how to turn off auto crew promotions
 

Playing TMO w/ pre pearl harbor career start and my crew seems t be getting promoted automatically. Anybody have a fix for this? I am also unable to earn any medals for the crew after 4 war patrols and a couple of sinkings

No idea, my crew have to be hand picked from promotion lists. Never been any different, maybe a mod that you have inserted???

Promotions are usually a mixed bag IIRC. 1-3 are automatic then you have to manually promote to 4. 4-6 automatic, manual to 7... something like that. That is mod-able and you can add enough promotions to your save files to promote everyone who is eligible for the manual promotions. (You can also add medals to award too.) If you would like, I can look up the particulars. Is that what you're looking for? If you're talking about adjusting the number of promotions and medals that the game gives you at the end of a patrol without editing save files then I cannot help you; that's beyond anything I've tinkered with.

Dont. All these promotions etc all add to the crew expertise and even makes diving faster. An expert crew makes monkeys out of newbies.