[vonTorpitz]

Think of this:
A mix of old and new. Id love to have back the old style crew management screen with its slots for the entire crew and the abilities to move them around between jobs and watches as well the experience, medals, rank promotions and specialization options for the whole crew of the boat. But the new system is good too because it actually lets you have more control over your officers and gives them each a unique skill set with which you can enhance their skills in time of need. The whole crew need not be depicted in actual 3d renderings in the boat. We could just assume they were there or in their racks, sleeping.
It seems to me that if this idea was possible; the merging of both crew management styles, old and new into one new all encompassing system. We would indeed have this problem beat and it would prove better and more immersive than anything offered to date.
Also as a footnote, the unique skills of each officer must be accessible by the commander regardless of where he is on the boat. In real type VII U-Boats there was a system of speaking tubes leading from the conning tower from which orders could be relayed to the control room and then throughout the boat. While in the control room the commander could use a ships PA to issue commands to the crew. For example, he didn't have to run all the way forward to ask the torpedo officer to pre-cook the eels, he would have issued the command through the PA or via the boats speaking tubes. This should be simulated in the UI through an officer command menu. As it stands, even with DarkWriath's awesome UI mod, we still have to run the length of the boat to get access to the officer buffs.