A Few Real Questions
 

Hi everyone, hopefully someone can answer a few queries.

1) How did U-Boats plot their course through sea? at the moment I plot my course randomly, making a very rough course to my patrol grid and bob's your uncle.

2) Why did U-Boats have red lights? Was this to give the bootsmen some sort of 'time awareness' and make the boat feel more natural?

3) On a similar vein, why in Das Boot does the boat switch to a very dim blue light when under attack? Does it really matter if the lights are on? or do the lights make more revs?

4) Again from Das Boot, why did the officers wear goggles sometimes?


Thanks alot :arrgh!:

U-boats used the usual navigation charts and methods, similar to those of every navy.

Red light helps adjust the human eye for night vision.

Dim blue light was used to warn the crew that the boat was in silent running mode.

Goggles were warn prior to going up top to adjust/accustom the eyes for night vision.

Thanks jimbuna. Do you know where I can get the navigational charts?

I think I can only guess at some of these,and I may not be totally right,as someone in here will have the proper answers.

I think for plotting their course they used to do what was called 'shooting the sun' ,or stars,using a sextant? (correct me),that way judging by where the sun appears on the horizon they could get an exact position of their uboat,mark it on the map,and then go from there.

The red lights are used at night,to allow their eyes to get accustomed to the dark better,its not as intense as a white light,and if they needed to rush to the top their eyes wouldnt be blinded as much by the bright lights used in the day.

Im not sure about the blue lights,obviously it was emergency lighting of some description,hmm.

The goggles may have protected their eyes from any source of light interferance,so if a ship was spotted in the dimness of night they would probably be able to see it better as their eyes would be trained for the darkness,via the goggles.Its like looking into the sun,for a moment you have a blind spot,then it goes away.That blind spot from any lighting could affect you spotting a ship in front.
Or maybe a sudden drop in pressure as the hatch is opened,and the goggles would prevent their eyes from being sucked out? (obviously a joke) :D

Somebody will no doubt correct me here i'm sure,but thats my guesses out of the way ;)

Too late,Jim got there before me ;)
Hey,I wasnt far wrong :yep:
Interesting about the blue lights,nice one jim

Must learn to type faster :nope:......:yeah:Your to quick Jim:03:

There is a thread somewhere on this forum with links to them (you may have to purchase them).

There is also a link somewhere to one of the older U-boat games (AOTD perhaps) maps which includes the 6 digit reference points.

Unless someone else comes in I'm afraid you'll have to use the search function here.


http://www.psionguild.org/forums/ima...eywolftail.gif

Thanks very much everyone :DL

Is there a mod for the emergency blue lighting jim?,this has got me interested now,I wouldnt mind that being modeled in the game.And if it has been modeled does it come on for you during silent operations?

:yep:

Check out

http://uboat.net/articles/index.html?article=61

For a nice article on Submarine Navigation.

In short, they navigated by dead reckoning:turn 200 run for 10 hours at constant 12 knots, then turn 220 run for 3 more hours and u hit the lighthouse. At each moment they would know where they are relative to the last well known position. And they coupled that with daily position updates by using celestial navigation.
For latitude: They had almanachs with all the stars' rising hours, setting hours and peak height hours so they could use any star not just the Polaris. They could do this with a precision of 6 miles of latitude by using sextants fitted with Vernier scales.
For longitude: they had their clocks set at "base" time, or the actual daytime of the base of departure which is not your well known GMT+X hours. For 12:00GMT, the Kiel base hour might be something like (11h12m42s). Each morning and evening they would note the time at which the sun rises or sets. The difference between that time and the actual rising and setting times at Greenwich(obtained from almanachs for each each day of the year) will give you a very exact Longitude.

It was nearly done for GWX but development stopped after the release of GWX3.0.

You never know...someone might pick it up and run with it.

Here is a motherload of high resolution scans of original Kriegsmarine charts. I don't exactly know how I got them, but I'm sure it's through a link here in this forum. Most likely the same as Jimbuna refers to.

Be carefull, it's 180 MB in size. You need to be able to open 7-zip compressed files. And the charts are different than you would see in the game map. Relative distances are wrong because of a different projection, and depths may not be the same either. The game map is a rectangular lattitude/longitude grid, with 120km per degree. But these charts are clearly different. Still, you can use the degree scales at the map edges to compare land features and city locations.

http://files.filefront.com/KM+Karten.../fileinfo.html

Amazing stuff Pisces. A gem to have.

Just to add to what's been said:

All ships "rig for red" at night, not just subs. On-duty crew sometimes need to be inside one moment and outside the next. Red lighting keeps your eyes adjusted to the dark.

Blue lights have been a much-discussed subject, and there has yet to be an answer. I don't recall them being mentioned in the book, and I do remember somebody claiming Wolfgang Petersen said he did it just because it looked cool. I don't know that that's true; just repeating what I think I remember. I also don't recall ever hearing of any navy's ships using blue lighting for any reason, but I'll be glad to be corrected on that.