From page 49 of the manual:
Superchargers were not an optional U-boat ―engine upgrade‖ in the way stock Silent Hunter III portrays them, since U-boat diesel engines already had superchargers when shipyards installed the engines during construction. Almost all Type VIIB, VIIC, and VIIC/41 U-boat diesel engines, manufactured by Friedrich Krupp Germaniawerft AG (GW), had a built-in Kapselgebläse (―geared supercharger‖); 8 Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg (MAN) AG built the diesel engines used by Type IX U-boats, and installed a Buchigebläse (―exhaust-driven supercharger‖). 9 The Type VIIC/42, had it been built, was to have used the MAN Buchigebläse, but these engines were diverted to the Type XXI U-boat program when the Type VIIC/42 was cancelled.
The premise of engine upgrades in stock Silent Hunter III was that installing a supercharger would make the U-Boat go faster at a small cost in fuel economy; however, U-boats were already running at their top historical speeds, so installing the upgrades allows player U-Boats go faster than in real life, as well as reducing the U-boat‘s fuel economy. The baseline speeds of all U-boats already reflected the presence of diesel superchargers, so the GWX Team has eliminated any special advantages from engine upgrades rather than remove them from the game entirely. Superchargers will appear by default in those U-boats that had them historically, and at no cost to the player, but neither will U-boats go faster in the game than they did in real life. The Type VIIC/42 U-boat in GWX uses Krupp GW superchargers on the assumption that the Kriegsmarine construction office has diverted all MAN superchargers to the higherpriority Type XXI construction program, as happened historically.
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