Shooting down aircraft with the deck gun - possible IRL?

Subnuts · 11-03-14, 06:11 PM

In the (really terrible) Haynes "workshop manual" for the Type VII, the author mentions that "a number" aircraft were actually shot down by 8.8 cm deck guns before they were removed from the boats in 1943.

Frankly, I'm having kind of a hard time believing this. The 8.8cm/45 would have made an absolutely terrible anti-aircraft gun - manual elevation and traverse, unstabilized, maximum elevation of 30 degrees, extremely rudimentary fire control, and the Germans never fielded a "real" (with a proximity fuze) AA shell for the gun. Seems like you'd have to be absolutely desperate to use the deck gun against an enemy plane, you wouldn't be able to crash dive while it was manned, and you'd have to have unbelievably good luck to hit anything with it. At least the 2cm and 3.7cm AA guns had a decent chance of screwing up an enemy's bomb run!

This is the same book that gives the Type IXB with a 182-knot surface speed, and lookouts infrared night vision goggles, so I'd obviously take anything from it with a grain of salt. Still, in the 15 years I've been studying the Battle of the Atlantic, I've never heard of a single Allied plane being shot down by one of the U-boats' "big" guns. Can anyone more obsessed with the subject please give me a Yes or No?

11-03-14, 06:11 PM	#1
Subnuts The Old Man Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Connecticut Posts: 1,658 Downloads: 14 Uploads: 0	Shooting down aircraft with the deck gun - possible IRL? In the (really terrible) Haynes "workshop manual" for the Type VII, the author mentions that "a number" aircraft were actually shot down by 8.8 cm deck guns before they were removed from the boats in 1943. Frankly, I'm having kind of a hard time believing this. The 8.8cm/45 would have made an absolutely terrible anti-aircraft gun - manual elevation and traverse, unstabilized, maximum elevation of 30 degrees, extremely rudimentary fire control, and the Germans never fielded a "real" (with a proximity fuze) AA shell for the gun. Seems like you'd have to be absolutely desperate to use the deck gun against an enemy plane, you wouldn't be able to crash dive while it was manned, and you'd have to have unbelievably good luck to hit anything with it. At least the 2cm and 3.7cm AA guns had a decent chance of screwing up an enemy's bomb run! This is the same book that gives the Type IXB with a 182-knot surface speed, and lookouts infrared night vision goggles, so I'd obviously take anything from it with a grain of salt. Still, in the 15 years I've been studying the Battle of the Atlantic, I've never heard of a single Allied plane being shot down by one of the U-boats' "big" guns. Can anyone more obsessed with the subject please give me a Yes or No? __________________ My Amazon.com reviews