[Sailor Steve]

Here's the problem with the 3-to-5-second reload time. Yes, you can load the gun that fast, as long as the ready-use locker is full. Once you have to resort to bringing up shells, the reload time goes up to a whopping 10 seconds or so. Now, you can load and shoot that fast, but can you hit anything? Maybe, if you're sitting still on a dead-calm sea. And if you're 500 meters from the target. At longer ranges, if you miss, you have to see whether you were long or short, and then guess by how much; then you have to adjust the range accordingly. Of course all this goes out the window if you're moving, since the range is constantly changing. If the sea is anything BUT dead calm, all this goes right out the window. The deck, along with the gun, is rolling, pitching, heaving and surging (this involves 8 different axes, in case you didn't know), and that means a lot of misses and a lot of careful aiming. The game lets you cheat by giving you a dead-stable aim view when shooting yourself, and doesn't take sea state into account at all.

A 5-second reload is historically accurate, if all the other factors are taken into account, which in the game they aren't. Overall, for the war, on average, Beery's RUB 30-second reload time is more accurate than anything else.