Yea laying down a mine gauntlet can be dangerous. I blew myself up a few times. :)
I was surprised to learn in WWI , mines were laid down in American waters: Chesapeake and Delaware bays and claimed several victims

The lack of a game save is still the biggest killer of this sim. I really like it but I just can't spend hours on it to progress without the possibility to save.

I agree, Its very difficult to get immersed in a campaign without a way to save a patrol. It's a pity, because I think the campaign is actually quite good. Oh well , I like to focus on sims positives and see if I can have some fun and learn a bit about the period. There are so few new good first-person sims especially those depicting WWI.

Why my torpedoes always go under the keel of enemy ships even when I set torpedo depth to 1m? Is that some kind of a bug?
Played this game as a kid on an old Windows XP PC, there were no such issues. Launched it in compatibility mode on Windows 7 - I get this.

I never had or heard anyone else with this particular problem. I installed SOF from a disk and run on a Windows 7/64 bit build, set to run as administrator and compatibility set to XP service pack 2. Video at 1980x1024 @60hz. Also, SOF requires elements from Direct X 9c which are not included in later versions. Maybe try reinstall. -hope you solve problem

Torp Explosion sound while underwater missing
 

Tip. I noticed a friend's recent install of SOF + UBoote KursWest mod , lacked the satisfying "thump" of torp hitting it's target while his Uboat was submerged. The sound wav wasn't playing. He didnt notice it until I pointed it out. I corrected my game years ago and forgot about it. I'm not sure how it occurred, but Im guessing other players may have this same problem and not know.

Fortunately fix is easy. (*Before changing anything always backup First!) His problem was caused by a duplicate entry in: 1914 Shells of Fury\Game\sounds.txt.

In the " sounds.txt" file there were duplicate entries for :explo_torp_Innen.wav and explo_torp_unten.wav. Open "sounds.txt" with notepad. You will have to scroll down to find the the duplicates. Keep the duplicates but change the values of the second pair from: 1 and 7000 to 120 and 9000 to match the first set. Then Save. That should do it.
-Vox