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Originally Posted by Hitman
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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).
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Correct  There is a record in "Clear the Bridge!" or in "Wahoo" (Can't remember right now) where O'Kane comments how much he had to insist for being allowed to mount his deck gun forward....doctrine of that era considered the deck gun as a defensive weapon for subs that were unable to dive and had to run away in the surface, so they could shoot meanwhile at the pursuer. |
In fact it was the reverse: in
Clear the Bridge, O'Kane recalls the discussion he had about wanting the gun located
aft of the tower - see page 161 for complete discussion, but, FYI, here's the pertinent quote:
"During construction I had argued to at least have our gun moved aft of the conning tower"
I think he was absolutely correct in his reasoning. The trouble with the deck gun is that it is far too powerful in the sim, and, perversely, your sub seems too durable against shell hits. A hit from a decent sized gun would have a good chance of crippling a sub, or, at least, rendering it unable to dive. That's not the case in the sim, so it's possible to expose your sub to fire that a real skipper would never do if given a choice. Even Morton wouldn't hang about when receiving any sort of fire - I remember well the passage in
Wahoo mentioned earlier.
I've only ever used it finishing unarmed cripples.