General Discussions
This is the place to discuss general issues related to the U-boat war or the war at sea in WWII.
RE: Why were deck guns kept for so long in the war
Posted by:
kurt
()
Date: August 19, 2001 08:18PM
<HTML>This is a good question. While they may have been used from time to time, a deck gun on a U-boat in 1944/45 was getting to be pretty useless for just the reasons you mentioned.
A gun can only be used against unarmed, or lightly armed, unescorted merchantmen w/o aircover - these targets were mighty rare indeed by the end of the war. Keeping the gun added drag, reducing underwater speed, increased underwater noise, and added to the cost of building U-boats. These penalties far outweighed their occasional use on some patrol. By late 1943 the gun was useless and should have been dropped -as it was in the XXI design.
But I think higher command was way behind the power curve in understanding just how things had changed. For example, the U-boat commanders handbook (captured on the U-505 in 1944 and availabe to day in book form - try amazon.com) came out in 1943, filled with the combat wizened advice of experienced U-boat commanders. But the advice was out of step with the realities of 1943, appropriate for a long past time of easy hunting. There are pages and pages on how to stop and board a freighter - a virtually unheard of act in an Atlantic Convoy - but not a word on how to avoid radar, either airborne or seaborne.
My guess is that the gun was not worth the drag and other penalties associated with its use after 1943, but myopia in command kept it in on the boats.
In the Pacific, guns were still usefull, often used by US boats to sink small fishing or cargo vessels (often only a few hundred tons or less - too small and shallow in draft for torpedoes to sink) - many hundreds of which were plinked from the seas. Often surface running fights would merge with a sub fleeing an escort on the surface. Consequently many US boats had their guns moved aft of the conning tower - better to shoot at a chasing escort - in the war\'s later years.
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A gun can only be used against unarmed, or lightly armed, unescorted merchantmen w/o aircover - these targets were mighty rare indeed by the end of the war. Keeping the gun added drag, reducing underwater speed, increased underwater noise, and added to the cost of building U-boats. These penalties far outweighed their occasional use on some patrol. By late 1943 the gun was useless and should have been dropped -as it was in the XXI design.
But I think higher command was way behind the power curve in understanding just how things had changed. For example, the U-boat commanders handbook (captured on the U-505 in 1944 and availabe to day in book form - try amazon.com) came out in 1943, filled with the combat wizened advice of experienced U-boat commanders. But the advice was out of step with the realities of 1943, appropriate for a long past time of easy hunting. There are pages and pages on how to stop and board a freighter - a virtually unheard of act in an Atlantic Convoy - but not a word on how to avoid radar, either airborne or seaborne.
My guess is that the gun was not worth the drag and other penalties associated with its use after 1943, but myopia in command kept it in on the boats.
In the Pacific, guns were still usefull, often used by US boats to sink small fishing or cargo vessels (often only a few hundred tons or less - too small and shallow in draft for torpedoes to sink) - many hundreds of which were plinked from the seas. Often surface running fights would merge with a sub fleeing an escort on the surface. Consequently many US boats had their guns moved aft of the conning tower - better to shoot at a chasing escort - in the war\'s later years.
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