Re: Surface Guns

Posted by Al Burnham on December 29, 2007, 8:29 pm, in reply to "Surface Guns"
67.72.98.45

A little more on surface guns as I remember it and were they effective on uboats and periscopes. At the beginning of the war uboats had little respect for any merchant ship and sank them with torpedoes or their deck gun if low on torpedoes. As more modern guns came available the WW1 guns got replaced on a lot of ships and the ones traveling in the heavy combat zones had the priority. The new ships got the more modern guns. The training of the gun crews got better and so good that they were in high demand when the Fleet needed trained gunners. The WW1 guns that were still on some of the ships and with the more experinced and trained gun crews had the flaws and kinks worked out and became real accurate for surface use but slow. The submarine commanders soon caught on to this after periscopes were damaged or they surfaced to finish off a ship and the Navy gunners were still manning the guns. My first ship had a 5 inch 51. We also had a Ensign for a gunnery officer and a Captain that beleived in well trained gun crews. So we got lots of firing practice with this gun. We would set off floating targets and shoot at them at different ranges and blow them up once we had the range. This was a fun gun to shoot in practice as so many steps had to be made. As some of the Navy sleeping quarters were under this gun you had to make sure the doors were bolted open so they wouldn't be jammed closed after firing. Every chance I got I would take a position on this gun during practice. It was kind of like stepping back to the old warships. Smoke and flame would come out of the breech and any other seam as while as the muzzle. I might have been a little nuts then as my regular position was the 20mm on the bridge.

Re: Surface Guns

Posted by Cal Cantrill on December 27, 2007, 1:34 pm, in reply to "Surface Guns"
207.118.25.161

We had a 5'' 51 on the stern of our Troop Ship. We were ordered to fire on a Japanese Amo dump on the North end of New Guinea Island. We got as close to land as we could get and loaded and fired the Gun in the direction given to us by a spotter plane. We Fired and thre missle traveld all of 150 feet and kerplunk into the water. Thats how much use we got out of this ww 1 gun,Thank God we didn't have to use it in an actual emergency. CVC

Re: Surface Guns

Posted by Octave Swindell on December 24, 2007, 1:35 am, in reply to "Surface Guns"

Thanks for the replies Mike and Mr. Burnham.

Re: Surface Guns

Posted by mike on December 22, 2007, 11:55 pm, in reply to "Surface Guns"
71.230.79.20

I am the son of an Armed Guard veteran and not exactly sure what you mean by "surface gun". As a kid I remember Dad telling me a story about guns mounted on his Liberty ship that could not shoot into the air at a plane. They had very limited elevation. I believe he told me they were old World War One guns remounted on his ship and not designed for the task at hand. They were basically sent to sea to do a job the best they can with whatever they had.