Man! Ducimus was right, check out this conning tower!

[Quagmire]

Well you were right Ducimus. At first I thought that all those people crammed into the conning tower was a little crazy but truth is stranger than fiction. Check this...



Here is the caption from the navsource.com USS Sealion photo page:

By the end of WW II, conning towers were badly crowded. This drawing shows that of the Sealion (SS-315) in 1945. The two large open circles on the right are the hatches, up from the pressure hull (above) and up to the open bridge (below). Wartime additions included the third mast (for SD) passing through the conning tower to the left, and the radar scopes to the right of the torpedo data computer. The shaded circles indicate the location of the crew in the conning tower.

So Ducimus, do you think you could get that many crew members in the SHIV conning tower! I want, I want, I want!!! (Just kidding...:rotfl

It must have stuck like a locker room in there! Thank God they had that air conditioner!
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[Ducimus]

The AC was shut off during silent running I believe. Ive read too many accounts of the temperature spiking up to 120+ degrees during an attack.

hard to beleive, but the old clark gable movie wasnt too far off the mark.


Scenes 1:34-1:40 give a good view of an active CT.

[M. Sarsfield]

I have color footage of a fleet boat in attack mode and most of the guys are in t-shirts or no shirts at all. B.O. was at an all-time high.

[Quagmire]

I forgot about that. Air Conditioning was certainly classified as "non-essential" during slient running. Oh, the horror! Makes you respect those guys even more.

Actually, I think this could be turned into a positive. Just tell your crew, "You guys execute a successful attack and evasion, then the A/C goes back on." Talk about motivation!
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[Ducimus]

I dont think the heat inside a fleetboat can be understated.

Think about it, you have all those men crammed in small areas.
The heat from the E-Motors would probably creep about through the entire boat.
Your in the tropics...

Ive always wondered what the "salt tablets" that i've read crew members took to replace the salt lost through sweating looked like.

The AC's real purpose was to dehumidify the interior to protect the electronics such as the radar, or misc fuses.

I guess being inside a Fleetboat during silent running, was probably quite literally, like living in a steam cooker.

Ive often thought of modding the crews to be stripped of the shirts more often, but i figure thats one bit of historical accuracy most could probably do without, or at the least, make people wonder if "Duci caught teh gay".

[ANTARES]

I guess that I can understand how those guys must have felt on tose boats, while serving on several destroyers, frigates and cruisers while at battle stations and holding NBC attacks the a/c was shutdown for hours.

[Quillan]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

Ive always wondered what the "salt tablets" that i've read crew members took to replace the salt lost through sweating looked like.

If I had to guess, I'd say they were problably small white tablets about the size and shape of your typical aspirin. At least, that's what the salt tablets used to look like on a job I worked one summer.

[M. Sarsfield]

The Batfish tends to hold its heat long after the weather cools off and it takes it a while to heat back up after the weather turns nice, again. The cork-lined hull makes a very good insulator.

[Quagmire]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

Ive often thought of modding the crews to be stripped of the shirts more often, but i figure thats one bit of historical accuracy most could probably do without, or at the least, make people wonder if "Duci caught teh gay".

Maybe that wouldn't be so bad. I mean, every photo I have ever seen of a fleet boat crew working while submerged had at least one guy mulling about shirtless. How about making one or two sailors in the damage control party shirtless? They would be the ones who were really working up a sweat doing their duties. Or furthermore...

I read in Dick O'Kane's book "Wahoo: The Patrols of America's Most Famous World War II Submarine" that the captain was in the shower when a juicy target was spotted. He jumped out of the shower immediately and rushed to the conning tower with only a towel wrapped around his waist. He began plotting observations through the scope and as he whipped the scope around his towel dropped to his feet! Undaunted he continued calling out range and bearing data for a few minutes stark naked until a crewman brought him his uniform!

Now go ahead and add that bit of realism! :rotfl:
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[jetthelooter]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

I dont think the heat inside a fleetboat can be understated.

Ive always wondered what the "salt tablets" that i've read crew members took to replace the salt lost through sweating looked like.

salt tablets were the size of a modern asperin tablet and were white. the ary issued them to troops up till the early 80's when actual research was done on water and fluid loss and it was found that salt tablets did far more harm than good

[jazman]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

I dont think the heat inside a fleetboat can be understated.

Think about it, you have all those men crammed in small areas.
The heat from the E-Motors would probably creep about through the entire boat.

Often a lot of heat was coming off the diesels, because they had just dived. So the diesels are really hot, and they're just killing the guys in the engine rooms.