Hello Kommandants,

This is my personal crew setup for early U-Boat types IIA/IID with 19 and 21 crew members. There are many other possibilities, this is simply the organization I prefer.
This guide is also available on reddit:
https://old.reddit.com/r/uboatgame/comments/1kab59b/guide_organizing_crew_for_uboat_type_iiaiid_19/

Here are all the screens for 19 crew members if you don't need the details:

• https://i.ibb.co/tT7xb9Tc/1.png
  
• https://i.ibb.co/PzGxdZjg/2.png
  
• https://i.ibb.co/G4kK4f0c/3.png
  
• https://i.ibb.co/Tqp8668x/4.png
  
• https://i.ibb.co/Fb52Mrkn/5.png
  
• https://i.ibb.co/ymJ19nZq/6.png

Accessing crew management:

TIPS!: When in normal views, you can swap the portraits of officers located bottom right of the screen to change the order in the crew windows !
TIPS!: You can create, save, load preset in the Task window (under each Officer).

(Task priority set from 0 to 10 or 0 to 100 for finer control. Higher number = Higher priority.)


Operate (flak): For operating deck guns.
Set to 0 because it's manual assignment. Only Obs/Nav officers are the most qualified for this.

Calm Down: Used to calm and reassure a crew member to stop making noise and return to work. Very important since panic attacks happen more often during attacks, when you need to stay quiet and have everyone working at 100%. Assigned to Nav/Obs officers and the Radioman, as they are the most likely to have time and opportunity to perform it.

Watch for contacts: Assigned to both officers. They will either stand on the conning tower using binoculars or operate the observation periscope when submerged to spot enemies at a certain range (which can be upgraded).


Navigate: Assigned to both officers to determine the submarine’s current position on the map (certainty percentage) and to improve maximum travel distance. Priority is set 1 point higher than Watch for Contacts to ensure that when the certainty drops too low, the officer will automatically switch from observation to navigation to restore the certainty rate, preventing the sub from getting lost.

Play card: To play games with crew members and increase discipline. Very low importance; barely useful.



Resupply ammunition: Assigned to engineers. They carry ammunition from the storage room to the deck gun (Flak or 88mm), important to avoid running out of ammo during critical moments.


Operate (88mm gun): Same as Flak, manual assignment. Reloading is even more critical because of the shell weight (task takes longer).




Maintenance and Loading torpedoes:


I grouped them together because it’s one large task. It can be detailed and micromanaged manually, but personally I don’t do it because there’s already enough to manage. Maintain/Maintenance means taking the torpedo out of its tube or storage, preparing it and warming it up, which lowers the chance of malfunction during travel or impact. Loading means placing the torpedo into a launch tube. These tasks are assigned to engineers, later on, a third engineer will take over this task completely.

Repair: Repairing damage received. Critical task that takes precedence over all others. Assigned to all engineers.



Manage engine: Very important, reduces engine fuel consumption, increases performance, and lowers smoke/noise output. Assigned to two engineers.



Salvage replacement parts: Very situational. Allows dismantling or creating equipment (later) to obtain spare parts needed for repairs. Assigned to the third engineer later.




Listen for contact, listen for transmission:


Very important. Both tasks assigned to the Radioman. Listen for Contact is set 1 point above Listen for Transmission to make sure that as soon as the sub is submerged, the Radioman focuses on hydrophone listening to detect nearby ships.


First aid: Critical, handled by the Radioman since he is the most qualified, used to heal injured crew members.




Cook: Adds a small discipline bonus. Assigned to a sailor with the Cook skill or an Obs/Nav officer. Not very important.





Sleep: Very important for everyone.

(I’ll go quickly through it: it’s basically about what task gets priority during which shift. As you can see, I removed one shift and renamed the two others.)

• Engine, valves, power switch task and bulkhead are very important, they allow the submarine to function better or faster depending on the current situation (for example, if an officer needs to perform torpedo maintenance or load a torpedo, bunks need to be folded, and that's often a critical task that must be done quickly, hence the high priority).
  
