In Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon (spoilers):
Is there any reference in the modern-day plot to explain what happened to Gunter Bischoff after he escaped from the V-Million towards the end of the WWII plot?
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Sign up to join this communityIn Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon (spoilers):
Is there any reference in the modern-day plot to explain what happened to Gunter Bischoff after he escaped from the V-Million towards the end of the WWII plot?
In-canon there is no specific mention of Bischoff after his escape from the submarine but we can make some reasonable assumptions from the text;
The internal bulkheads are described as failing after experiencing external water pressure of "five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten atmospheres of pressure". We can deduce that the boat has reached a depth of at least 300+ feet below the surface of the water.
The air has become a "safe cozy bubble of compressed air" as the rest of the boat is crushed.
Bischoff uses a "life preserver" to do an uncontrolled ascent to the surface.
As he ascends, he begins to suffer the early onset of decompression sickness. His "knees begin to hurt".
Although there are real-world examples of people surviving an ascent from a submarine at 300 feet, these are incredibly rare and never when breathing compressed air beforehand.
Postwar, submariner Walter F. Schlech, Jr., among others, examined submerged escape without breathing devices and discovered ascent was possible from as deep as 300 ft (91 m):
German U-Boat captains tended to be very, very unpopular after the war, being seen as war criminals for targeting civilian convoys and causing civilian suffering (starvation, etc.) Those in British custody at the end of the war (and their fates) generally went unreported.
So... there's a character that dies in the story in 1944 (Enoch Root), but mysteriously shows up alive a couple of generations later. I thought it likely that Bischoff simply assumed this identity after the war to launder his past.