Talk:List of U-boats of Germany

First comments
I originally intended this as a simple list of U-boats with articles. I see no reason to include over a thousand links to nonexistent articles. Now another user has begun to add these links. I'd like to hear from others on what they believe this page should be. --Pascal666 02:07, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Shouldn't this list be divided into World War I and World War II U-boats? Gdr 16:18, 2004 Oct 18 (UTC)
 * This list really must be divided into WWI boats, WWII boats, and post-WWII boats. The numbering started again from 1 after Germany had to surrender all U-boats after WWI and again after WWII, and so we will have numerous duplicate numbers here.  The current listing of multiple years after various U-boat numbers is not very helpful.Cosal 03:16, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
 * not neccessarily; see "The List" section below. Xyl 54 (talk) 16:43, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

A red link provides the incentive to write an article. Without a red links the gaps are not nearly as obvious. Jooler 12:35, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Red links should be included. Categories, unlike lists, link only to existing articles.  Gene Nygaard 17:36, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This list is silly, there's no way to keep it always up to date any time someone adds an article about one of the thousands of U-bots. They are being kept track of using categories, but I just can't figure out a way to include the categories in the article so I'm leaving the list as it is, very incomplete.Elfguy 00:29, 6 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree, categories are much better than lists. They just didn't exist when I created this page.  Now that they do, I'd love to see all lists (including this one) get deleted.  --Pascal666 00:16, 7 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I disagree a list can be much more informative than a category. You can put notes beside each entry as in when commissioned and when decommisioned and sunk etc.. Jooler 00:17, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Which is why it should just be the complete list, red links and all. Jooler 09:02, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

I added some more uboats, I hope someone will find the infomation usefull. Nomble 03:00, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

(I've re-arranged this section a bit to make it more coherent. Xyl 54 (talk) 16:42, 18 September 2008 (UTC))

Naming?
(moved from Talk:Unterseeboot 754 to get more input) Naming_conventions suggests (by my reading) that this article be moved to U-754. Thoughts? Good job with a great first draft, btw! --Chaser T 00:15, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Thats odd, beacuse the general rule at List of U-boats seems to be the opposite.--Jackyd101 07:43, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Actually, just read further, this page:Naming conventions (ships) explains that it should be spelt out, although U-754 should redirect here. further comment by .--Jackyd101 on 11 June 2006


 * It may be an interpretation of the naming convention two down about acronyms. The expanded version being Naming conventions (acronyms). I'm not sure what's appropriate now. If it's a bunch of work, I'd suggest just leaving it and creating redirects for all the articles, though that's a lot of work, too, so perhaps more guidance first.--Chaser T 07:54, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Jackyd added this to the other page: Actually, just read further, this page:Naming conventions (ships) explains that it should be spelt out, although U-754 should redirect here. I think that closes the issue.--Chaser T 07:57, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Spelling
The official name of German WWII submarines was always unhyphenated. Like U 995 not U-995. Someone should change that for all boats. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.65.79.241 (talk) 12:05, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Another comment
We need more u-boats here--Ogulsev 03:58, 19 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Feel free to add any you can. Xyl 54 (talk) 16:53, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

The List
Really, each U-boat which saw service should have its own individual page. This is clearly a lot of pages, since in the First World War there were 167 "U-class" boats, 155 "UB-class" boats and 114 "UC-class" boats (although probably only 2/3 of these saw active service) whilst in the Second World War there were over 1,000 operational U-boats. This is in addition to German post-war submarines which bear the same designations. This raises some problems, especially as many U-boats share numbers and designations. I see that some people have tried to put all boats with the same designation on the same page, but this raises all sorts of problems or size, as well as the fact that the boats on the page have nothing besides name and nationality to connect them. My suggestion is to create a disambiguation page as with U-69 and then create seperate articles from there, creating all relevant links here too. If any one has a better idea then please say so.--Jackyd101 15:13, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Red Links
I added a large number of links please leave them there; someone said it encourages additions, which it does.--Noha307 20:39, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Lost at sea?
I've read UC-36 was the third submarine lost to aircraft in WW1, but neither the German nor Austrian lists have any record of her. What's up? Trekphiler 05:24, 11 February 2007 (UTC)


 * A belated reply


 * The story turns out to be complicated:


 * Kemp (“U-Boats Destroyed”) says UC 36 was lost, cause unknown in May 1917; Also that the first U-boat to be sunk by an aircraft was UB-32, by a RNAS flying boat in the Channel on 22 Sept 1917, but that the first submarine to be sunk this way was the French boat Foucault, by Austrian flying boat/planes in the Adriatic in September 1915. His “British Submarines of WWI” also lists B 10 sunk at her moorings by Austrian planes at Venice in August 1916. Which is three in total, at least.


