[Gustav Schiebert]

Cheers all for the welcomes.

I like what you're suggesting, but as a former American sailor it looks odd to me. In the US Navy officers have to do at least some studying before they are assigned to head a division, and here there is no such thing as an unqualified petty officer. Earning the qualification is what gets them that promotion. I wasn't even a PO, just a lowly seaman, but the radio section was my permanent position and if I had stayed in I would have become a radioman, which is a petty officer position.

That's always been hard for me (also a navy man) to get my head around the German system. At least in the war, rather than the UK/US system of having enlisted men and officers, where you start at the bottom and work up, the Navy (and Army) had three career paths. You could be a sailor, and basically be unskilled labour (although in practice you'd build up considerable experience in your field). Promotion here is entirely dependent upon time served. Petty Officers would all have a trade - I should probably clarify that Kriegsmarine NCOs would all have a trade, but for my crew management system only the mechanics have the Silent Hunter 'qualification' to set them apart from the seamen's division. Officers would, like with the US Navy, train in one discipline. Unlike in many armies, transferring between the grades was quite rare.

On U-boats, the crew was split between seemänner (seamen) and techniker (technicals). 'Seamen' offcers took responsibility for commanding watches, navigating, general leadership etc under the Watch Officers and Commander, while all mechanical stuff was dealt with by the Chief Engineer and his machinists. The idea of the system is to prevent just dropping the 1WO in the torpedo room to speed up reloading, where in reality he'd just get in the way.

You can not reload torpedoes without a Weapons Officer, so you can't just leave that slot empty.

Surprisingly, you can maneuver just fine without a Navigator and/or a Bridge Watch Officer. However, you can not change course without a Chief Engineer - you just get the "No Officer at Helms Station" error message.

Hmmm. My torpedoes reload on their own, and didn't realise it was the engineer who did the steering. You're right there, SH3 commander seems the way forward (not running at the moment). I tried running it and got a CTD every time I loaded a game - am I missing something on this?