Enemy Guns and You

[Reinhard Dietz]

My super-duper IXD/2 is currently shadowing a convoy in the daylight hours in June 1943, 'cause I'm hoping to make a nighttime surface attack on account of my dismal torpedo reload times. This means deck gun fun, of course. However, I'm willing to bet that the unescorted convoy I'm pursuing will have at least one or two armed vessels.

Small deck guns in the 3-4" range are bad news for U-boat hulls. Therefore, I need to knock them out. I've had luck doing this with the deck gun, but have yet to see any success with torpedoes or with AAA fire. I've emptied a magazine or two of heavy caliber AAA in the general direction of a gun to no effect and I've put a torpedo right under a gun before, to no effect.

Am I just a lousy shot or are gun crews immune to anything other than 105mm fire?

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Reinhard Dietz

Small deck guns in the 3-4" range are bad news for U-boat hulls. Therefore, I need to knock them out.

No, you need to dive and sink ships with torpedoes. I try to pretend like my boat and my life are really on the line and act accordingly.

To each his own, though.

[Reinhard Dietz]

Steve, given my crew's abominable reload performance, I'm having to consider alternatives. Convoys tend to scatter and escape when it takes 45 minutes to an hour to reload a single torpedo. Given that and the five torpedoes it took to sink a C2, I'm not in a position to solely rely on my small supply of torpedoes. (Nevermind someone's left all the aft tubes loaded with Wrens and a bunch of G7as stuck in the external containers. !@#$%

I'm either doing something hideously wrong or I've got the world's worst crew.

This'll need to be a quick battle 'cause I'm well within the allied air coverage available from Ceylon. I need to cripple as many of those ships as I can.

[Sailor Steve]

That I don't have an answer to. Beyond making snarky remarks about history I'm not good for much.

Seriously, I'm not sure what the problem could be. It shouldn't take that long.

[Reinhard Dietz]

Make all the snarky remarks you want! I was under the impression that reloading a single tube for a U-boat was a 20-30 minute job under normal circumstances and half an hour or so for reloading all six in an XXI. IIRC, a fully-efficient crew in stock SHIII can reload in 7'30", which is probably what I'm unconsciously comparing this to.

I think it's something to do with utterly inefficient crewing, which is what I can usually see. Even being at battle stations doesn't seem to affect it much. Mutineers! Wreckers! Defeatists; I'll deal with you all!

[Sailor Steve]

I've been under the impression that ten minutes was about average, but I could be wrong. Your forty-five sounds like everybody's asleep and taking turns one at a time.

[Reinhard Dietz]

It sure seems like it, Steve. Meanwhile, can I use AAA and/or torpedoes against deck guns, or am I going to have to count on a list to mask their fields of fire?

[Sailor Steve]

I have no clue. I never stay surfaced in the presence of anything that can shoot me.

I'm a coward...I mean a sensible skipper.

[JoeCorrado]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

I've been under the impression that ten minutes was about average, but I could be wrong. Your forty-five sounds like everybody's asleep and taking turns one at a time.

My guys, on the third patrol are taking about twenty minutes to reload each tube. Twenty minutes is a lifetime.

edit: Actually they take about twenty minutes for the first fish, and ten minutes for each one there after.

[green_abobo]

personally i just enjoy the title of this thread.

it's like some kind of public service announcement pamphlet warning against the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases or the like.