WW2 U-Boat 8,8cm / 10,5 cm deck gun optical sight

[butterfly]

Hi Kev,several points of interest for your opinion,firstly,would the deck gunsight be pressurised which would help to keep out seawater during submerged running or would this make them more vulnerable during a depthcharge attack,secondly,I found a site www.uboataces.com,which is quite informative with lots of photos,it also states that there were some rounds stored in a ready locker at the base of the conning tower then there was a chain of men handing the rounds up form the storage locker under the command deck below the conning tower,which did it seems interfere with the crash dive sequence and made it much slower,and there were no rangefinder facility so the UBoat had to get in fairly close which must have been interesting on a pitching rolling deck,
Cheers,
Don,

Hi Don,

thanks for the link some good photos on that site.

You are right there were some ready use lockers of ammunition stored near the conning tower. Each round was stored individually in a waterproof canister and it was located for fast access so ammunition could be made available until the supply could be brought up from inside the U-boat. The number of rounds stored in the locker varied depending on which deck gun was mounted and type of U-boat.

I have read somewhere that some optics contain gas, this helps to keep them clear as far as I know, I am not certain if this is the case with the gunsight. The optical part is a sealed unit so as not to allow water to penetrate. There is a good film clip showing the use of the deck gun in the link posted below...... take a look at @ 1.30 mark, you will see the U-boat in rough sea conditions with water crashing over the conning tower; for a brief moment you can see that the deck gun has a sight mounted to the right side of the gun - this is the sort of conditions the unit had to endure and still function when needed!! I have posted a screenshot below for discussion purpose....

http://www.criticalpast.com/video/6...oking-through-periscope_giving-signal-to-fire

regards Kev