Feinder
Posts: 6589
Joined: 9/4/2002
From: Land o' Lakes, FL
Status: offline
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The French "cruiser sub" was the Surcouf. She actually had a pair of 8" guns. This is just from memory, but as I recall, she was interred by the British, but then was allowed a Free Frech crew. However, she ended up accidently getting rammed by a British CL.
Putting big guns on subs was generally poo-poo'd by the time WW2 came around tho. There were several problems associated with it...
1. Poor fire-control. They weren't fitted with the fancier mechanisms that surface vessals had, in order to aid in range finding and spotting. Hitting your target is important...
2. Low silloette of the sub. The gun(s) ended up being only 5 to 6 feet above the surface of the water. That meant that you were very limited in your ability observe your target. It doesn't do you much good to be able to shoot 12,000 yds, when you don't have radar and can only see 8,000 yards.
3. Unstable platform. The displacement and shape of a sub's hull didn't lend itself to a very stable ride on the surface, even in favorable seas. Combined with being so low in the water, it makes it very difficult to train the gun(s) accurately. All of the above tie in to making it difficult to utilitze your deck gun.
4. Weight. If you can't shoot, see, or hit a target that would be a match for your heavy guns (say a CL), you're not going to engage him on the surface. So you end up engaging something that smaller, that you CAN see and maybe hit (like freighters, or maybe even a DD, altho the DD would still generally be a bad idea). But if you're going engage freighter or DD on the surface, you don't NEED 8" guns. You'd rather have the more accurate, and probably more importantly, higher rate of fire of a smaller 3" or 5" gun. If you don't need the 6" or 8" gun, why "waste" the weight? Also the smaller guns would allow you to carry substanitally more ammo.
When it all came down to it however, by the end of WW2 deck guns were all but removed from subs, for the very reasons stated above. The same problems that hindered the use of 6" guns on a sub, ended up being the same reasons for the elimination of the 3" guns. WIthout a deck gun, that meant you suddenly had more room for fuel or torpedoes or whatever. Also without a deck gun, it increased the hydrodynamics of the sub CONSIDERABLY, so the underwater speed was tremendously increased.
-F-
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