>>516704199
That was years later.
The U boats fucked us up massively. There were only a few dozen of them as well during the first period of open hostilities. Had Hitler focused on them before the war instead of the retarded Plan Z, he would have 250-300 high end U boats at the start of hostilities to fully blockade Britain and dominate all of the European waterways. The cost of the two Scharnhost class alone was enough in finances and resources to build 100 Type VII U-boats.
50 U boats of mixed types almost starved Britain to death.

Actual estimates put it at 300 U-boats by the time of hostilities would have completely and utterly strangled the entire British economy in less than 10 months of operations and forced a surrender through starvation of resources and food with an estimated 4000 British merchant ships sunk. That's not including time reduction with focused mass attacks by the Luftwaffe.

Hitler decided it was time to mass produce U Boats only in mid 1943 when it was far too late as technology, increased aircraft patrol ranges and convoy escort tactics made it obsolete. All the physical resources wasted on the Kriegsmarine at that point SHOULD have been pumped into the Luftwaffe and Heer.

The Battle of the Atlantic was the most important theater of the European war. It's far too often overlooked and its a tragedy. Those men on all sides were true heroes as the death rate was horrific same with RAF Bomber Command as the latter actually had the biggest single losses in manpower and materiel in the war for Britain at over 55,000 KIA(44.4% death rate) and 8300 aircraft shot down.

Even Churchill said the only time he was truly terrified of losing the war was during the U-Boat dominance era.