Maximum diving depth
The XXI was designed with a theoretical crush depth of 330-340 meters, a design depth of 135m with a safety factor of 2.5. However structural issues, such as the way the bottom pressure hull was joined to upper one and workmanship problems meant that this could not be attained, joining two sections for example required a continuos weld taking about 8 hours to complete that could not be interrupted without creating weak spots
(not good news in 1944-1945 for reasons that will be obvious...) .
Some of these issues were being addressed, for example assembly was going to be moved in special bunkers, but nervethless various studies and estimates put the crush depth to as little as 245 meters or at most just past 300m.
Thus if you want to play realistically the depth gauge, limited at 260m, is pretty much spot on in terms of what you can get away with.
If you instead assume that somehow the design was properly debugged you have in the game at least another 50 meters to play with before taking damage.
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