Is there a trick for using the FLAK guns?

[fastfed]

Yes its GWX and I understand it should be hard.. But I feel in real life, you give me a flak gun like the one used and have a 4 engine plane come at me, at 200mph, less than 500 feet, I would be able to shoot the darn thing myself ( and I never fired a flak gun, lol )

From the reading I read, I thought it was hard, because the planes would POP out of no where, at night, basically they wouldn't see them until it was to late.

I like the idea in this game, that sometimes it seems if I have a tired or less qualified crewman on the sonar and radio controls, the "radar detected" signal gets to be close, real close.. To the point that I don't have time to Crash dive and in that case, man the guns and take my chances.. Its just annoying as Tessa says he shot down 20 planes and my A.I. guys cannot shoot one?

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by fastfed

I like the idea in this game, that sometimes it seems if I have a tired or less qualified crewman on the sonar and radio controls, the "radar detected" signal gets to be close, real close.. To the point that I don't have time to Crash dive and in that case, man the guns and take my chances.. Its just annoying as Tessa says he shot down 20 planes and my A.I. guys cannot shoot one?

Well...in RL I doubt any flak gunner shot down 20 planes but I'll wager the majority shot down none

[Tessa]

Originally Posted by jimbuna

Well...in RL I doubt any flak gunner shot down 20 planes but I'll wager the majority shot down none

I believe IRL only 1 plane was ever shot down by a u-boat, not sure if that was from a normal one or one of the experimental flak boats they tried out for awhile.

My AI gunner must've been born to kill, even in stock I've never seen a gunner with such good aim (also has 2 catalinas to his name as well). First time I've put a RK around a sailor's neck

[desirableroasted]

Originally Posted by Tessa

I believe IRL only 1 plane was ever shot down by a u-boat

http://uboat.net/history/aircraft_losses.htm

Rare, but it happened over 100 times.

[Tessa]

My bad, now would like to know where I read that they had only shot down 1 plane (thought I might have gotten it mixed up with the u-flaks but they shot down at least 2 though), all this time had always thought that AA fire was a 100% futile effort, not just insanely dangerous (as if that wasn't enough).

[danzig70]

There is the Fight Back order of 1943. 26 boats lost vs 28 aircraft shot down. http://uboat.net/history/fight_back_order.htm

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by fastfed

Yes its GWX and I understand it should be hard.. But I feel in real life, you give me a flak gun like the one used and have a 4 engine plane come at me, at 200mph, less than 500 feet, I would be able to shoot the darn thing myself ( and I never fired a flak gun, lol )

You really think so? In real life aircraft were a submarine's worst nightmare. More than twice as many u-boats were sunk by aircraft as aircraft were shot down by u-boats. Another factor is that one hole in the pressure hull and your u-boat is now a fairly slow surface gunboat, with nowhere to hide.
http://uboat.net/allies/aircraft/index.html

Trust me, doing it in a game is nothing like doing it in real life.

[Draka]

Hitting a moving target while that target is shooting back is definitely not on the "easy" list .... one of the hardest things to teach new recruits in BASIC. I also tell my gunners to prioritize bombers on an attack run - slower, larger targets at minimum deflection angles - but it is still not an easy task from the deck on a rolling craft. In anything but a dead calm, you have to take into account not only HIS motion but your own.

[K-61]

My crew shot down a Catalina in my last patrol. I have two twin 37's and one quad 20. They finally managed to shoot it down on the third pass.

[Gerald]

http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNGER_20mm-65_c30.htm

http://www.uboatarchive.net/KTBNotesArmament.htm

[Tessa]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

You really think so? In real life aircraft were a submarine's worst nightmare. More than twice as many u-boats were sunk by aircraft as aircraft were shot down by u-boats. Another factor is that one hole in the pressure hull and your u-boat is now a fairly slow surface gunboat, with nowhere to hide.
http://uboat.net/allies/aircraft/index.html

Trust me, doing it in a game is nothing like doing it in real life.

A u-boat only had armor on the bridge (little more than 1/2") and no dedicated hull armor to protect the pressure hull. Planes could take a pretty severe beating (even large bombers) and still make it back to the airfield and land.

I think you mean that twice as many u-boats were sunk by aircraft than by surface ships?

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Tessa

I think you mean that twice as many u-boats were sunk by aircraft than by surface ships?

No, I meant exactly what I wrote. U-boat.net says that U-boats shot down 118 aircraft, and airplanes sank 249 u-boats. That's better than 2-to-1, or twice as many u-boats lost to aircraft as aircraft lost to u-boats.

[Tessa]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

No, I meant exactly what I wrote. U-boat.net says that U-boats shot down 118 aircraft, and airplanes sank 249 u-boats. That's better than 2-to-1, or twice as many u-boats lost to aircraft as aircraft lost to u-boats.

After desirableroasted pointed my error out I see that your ratio was right on the nose, sorry about mis-correcting you there. Still bothers me that I got such a huge piece of history wrong, no idea where I heard or read it but what always stuck was that the u-boats only shot 1 plane down. First time even playing stock SH3 I realized what bad news they were, and never really tried to go after em. Recently now with a whole different attitude towards playing (am tired and exhausted of playing 'historically' anymore, its a game, just have fun and enjoy it) so take a lot of risks I never would've in the past (hence putting my guy at the flak gun again and again while taking down an obscene number of swordfish. After he shot down 5 I was floored, when he kept on going and was taking down 3 in the air before they could even drop their bombs I knew this guy was on a roll (my AA skills are horrible, leave that ALL up to the AI) and didn't want to stop him till we needed the medic ). He survived all the way till the ammo went dry. Personally placed the RK around his neck and entered his name into the honor roll (too bad won't get the actual award till 1944) and a special double promotion

[Sailor Steve]

Yeah. I remember one guy back when SH3 was new reporting being attacked by a swarm of Sunderlands. He said he shot down something like 52 before they finally got him.

For me historically is the only way to play, game or no. I have as much fun cruising out of the cool new harbors as I do actually sinking things.

[K-61]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Yeah. I remember one guy back when SH3 was new reporting being attacked by a swarm of Sunderlands. He said he shot down something like 52 before they finally got him.

For me historically is the only way to play, game or no. I have as much fun cruising out of the cool new harbors as I do actually sinking things.

Amen, brother!

Something that really irked me about the stock game was the ridiculous aerial routines. For the first nearly four years of the war, Coastal Command suffered from a paucity of ASW capable aircraft, as Arthur "Bomber" Harris hoarded every large plane for his blindly zealous prosecution of the bombing campaign against Germany, hoping to prove that strategic bombing could win the war cheaply. Although he was a Brit, he was akin to Goering in his single mindedness that "Everything which flies belongs to me [Goering]." Similarly, Harris refused to release a relatively small number of four engined bombers, or even twin engined bombers which would have proved instrumental in protecting shipping from the U-boats. It wasn't even because the ASW weapons were not that efficient; even the presence of a plane would force a U-boat to dive and render it incapable of offensive action. Harris simply refused to allocate a suitable number of such planes for Coastal Command. If anyone should have been cashiered, it should have been him, not Stuffy Dowding of Fighter Command.

To see whole squadrons of Hurricanes [d'uh, a fighter plane] or Sunderlands attack a single contact was so FUBAR. The relative scarcity of such patrol planes meant they had to be spread out in order to maximize the size of ocean they could colletively patrol. There was no way they could bring such a large number of planes together so quickly as we see them in the game. GWX has done a good job of restoring the depiction of aerial patrols to more reasonable levels.

Historical is the only way to play for me. If I want an arcade game I'll get an Xbox.