[AS]

I might repeat myself but: FORGET about dead crew members. Sometimes crew members were injured: some lost some of their teeth when they hit steel while under depth charge attacks. One unlucky guy was hit in the head by wreck-pieces flying around after torpedoeing a ship, other guys got into "accidents" like shell-hulls (don´t know the proper name for that) flying around hitting someone´s face accidently or torpedoes crashing down while under inspection in trhe torpedoe roo, etc. But casualties... no, not really.

Cheers, AS

[Furia]

[montecarlo_75]

Hellody all!

A big problem was Chlorine gas, formed from saltwater mixing with the acid from ruptured batteries. If you didn't surface the boat and vent the toxic fumes, the crew could die. It woudl be awesome to see the pale yellow gas forming in the rooms too... But that's just me.

[mystery meat]

I remember reading in Herbert Werner's memoir Iron Coffins about a crewman who was knocked about in the engine room and killed.

[Henric Edwards]

One German U-boat had its entire bridge watch washed overboard once. The boat continued on its course for at least seven minutes before the tragedy was discovered by the crew members below decks. None of the bridge watch survived. There were MANY instances of crew members dying, especially after Dönitz' order to his boats that thay should stay surfaced and fight it out with the allied aircraft.

[montecarlo_75]

Hellody all!

If I'm not mistaken, when a boat was at battle stations, they had all the watertight hatches dogged down, to prevent flooding in the event of a hit. This could lead to crewmembers drowning if their compartment flooded before they could contain the damage. Of course, a flooded compartment often ment a doomed boat anyway... Historically, once a U-boat took enough damage that major flooding occured, the CO would abandon ship... Not fight it out to the death as the simulation crowd would tend to do. There's a lot less glory in abandoning ship than fighting her to the end, but real men in real combat aren't worried about glory, they want to survive. So I guess I've accomplished nothing but to say that Captains rarely fought their ships to the end, they usually abandoned them once it got pretty bad (yes I know there are exceptions, there always are). But then it would also be nice to have the option to fight your ship to the very end, and have to deal with massive crew casualties and whanot. But that's just my opinion...

[bart]

The worlds first flying submarine!........

[bart]

OOPS! appologies, that last remark was intended to follow oscar19681
post at the bottom of page 1, I replied before realising there was another
page

[marauder]

How about getting different crews assigned to your boat. From what I know, in WWII they did mix old crew with rookies, so you seldom have a boat of all veterans or a boat full of rookies. And if the crew reassignment is random (ie getting 1 or 2 rookies in every sortie, in random positions of boat), it would add suspense to game as well as weak links to your otherwise super crew which is less fun. No boat is without a weakness, same can be said of its crew.

[AS]

Considering that there were almost 40000 (yes, fourty thousand) U-Boat men in WWII, your four men crew washed away or one guy being hit in the engine room doesn´t seem to be of any significance to my argument that ALL IN ALL there weren´t killed crew members. I can give you statistics proving that more people die due to accidents in their own house than do people killed in car accidents etc. Still you can´t conclude that it more dangerous to do the washing up than it is to travel 20000 miles a year.

So what I´m aiming at: don´t care to simulate an aspect that doesn´t play any role. (Even if there WAS a casualty now and then, it wouldn´t effect the whole U_boat unless it is the CO having a heart attack while he is trying to close the main hatch while diving, hehehe.

[oscar19681]

well at least you can model crew replacement . this is top my knowlege realistic .

[Bonfleck]

Seems to me, U-boats had many perils to survive other than a direct hit by a depth charge. For instance, if you had the common occurence of diesels breaking down and an accidental fire killed the engine crew ala u-571, or your boats seanoned sonar operator has his eardrums shattered, or half your crew succumbs to chlorine gas, your first officer goes nuts from the pressure and commits suicide, crew members being washed overboard and lost. Scenarios such as these would make the skippers job pretty hairball! (They do suggest the game will be more of a "Captain" simulator.) Anyway, blah blah blah............

[Henric Edwards]

A very interesting, and related, link to Uboat.net: http://www.uboat.net/men/men_lost-boats.htm

[Sailor Steve]

Machine gun accidents. Deck guns exploding. Men washed overboard. Suicides. FIDO torpedoes injuring crew, but the sub survived. Lots of weird stuff there. Lots of options for interesting gaming.

[AS]

Suicide? Oh, I see. It´s like: you order flank speed to escape that DD but there´s no respond. You repeat your order, nothing. You get angry, walk to the engine room (which you can do in a 3D interior, yeah!) just to find out your engine crew has comitted suicide. You search the guy hanging from a pipe, finding a letter saying: "This U-Boat diesel consumes tons of fuel just to sink ships and kill people and it even doesn´t have a katalysator. I can´t take this any longer. My death shall be a symbol for the need to protect our environment."

We could also have crew members bored to death.

Just kidding, AS