@Tall:
Gentlemen,
––I think ya’ll are doing really well as far as the Coastal Guns rules go,…Well Done
The only allied ships that got sunk during D-day were sunk by German destroyers, not coastal guns. Come to think about it, I guess KM Blucher was the only ship sunk by coastal guns during WWII.
**––I just thought for Historical Accuracy I’d remind you of the U.S. Marine defence of Wake where they damaged and sank ships with Coastal Guns.
Tall Paul**
One thing to keep in mind when designing house rules for coastal guns is that “coastal guns” (a.k.a. coastal artillery) is a term that can refer to two very different things. In the broad sense, it refers to any gun situated on a coast and intended to engage targets at sea. By that definition, coastal guns don’t have to be very powerful weapons. The coastal guns at Guam which Tall Paul mentions were 5-inch guns, which by battleship standards are regarded as secondary armament. The narrower definition of coastal guns refers to very heavy artillery pieces (guns that would qualify as primary armament on a battleship) that are situated on a coast, sometimes set in very elaborate fortifications and sometimes mounted on railroad-track turntables. Actual naval guns with large calibers were often used for this purpose; one example was the Lindemann Battery, which used 16-inch guns originally earmarked for the H-class battleships.
Coastal guns, as far as I know, weren’t responsible for sinking very many ships. Their basic problem was that they couldn’t move, that their locations were generally known to the enemy, and that the enemy would try as much as possible to bypass them in favour of easier points to attack. Japan’s conquest of Singapore from the landward side (rather than from the sea side, which was covered by British 15-inch guns) is one example of this principle; another is the choice of Normandy for the D-Day landings, one of its advantages being that it bypassed the powerful German coastal artillery located in the Pas de Calais area, for instance at Cap Nez Gris.
