[3Jane]

In his book 'u-boat war' Lothar-Gunther Buchheim describes being given a brief stint at the helmsman's position in the conning tower during a quiet period. Presumably there must have been a helm position in somewhere in the rest of the boat for other times. Wouldn't be a nice place to be during a depth charge repost. But there again, no place in the boat would be
In another book (I forget the title, must try to find it again sometime) describing coastal command's campaign against the u-boats in the bay of biscay. One u-boat helmsman was the only one of the crew, other than the flak crews on deck, to survive when the boat suddenly went down after sustaining damage from a Dutch bomber. One of ten aircraft circling the three boat group at the time. So he was in the tower position during surface action at least. Two of the boats were sunk at the time, the third being sunk by depth charges later by a hunter-killer group tasked to head towards the scene.