Kretschmer’s policy was to dive for two hours before dawn. Merten had a similar practice. In general though, I have not come across any dives for the express purpose of doing a hydrophone check unless it was foggy or the weather was very poor. Daily trim dive an absolute must, which would’ve been used to service the torpedoes as well, but never simply a hydrophone check. What games just don’t get correct is how poor the acoustics of some sea areas are. Hirschfeld’s book (former radio mate, can’t remember the name of it) sheds a lot of light on how unreliable hydrophones were. Plus mast tips could be spotted out to 30 km or so in some cases, smoke even further. Hydrophones are overpowered in nearly every U-boat sim it seems.
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