@Tomi, Dietrich, Mikhayl:
Sorry guys, but celebration has proved to be a little premature.
I've noticed very belatedly that my earlier removal of the observation periscope from the model has for some reason also removed the rear part of the conning tower from the XXIII sub. That is the extension at the rear of the conning tower, which actually was used to store rubber dinghies and similar equipment.
In further testing, using Tomi's original NSS_Uboat21.sim/dat/zon files, I found something very strange. If the observation periscope is disabled (commented out with ';') only in basic.cfg, the raise and lower mechanism still works, but it raises and lowers the conning tower rear extension! It looks like there might be a similarity or overlap of nodes here.
That was a pretty careless oversight, so apologies to all. Without the rear tower extension, the Type XXIII looks just like a normal U-boat for its tower. That's how I missed it.
There's another issue too. The movement of the watch crew into the 'good weather' positions exclusively has somehow created a tiny artefact floating to the left-hand side of the tower. This remains in place even when individual watch crew members are removed, so I can't guess the cause. I did all the testing in bad weather. As soon as I took the XXIII out on a sunny, windless, day, the sun glinted on the artefact. That's when I saw it.
Back to the drawing-board.
I have grave doubts now whether the observation periscope can be disabled without affecting the conning tower rear extension in some way.
Stiebler.
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