[TorpX]

Originally Posted by She-Wolf

very helpful GR ( and hello again ) - asked Himself downstairs as well, and he said something about a Y-gun - and said much the same as you ( but without the excellent pictures). He said couldn't tell me much more else he'd have to shoot me!

The 'Y-gun' was an older weapon, going back to ~1918. The 'K-gun' was a more modern weapon. Both did an adequate job of hurling depth charges to obtain a wider/larger pattern, but the Y-gun lost favor after the K-gun came along, for these reasons:

1. The Y-gun always fired two depth charges, so if a contact was known to be on one side, one DC was wasted.

2. The Y-gun had to be mounted on the center line of the deck, whereas the K-guns were mounted at the edge. This meant the Y-guns gobbled up a lot of deck space, in a way the K-guns did not.

navweapons.com has a couple pictures and some info on this page, about half way down.