So who has ever had a Holy 'holy mother of god!' Moment?

[Silversides236]

I torpedoed a DD once it kept coming at me then it dove at me still firing its guns and it stopped 2 feet from hitting my boat.

[padi]

I attacked a port at periscope depth (not more possible), I see 2 Bettys passing me, I continue the attack on the port and then without warning 2 torpedos passing right over my sub not more than 3 feet over my deck. I was totally shocked...

[Rockin Robbins]

I don't go deeper than 90 feet and then only for the least amount of time possible. Then I pop back up to radar depth and to the surface if I can. Every second I'm running on battery I'm asking "is there any reason I can't pop to the surface NOW and raise some hell?" Running your batteries low is just taking your boat and crew out of the war. Hold on. Getting a dispatch from the Admiral. I'll patch you in....

If I see on your cruise report that your batteries were below 75% I had better also see that your life was in imminent danger or your boat gets a new skipper. We put way too much trouble into training your crew to put their lives in danger from a skipper who confuses hiding with safety. As a submariner, your job is to be dangerous. A hiding submarine is only dangerous to its own crew.

Admiral Lockwood
CINCPAC

[Tshark]

Yep, the Eugene Fluckey doctrine. The fleet boat is a surface warship that can "manually" sink in an emergency.

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

As a submariner, your job is to be dangerous. A hiding submarine is only dangerous to its own crew.

Indeed, after reading Goebbler's book on the U-505, now at Chicago, where he was in the zentrelle, assigned to the valve duty specifically by his first kaleun, for dives, how many boats actually died in crash-dive accidents with faulty valve work.

[Rockin Robbins]

German subs were WWI technology and they were strictly Rube Goldberg machines for operation by the crew. The valve section of the control room is just a byzantine mass of unorganized valves, dozens of them and you had to know them cold to do it right. Chances of mistakes were very high, just by the terrible organization of valves in the array.

The U-Boats were amazingly primitive compared to the American Fleet Boat. Those had logical layouts, with many many fewer valves, carefully laid out in ergonometric manner. Mistakes were few and the boats much more efficient to operate.

Maybe the best kind of comparison would be the control layout on a Model T. To drive them you must learn to drive all over again. They certainly are not intuitive in any of their operations.

However, today, with standard control layouts in automobiles, gas pedal on the right, then the brake to the left and clutch, if any, to the left of that, with gearshift knobs in expected places with similar gear layouts, you can just jump from car to car to car forever and drive each one without a lot of difficulty.