Flak against ships

[Luken]

I just wasted whole ammo of two flak guns and wasn't able to sunk a light tanker by it. It's suppose to be like that? A bit unrealistic I would say. He had just two short fires on the board. It looked like he left trail of metal scraps that had bigger tonnage than him :88) . Come on...

[Sailor Steve]

Why would that be unrealistic? Can you find any records of tankers being sunk with flak guns alone? I can't.

[railman023]

Are we talking about the anti aircraft gun or the boats deck gun The deck gun is great against unescorted merchants

[Luken]

Well, anti aircraft gun ammo has great armor penetration, if I will shoot few hundreds of bullets into his side, many of them under the level of sea, shouldn't he sunk?

[Wuss]

i dont know how they would work against ships but i have read somewhere they made excellent anti-tank weapons

[misha1967]

Well, anti aircraft gun ammo has great armor penetration, if I will shoot few hundreds of bullets into his side, many of them under the level of sea, shouldn't he sunk?

Provided nobody spent any time plugging holes the size of your thumb, yes, but it would still take a looooooooong time.

[Commander Mysenses]

Well, anti aircraft gun ammo has great armor penetration
Well yes, the 88mm Flugzeugabwehrkanone certainly was pretty good against armour. But the 20mm Flak 38 might struggle with 1 - 1.5 inch of steel plate on the hull of a tanker. Especially as they would be using fragmentation (FLAK) rounds against incoming aircraft, not likely they would find much use for AP rounds for their 20mm AA.
You could tear up the light superstructure pretty good with frag rounds and start some fires in the cabins, but the heavy crude oil in the holds would need some serious heat to get going... even then it would take days to sink.

You'd be better off boarding and scuttling an unarmed tanker, using the FLAK as cover.

[Sailor Steve]

Well, anti aircraft gun ammo has great armor penetration, if I will shoot few hundreds of bullets into his side, many of them under the level of sea, shouldn't he sunk?
That's nice. Can you find any records of that actually working on anything larger than a fishing boat?

[Luken]

That's nice. Can you find any records of that actually working on anything larger than a fishing boat?

So can you find any records of that working on fishing boats? That would be pretty interesting data for me. :D I'm just wondering if that kind of data exists, someone had to try this in desperate need.

[Sailor Steve]

My point is that you, or I, can talk all day about what we think should be realistic. Unless you can find incidents of it actually happening then it's not realistic, and it's just talk.

They tended to use the deck gun on even the tiniest vessels.
http://uboat.net/allies/merchants/ships/2005.html
http://uboat.net/allies/merchants/ships/1736.html