Der Schnellboote...

[Grissom]

Would be a great addition to the AH naval service...  IT was the fastest of the PT types.  

Carried 4 torps and a wide variety of armament, both anti-air and anti-shipping.  And it was armored, diesel driven, and did I mention just plain better looking than the Allies PT's?

I gotta dig out my books on her, but that old E-boat served all over the European/Med throughout the war years.

Used to have the RC model of it from 32nd Paralell models.  Still out there somewhere, but I heard 32nd folded couple years back....  Anyway, it is a thought.

[Grissom]

A brief overview:
The fast attack boats were used in almost all theaters of war, the Baltic Seas, the Mediterranean or the Black Sea, but their main operational area was the British Channel where they attacked coastal shipping, especially during the night. Their operational record was quite successful, the S-boats sunk over 40 warships (including 12 destroyers) and far over 100 merchants, while damaging 14 other warships (including 2 cruisers) and 15 merchants. But this was not archived without heavy losses, especially in the later years of the war. Being vulnerable to air attacks and without nay radar, the S-boats lost the surprise factor in their night attacks and had to abort more attacks than they could bring to an end.

One more unknown fast is that S-boats were also intensively used for mine laying operations. In fact most of these operations made by S-boats were mine laying operations, but as the boats could only carry up to 6 mines those operations had only a minor success.

At the outbreak of World War II, only 18 S-boats were in service, but between 1940 and 1945 about 230 of this boats were build. Although there were several classes of those ships, all had the same basic design and most of them were build at one single shipyard, Lürssen in Vegesack, which continued to build successful fast attack crafts after the war. Several boats were used by other navies after the war, two of them were added to the new formed Bundesmarine in 1957.

Links :
http://www.german-navy.de/marine.htm

tonne of Naval Links    http://vlib.iit.edu/vlnavmar/history.html

Allied PT: http://www.ptboats.org/

More Linkz: http://www.teacheroz.com/WWIIAirSea.htm

And a pretty pic...

Did you know that near the war's end, the German's had the first operational hydro-foils?
  They were working on Turbojet and submersible models, but those never entered service proir to surrender.

[devious]

It`s either

die Schnellboote ( = the fast-boats) or

das Schnellboot ( = the fast-boat)

Other than that, yay, give me a S-Boat.

[Staga]

http://www.prinzeugen.com/SBOATIND.htm

[Grissom]

Devious: I sit corrected, and TYVM

Staga: Great gooshy-mooshy!  I lost that link a couple years ago!  Never thought I'd see it again.

THANK YOU ALL!:D