Ah, fools (no offense) rush in where angels fear to tread! I know that for a deck gun bolted onto a concrete base on dry land with ammo stacked right beside the gun and Magilla Gorillas shooting as fast as they can at nothing, 15 second cycles might be attained.
But deck guns, not only bolted to real decks (yay!!!! finally right. I still like read lecks better), but the decks of submarines, fed not by Magilla Gorilla but by sub sailors not trained using bananas, and who are not particularly proficient, where the ammo is fed by a line of guys passing hand to hand on a wet, pitching, sometimes slippery deck, where the pitching of the boat makes each shot an exercise of precise timing and profanity, one shot every 30 seconds is commendable.
This has been brought out by a study of submarine action reports where rate of fire could be determined. Beery went through all of this in loud and contentious detail over a year ago.
I'll tell you what. I have a copy of the development version (it never went beyond that so far as I know) of
New Real Deck Gun. For development purposes the gun loads in about 2 seconds. But that doesn't matter a bit because your gun is no longer gyro stabilized. It pitches with the sub deck. Reload time is now irrelevent. Check it out and knock yourself out with the 2 second reload time. You'll BEG for 30 second reloads and a gyro stabilized gun.
Oh, the correct time to fire is the precise instant when the crosshair crosses the horizon.
