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Notes -
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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That's what I get for not looking crap up, yeah
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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."
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