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Originally Posted by gimpy117
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Originally Posted by Dread Knot
Fleet boats never had snorkels until well after the war with the 'Guppy' class.
Unfortunately I don't know of any keystroke shortcut for diving other than 'P' for periscope depth and 'C' for crash dive.
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It's kinda funny huh....you'd think the designers of big relatively advanced Boats of the country on the winning side of the war, Equipped with the latest advances of electronics and outfitted with comforts like A/C and Refrigeration would have thought of a tube mounted on a submarine with an electric blower to bring Air into the Sub...oh well |
They were really a tool of desperation, though.
Pre-war, USN doctrine held that any enemy units, escorted by air would be able to observe a sub at periscope depth. As a result, pre-war tactics revolved aroud deep, sound approaches. A snorkel requires a deptht hat pre-war was considered suicidal.
At the beginning of the war, air-search radar was right over the near horizon. Once common, the snorkel was not really needed since enemy air coverage was not dense enough to require it.
I suppose once enemy air was commonly amred with good surface search radar, the tables would turn again in favor of a smaller profile while recharging.
Wasn't critical during the war, though.