FACT: You could be in a rowboat 2,000 miles out at sea in the Pacific, and if a tsunami were travelling right through your location, you'd never know it - the 'wave' would be about six inches, tops.
Check out some basic physics. A wave in a medium such as water is highly misunderstood by most people. The compression and rarefaction of the particles (i. e., water molecules, in this case - also bear in mind that water is an incompressible fluid) is almost entirely imperceptible out at sea (and I mean well out at sea). The breakers and what most people think of as waves occur only when the bottom of the wave starts to hit a substance even more incompressible, i. e., land.
Das Boot is a work of fiction. As a Lit major, I'm all for poetic license, but recognize it for what it is.
* German boats were smaller than US fleet boats. A smaller vessel will be more affected by sea state.
* Where you are is crucial. I respect the opinion of a sub vet, but notice where the boat was - in Long Island Sound in a hurricane. Shallow and enclosed; even a modern 350' long behemoth with the tonnage of a WWII CV is going to roll at a shallow depth.
In general, submarines do not roll, pitch, or yaw greatly under 100'. Furthermore, as far as SH3 and SH4 go - a great deal of the action in 4 occurs in 'blue water', away from a continental shelf. A lot of the action in 3 is above a continental shelf. This is a significant difference in what you can expect for sea state and weather, so maybe the devs have modelled it much more reralistically than one might think.
|