Hi, Fellows!

Extended Rod Antenna - most likely a whip antenna. On the Daphne Submarine this is attached to an extendable periscope-like device in the conning-tower. When raised, the whip antenna, spring-loaded, moves to a vertical position, and above the water, can be used for radio communications.

When lowered, the base of the antenna comes into contact with a cam, which folds it to a horizontal position, trailing from the conning tower, not visible on the surface.

Most often it's used for VHF or UHF comms during excercises, I should imagine that the U-boats used it for long-range stuff, which would have made it hell to load properly, I know we battled a bit with ours if we wanted to do long-range HF transmission - we could never get a decent standing-wave ratio, but it did work.

Hope this helps

Garth