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German Submarine Warfare

The supreme stealthy weapon, submarines evaded Allied forces and struck suddenly at unprotected cargo ships. U-Boats of the early 1940s performed poorly underwater, submerging mainly to hide from enemy forces, but they were fast and effective on the surface where their low hulls made them invisible. Surfaced U-Boats could get close to their targets and deliver a sudden, accurate salvo of torpedoes.

Winston Churchill once said: "The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-Boat peril."