A Few Real Questions

[Paul Riley]

Is there a mod for the emergency blue lighting jim?,this has got me interested now,I wouldnt mind that being modeled in the game.And if it has been modeled does it come on for you during silent operations?

[Platapus]

Check out

http://uboat.net/articles/index.html?article=61

For a nice article on Submarine Navigation.

[karamazovnew]

In short, they navigated by dead reckoning:turn 200 run for 10 hours at constant 12 knots, then turn 220 run for 3 more hours and u hit the lighthouse. At each moment they would know where they are relative to the last well known position. And they coupled that with daily position updates by using celestial navigation.
For latitude: They had almanachs with all the stars' rising hours, setting hours and peak height hours so they could use any star not just the Polaris. They could do this with a precision of 6 miles of latitude by using sextants fitted with Vernier scales.
For longitude: they had their clocks set at "base" time, or the actual daytime of the base of departure which is not your well known GMT+X hours. For 12:00GMT, the Kiel base hour might be something like (11h12m42s). Each morning and evening they would note the time at which the sun rises or sets. The difference between that time and the actual rising and setting times at Greenwich(obtained from almanachs for each each day of the year) will give you a very exact Longitude.

[Pisces]

Here is a motherload of high resolution scans of original Kriegsmarine charts. I don't exactly know how I got them, but I'm sure it's through a link here in this forum. Most likely the same as Jimbuna refers to.

Be carefull, it's 180 MB in size. You need to be able to open 7-zip compressed files. And the charts are different than you would see in the game map. Relative distances are wrong because of a different projection, and depths may not be the same either. The game map is a rectangular lattitude/longitude grid, with 120km per degree. But these charts are clearly different. Still, you can use the degree scales at the map edges to compare land features and city locations.

http://files.filefront.com/KM+Karten.../fileinfo.html

[karamazovnew]

Amazing stuff Pisces. A gem to have.

[Sailor Steve]

Just to add to what's been said:

All ships "rig for red" at night, not just subs. On-duty crew sometimes need to be inside one moment and outside the next. Red lighting keeps your eyes adjusted to the dark.

Blue lights have been a much-discussed subject, and there has yet to be an answer. I don't recall them being mentioned in the book, and I do remember somebody claiming Wolfgang Petersen said he did it just because it looked cool. I don't know that that's true; just repeating what I think I remember. I also don't recall ever hearing of any navy's ships using blue lighting for any reason, but I'll be glad to be corrected on that.

[Captain Birdseye]

Thanks everybody

[Paul Riley]

Just regarding the blue lights,I think what jim said sounds about right (if there was a use for it),to remind the crew that they were running silent.Having a visual cue to remind people not to fart or burp out loud,or even dropping the wrench on the floor plates

Where did you get that information from jim? I don't think I can find any references to it in the film,but it does look bloody good mind you.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Paul Riley

Is there a mod for the emergency blue lighting jim?,this has got me interested now,I wouldnt mind that being modeled in the game.And if it has been modeled does it come on for you during silent operations?

It was nearly done for GWX but development stopped after the release of GWX3.0.

You never know...someone might pick it up and run with it.