@@mogaman28 both French and Japanese developed "diving shells", meaning those falling slightly short would have a higher possibility of scoring a hit. I believe Drach already did a video/had a drydock question about this.
This talk is one of the best discussions on this topic I have ever heard. After 41 years of work on such systems for the US Navy (both guided missile and gun systems), I have A LOT of knowledge about this and this instructor HAS NAILED IT!!! This instructor is WAY, WAY, WAY better at such discussions than most other people I have ever heard. THANK YOU, DRACHINIFEL!!!!!!!
I had a landlady I rented a room from for a couple years before I found out she was a tech that repaired the mechanical fire control computers on the Iowa class battleships. I was stunned.
*Which means what, exactly?* (your experience, that is) *What has a guided missile have in relationship to Naval artillery, other than 'arc-in-transit' over distance?*
@@gerrynightingale9045 The target acquisition and future position prediction calculations are identical. The computations for the missile trajectory are somewhat more complex in that (1) Even for Homing-All-the-Way (HAW) missiles, such as the TARTAR, and second generation missiles of TERRIER and TALOS types (the first generation of these were beam-riders), the calculations get complicated in that most of these missile types have boosters that accelerate them to "cruising" speed and thus the calculations have to separate the time during boost from the post booster rest of flight computations (either just cut off inside the missile like TARTAR or Aegis or e large drop-away booster like TERRIER or TALOS). When uplink to the missile was added (SM-2 in the US, for TARTAR, TERRIER, and, from the start, Aegis) things get VERY complicated for getting the extra range by high-altitude non-homing computations with only homing being done at the end when the signal is sent to the missile. Guns are child's play compared to all of this. And I haven't even talked about 11-dimensional vertical launch computations...
@@nathanokun8801 *My point was that 'long -range guns' are as 'worthless as my tits' and completely irrelevant as compared to a torpedo or 'self-guiding missile'* *A dedicated surface-ship is nothing more than a 'Hole in the water waiting for destruction'* *I know how a 'Missile' works and the mechanics involved, and you are making it seem virtually impossible for a 'programmed-targeted missile' to 'hit anything but air' without Einstein furiously scribbling while consulting several 1950's era 'Univacs' to confirm a trajectory* *In fact, all the computers on Earth in synchrony could not program a robot-guided '10-speed Schwinn' more than 2-feet without falling-over* *Gyroscopes take care of most functions quite well, like 'pitch & yaw', so I'm uncertain what you're on about*
I made my nephew an optical rangefinder as a way of teaching him trigonometry. We pretended we were working out the range of enemy ships, he still thinks it was the best maths lessons he ever had.
Drach, Thank you for all your efforts. I thoroughly enjoy almost everything you publish. I didn't realize until it was too late you were here in the US only 30 miles from my home.
@@karlvongazenberg8398 I was artillery Fire Direction and Control. They still train you to use the slide rules, but yeah, that was on a stationary-ish target with a stationary gun. There was a procedure, though, with mechanical timed fuses jokingly called "waking up the monkey." This was where you made sure none of the parts in the timer were sticking by, and I'm not making this up, hitting the fused HE round with a hammer.
This is just one of the reasons that if you hoped into a time machine back to 1890 and convinced the RN to build Dreadnought early, you'd get a ship that was totally rubbish.
This is why the FCO says, "I have a firing solution." They were _literally_ solving a trigonometry problem. Those Ford Mk.I computers are a pure marvel of mechanical engineering. Just absolutely amazing.
Before this video: how did these navy guys manage to shoot at eachother so much and miss so often? After this video: wow it's a miracle any shell ever hit the target
@Wes Peeble Bismarck was hit about 400 times in the final battle, when the Rodney and King Georve V finally caught up with her. About 400 shell hits, then either 2 or 3 torpedo hits.
You gotta feel sorry for the Italian designer who jammed the Littorio full of the best rangefinding and fire control equipment he could build, only for the shell manufacturers to render all his work pointless. Teamwork: Ensuring your hard work can always be ruined by someone else.
Actually, it was complicated even more by the Italian heavy guns being of rather lightweight construction. This meant their long range performance was very inconsistent, and became even more over time, even in a relatively short time span.
@@bobcornford3637 from what we know what you said is just not true. It had a bit shorter barrel life that's all, but that's due to the velocity of the shells not lightweight construction.
