Historically the deck gun was orginally thought of as a last ditch defenseive weapon. Hence the aft mouting. (handy if somethings chasing you) Some more aggressive skippers found other offensive uses for it, and mounted it forward. (handy if your chasing something down).
Nothing exemplified this more then two radio reports from the USS wahoo:
"Wahoo encountered a convoy, sank a freighter and the transport Buyo Maru and damaged another cargo ship. Wahoo made additional attacks on a tanker and a freighter. Afterwards, she reported by radio: "In ten-hour running gun and torpedo battle destroyed entire convoy of two freighters one transport one tanker ... all torpedoes expended".
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"After an escort ship thwarted his attempt to use Wahoo's deck gun against another convoy on 27 January, Morton made a second radio report: "Another running gun battle today. Destroyer gunning, Wahoo running".
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