Propbeanie, yeah, tried 1.5 for a couple months and had too many crashes, went back to 1.4. Fact that I have an oddball OS might be a factor, Win XP Media Center Edition is neither XP Home or XP Pro, but some kind of in between hybrid.
Found an old thread;
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...8&postcount=22
That post was the basis for a mod;
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/down...o=file&id=4364
If you're running other mods that change the UPC files, you can edit the modded files instead to change to a forward deck gun as default, see if that works. If the game has some kind of glitch that pings the UPC file for the sub after changing guns, maybe having the default slots forward instead of aft will prevent the FLAILEX.