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Originally Posted by tater
Modding (or unmodding) the deck gun takes less work than a single one of these threads.
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You might be right. But then people would still be laboring under the assumption that deckguns were worthless weapons that couldnt hit the broad side of a barn.
Not so. IF it were so, You couldnt sink all these ships by gunfire.
US doctrine was flawed and over cautious when it came to the deck gun. So much so that it did not include finishing off a merchant that had been torpedoed. Not untill late in the war did they realize what the Germans had known since WW I that the gun could sink ships and save torpedoes. By that time, Japanese Shipping had been reduced to such an extent that if you ran into a big merchant you could afford to fire a bunch of torps at it simply because there was nothing left to shoot at. Sea trucks and lots of them were all over the place and they were shot up.
So in 1941/42/43 lacking strong ASW opposition, it was quite possible to sink merchantmen when your faulty torpedoes screwed up.