Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by Rob Doorack (R) on March 10, 2006 at 13:44:58

In Reply to: I went in the German subs at Chicago's Science & industry museum. posted by GTF on February 28, 2006 at 15:13:42:

When I toured that sub the guide noted that the conditions aboard a U-Boat on patrol were hideous. The temperature inside the sub was well over 100 degrees, and the crew - if they were lucky - got one brief salt water shower in a combat patrol. The crew was allowed one change of clothing, and three sailors shared each bunk, sleeping in shifts. When the sub went to sea it had fresh food crammmed into or hanging from very available nook and cranny. However after that food was used up in a few weeks the diet consisted of mostly tinned meat and sauerkraut. The sub had flush toilets but they didn't work at depths greater than a few meters, so the empty food cans were used to store waste until it could be dumped overboard when the sub was surfaced. The stench of those accumulated cans combined with the inevitable noxious gasses emitted by a crew subsisting on spam and sauerkraut meant that the air inside a sub smelled vile. And this was considered elite duty!