381/50 guns were remarkable for their exceptional long range (longest range in recorder history in any battleship) but life was proportionally short. This was a design characteristic, not a defect, as crews could easily switch internal gun sleeves in any harbour provided spareparts were made available there. For Italy and areas within the logistic radius of the Regia Marina, there was no problem as the life of the gun sleeve was higher than the number of shells available in turret magazines anyway. Dispersion was the real problem, not short life or low barrel weight, as 1-shell weight was not constant (a funny legend says that officers smuggled large scales on board to at least select by weight ordnance available) , 2-muzzle speed was really high , 3-shells were relatively heavy for a 15" gun. Weight of the gut itself was unremarkable (somehow heavier than 100 tons , as most 15" similar guns).
On the note of parallax though, something interesting I've noted is that there are some people who really struggle with things like driving if they are unable to use one of their two eyes for any reason (like a temporary infection, etc), and that they usually say that the reason they don't want to is because they don't have depth perception at the time. But other people are just fine with it, aside from needing to turn their head more to check mirrors and such, as they can apparently sense how far things are away from them based on non-parallax cues. I somewhat wonder if the latter people may have grown up more with 3D games and TV programming a lot, as those place 3D images on a 2D screen and thus may have trained their minds to be able to at least reasonably determine distances from a 2D image, which in turn would hamper them less when they are using only one eye for whatever reason.
As an old fire controlman, I enjoyed the heck out of this. The picture of the switchboard brought back memories: we had motorized switches, and when they rolled, it was like have a couple dozen pistols firing right next to you. You brought out the complexities of the fire control solution really well, and with more humor than my instructors in school. Except for Petty Officer Wilson. He always liked to say that us wimps with the new-fangled digital computers were slaves to the AC. His Mk 56 analog computer could take the heat. So it got a little warm; his accuracy went up!
Great presentation. My grandmother was a "computer" in WWII. She was one of the women that made the pre calculated tables. She later worked as a math teacher. I must say it was hell growing up having to explain to her that I was terrible at math and didn't even like it. However, it is cool that she had an important job in WWII. The computers were highly respected.
My maths teacher worked with Barnes Wallis on the bouncing bomb. He was a weird cove, a bag of nerves and could get through 10 capstan full strength in a double lesson. He was however, the one person who finally drilled mathematical principles into my unwilling, adolescent brain - I am forever grateful to him !
Some more "fun" things" (1) When several ships were firing at a single target, you had a MAJOR problem of figuring out whose shells were landing where so that you could adjust your guns' aim point. This started to be a problem in WWI battles when director/computer control of all of the guns became the rule. (This was before radar eventually helped show your shells in flight and thus the ability to see which ones were yours from the fire-control radar operator, if he was good.) The US, France, and Japan after WWI decided to try to fix this problem, though interestingly, the British and Germans did not (to my knowledge). The thing to do was to give each ship's shells some way of making their hit at the target area different enough to, at least in good visibility and during daylight, allow the spotters with their telescopes to sort out what to report to the fire-control personnel to adjust the gun calculations on the computer. The method was colored dye in the shell windscreen (the sheet-metal hollow false nose of the shell to make it more streamlined without compromising the usually-much blunter projectile nose and, if fitted, armor-penetrating (AP) cap on the actual shell nose). The US system had a simple paper bag full of a colored powdered dye, each ship in a group using its own color powder, and some spot-welded-over holes in the windscreen to let the water on impact slam through the windscreen interior to color the water-impact splash -- it did not work at night or in low visibility or, unfortunately, if a direct hit on the target occurred (kind of a bummer, that last fact!). The Japanese, in their post-1931 major caliber gun (6.1" (155mm) and up) Type 91 and later Type 1 AP shells, was effectively identical, but had the entire windscreen tear off the nose on water (or any other) impact to allow the now-flat-faced shell to travel underwater nose-first for a long distance in the hope of hitting the enemy warship well below the waterline if the shell hit short of the target, so it acted like a tiny torpedo on such hits (they also made the shell fuze delay extremely long to help this, which caused some problems with hitting thin armor on an actual target direct hit, a negative aspect of this shell design). The French, as they usually did, went to a more elaborate and "elegant" solution for their new 33cm (13") and 38cm (14.96") battleship guns: The dye bag was increased in size and supported by a framework near the tip of the windscreen; the windscreen was enlarged -- making these the most streamlined shells used in any warship gun ever, to my knowledge -- and a strong base was crimped/screwed to the face of the shell's AP cap to rigidly support it; and, uniquely, the tip of the nose of the windscreen