External Torpedo Reserves
 

I was reading an old posting on the subject and it got me to thinking about something again that i have wondered before.

When a crew wanted to bring down external stores they had to do so under lock and tackle. I would imagine there was quite a bit of hoisting with a pully system, lowering the torpedo into the loading hatch, getting it secured inside the submarine, and moving it into position etc... long story short its like an hour long procedure that takes several men to complete and takes an interesting rig of pullys and chains etc to do this.

my points in this post is as follows

this would have been very difficult if not impossible in rough seas

this would have been a task which required quite a bit of commitment once you started the process meaning that you couldnt just drop everything and crash dive when a plane or ship was spotted since you have a torpedo half way down the loading hatch... so you hade to pick the moment careully, such as in low light conditions etc.

does anyone have historical information on the activity?

I had a whole bunch of links that sent u to sites with tons of info on tech stuff on uboats, it has "blue prints" of the external reload system. I dont think much has changed since how they load torps from the outside to the inside of a sub, it still takes hours and hours to load torpedos into a fast attack sub today.

I beleive the system was a lock and tacle system with some changes, i think they slide the torp down a tube which enteres the front ward room then it goes to the torpedo room. i think haha

yes you are correct in the method used, but my main question is this...

If your in the middle of the process can you just put everything on hold and crash dive?

i woudlnt think so.

I think it's "Block & Tackle", and yes it should take an hour or so. The "external" storage is a storage box under the deck. They have to set up the little crane, winch the 1-ton torpedo out of the storage, open the torpedo loading hatch, winch the torpedo down the tube, close the hatch and put everything away.

You can't dive with the torpedo hatch open. If you close it and dive you'll lose the torpedo, and maybe the crane too. In any case your dive time will be longer because the on-deck crew have to get below. If the torpedo is in the tube and you can't close the hatch you're stuck.

exactly as i suspected - i propose a new mod then that renders the boat unable to dive when loading external stores and causes the crew to be unalbe to load them in bad weather.

anyone?

I don't know if that's possible. I just do it that way myself and pretend.

:rotfl:

or we could do that

This would be up to the individual of course. But, I only load externals with wind speed of less than 7 and in daylight and at a dead stop. And with crew manning the AA guns to protect against planes (no diving allowed). And since this is a winch and pully system that was hooked to the conning tower that had a shute going into the forward or aft torpedo rooms, I do not load the forward and aft torpedoes at the same time.

Just a note here: The only area safe enough to transfer externals was in the air gap. So, in the later stage of the war (probably late '42) when the air gap was closed and carrier groups prowled around, most boats carried no externals. There were just too many aircraft and crash dives to allow for safe transfer. Not to mention the danger in carrying a bunch of explosives on top of the deck. Therefore, BdU only allowed long range boats to the South Atlantic and to the Indian Ocean to carry externals in the later stage of the war. This is not in the game but should be considered.

very informative - thank you :know:

Precisely :yep:

When I'm playing I take not only the weather conditions into account but also the area I'm patrolling. If it's covered by aircraft, then I'll only reload the externals at night. :arrgh!:

Makes sense. Didn't know that. With the Typ VII that would mean only losing 2 torpedoes, but since the Typ IX had almost half of the torpedoes in external storage it became no more useful than a Typ VII both having now 12 torpedoes at their disposal. The only advantage of the IX was the range. Interesting.

Reloading at night might be more dangerous than during the day. During the day you can at least spot a plane. At night they can detect you with radar and you only find out a few seconds before your boat get's bombed. BTW your crew can't see very well at night and lighting the upper deck during the night is inviting trouble :know:

I don't believe they were able to reload at night, not enough light.

Everything depends on the year (certainly for widespread use of radar)and the light conditions (moonlight) :arrgh!:

I do that too, had to cut a patrol off with my trust VIIB because the sea was too rough to bring the two externals inside.