I'm necroposting this old thread because I (well, anyone) can.
I've posted about reading Blair's two part U-Boat series. Long, a bit dry, but fascinating books. That had me think things like how many boats were there, losses on one patrol, losses with all hands, etc.
Because I'm me (and stupid...okay, that's redundant) I decided to answer those questions.
The German U-boats of WWII (Kriegsmarine) and WWI (Kaiserliche Marine) - uboat.net
Using links from the above I created a spreadsheet with some basic data. I only bothered with simple math for the numbers below. I intend to dump these into a database to play with the total statistics later. Data I pulled from those links included # of Patrols, Year for the First Patrol, Was it Sunk on the First Patrol, Total # of Days Spent on Patrol, and whether or not the boat was lost with all hands.
For the 3 or 4 of you still reading....
Total # of boats commissioned: 1156. 301 never made a patrol (too late, schoolhouse, etc.) so 74% of the force made at least one patrol (I called these boats "Active"). Of those 301, 172 were the new Type XXI and XXIII "Elektro boats*."
428 boats were lost with all hands, 421 of those were Active. The remaining 7 were lost on works-ups or as part of the schoolhouse. Sorry about not being MOSQ'ed, you're dead. 49% of the Active U-boats were lost with all hands.
Of boats with only one patrol, 182 were lost on their first with 130 going down with all hands; 21% and 71% respectively.
Roughly 3 out of 4 U-boat sailors were casualties and somewhere around 750 boats were lost.
* - To add some perspective on the technology and evolutionary change in tactics to take advantage of this technology, many of these boats spent 6 months to a full year in work-ups and training. Only a handful (I think it was 7) made combat patrols with a few sinking ships. Several went into a convoy without detection. We seriously had nothing to combat these craft once they submerged.
