A pair of historical questions..

[Ducimus]

Originally Posted by Aviv

Second, I was reading the other day (bored recently) about how crews can escape from submarines. I learnt that those two small hatches at the back of the submarine (with one at almost 45 degrees) is part of the system which allows sailors to escape; the "escape trunk" (more information on Wikipedia). I wanted to know how successfull was that to allow people to escape and survive sunked submarines?

One of the most famous accounts of escaping a stricken submarine was the USS Tang.

A first hand account of sorts can be read here:
http://ss563.org/306/survivors.html

[CptChacal]

Originally Posted by Aviv

I learnt that those two small hatches at the back of the submarine (with one at almost 45 degrees) is part of the system which allows sailors to escape; the "escape trunk" (more information on Wikipedia).

The 45-degree hatch is the torpedo loading hatch and has no escape trunk.