Quote:
Originally Posted by Schone23666
For what it's worth, since you were talking about weapons on vehicles stripped from aircraft, I remember seeing a pic of a WWII PT boat that had the 37mm autocannon from a P39 Airacobra rigged on a weapon mount on the deck, with traverse and elevation, fire controls, ammunition drum, the works. If they could do it on a boat, pretty sure they could have set up something similiar on a truck as well. Of course, I think you'd find 37mm ammunition to be fairly scarce these days.
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Late-war PT boats had a lot of weapons on them. The 80' Elco boats were best suited for such upgrades.
The two twin-.50-cal turrets were normally retained throughout the war. The 20mm Oerlikon was moved from the stern to the foredeck and replaced by a 40mm Bofors. The 37mm M-4 gun salvaged from P-39's was added in the field and later as a more standard piece of equipment (also on the foredeck). An 81mm mortar was often also added on the foredeck (primarily for firing illumination rounds for night fighting. but sometimes for shelling shore targets with HE). A few also had port and starboard racks for 5" rockets.
The foredeck of a late war PT boat could be a very crowded place ...
The four torpedo tubes were replaced with four roll-off torpedoes (which saved a lot of weight) and late in the war two (and sometimes all four) torpedo racks were left empty on patrols (the torpedoes ran too deep for shallow-draft Japanese barges, then the main target of PT boats). Sometimes the rear racks carried depth charges -- not to attack subs, but to break the backs of pursuing Japanese destroyers.
Finally, the smoke generator, carried at the far stern, was normally carried throughout the war.