Naval Units at Close Range

[umbro]

Naval guns of this era were designed for long range firing against moving targets. Heavy calibre weapons were essentially antisurface. Ranges/bearings were derived from visual, later radar information, adjusted by spotting FOS. Naval gunfire against shore targets became increasingly important, especially in the Pacific, used mostly against area rather than point targets. Larger units would be well offshore. Sailors like searoom.
The chances of taking out a bunker or pillpox with a "direct fire" shot would be very small indeed.

Agreed, hence my thought that a good way of modeling this would be to reduce the attack value at close range verses soft targets. As you point out not all shells bounced, so perhaps not all the way to zero.

umbro