Hi. Here I am being contrary again. My position is that AA guns are for popping sampans and drying laundry.
Let's look at the scorecard:
Submarine. Expensive. More than 60 highly trained men at risk. Difficult and time consuming to build.
Airplane. Cheap. One or two men at risk. Easy to replace, they're turning them out like popcorn.
So you're in the difficult to replace and very expensive submarine with 65 sailors in the people tube. Are you willing to stay on the surface and slug it out with a cheap, quick and easy to replace airplane?
If you win you've deprived the enemy of nothing much. Two men and a cheap airplane. But if they win they've destroyed your sophisticated, difficult to produce, slow to manufacture very expensive submarine and killed 65 highly trained sailors.
The cost/benefits ratio just sucks here. You have no business ever shooting at an airplane. Get the hades off the surface and to sink one of their expensive, impossible to replace merchants filled with a hundred or more well-trained sailors. Reverse that sucky cost/benefits fiasco and turn it in your favor by fighting the fight your ship was designed for!
War is supposed to be hell--for the enemy!
