Don.
Your "discovery" of the maneuverstand not being mirrored touch upon an interesting subject. Modern warfare is depending upon access to rawmateriel, people and industrial capacity. The Nazi Germany was limited in all and in the submarine construction details you might find clever details to come around their problem. The most common submarine engine was built in two versions, 6 and 9 cylinder using as many interchangeable components as possible. This was done by making symmetrical parts which could be assembled 180 degrees avoiding mirror ( two) executions in a twin engine installation. For instance the large items as the cylinderblocks were made in 3 cylinders symmetrical units. The same casting could be assembled in 2x3 units= 6 cylinder units for the VIIC and 3x3 units=9 cylinder for the IX, being symmetrical they could be turned 180 degrees and used both as a port and stb. engine. On the image below you see the U 995 6 cyl. engine connectionflange for the two 3 cylinder blocks. Between the blocks there is an inch visible gap between the cylindercovers because of the extra space required for the cylinderblock flanges.
For the fuelpumps they followed the same system. One type of fuel pump for port and stb. engine, not mirrored on the other engine, but simply turning the fuelpump 180 degrees. By that you face a problem as the fuelplunger is controlled by an axially movement of the fuelrack and by having the maneuverstands on both engines up front and governor in the aft you have to change the direction of the fuelrack movement on one of the engines. On the port engine the fuelrack moves aft to increase the fuelinjection on stb engines it moves fwd.
The movement of the fuelhandle and the hydraulic governor are the same on both engines, a change of the fuelrack direction is done by introducing and extra lever in the rack linkage for the fuellever and the governor on one of the engines.
The whole engine is full of such solutions, like on cylindercovers, supercharger etc. etc. and means a vast saving in production and storage.
On the raw materiel you see substitutes for brass and nickel alloy. F.inst on the U 995 all the text plates on the maneuvering stand are a very dull aluminium instead of brassplates, even the gauges have in some cases substitutes for brass.
I remember during "WW2" all the nickel- and coppercoins were withdrawn from the circulation and substituted by iron and zinc and all the brass ashtrays and handles were removed from the streetcars and trains to be used in the German warproduction.
May be difficult to understand today, but dead serious in my younger days and, as you see ,an impact on the submarine constructions as well.
Tore
