Type VIIC Exterior mod for UBOAT

Conning Tower (Turm 0)

• All major horizontal surfaces painted black (in accordance with Kriegsmarine regulations - to help make the boat less visible from the air when sailing at shallow depth).

• Metal bridge deck with hole pattern replaced with wooden framed deck sections. No WW2 U-boats had a metal deck surface on either the conning tower or the hull (Turm II & IV had simpler wooden planked bridge decks).

• Vertical wooden panelling inside the forward areas of the bridge bulwark painted to look darker and more weathered.

• Wooden seats on wintergarten railings painted to look darker and more weathered.

• Protruding 'patch' plates removed from the upper front and sides of the tower. The excessively protruding hatches, such as the ammo re-loading hatch covers, will need to be fixed by editing the meshes. That will hopefully be dealt with at a later stage...

• Changed the texture for the two engine air intakes on the conning tower (upper rear area of the bulwark). From many photos I've examined, I'm sure that all tower versions had steel wire grills covering the air intakes, not metal plates with little holes in as shown on the vanilla texture. The new wire grill texture has actual holes in it so you can see down inside the intake shafts.

• Navigation lights painted grey - apparently all bulbs and coloured lenses were removed from boats on active combat duty (not shown on preview images above).

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Deck gun

• All major horizontal surfaces, hand wheels, shoulder harness pads and deck foot grips painted black and weathered.

Hull deck

• Metal deck replaced with a slotted wooden deck*, which when new (or reconditioned in port) was stained a very dark black-ish colour but gradually became worn and slightly grey due to the salt water, sun, wind and wear from the crew's boots and equipment. Later Type VIICs had simpler wooden planked decks with hatch covers, which I will also create as a separate mod option at a later stage.

• Metal plate sections (painted grey) on the bow and stern deck sections - new texture featuring spot-welded foot grips (a pattern of small raised bumps), which apparently all U-boat types had (hard to see in photos, but I've found some)

* The deck texture I've created still uses the outlines of hatches and other deck fittings from the vanilla hull deck texture. I will redraw all of these outlines and holes in order to get sharper edges around all of them - and also to make the position and size of the slots and hatch covers more historically accurate.

 

Hull

• Waterline draught marking added to sides of bow and stern, and also in the middle of the saddle tanks.

Jump wires

• Re-coloured to look more like steel cable (vanilla textures look more like rope).