Nice to see you are working on the deck and hope your studies are going well.
Yes, putting all me late war deck research into a 3-D model. I’m trying to build the deck based on measurements, not on photographs and plans. This has been very difficult as there are very few original German measurements I can find. I ended up using as many of the original German measurements I could find plus under the decking pipework, frame measurements and a MSExcel spreadsheet with all the original frame measurements and my predicted deck width and height measurements. I will make available the Excel spreadsheet to anybody who wants it shortly.
At the same time as building the deck I am modelling the deck framing. Yesterday I had an interesting moment with the deck framing, I suddenly remembered there a good picture of the deck framing in the book by E. Wetzel on U-995. On looking at this pictures I noted my modelled deck framing was almost identical to the wartime photograph
(It was great recognition to know that I am building the deck correctly) I only had to change one little area of deck framing around one of the hatches that of the incorrect.
My studies are going good, been reading about dielectric permittivity of snow (the measure of resistance that is encountered when forming an electric field in a medium).
If I am understanding you correctly then I think the pole on the port side was for hauling in ropes when docking the boat. On the slotted deck there were usually two poles on the aft deck; these were on their own with no wooden blocks on either side.
On the planked deck there was one pole on the port side. This was secured to the deck with the same fasteners as on the early decks. But what was different is that the planked decks had a series of wooden blocks on either side of the pole. I think the pattern varied between boats and yards.
Thanks for the information, I will post my model soon. Do you think the pole was made of wood? I estimated the pole was about 5 m long, would wood be strong enough?
On the planked deck there was one pole on the port side. This was secured to the deck with the same fasteners as on the early decks. But what was different is that the planked decks had a series of wooden blocks on either side of the pole. I think the pattern varied between boats and yards.
Dougie, there an incredible amount of variation in the planked decks. The two key elements are plank width and date of construction. The plank width, would govern the width of some of the hatches and the date of construction would govern the material of the hatch, as metal hatches were being replaced by plain, simple, wooden hatches near the end of the war as metal became more scarce.
Yesterday I looking at a photo of U-250 and I could not see any gaps for the hatch for the aft reserve torpedo container, then I realise they had completely covered up the aft reserve torpedo container. Dougie, if you have time could you please have a look at your planked deck photo collection to see if this was a common practice for planked deck U-boats nearing the end of the war, thanks.
