Can your deck guns damage planes?
 

I was trying while my port I was at was getting raided. (Ill make a thread about that with a video in a bit) and decided to try and see if I couldnt kill something with my 3in. I think I hit 2 betties with a shell each, but they were not affected. I could of easily missed I suppose.

I must know if its worth spamming shells off in the hopes of doing something.

Theoretically, you can. But given:

a) the shallow upward angle of the DG (20-25 degrees)
b) its slow rate of fire, and
c) the high speed of aircraft,

you'll have to deliver a VERY lucky shot to hit one of them buzzers.

Okay, thats good to know.

Now I must become the (hopefully) first person to shoot down a prane with mah deck gun!(sadly my hopes arnt high :<)

Good luck! If you do succeed, go play a lottery! :haha:

Before I got into the mod upgrades and was playing stock SH4 v1.5 I managed to hit an H6K with my deck gun, using an HE round. The only reason I tried it, I was running low on AA rounds heading back to Midway from Japan home waters. I hit him in the right engine wich caught fire but the plane kept flying. The good thing is it did not turn to attack me again.:D. I fired 3 shots and the third one hit the motor, lucky shot.

Ewall007
"Ranging Far, Sweeping Wide"
Quote from Victory at Sea 1955

Have you seen the AA ammo in the 5/25 deck gun?? What it is for?

i know in real life it was an effective anti air cannon, but in the game i dont know what to do (it has a great upward angle, up to 70°) with it....

i shoot to planes, but i never hit them :cry:, and i have to do it manually,
if the game makes the AA shell for the 5/25, it should allow the AI to automatically fire to the planes... the DD's guns in the game do it. and also their aa guns fire at ships (when they are really close), the ai in the sub cant....

is there a way to tweak the conf files and make possible the aa gunners shoot to ships and deck gun shoot to planes? it would be great:yeah:

On the subject of planes, I noticed that they get hit and start burning but just keep going, like the fire isin't affecting them at all.

I don't believe (although I'm not certain) that, in real life, the submarines carried AA (FLAK) shells for the main deck gun. That is, I don't know how they would've found the space to do so in the already cramped confines they were subject to. In addition, FLAK was relatively ineffective without some type of fire direction radar. During the war, the U.S. developed "Proximity Fused" AA shells that contained a tiny radar in the form of a type of transponder placed in the tip. It would send out signals to detect incoming targets and once it received a reply indicating that it was in effective range of that target, it would detonate. They were even able to fit these into a 40mm shell. However, there were problems with quality control that (if I remember correctly) affected as much as 15% of production which caused some consternation among the brass about one of these unexploded shells falling into the hands of the enemy. :hmmm:I don't know if any were issued to the submarine fleet and it wasn't until much later in the war that they were even used in the European theater.

The Stock version gives you the choice to select AA shells for the deck gun and, although they were fun to use/observe against surface targets, it was a waste (IMO) to use them against aircraft. You don't get many DG shells to begin with so I only use them against merchants. TMO doesn't give you anything but HE shells which (again, IMO) is much more realistic.

I noticed that too. I thought, great, all I have to do is out wait the destruction of the aircraft. But no, they will burn and still complete their circling and stuff.

Sucks.

Fire, in and of itself, doesn't do any damage, be it in stock game or any of the major mods. You may want to try Ship Damage from Fires, which does exactly what its name implies, and also applies to aircraft (although the effect is not all that prominent). It's compatible with pretty much every other mod out there, and if you have a passing knowledge of S3D you can easily adjust the damage done to be more to your liking.

In SH4, regardless of what mod you're using, planes are either destroyed or not.

Meaning, 99% damage = fully active plane. The fire and smoke is just for show. At least that is what my experience says.

VonTrapp is right, I think that only DDs and onwards used flak shells. They had some indution that triggered them close to the airplanes, and the shrapnel should cause enough damage to bring a plane down, but as I recall it, only larger guns could fire such shots and I never read anywhere about subs using this kind of ammo. Only cannons and heavy MGs were used, and even so, diving immediately was also the procedure of choice instead of facing the air attack.

I always considered that standing in the surface to face a plane is suicidal thing.