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Originally Posted by Wulfmann
Not only that I get way too much damage. That hit I witnessed. It exploded about 5 feet above the quad 20MM mount. It sank the boat with that hit and I have read countless accounts of such close cans causing damage but not near what I get.
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Just a few things to think about
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If the can really exploded some 5ft (that's less than 2 meters!) above the 20mm, it exploded proably less than 5 meters above the hull. There's a really big chance the DC would have ruptured the pressure hull at that distance when the DC had a blast radius of 10 meters. And in 200 meters depth ANY rupture in the pressure hull combined with the immense water pressure around the boat would crushed the boat to pulp instantly. After all you alreay were near crush depth of the boat! At 20 meters that's a different story.
In addition: where do you get the information on those counteless accounts? How would a sub crew have any indication of how close the cans explode? They didn't have an external camera and a free view mode. And at 200meters it's pitch black and a flashlight won't carry 2 meters, so seeing a DC fall through the scope is impossible. They probably examined the damage to the outer hull and thought: "My, this can must've been close"!
The problem with the accuracy can be quite unnerving, but with evasive maneuvers (not only lieft and right, but up and down as well) you have a pretty good chance of getting rid of them. And although the DC is a highly inaccurate weapon several DD commanders simply had a lot of experience and a gut feeling on when to drop them without the help of a computer. Otherwise Germany wouldn't have lost so many boats.