Karl Donitz's ineptitude went far deeper than *that*.
His only notable achievement in the First World War was somehow failing to be killed when his vessel, UB-68, was sunk by the British. The "Rudeltaktik" (better known as "Wolfpack Tactics"), which Donitz is world-famous for devising starting during his incarceration as a POW, called for the use of many U-Boats to ambush enemy convoys. However, anyone with even the slightest understanding of naval warfare will instantly recognize Donitz's "brilliant innovation" is just a Task Force made-up of Submarines waiting in ambush, rather than just one --- amateurish stuff. Notably, the idea of concentrating most of the U-Boat fleet into a few Wolfpacks to ambush a few convoys underscored an ignorance of just how huge the Atlantic Ocean was, and how agile convoys were.
Another shocking failure of judgement was that Donitz envisioned that the entire U-Boat fleet should be fully-coordinated and commanded at all times from the shore, via radio. Donitz simply didn't understand the concepts of radio interception, jamming, and code decryption, which were practically all down to a science by the Interwar Era. He also failed to comprehend that by being forced to report back to headquarters at least once a day using their radios, the U-Boats would be vulnerable to radio-location.
But worst of all, Donitz was stupid enough to believe that shuffling tiny U-Boat markers across a map of the Atlantic was the height of strategic brilliance. As a result, all the lengthy, methodical training his many skippers received was for nothing, because they were allowed virtually no individual initiative. That the U-Boat service was nothing more than a fleet of Yes Men starkly contrasts with the command model of the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe, which strongly encouraged officers in the field to act on their own initiative.
Donitz's reputation as history's supreme Submarine commander also benefits from widespread ignorance of his paranoia toward sensor technology in the 1930s. In 1935-36, Donitz was actually extremely reluctant to endorse further development and construction of U-Boats, being deathly afraid of a new British supertechnology; ASDIC (British Sonar). Thing is though, not only did the Germans wildly overestimate the value of ASDIC, but so did the British themselves. Only 1 out of every 10 Submarines were detected by ASDIC during exercises, but actual results didn't sway the Admiralty's opinion of the system. The Germans must have been aware (or unaware?) of this as well, as they were developing their own Sonar technology. Alan Hotham, British Director of Naval Intelligence, later characterized ASDIC as being so ineffective that it amounted to being only a "huge bluff". The ASDIC paranoia of Karl Donitz is no minor one-time trifle --- as you will soon see, the inability to rationally evaluate the capabilities and limitations of new technology was a habit he never kicked.
By the late 1930s, Donitz had finalized the plans for his dream fleet, which was to be 300 Type VII U-Boats. However, Germany's ability to construct U-Boats during the Interwar Era was far too limited for these numbers. Between 1935 and 1939, Germany had only completed 63 U-Boats.
U-Boat losses in World War 2 also eventually exceeded production rates. In 1943, 1944, and 1945, nearly as many U-Boats were sunk than were built, and 1943 saw more built that year than in any other. To put it another way, had Donitz gotten his "dream fleet" by 1940, and Germany stopped rapid production of U-Boats, all of them would have been lost by the end of 1943.
The Allies started causing very heavy losses to U-Boats right in the middle of the war, that were completely out of proportion with what they'd managed in prior years, because they broke the Enigma Code. Between that, and the fact that Kriegsmarine submariners were forced to send status reports and receive new orders every single day at exactly the same time, it's astonishing that they survived for as long as they did. Donitz quickly noticed that the Allies always seemed to have extremely heavy concentrations of ASW forces in place wherever any U-Boats were sent... almost as though the Allies were expecting them --- yet, he didn't suspect a thing for quite some time. Even when he did on two occasions during the war, his "experten" always told him that the Enigma Code was unbreakable. Despite substantial evidence to the contrary, Donitz unflinchingly believed them.
Moreover, oceanic submarine warfare demanded the longest-range boats Germany could produce, and the design that fit the bill was the Type IX. Instead, Donitz refused to part with the obsolete Type VII U-Boat, which had a range of 8000nm; the Type IXC had a range of 13000nm. More than half of the U-Boats built by Germany (703) all the way into April of 1945 were Type VIIs --- only 290 Type IXs were authorized, of which 194 were completed.
And how about that new German innovation of World War 2 that Donitz oversaw, the Submarine Snorkel? It turns out that it wasn't new, it wasn't developed in World War 2, and it wasn't German. The first engineer to devise and patent a Submarine Snorkel was British citizen James Richardson, in 1916. The only reason Richardson didn't go down in history as a great inventor was because the Royal Navy failed to see the potential of a snorkel. A snorkel was also later devised for the Italian Navy in 1926 by Capt. Pericle Ferretti of the technical corps, but again the establishment was oblivious. The Germans didn't catch-on to the snorkel until 1933, when German professor Hellmuth Walter devised one and offered it to the Kriegsmarine. However, those genius innovators in the Kriegsmarine scoffed the idea of a Submarine Snorkel, and wouldn't reconsider one again for another decade.
This Dutch Navy *did* recognize the snorkel's value, and it was incorporated into the design of the O-19 class Submarines, which were laid-down in 1936, and commissioned in 1940. After Germany invaded the Netherlands in 1940, they had access to ex-Dutch Submarines in various states of completion that were fitted with snorkels, along with extensive blueprints and documentation. However, the Kriegsmarine AGAIN failed to take any interest in the snorkel. It wasn't until Prof. Walter desperately pleaded to Admiral Donitz on May 19th 1943 to reconsider the snorkel that the Kriegsmarine finally began to THINK about it --- and by then, the war at sea was unsalvageable.
Initially, the first U-Boats to receive snorkels were the Type VIICs, a model that had already proven too lacking in endurance to be of much use in the Atlantic. The Germans moved far too cautiously, and initially they fitted snorkels only to U-264 and U-575, and only in an experimental capacity. Both went to sea with snorkels in February of 1944... and never returned. Only a very small percentage of Germany's U-Boats received snorkels by the end of the war, and almost all of them were sunk --- along with almost all of the other U-Boats.
There's probably more than that, but you get the idea. Donitz wasn't the sharpest shiv in the crayon box.
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