A question about U-Boat Deck Guns

[Leon West]

http://i293.photobucket.com/albums/mm48/Night_Hawkphotos/DeckGuns.jpg

Ok, so, when a U-Boat is submerged like so, do they prep the deck guns and AA guns in anyway?

From what I know about conventional weaponry (I'm talking about infantry weapons, rifles, handguns, ect.) if they get wet, they don't work so hot afterwards.

So I was curious as to how these big deck guns and stuff could have an extended stay under 80+ meters of saltwater, only to surface and begin blasting away.

Just something I'm curious about. Do they cork these things off?

Thanks in advance, guys!

[couger642]

As far as i know, they had watertight caps on the deck gun, and im not entirely sure about the AA guns.

Edit: They dont model that in-game, however.

[LukeFF]

On the American boats, if there was time, the 20mm guns were taken below decks when the boat submerged. However, if there wasn't time for this, the guns would still fire properly, provided the barrels were regularly changed out.

[Leon West]

Oh, alright. Thank you guys both. I figured something must've been done that the game just couldn't cover, but I wasn't 100% sure.

Thanks again for both of your answers. I can finally put my curiousity to rest. :yeah:

[Admiral Von Gerlach]

There were closures (tampions) for breech and other openings for all services deck guns. Some retracted into housings, but regular greasing with heavy grease, oil and fast and trained crews to take delicate elements top side allowed armament to be exposed to water and depths. The deck guns were not as useful as may be thought, and were not used as much as ppl might think. Even the AA mounts were not very useful often. MOre a moral booster :) and for HQ desk admirals.

the US The 3 inch 50 had a watertight tampion for the muzzle and a watertight cover for the breech with stainless steel mechanisms and bore.

[Leon West]

Wow, excellent info Gerlach!

Where do you guys find this kinda stuff?

I need to visit my library and dig up some books about subs and such. I sadly don't know anything about WWII naval warfare, but I love SH4.

[DaveyJ576]

I can't say much for the German boats, but the following link is probably more than you ever wanted to know about U.S. fleet boat deck guns. The article was written by Jim Christley:

http://www.oldsubsplace.com/Submarine%20Deck%20Guns.htm

Dave

www.pigboats.com (http://www.pigboats.com)

[DaveyJ576]

Leon,

Surf over to this link:

http://pigboats.com/dave3.html

These are the books that I recommend. The submarine design books can get pretty technical, so you may have to skim them until you get more knowledgeable.

This list is not all inclusive. There are books out there that I did not list that are good to read. My area of specialty is the U.S. boats, unfortunately I can't help you with the German side.

Dave

[Admiral Von Gerlach]

German U Boats carried two types of deck guns, the 8.8cm (on Type VII) and the 10.5cm (on Type IX) I, VII, XI and X all were armed with guns, and they were served by a crew of 3 men, under a watch officer, and it was a tough job to get the ammo up to them as a chain of additional crew had to pass the shells up from the ammuntion storage down below, with few ready rounds being stored on a deck locker....

there was no advanced sighting other than what came with the gun and experience but a trained crew could fire maybe 15 rounds a minutes and with good accuracy, relatively. Due to potential targets being armed themselves more and more as the war went along, use of deck gun was less and less....

there were pre war plans to create an XI U Boat Cruiser with four gun mounts in 2 turrets but they were never built. :) These boats would have carried a Ar 231 aircraft as well, three were contracted but as far as records show, none were laid down and all were cancelled.

info here:

http://www.uboat.net/technical/guns.htm

http://www.uboataces.com/tactics-deckgun.shtml

http://www.uboataces.com/weapon-deck-gun.shtml

[Leon West]

WOW! What a wealth of knowledge...

Thank you all. I was away for a few, (friend's wedding) and I come back to droves of info. Also, thank you for the book recommendations! I'll check those out ASAP

So cool. Love these forums, and I love the help and info from all of you. Thanks so much! You guys ROCK :rock:

[Sailor Steve]

there was no advanced sighting other than what came with the gun and experience but a trained crew could fire maybe 15 rounds a minutes and with good accuracy, relatively.
'Relatively' is a relative term. In WW2 no ship had stabilized fire control systems like the ones in use today. They had to "fire on the roll", pretty much the way it was done 200 years earlier. This means that once the range and speed of the target were calculated, as well as the speed of their own ship and the coriolus effect (rotation of the earth means the shell tends to move sideways as well, depending upon the direction of fire), they then had to take into account the rolling of their ship.

Today (and as early as 1946) the fire-control periscopes and the guns themselves are gyro-stabilized, so as the ship rolls the guns move up and down, and are always pointed to the same elevation. During the Second World War battleships depended upon the 'Stable Element'. This was a leveling device with a tripswitch that fired the guns the moment the ship was perfectly level, so the gun captain didn't have to. Smaller ships such as destroyers didn't have this, and the fire control officer had to do his best. On a submarine it became pretty much "by guess and by golly", which means that the actual rate of fire in combat was more like 10 rounds per minute on a perfect calm day and 4 rpm in any kind of sea at all, and since a sub has a very low deck fire was only accurate at very close ranges.

Overall gun accuracy for the war was around 7% hits.

The best book I've read on the subject is Peter Padfield's Guns at Sea, which gives a good history of the development of naval gunnery from the 1300s to the modern era.

[Leon West]

Goodness...

That math is far beyond me. I never was good at math...but to think that the earth's own velocity comes into play is amazing...I didn't even consider that.

Being as young as I am, I really take for granted all the technological developments that are around me everyday.

In fact, this laptop I'm typing this on would be considered a miracle of modern technology just 10 years ago...

I've always had the convienence of technology. I can barely do math in my head.

Some of the trigonometry the sub captains had to do is amazing by scale and comparison.

It's almost as if the human brain is wasting away now, because a machine does pretty much everything for me.

Thank you for sharing all that, Steve. It's a lot of great information, and really makes me appreciate what those men did.