cameraman-correspondent from the official news service
Propaganda-Kompanie
or a physician. In those cases, the interior of the boat on departure, already constricted by food stores and reserve torpedoes, would be so cramped as almost to prevent human movement.
    While the IX boats had the distinct advantage of long-range war waging, and while they performed well against independently sailing or weakly escorted vessels in distant coastal waters, where, in fact, the IXB sank more tonnage
per boat
than did any other U-boat type in the war, and individual IX boats became the third through sixth most productive of the war, they were at a marked disadvantage in the heavily escorted transatlantic sea lanes, where Britain’s seaborne trade moved in tight convoy columns protected by Royal Navy close escorts— destroyers, sloops, frigates, and corvettes—as well as by aircraft, both land-based and, from March 1943, escort carrier-based. The IXs had several particular problems that made them less suitable for convoy operations than another U-boat type that was three times more numerous in the Atlantic at this date, namely, the Type VII.
    How well-regarded this latter type was by Dönitz and his boat commanders in convoy operations is evidenced by the fact that prior to and during the war 709 VIIs were manufactured and delivered to the U-Bootwaffe (as against 159 IXAs, IXBs, IXCs, and IXC/405), of which 665 were VIICs or VIIC/415. Produced in greater numbers than any other design in submarine history, the VIIC boat was arguably the best-integrated combat system developed by German engineers prior to the Type XXI, described later. Smaller than the IX, with a lower silhouette, more maneuverable both on the surface and underwater, the whippetlike VII dived faster than the IX, putting 13 meters (42.6 feet) of water above the hull in thirty seconds, while the larger IX required thirty-five seconds at best to do the same. As has been calculated, during that five seconds’ difference an Allied anti-submarine aircraft suchas a Consolidated B-24 Liberator could close a target more than a third of a mile on a depth-bomb attack. 6 Furthermore, underwater, the VII boats were more stable in maintaining depth and, because of their smaller size, were less easily located by British detection gear.
    During March and April 1943 it was observed by BdU (U-Boat Headquarters) that the losses of IX boats to Allied escorts in the Atlantic was proportionately much higher than the losses of VIIs, leading to a decision on 5 May: “Type IXC boats leaving French ports are to be detailed to remote western or southern operational areas.” 7 The same observation explains why it was such a radical step a month before, on 6 April, for BdU to direct IXs “to proceed to the North Atlantic in order to make up the number of U-boats needed there to intercept convoys”; and why the commitment of those resources had to be quickly reversed: though making up less than a quarter of the Atlantic force in April, the IXs suffered twice as many losses (8 to 4) as did the VIIs. 8 Never enthusiastic about the IXs as a U-boat type, Dönitz had energetically opposed the construction figures that the Naval Staff in Berlin had advanced for them. Nonetheless, during the January-July 1942 offensive off the