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Originally Posted by Wave Skipper
but it does point up one thing - Germany should have designed such a snorkel! A little extra metal to strengthen it would have saved a lot of lives.
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A raised snorkel would have been very visible and would have defeated the whole purpose of U-Boot design.
Remember that U-Boote were designed so that the commander's or watchman's head was the higher thing on the boat, so they could follow enemy ships keeping only the top of their masts in sight, being sure they could not be seen.
For this reason they had very short periscope lodging (not higher than the turret itself) even though this led to a very short periscope, that made difficult keeping periscope depth without having the top of the turret come out of water in rough sea. But all was designed to be functional to surface attacks (as opposed to submerged attacks).
With a raised snorkel they would have been spotted much more easily against the horizon.
Even raising the periscope (that is much smaller than the Schnorkel) while surfaced (e.g. for having better sight), was strictly forbidden fie U-Boot commanders.
Maraz