had the instantaneous nose fuze and booster charge of their high explosive (HE) shells used for shore bombardment and shooting at small, unarmored enemy ships. On impact with anything whatsoever, the nose fuze would go off, making a colored flash and large puff of smoke, visible at night and even in some low-visibility conditions and, the best point, on a direct hit, too. More expensive and making the shell have to be handled with care due to the exposed nose fuze (as did any HE shell, though), but it solved all of the problems. When the British got some French naval material from refugee warships after the fall of France in 1940, they decided that the French design of this was good enough to add to their battleship AP ammo -- they had had some problems when their cruisers were firing at the German "Pocket Battleship" ADMIRAL GRAF SPEE in 1940 due to this shell-sorting problem -- and they thus created their "K" AP shells with this kind of nose-fuzed dye bag to their new and refitted AP shells, though they did not change the windscreen shape so that the shells kept their old ballistics. Germany, probably due to having so few warships, never used this dye bag option. (2) At the start of WWII most ships used the "follow the pointer" system to aim their guns, where personnel in the turret would manually adjust their traverse and elevation controls of the mount using a pointer dial set by the calculator (either the central ship calculator in normal control or some backup in-turret calculator using its own inputs in local control); he did not usually see the target he was shooting at himself. Just prior to and during WWII, the US and Germany and, eventually, Britain, developed their own forms of what the US Navy called "Remote Power Control" (RPC), where the calculated values were amplified reliably enough to directly be input into the controls and the human controllers became backup/emergency use only. To do this required the amplification of the signal with the aiming orders without changing its value by more than 0.001 degree or so (even a small error could make a big difference at longer ranges or against higher-speed targets, especially with anti-aircraft fire). Attempts to do this with direct-current "stepping-motor" systems -- most warships used DC power systems throughout at this time -- with tiny jumps from value to value, as in the second hands of some clocks, had never been successful, with errors jumping upward in sync with the signal strength needed to run the controls automatically. What was needed was a very fine control range method that could be amplified in strength with no change in the error. The solution was to change to alternating-current (AC) signals and use transformers -- the same method used in homes to change the higher-power electrical pole voltages to the much lower one used in the home wall outlets -- to adjust the signal strength up and down. To keep the same error required a very precise way to measure the values being transmitted (any signal could be converted to this system, not just angles for gun aiming, note) and a way to shift the signal strength without changing the precision of the original measurement/calculation (this can go to and from any device, not just from the computer to a gun mount). The solution used by the US Navy was the "synchro" or "selsyn" ("self-synchronization") technique. The information to be transmitted was changed to an angle value on a 360-degree dial by appropriate gearing/electrical conversion and then this was sent to the transmitter for output. The transmitter had a magnetized needle on a pivot that rotated to the angle given to it. Around the needle in an equilateral triangular set of three AC electromagnets was placed on the same plane as the needle, so when the needle moved, it changed the strength of the output to each of the three coils slightly in a unique manner for any angle value. These three currents could be put into a single voice-radio-style transformer/amplifier to boost all three by exactly the same amount and this boosted current sent to the receiver where it too had the three coils and its own magnet needle, which the now-strong signal on the three coils pushed to match the position of the needle in the original transmitter. Shazam, the signal was "teleported" to the device attached to the receiver, no matter where it might be on the ship. To handle slop in the needle position, a second geared needle system with a 36-to-1 geared needle (10-degree range) was also created by the transmitter and sent parallel to the the 1-to-1 signal and, using a simple geared or electrical network, the two were combined to make the final geared needle output match the original one within any accuracy desired (even higher secondary adjustment needle ratios could be used if, rarely, even higher precision was needed). Instead of vacuum-tube-enhanced transformers, the Germans used magnetic amplifiers (also used by the US in some systems after WWII) with similar results. The original British system, the "Magslip", was a hybrid requiring the human to move the controls to within 10 degrees of the aim point before the RPC could cut in; it was replaced after WWII by a more conventional fully RPC system, as was done by everybody else. Against surface ships, which were rather slow for the most part, the follow-the-pointer system worked OK, but it failed badly during WWII against smaller attacking aircraft -- not straight-line horizontal bombers -- as the aircraft got faster and more maneuverable. The analog synchro-type systems remained in use until digital equipment began to replace them during the 1970s, though it took many years to finally do this, given the slow overhaul rate of warships and the "if it works, don't fix it" logic when using older equipment...
