Discussion: rate of depth change (lengthy)

[Torpex752]

Originally Posted by Chock

It's funny you should mention this. I was watching Run Silent, Run Deep, the 1958 classic sub movie, today. If you haven't got this on DVD by the way, why not? Stop reading at once and go and buy it.

Anyway, I noticed that during the many diving and surfacing sequences there are in that movie, when the sub surfaces at low speed, it has a really nose up attitude, must be a good 15 to 20 degrees nose up, with the prow fully out of the water while the stern is still well below the surface. It's almost as severe as when you see a modern nuke sub doing an emergency surface.

As an aside, I also notice that the sub used in the movie has a very prominent whip antenna mounted on the conning tower behind the persicopes. Was this antenna a post war addition, does anyone know?

The whip antenna was installed after surfacing and stowed below when submerging.

The US subs had a unique "hard" tank called "Bow Bouyancy" it was located external to the presure hull and could be rapidly flooded and blown dry in order to rapidly affect the trim angle of the sub. It was used during crash dives to get the bow under fast. The german U-Boats did not have this system, they used bodies!
The Bow bouyancy tank is not modeled in this sim (not a big deal). The diving Officer isnt either(big deal).
Frank