 * OTOH U boat net says the boat lost in May was UB 36, and UC 36 was sunk by SS Moliere while attacking a French convoy on 22 May 1917. (Kemp gives the boat sunk by Moliere as UB 36).


 * OTGH Price (“Aircraft vs Submarines”) says the Official History (from 1934!) attributes the loss of UC 36 to an air attack in early May 1917, and states this was the first U-boat sunk by an aircraft; this has been repeated ever since, and misrepresented as the first submarine loss, ignoring the loss of B 10 and Foucault.  He says current thinking is that this attack didn’t sink whichever boat it was directed at and that it probably wasn’t UC 36 anyway.


 * So there you have it.

Additions
I'm planning to add the UB, UC and Austro-Hungarian boats to this list. If that's a problem to anyone please let me know before I get too far into it. Xyl 54 (talk) 14:58, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Red links, again
The point about completing the list is valid, but we can get the same effect by writing the name/number in black.

And the problem with a red link is it dictates the name of the new article; if we are going to do that then Unterseeboot is wrong, for a whole variety of reasons (see below). Xyl 54 (talk) 17:03, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Naming, again
There is a pressure here to use Unterseeboot as the title for these U-boat pages. I think this is wrong because;-


 * It effectively loses the page: When I first searched for "U-47", or "U-boat U 47" or "German submarine U 47" it didn’t throw up anything useful; I eventually found it by following the link from HMS Royal Oak, which is ridiculous.


 * Unterseeboot is an abbreviation, like HMS or USS; We don’t write "His Majesties Submarine..", or "United States Submarine…" in full, so why "Unterseeboot…"?


 * Unterseeboot is a foreign term; it isn't a loan word, or a borrowed term, and it isn't untranslatable, so wher is the justification for its use? The English word is U-boat, which may be derived from unterseeboot, but it’s no more correct to use that than to say Chai instead of Tea.


 * It breaks with convention: Other submarine pages use HMS, etc for English-speaking navies, and “Italian submarine” French Submarine” etc for others; so why is "German Submarine" unacceptable?

Can we do something about this? Xyl 54 (talk) 17:15, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * No other german warships use this format: Bismarck is “German battleship…” not "Schlachtshiffe.."; Again, why is Unterseeboot different?


 * I think the most appropriate place to discuss and reach a consensus would be at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (ships). — Bellhalla (talk) 17:48, 18 September 2008 (UTC)


 * OK, done; further discussion here. Xyl 54 (talk) 10:09, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Requested move
Proposed move: List of U-boats → List of German U-boats

Rationale: Since there already exists a List of Austro-Hungarian U-boats and this page (even before the recent reworking over the last few months) has identified itself as listing German U-boats, I believe that the suggested new title would more accurately reflects the content of the page. — Bellhalla (talk) 17:45, 14 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Support - More accurate title, a "List of U-boats" would conceivably include both the German and AH subs. Parsecboy (talk) 18:34, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Support I agree that this would be a more accurate title. TomStar81 (Talk) 18:56, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Support. Not quite sure what to do with the resulting redirect. Perhaps a page that just says "See: (bullet) List of German U-boats (bullet) List of Austro-Hungarian U-boats" would be appropriate. It's not really a disambig, but we don't want to delete the redir, as external sites may link to it. Alternatively we could just leave the existing hatnote at the top of the article. Andrewa (talk) 03:16, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment - It's likely that the German page would be the primary usage, it would be best in my opinion to leave it redirect to the German list, and have a hatnote pointing to the AH list. Parsecboy (talk) 11:41, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment- I suggest you put it where you like, as you've now deleted all the "recent re-working" that I was doing, without any discussion at all. If you didn't like it, or had a better idea, you don't think it was appropriate to say so? Xyl 54 (talk) 14:16, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Proposed reorganization
Currently we have just lists of hull numbers, divided into 3 eras. Far more useful if it were broken up by type, e.g. "Type VII", Type IXB" etc. Solicitr (talk) 15:38, 27 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Not really: the various U-boat types all have their own templates, with a full listing of boats for each type. Far better to have a straight numerical list somewhere (like here). Xyl 54 (talk) 23:26, 27 April 2012 (UTC)