  
• No one assigned to periscope observation because there are not enough sailors in the Type IIA/IID, but it could be assigned later. It’s not very important because two officers already handle it with their sailors. (However, if both officers are incapacitated, it could be temporarily useful — keep that in mind.)
  
  
• I swapped cleaning and cooking priorities between the two shifts so that both tasks are properly covered every time (when there’s nothing more critical to do).
  
  

• Only two shifts: Day and Night. Third shift removed.
  
• Both sailors and officers alternate between day/night shifts.
  
• Shorter shifts are preferred for more dynamic task management and better reactivity.
  
• You can only have 4 officers sleeping at once (there is only 4 beds for officer, skipper will have his own bed later on bigger submarine).
  

(You can assign sailors to shifts using the + and - buttons and up to two sailors per officer. You can also use the green button to assign a specific sailor manually, but that's only for roleplay purposes, it has no impact on gameplay.)

• 5 Officers ( 7 later) and 14 Sailors.
  
• Each officer (except Radioman) gets 2 sailors assigned to them, boosting their tasks.

There are two main crew configurations used with 19 total crew (5 officers, 14 sailors): 5-5-8 and 7-7-8.

• 5-5-8 means 5 sailors in the day shift, 5 in the night shift (10 total), and 8 sailors assigned to officers.
  
• 7-7-8 means 7 sailors in each shift (14 total), and 8 sailors assigned to officers.

I chose 7-7-8 as the better setup because:

• It ensures *continuous station coverage* (cleaning, cooking, navigation) throughout the day and night.
  
• Even though it slightly reduces the number of sailors helping officers (from 6 to 5), this loss is minor and doesn’t impact officer efficiency significantly.
  
• Most importantly, it prevents task interruptions and warning alerts (like no cook assigned between 20h–21h), which can happen in 5-5-8.
  
• The extra fatigue generated in 7-7-8 (~+1/min) is negligible and can be offset with others bonuses (like food diversity).

In short: 5-5-8 saves sailor fatigue but causes occasional gaps in task coverage. 7-7-8 gives you full task coverage with no critical downside.

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Here is a more detailed explanation of the whole crew management and shift assignments, I suggest taking the time (10 minutes) to test this yourself. You will have a better understanding of how it works. It is best to do this while at sea where you can use max time compression:

— If you assign **more** sailors to the shifts, your officers will get less help (bonuses), but all the stations in the submarine will be correctly manned. You can easily test this yourself by:

• Assigning 14 sailors to both shifts and removing all the sailors from the officers
  
• Going back to the normal view
  
• Letting a few hours pass at max time compression to let the changes take effect
  
• Looking at the bottom right of the screen: you’ll see that no rectangles next to officer portraits can be filled, and the “on duty” box on the far right of the portrait will show 0/0 sailors available.

Now, even if you assign the max sailors to each officer, none of them will get help, because shift-assigned sailors take priority over officer-assigned sailors. So: no bonus.

— If you assign **fewer** sailors to the shifts, your officers will have more help available, but stations in the submarine like cleaning, cooking, engine room, etc. (see the “Sailor task assignments” section above for details) will not be correctly manned. You can test this by:

• Assigning 0 sailors to both shifts and adding the max sailors to the officers
  
• Going back to the normal view
  
• Letting a few hours pass at max time compression to let the changes take effect
  
• Looking at the bottom right of the screen: you’ll see that all rectangles next to officer portraits are filled, and the “on duty” box will show x/9 sailors available (x will change when your officers go to bed or start working).

But, as you probably already heard through the alert system, stations (like the galley, cleaning, helmsman) are **not** staffed.

You can see this visually by looking around the submarine: it will be mostly empty, and you’ll see 9 sailors lying in beds, waiting to be assigned to officers.

You can also check the Discipline bar at the top of the screen next to the money: it will drop quickly due to the submarine being unmaintained.

If you are still limited to 14 sailors max, you might be wondering why it says x/9 sailors are available to help officers, and not x/10, since in the squad screen we’ve told the game we want 2 sailors per officer, for 5 officers, so 2×5=10 ???

