German submarine U-1206
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
Second, there's a lesson here for design. Correct operation was complicated and required special training, and the implications of failure were potentially fatal. The toilet failed because of operator error, but having a toilet that complicated and in a location where failure put seawater into the battery is a design error. The 'old' system was fine and something similar remains in use. I'm a former submariner-- I've seen myriad shitty things happen from sanitation tank operational errors, but an uncontrolled seawater leak is not one of them.
The same sometimes goes for exception handling code.
Designing fail safes for such things has to be a sort of balance between added complexity / options for failure, and safety.
In the military there are plenty of "don't touch that, let the person who knows how to do it touch it" and I suspect that is often the right design.
I would also imagine that if you make a weapon too safe - then it either can cease to be a weapon, or by the time you remove the controls which turns it from "safe" to "unsafe" - you might already be captured/dead.
It's kinda like some initiatives out there to make it so that owners of guns have to store their guns unloaded in gun safes, with trigger locks, and ammo in separate locked containers.
In the (hopefully low probability) event that you need that weapon (perhaps a home invasion or such), by the time you are able to get to it and go through all the steps to make the gun usable - you're probably already dead.
Of course, I understand the logic and want behind such protections (to protect children, curious adults, to potentially keep the weapons out of thieves hands, etc) - but at the same time, I also understand and sympathize with the arguments against such controls.
There needs to be a balance between making such weapons safe, while also letting them become unsafe quickly when needed. In the case of military hardware, this balance also requires thoughtfulness about the destructive capability of the weapons involved; for instance, safety vs usability will be different for a rocket launcher, versus a nuclear missile.
Practically, how would that work for a toilet?
"I was a submarine toilet operator, first class, serving aboard the USS Deuce"
If you have to have a specialist flush a toilet for you, the design is bad.
It's not "just a toilet" anymore than a sub should work like a video game.
[1] https://warisboring.com/the-high-tech-toilet-that-destroyed-...
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a147838...
Hatches are left open all the time. This sub was not at sea but in harbour. A sub is an enclosed/confined space. While in port it would have been undergoing all sorts of maintenance work. Hatches are left open for ventilation, access, even to run power cords for electric tools. It is not unusual for someone welding stuff inside a ship to require the nearest hatch to be left open for a long period of time.
There's strong suspision that it was an act of sabotage. Not sure what turned out post the inquiry.
"When the Commander, Lieutenant Captain Schlitt, operated the flushing of the toilet on April 14th, he ignored an order according to which the flushing was to be triggered exclusively by the specialist on board.
Sea water, mixed with Schlitt's excrement and urine, poured into the submarine at high pressure through the open valves.
The toilet specialist was no longer able to close the toilet closures. According to reports of a survivor, the boat sank 'like a stone' into the depths."
To the incident itself: Shit happens. (scnr)
I find it amazing that at this point in the war when the end was imminent, they were still going through the motions of doing training patrols.
Consider that the same process usually takes months for a modern warship, even of a proven design.
Basically the war was fought until the last minute.
If you are ever in Chicago, find time to go to the Museum of Science and Industry and pay extra to go on U-505, she's beautiful and if you like technology and engineering at all it's well worth the cost to walk through her. Even just walking into the cavernous room she's in, is an awesome experience itself.
About 3/4 of the way down this post I have a phone of her in the massive room https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2019/3/4/21ad-after...
> The site survey performed by RCAHMS suggests that the leak that forced U-1206 to surface may have occurred after running into a pre-existing wreck located at the same site.
Misuse of available tools and then sinking the whole product sounds like a quite familiar story in software engineering.
https://www.amazon.com/Turn-Ship-Around-Turning-Followers-eb...
One great example: Junior folks kept hitting the wrong buttons during safety evaluations so the crew instituted a "positive action" e.g. "I am about to turn on this device" before they did anything.
During the safety review, the reviewers came back and said:
"You performed fewer errors than anyone we've ever tested. Actually, we take that back, your crew was ABOUT TO make as many mistakes as normal but the verbal call out meant that everything was double checked leading to such a lower error count"
I always pictured submarines would spend most of their time submerged, but how is that possible if its maximum submerged range was 92 miles?
