Gus wrote: "...(I had thought the Type-II had) just the single tube forward (but now)...Well, suck me silly with a handy-billy! (LMFAO! - Ed.) Wikipedia sez three bow tubes and 5 torps. Would like to see a picture of the other tubes open just to know how they did it, crafty Kraut buggers!"

Oh My God, Gus, but you're a riot, buddy! And I think I can show you (almost) exactly what you are looking for:


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______________FULL RESAt left are a pair of Type-IIs: U31, at far left, date- and place unknown, and next to it a modern-day pic of the preserved Vesikko, a Type-II transferred to the Finnish Navy. Note the former - just like the ICM mold - shows no hint of any hinge line for a torpedo-tube outer door - shaped like a cap - over the portside (cheek) torpedo tube. However the pic of Vesikko certainly does - in fact, the cap looking slightly ajar. While at first looking perhaps like the door is swung slightly inboard, all the following evidence (see below) will argue strongly (Your Honor ) that these caps in fact flipped upward - into recessed pockets - just like eyelids!

Exhibit I appears at right: a Type-II interior profile drawing, which at full resolution (inset) shows a dotted half-circle just ahead of-, and extending above, the outboard (starboard-side) tube-end - undoubtedly indicating the travel arc of the opening tube cap. (And smaller half-circle just below it indicates a rounded cap over the recessed, centerline tube, as well.)

Although this is all the evidence I could find relating specifically to Type-IIs, it is not the end of evidence for "flipping eyelid"-type tube doors, in use by these "crafty Kraut buggers" :


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______________FULL RESConsider, if you will, the stern of the Type-IX - full of unusual concave- and convex forms, as well as numerous flood ports, as at left, on U-510 (circa 1945) - similar in many ways generally to the Type-II bow. Not least in that the Type-IX stern tubes are also covered with cap-like doors, as shown at right on U-505, at her (original outdoor) exhibit at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. Close examination of these pics reveals that the only place offering enough room for (interior pockets for) them to retract would be the hull, immediately above.

But you don't have to rely on my reasoning:


Here - again on U-505, during transport (it looks like, to its new, enclosed exhibit) - the starboard stern tube door has now been opened - proving of course that it does indeed retract - and you can even see a fringe of the cap at the top, still protruding slightly - again, just exactly like a (mammalian) eyelid!

I did not (yet) find any closeups of the Type-VII stern, whose single centerline tube was deeply recessed, just like the centerline bow tube of the Type-II. However I would bet dollars to donuts that both were nearly identical: with a hemispheric cap for a door, which flipped upward/backward, into an overhead pocket. Even if these centerline tubes were somewhat different, however, it seems conclusive that "eyelid-type" tube doors were employed by (at least) the outboard tubes of the Type-II design, and continued in use for stern tubes of (at least some) later designs.

Now, try sucking that with your Hand-Billy!

Cheers,

-Matty