This is because there’s a line in the game’s code that limits the total number of officer assigned sailors at any given time:
This formula means:
Out of all sailors who are not sleeping, injured, or busy doing something else, the game only allows 60% of them to be assigned to assist officers. The result is rounded up using `Ceil`, so you don’t lose a sailor due to rounding.

Examples:

If you want to assign 10 sailors to your officers, you need at least 16 truly available sailors.

For the "Why ?"

I don't know, but it's probably a safeguard for the game to keep at least a few sailors free under any circumstances to allow them to perform task that should not be blocked (like open hatch, turning valve, turn on light etc).

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• You can activate a dive schedule by using one of the buttons located to the right of the Depth Meter instrument.
  
• When I’m patrolling a grid, I activate it to increase my ship detection rate.
  
• It’s not absolutely critical, but it definitely helps.
  

Here are all the screens if you don't need the details:

• https://i.ibb.co/qMRJstgv/1.png
  
• https://i.ibb.co/wZ7ZRVDx/2.png
  
• https://i.ibb.co/4ZCHCwYp/3.png
  
• https://i.ibb.co/j91cV9qc/4.png
  
• https://i.ibb.co/CK2p5xJ9/5-21.png
  
• https://i.ibb.co/whF3nL2B/6.png

TIPS!: When in normal views, you can swap the portraits of officers located bottom right of the screen to change the order in the crew windows !

TIPS!: You can create, save, load preset in the Task window (under each officers name).

By going to the mission officier in a port, you can ask for a favor and add up to 2 officers to your submarine.

• You can promote one of your sailors or buy one officer at the recruit officier also at the port. (but very expensive compared to promote your own).
  
• Favors and promotion cost reputation point you gain by accomplishing missions and extra tonnage.
  
• If you did very good, by your second patrol, you will have enough reputation points to increase your number of officier from 5 to 7 and promote/buy two of them

---

In short:
We use the increase number of officiers to double the radioman jobs, add a third engineer for the maintenance of torpedoes (to not have to micromanage it), change tasks we don't need anymore on the others officiers.

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Configure the new officers schedules, you can do like this or also, you can make the torpedoes officer work every two hours. That will ensure the maintenance of torpedo at all time but he will fatigue quicker. Doing that also allow us to not give him 1 or two sailors thus, allowing them elsewhere.

• You can only have 4 officers sleeping at once (there is only 4 beds for officer, skipper will have his own bed later on bigger submarine).

There are three crew configurations considered with 21 total crew (7 officers, 14 sailors): 7-7-6 and 5-5-8.

• 5-5-8: 10 sailors in shifts, 8 for officers.
  
• 7-7-6: 14 sailors in shifts, 6 for officers.
  
• 7-7-8: 14 sailors in shifts, 8 for officers.

I chose 7-7-6 as the better setup because:

• It keeps all submarine stations fully staffed 24/7.
  
• Even with only 6 sailors helping officers, this is usually enough: 4 rotating officers (watch and engines) need 2 sailors each (8 total), but the torpedo officer doesn’t always need help outside of combat, and radiomen need none.
  
• This setup avoids leaving roles like cooking or cleaning unmanned, which happens in 5-5-8.
  
• The slightly higher fatigue (~+1/min) is manageable and doesn’t affect performance significantly if morale is stabilized.
  
• But you need to you manually assign (using the quick add button next to the portraits) sailors to the officers that miss 1 or 2 when needed like in combat or right before combat. Don't forget !

In summary:

7-7-6 gives you stable task coverage and enough officer support but have a little bit of micromanage
5-5-8 leaves background jobs exposed for too little benefit,
7-7-8 is fine if you are not bothered to manage sailors manually.

Since we have now two radioman in shift, let's increase the number of dive we do but it is not required, can be detrimental overall because having hydro check so close to each other is not very optimal, that's why at this stage, i prefer to use the routine hydro check button, since i don't have to wait/check for my radioman anymore.

Have fun Kommandant !