Hi Glenn, Dougie et al,
First let me say damn, the picture that I was thinking of must have been out of focus or something as I have deleted it.
Attached Hull-19 is the forward ducts which appear to have been cut away, if you look at the middle hole it can be seen that it has rounded corners, the same as the original vents in that location.
Hull-42 shows the aft it is possible to visualize the original vents behind the ducts, trust me they are there, (another photo to put on my list for my next trip), note that the ducts are formed from individual sheets, probably formed over a former judging by the have curved edges.
Silencer fairings, seen either side of the center line in Image2, note this is U889 which has 8 holes per section, there are various patterns of holes, the fact that the U190 has these would imply that the silencers were still fitted.
Dougie, we came to the conclusion that the hole was a sub surface exhaust which may have had a fairing fitted to cover some of the hole.
In a report about sub surface exhausted fitted to U boats I found to said that the exhaust was used during surface and schnorkel operations, also there were no silencers fitted, presumably this must have something to do with back pressure as the underwater noise would have made any boat much more prone to being found by ASDIC at a large distance, possibly before a schnorkeling boat could detect a surface vessel.
I found an RCN report on the U190, but it is not available online, only from Kew and it seems to concentrate on the sonar and radar fit on the U190 and U889, so may not be much use, if it was a full technical report it would certainly contain information of a sub surface exhaust if fitted. The report was sent to both the Admiralty and the USN, maybe it is available from a US records site.
Regards
Jon