How do we know the tonnages U-boats sank?

Upvote:2

Any submarine would try to identify the target before firing. While mistakes are possible, both regarding the proper identification and the listed tonnage, reports would list what they thought they were shooting at.

For warships, the best-known reference is Jane's Fighting Ships. For instance, the 1978 edition lists 7 ships with the hull number "16", one "D 16", one "DE 16", and three "F 16" in various navies. So a ship spotting an "F 16" would have to check if it was the Diomede, the Umar Farooq, or the Oland.

Information got somewhat harder to get during wartime, as discussed in the comments to the OP, but navies produced manuals like FM 30-58, the US guide to Japanese warships.

o.m. 16635

📝 Worth of an old 1/4 tanka coin when it was active 1516-1526
📝 Did this "sledge rigged like a sloop" vehicle ever exist, or was it an invention of Jules Verne?
📝 Are species introduced to England and Wales by the Romans still found near Roman settlements?
📝 Did Cao Cao really say the greatest traitor resembled an honest man?
📝 Is there an example of Egypt recording defeat?
📝 "You Are Now Entering the X Sector"
📝 What did the ancient Eastern world think of the ancient Greeks?
📝 How did the US vet Soviet refugees for possible spies/infiltrators?
📝 What made Stalingrad a turning point in the second world war?
📝 Have Paralympics been the specific target of boycotts?
📝 Toyotomi Hideyoshi threatened to exterminate all Japanese foxes unless he heard from the god Inari. What was the aftermath (if any)?
📝 Was the Somerset Decision in 1772 in England the real underlying cause of the American Revolutionary war?
📝 Did international laws on wars of conquest change in 1945?
📝 Is the Sri Lankan Civil War really over?
📝 What was Poland's posture during the Seven Years' War?
📝 Did the early Christian community on Iceland require the import of wine for liturgy?
📝 What title did the merchants permitted to deal with Canton's 13 Factories carry?
📝 What were the Nazi racial views on Hungarians and the Japanese?
📝 Why did the US pay money to the losers, at the end of both Barbary wars?
📝 What was the population of the main area of settlement in New York City in 1890?
📝 Has the feminization of the labor force continued after WW1?
📝 Are there any records of Vikings burning each others 'island of boats' out of desperation?
📝 Has any music act ever topped the Beatles in sales?
📝 What was the motivation for the Church of England to begin recording births, marriages and deaths in 1538?
📝 Why did the USSR switch from 1524 mm gauge to 1520 mm gauge in the late 1960's?
📝 Why did European writers and artists continue to depict the Moors as being black skinned, even though they were mostly Berbers and Arabs
📝 Did Russia and Lenin benefit from the Treaty of Versailles?
📝 Are the proportions of a Christian cross based on a golden ratio?
📝 How culpable was Captain Smith for the Titanic disaster?
📝 Was Frederick Douglass right that in his day 'religious slaveholders are the worst'? If so why would this be?

Source: stackoverflow.com

Travel Tips

Search Posts

📝 How do we know the tonnages U-boats sank?
📝 How do historians and linguists know how to pronounce the names from non-phonetic scripts?
📝 How do we know the gender distribution of cave art painters?
📝 How do historians know the details of a seemingly private event?
📝 Did the Ptolemaic Egyptians know how old the Pyramids were?
📝 How do we know that Louvre version of Mona Lisa painting is the original one painted by Leonardo Da Vinci?
📝 How does finding a Franklin ship change what we know about the expedition?
📝 How did the helmsman know what he was sailing towards with a big mast in his face?
📝 How did Lincoln know to stick with Grant before the completion of the Vicksburg campaign?
📝 How did Diego Gutiérrez know the boundaries (shape of the Americas) when he drew the 1562 Map of America
📝 How did Vasco da Gama know about the Southern Cross?
📝 How much did the western world know about the Soviet Union pre-WWII?
📝 How did Farragut know he could get his fleet through the Confederate line of "torpedos" at Mobile Bay?
📝 How effective were siege guns and gun boats compared to field artillery in the 19th century?
📝 In the 19th century, do we know how armor changed with respect to guns of the time?
📝 How do we know the oldest New Testament manuscripts are copies?
📝 How do we know that the Tiwanaku Empire actually existed as an empire
📝 How do we know the patricians of Rome?
📝 How did the HMAS Sydney know the real Straat Malakka's secret callsign, "IIKP", but not HSK Kormoran?
📝 How safe were ancient boats on the sea?
📝 How and when did the word "nuclear" replace the word "atomic"?
📝 How did Israel win the Six-Day War?
📝 How did the general population of England convert so smoothly to Protestantism?
📝 How did the USSR manage to innovate in an environment characterized by government censorship and high bureaucracy?
📝 How did the Romans do division?
📝 How did 300,000 people survive the 3 1/2 year siege of Sarajevo?
📝 When and how did the USA and the UK become allies?
📝 How did pilots know when to release bombs on airplanes during World War2?
📝 How did the authorities not find the speakeasy clubs during the prohibition?
📝 How did such a relatively minor event as the assassination of an archduke start World War I?

How do we know the tonnages U-boats sank?

More post

Search Posts

Related post