Analysis of Decisions
A study was held in the spring of 1944 to analyse the effectiveness of the decisions made by ORS. It showed that the number of U-boats able to submerge before being sighted by aircraft had decreased dramatically; from 66% to between 10% and 35%, dependent on visibility conditions. This was said to be due to the camouflage of the aircraft and improvements in aircraft look-outs, although deterioration in the standard of U-boat crew training could also have been a factor.
The reasoning behind these graphs is equivalent to the graph found on the ‘Initial Analysis’ page. In the analysis of 1944, the number of U-boats detected was found to vary according to the visibility conditions, and so there are different graphs provided for these differing conditions.
From these graphs it was concluded that only 10% of U-boats evaded detection in low visibilities to 35% in higher visibilites which is a vast improvement on the the 67% of boats which were evading detection up to 1941.
