World war 1 U-boats
The U-boats were used to sink enemy carriers and ships who were bringing supplys to their allies. They were only able to be submerged for two hours. They would submerge themselves and then, if a ship got close enough, they would fire torpedoes at the ships. They had propellers on the back, which didnt really work a lot. The U-boats were first built in Hamburg, Germany and they were first used in 1917. It was invented to stop ships from bringing supplies to enemy soliders in Germany. At the beginning of the war their were only 29 U-boats created but at the end of the war they created 360 U-boats and by wars end 178 U-boats were destroyed.
Impact and Consequences of the U-boat
The U-boat actually has a lot of impact in today's society. For example: Sonar was created to pick up any signs of U-boats around cargo ships. We use that same exact sonar in today's ships and crusers. Also we created our own U-boats after the war and that allowed us to do a lot of things. If we did not have U-boats ourselves, we would not have found the Titanic wreckage underwater our found a lot of wrekages and airplanes that went missing. This was a big influence back then. Germany was losing the war and they created the U-boats as a last resort. Germany almost won the war with the U-boats because they were destroying out ships that were delievering supplies to soliders who were fighting in Europe. This weapon affected the soliders near the front lines because those soliders could not get the supplies that they needed and U-boats shot down all the reinforcment ships that were comming to drop off extra soliders. This effected national leaders by making them stop sending ships to drop off supplies. America was getting mad by all of these boat sinkings and that is one of the reasons why america joined the war. Civilians were effected because they feared the U-boats if they had to go across the ocean. U-boats always shot down civilian ships regardless if they were neutral or not.
Connections to Today
The modern day example for the u-boat is a submarine. The submarine can spend a long time underwater and can reach deeper depths of the oceans than the outdated U-boat. Modern day submarines are generally more protected than U-boats and can take more hits, but are still very vulnerable underwater. Bigger submarines have large amounts of torpedoes. The submarines are now used for underwater exploration. For example: Scientists used submarines to find the wreckage of the titanic. The navy also uses submarines to destroy enemy ships from beneath the surface. Scientists have discovered over 20 different species of fish this year by use of super-advanced submarines. If you have ever seen the t.v. show called Blue Planet The show the scientists actually going in to submarines to film all the fish and other marine wildlife that lives below the depths. They also show person-less submarines that are controlled by robots to get up close to the wildlife without getting injured. Submarines are normally used in deep ocean drop offs like the Great Barrier Reef.