A question regarding Dive Times as pertaining to realistic times.

[Teh_Diplomat]

I thought the idea of having my VII-C dive under water in 27 seconds seems a bit too unrealistic, or perhaps unfeasible given that you would also have to take into consideration that you might want to have your watch crew submerge with you.:lol:


Does anyone have any information regarding how long it actually took to submerge a U-Boat with a full compliment of Watch crew including the Officer needing to get down the hatch first?

[Phaedrus]

As far as I have read about a VIIC:

25-27 is a perfect dive with a well trained crew / ideal sea state. (Read: Sometimes achieved, but not likely)

27-30 is a good dive.

30-33 is a "normal" dive time.

Anything above 33 is a bad dive.

They dont have to worry about leaving the watch crew behind, because all they had to do was unbuckle and slide down the ladder. Watch officer bails into the conning tower to close the hatch behind the last man.

Keep in mind that these are "crash dive" times.

All spare hands forward to put more weight in the bow, dive planes as far down as the Chief thinks possibile without lifting the screws out of the water - which are turning at ahead full.

The 27 second mark GWX uses is appropriate.

Werner (Ensign on U-230, Commander U-415 / U-953) describes 27 seconds as the goal during drill crash dives while on patrol, and the 27 second mark was also the time Reinhard Hardegen (U-147 / U-123) strove for, according to Michael Gannon's "Operation Drumbeat".


.... all this talk about diving has made me want to go for a quick patrol.

Now if only I can find a way to keep my lazy Watch Officer sober after I dive, so I don't have to wake his ass up and post him there myself when I surface.......

[Teh_Diplomat]

Now if only I can find a way to keep my lazy Watch Officer sober after I dive, so I don't have to wake his ass up and post him there myself when I surface.......


Yeah I was wondering about that too, he never seems to want to return to his post after re-surfacing. I tend to drop to periscope depth periodically in high traffic zones as my Hydrophones will pick up the boat(s) before my watch crew will.

So there is no way to have you WO return to post after surfacing?

[predavolk]

Me too! It's a plague on our fleet to have to keep those lazy-arse watch officers up and running! You don't have to do that with your chief engineer when you switch between electric and diesel.

[Jimbuna]

I think you'll find the dive times aren't too far off the RL mark.

[Tombow]

My sources also cite 25-30 seconds (with an experienced crew) for a a crash dive to 10 meters, so we must believe it is not that far off the mark. Would post links to a nice online book on the topic, unfortunately it is in russian.