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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   21694 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026

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One point I’ll make here is that the culture of occupational safety is a lot different now than it was back in the 80s during the Tanker War. A 1% chance of someone onboard dying is not an acceptable level of risk for a civilian-crewed merchant vessel in 2026.

For a counterpoint: in WW2 once the Germans started losing roughly 2 u-boats a month they began drastically drawing back the campaign against Atlantic shipping. This effectively ceded the supply war to the Americans, even though Germany still had over 1,000 u-boats. Extreme risk aversion has been a thing in the past too.

Edit: Am retarded, disregard

For a counterpoint: in WW2 once the Germans started losing roughly 2 u-boats a month they began drastically drawing back the campaign against Atlantic shipping. This effectively ceded the supply war to the Americans, even though Germany still had over 1,000 u-boats. Extreme risk aversion has been a thing in the past too.

Question: At the time the Germans were losing 2 u-boats a month, from the perspective of the crewman on a u-boat, what were the odds of being sunk on any given mission to disrupt shipping?

The total death rate of Uboat crews was something in the order of 70% over the war, and half of the survivors were captured - the highest for any of the German branches at least. Peak operations were 118 or so boats out at one time, but then they lost 43 in a single month - Black May. I think @ChickenOverlord might be slightly misremembering the history here, the peak attrition was brutal and their scaling back of operations was after this point to prevent a collapse of the force and reassess tactics etc.

Even for the Americans the submarine arm was the deadliest branch of the armed forces - around 25% of American submarine crewmen in WWII died.

Honestly kind of crazy that half the survivors weren't captured. What did they do, row a lifeboat back to Germany? Wait for the Kriegsmarine to steam out and pick them up? I know there were U-boat-to-U-boat rescue operations but that's not exactly an easy feat either.

The other half of those survivors weren't of those crews that were sunk, it was of those that returned home safely. So 70% of Uboat crewmen died, another 15% were captured, and only the other 15% made it home safely.

I know right... I assume some of that difference might be crews who were recovered by neutral countries/landed on coasts where they were not captured/interred afterwards. But there might be a fair number of crews in that total that never were on a sunk U-boat in the end, for example they were on leave, training, rotations or whatever and didn't get a uboat posting again when they returned after they were all sunk, bombed or too low on resources to run in the late war.

I think that's also true on the Kamikazes, not all died as they didn't all get planes or missions by the end, and some tried and failed to find a target (you got a few chances to return before on like the 5th one or something you were assumed to be a coward and shot? However, some later versions of the planes couldn't even land, so you were committed).

Ah, I think I just completely misread what you meant by "survivors" - surviving the war, rater than losing a boat.

I think the survivors weren't necessarily people who survived the sinking of their boats, but rather mostly whose boats came home in one piece. Many of them would then get taken POW after the u-boat bases on the french atlantic coast surrendered, but those who were dismissed from service beforehand would just go home as civilians.

That's what I get for not looking crap up, yeah

The total death rate of Uboat crews was something in the order of 70% over the war, and half of the survivors were captured - the highest for any of the German branches at least. Peak operations were 118 or so boats out at one time, but then they lost 43 in a single month - Black May. I think @ChickenOverlord might be slightly misremembering the history here, the peak attrition was brutal and their scaling back of operations was after this point to prevent a collapse of the force and reassess tactics etc.

Thank you for this. Assuming your narrative is accurate (and I have no reason to doubt you), it seems unlikely that it was a matter of "Extreme risk aversion."

Not even for one owned by Greece and crewed by Thais? I think they'll find someone to take the risk.

You could certainly find someone. And some have run the blockade, maybe with bribes but still not officially allowed, but those kind of blockade runners aren't going to be enough to carry the global economy.

but those kind of blockade runners aren't going to be enough to carry the global economy

They would be if the rest of the world would support them rather than continue to insist on insurance rules developed for peacetime.

It’s actually less likely than you think. Even with the cost of insurance, the journey itself could still be profitable. But consider the risk of an attack - legal cases with the crew and negative press attention for “getting workers killed” (even if they volunteered) aside, the biggest risk is that you lose a ship you can’t replace just at a time when shipping rates might rise overall. New specialized tankers or other specialized cargo ships take a long time to make, you can’t just buy a new one off the shelf. So even if the insurance pays, you’re out a lot of revenue. All these things factor in.

They'd also have to find an insurer willing to take it.

At a certain price level, self-insurance is rational

Self-insurance isn't permitted, by treaty, law, regulation, and contract. You have to have P&I from the cartel, and once you are required to have insurance, you're forced to cede your business decisions to the insurers (or join the shadow fleet)

The shadow fleet, of course, has no such restrictions. The West may just be too risk-averse to win a war, because while a war is happening, you do need to continue to do things despite risk imposed by the enemy.

The WSJ published an article yesterday handwringing about the Dubai Airport remaining open. Yeah, like the country should grind to a halt because risks have unavoidably increased. It's that kind of thinking that got us COVID lockdowns, too.

Dunno how much it actually factors into anybody's decisions here, but the Trump admin's urgings in the spirit of 'oh the strait is open now, just sail, we've blown everything up and it's pretty safe now actually' and 'hey Euros/Japanese/etc please send escort ships, come on, don't be sissies' and related forum discussions of how doing otherwise is pathological risk aversion, feel a bit unconvincing while the US has a ridiculously formidable naval presence thereabouts, and keeps it way, way away from the Gulf, flying all the sorties in an expensive tricky way using tanker planes.

Like, I'd expect that those carrier groups include several of the very best ships on the planet for defending against every sort of airborne threat. If the new lethal warlike US Department of War visibly doesn't dare risk dipping a little warrior toe in the gulf, is it very surprising if most big slow unarmed tankers won't be that enthused either, nor the inferior warships of every other country. Maybe something even changes up a bit if the US actually brings in those Marine landing ships instead of leaving them hovering menacingly a few hundred km away.

It's not really the West so much as modern multinationals from my understanding who actually transport the oil.

It's not the multinationals transporting the oil, but the insurance cartel based in London. Which would rather pressure the US to stop the war so they can continue to collect war risk premiums with no war risk than actually sell insurance when there might be claims.

I had no idea maritime insurance was such a monopolistic cartel.

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