Was it really possible its surfaced range was over 100 times greater? Or was it just that it needed to surface occasionally then it could submerge again?
Submarines of this era would have a bank of batteries, using 1940's technology, which they could use to run the boat whilst submerged. Once they were flat, they would have to stay at or near the surface long enough to charge them again(they could run at the surface using a 'snorkel' to bring in air for the engines.
They would submerge only to attack or to hide. So looking at it from a range perspective is perhaps not the best way. They could have stayed submerged under water for a long time, but they couldn't be cruising flat out whilst doing it.
All modern submarines, including AIP, diesel-electric, and nuclear, use hull forms optimized for underwater operations.
they have to come to surface to recharge the batteries and to take in oxygen.
https://vimeo.com/221068308 - direct video link.
Engineering fails on seafaring vessels is a very old thing.
Iiiish. More precisely, the leak forced it to surface and it was sunk by allied bombs once on the surface.
Edit: And like lgrebe says, the toilet may not have been the sole reason for the leak - they may have struck an older wreck.
Someone will perhaps reply with their more encompassing definition of Nazis, etc., but I don't mean to engage with whatever discussion that generates. I only point out the standard terminology that you'll see in most books, etc.
EDIT: Looks like someone has changed the title from "Nazi U-boat" -- thanks!
Similarly, many American military bases around the world are built and staffed by mostly locals. But this is done at the direction of the American government (usually with the incentives of payments to and defense of the local government). But we still call them “American bases” because the Americans exercise most of the control.
So I'd guess "German Army", "German Navy", "German Air Force" if you want to use translated names. Otherwise "Heer", "Kriegsmarine", "Luftwaffe" if you want the originals. Or generically "Wehrmacht".
Nitpicking, I know, but there is some substance to the point.
"Nazi soldiers", etc., was common during the war years and immediately afterwards, especially in ideologically charged material, but "German soldiers" took over by the 1950s, and has continued.
The Bismarck is another good example. It was the largest, heaviest, strongest, most advanced battleship of it's time. There was no single allied ship that could match it's performance or firepower or withstand combat against it for very long.
And the Bismarck was sunk 9 months after she was commissioned. Not by a toilet, not by inexperience; but because the entire British navy identified the gargantuan risk and superflous symbology of destroying the pinnacle of German tech. That, and it sunk the symbolic HMS Hood (arguably second best warship at the time) battleship in an almost comedic display that lasted mere minutes. The Titanic took hours to sink but the Hood, a ship of similar size and weight, was gone in mere seconds after being hit by the Bismarck's deck guns. After that the Bismarck was the only thing Britain cared about.
The reason German tech didn't last wasn't because the tech was inferior. It was because for every one unit Germany built, there were 5 allied units with crosshairs trained on it. The hunting was simply better for the allies than it was for Germany towards the end of the war, after Germany had been crippled by allied carpet bombing.
Unfair comparison. The Titanic wasn’t shot at, and it didn’t carry tons of high explosives.
With carriers and planes... just a matter of time until a battleship is found and not much a battleship can do alone at that point. Thus the effectiveness of subs (and in particular at that time the wolf pack system).
This is something of a myth. The Bismarck was roughly comparable to contemporary British battleships (e.g. the KGV class) in terms of protection and firepower. The Hood was a much older design, and the Bismarck got a lucky hit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_George_V-class_battleship...
Also I'm not a history major or anything so there will be inaccuracies in my posts. I'm just the son of a WW2 buff who himself is a WW2 buff, repeating most of this from memory. It's been a fun conversation so far though!
You don't think that the US, the leading industrial power at the time, couldn't build better tanks. The Sherman got the job done that they needed it to do.
Firepower is also arguable, plenty of Allied tanks could engage German tanks at comparable ranges. For example, after the war, the Soviets tested their tank guns against German ones and concluded that they had similar performance and penetration. Also, in the beginning of the war, the Soviet T-34 and Kv-1 outclassed all German tanks of the early war.
Sank 1300 m(!) into its maiden voyage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Heroic_Failures
I have a copy. It is a much-beloved source of joy.
Well, that's just perfection.