Quote:
Originally Posted by jarlemag
What downtime? Either you are cruising/drifting submerged and trying to track contacts by hydrophone, or you are cruising/chasing a convoy on the surface. In neither case do you want to be diving or surfacing unnecessarily.
Dive officer is needed to keep depth (or be ready to crash dive), sonarman is needed on the hydrophones/radio, helmsman must also be ready to switch engines to electric for crash dive if on the surface. Submerged the helmsmans position is perhaps less time critical, but still speed affects depth, so without a helmsman at the controls you risk surfacing accidentally, worst case.
Any idle hands can either help man the periscope (if dived), or keep lookout on the bridge.
Doing drills and practicing as a crew is good, sure. But it doesn't make sense to do that while hunting a convoy. Unless you are already ahead of the convoy and just waiting for it to come to you.
The most sensible use of free time except for lookout duty, and which does not interfere with operation of the boat, is probably studying/practicing navigation and plotting, preferably with a practiced navigator. Or studying/practicing any of the stations, really. But you still want to keep all stations manned, and don't move the boat all willy-nilly just for practice when there is a convoy out there that doesn't wait for you.
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Valid point. Definitely something for a time not chasing a convoy. So a session from time to time could be devoted to practice and kept separate from an engagement (or after you’ve sunk em all, of course
).