Ah. Fair enough. Would it be standard practice then to run the battery down with the electric motors, stick up a snorkel, recharge them, take it down, run the battery dead, etc etc? This seems like it would be a problem if you were near the end of a cycle with low battery and suddenly you had to dive. On that note, would the electric motors be propelling the craft even while the diesels were charging the batteries while submerged? Or would you just have the diesels doing both and the electric engines off for the duration of the snorkel?
This doesn't even have to be a theoretical question: what do modern diesel-electric submarines do?
Sorry if this is getting wildly off topic. I've never really understood how the snorkel was used.
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