Living on a submarine during world war 2?
Submarines went on war patrols that usually lasted about two months. When they departed every spare nook and cranny would be crammed with foodstuffs to last through the voyage. Fresh water storage was very limited, so men could not shave or shower. While in enemy waters the subs usually had to stay submerged during the day and run the ship on battery power. The ships were slow under the water on the limited battery power. After dark they would surface and open the hatch in the top of the conning tower, letting fresh air into the boat, to the relief of all. On the surface the boats could run on their diesel engines, going much faster and recharging their batteries. The batteries were very heavy and in the very bottom of the boat. If seawater got into them the acid could react with the seawater and fill the boat with poisonous gas. The boats usually had a crew of around eighty men, about six or eight of whom would be officers. The officers ate in their own dining room, called a wardroom. In the US Navy, they had a mess steward to fix their meals. The US Navy was the most segregated of the services, and mess steward was the only position on a warship open to blacks, but a great many mess stewards were Filipinos. The enlisted men had a small galley where the cook prepared their food and a small dining area, with a few long tables. These could be folded up and put out of the way so the room could be used for showing movies. Only the captain and the executive officer had their own tiny cabins. Junior officer shared cabins, and the crew had a berthing space, but there was not room for every man. Some, such as the torpedo gang in the nose of the boat, had to sling hammocks and sleep among their torpedoes. Some bunks were "hot", meaning shared by two men, one sleeping while the other was standing watch. Men stood watches four hours on, eight hours off, every day. There was a single head (toilet) for all men aboard. It had an incredibly intricate flushing procedure, so that the waste could be expelled against the water pressure outside the boat while under water. If this procedure was not done properly the compressed air used to expel the waste would blow it back all over the man trying to flush the toilet. US boats usually had six or eight torpedo tubes and carried about twenty-four torpedoes. Reloading the tubes was very hard, heavy work. The torpedoes weighed over a ton, and they had to use a chain hoist to lift them. Once a boat fired all its fish its patrol was over, as it had to return to harbor to reload. The enemy had anti-submarine surface ships trying to destroy the subs. The surface ships had hydrophones to listen underwater for the sounds of the sub, and also Sonar, which worked something like Radar under the water to try to find enemy subs. If they thought they had found one, they would make a "depth charge run", taking their ship across the sub's believed position and rolling depth charges off the back end of their ship as they went. These were about the same size as a 55 gallon oil drum and packed with explosives. They had hydrostatic fuses which could be set to explode the charge at the depth the sub was suspected to be. If they were close enough these would cave in the side of the sub and flood it, instantly killing all aboard. Being depth charged was the most nerve-wracking thing for submarine sailors, followed by an attack by airplanes while on the surface. If the depth charges were coming close, the sub sailors could hear the click of the fuse as it was about to detonate the charge. The depthcharging could go on for hours, in a few cases even days. The sub would try to make sharp course changes and slip away in the water noise stirred up by the depth charges.In the US Navy, submarine sailors made up 1% of the navy's men, but they sank 55% of Japanese ships sunk by the Navy. German U-Boats were likewise very effective, but about 90% of German sub sailors died, as Allied anti-submarine warfare evolved to become extremely lethal.