The USN Ford Mark 1 electrical mechanical computer generated gun orders, azimuth and elevation for the guns. Do you know when this system was automated with synchros to directly control the guns.
I remember when I was in the RAN on HMAS SWAN, I did some work on the fire control computer, it was an ANALOGUE MECHANICS computer, a glorious sight to see, this is around the mid 1980's. EDIT: As a side note, On HMAS SWAN we did a RIMPAC and a wargame, we were in the USS Missouri battle group at war with the Nimitz group (SWAN is ASW), during that we got a gunnery display from the Missouri including a close range (for us) of a full broadside firing. We were located only a couple of miles away! It's a memory that will never leave me..
@@pscwplb The last broadside was probably during Desert Storm in '91 (OP said he was on HMAS Swan in the mid-80's, pre-Desert Storm) when they were doing shore bombardment of Kuwait until the Iraqi Army pulled out of range. _Missouri_ & _Wisconsin_ had Tomahawks, but they did fire their sixteens then.
@@karlvongazenberg8398 That was a really common term in the RAN! I wonder if you got it from there? That's something us techos used to always say. Although we still had to do our PM's (planned maintenance).
I was so excited to see a photo from the film "Master and Commander" one of my absolute favorite movies of all time. The depiction of naval battles in that film were so authentic. Love it.
I have researched this topic for the last 30 years; I even got special access to the research library at the Mariner's Museum. This video states the problems of fire control very well. That inventive men found ways to put their mathematical models to use on actual ships, using trains of gears and mechanical whatnot, is amazing. The problem is so much easier today, with digital computation. Of course, naval artillery is almost an afterthought; missiles are the thing.
The fun irony of your comment is that depression range finder systems, due mostly to being used by fixed shore batteries, were almost expected to hit with the first shell.
@@C4Cole05 . . . And give away your position to anyone who wants you dead. Over the Horizon is/was an attempt to mitigate that risk. Then again, when everyone else has that too it's back to tin-cups and string. . .
Another thing the FCS needs to take into account is the wear of the barrels overall and number of rounds fired in a particular engagement, as both of these will also affect the ballistic trajectories of the rounds. Another thing that can also be important to consider is masking data, which is the location and height of external objects (such as buildings and trees) relative to your position as well as the target. Obviously not as much of a concern in the open ocean (except in fleet actions because friendly fire is generally disliked), but is also important to consider when engaging in shore and coastal bombardments. This video is good but really just scratches the surface on many of the concepts and factors that go into artillery ranging and ballistics. There is a lot to consider and one can spend literal weeks just learning the concepts.
I was present and observed from the flag deck what was one of the finest and most accurate shooting ever by a ships guns. When during Operation Praying Mantis. the USS Merrill fired about 105 shots in continuous uninterrupted shelling of an Irainin oil platform from about 3 miles out. All shots fit the mark! These were air bursts. Made more demanding, because one end of the platform had containers of gasses, that we did Not want to hit. It was feared the gasses if released might drift to "friendly" territory. Both for and aft guns were used. The enlisted gunnerry personal responsible for the upkeep of the guns were awarded medals.
We were briefed on that operation by the Ops Boss of USS Bagley. He told us of the great frustration his gunners had hitting an IRG manned "oil rig" (really a base for the IRG) in that they were trying to hit the legs of the rig and bring it down. The shells would whiz right through between all the structural members and hit nothing. It was to the point they were running low on 5 inch ammo. Finally they decided to hit the oil storage on the rig and that lit it up good. Their Seasprite pilots mentioned they could feel the heat from the fire from 3 nm away (with Seasprites you could fly with the cockpit doors slid back in the open position).
I knew those pilots, they were from HSL 35 as was i... I landed on the Bagley from time to time..and Passed by that oil platform the day after it was taken out. The plan actually was to capture it..but that didn't work out. The were no Iranian survivors. I was in the Persian gulf for a month at that time. Not a day passed I didn't see someone shooting a ship! Operation Praying Mantis.
@@raywhitehead730 There was a constant drumbeat of naval action out there in the mid to late 1980s. So much happened and so little ever made it to the evening news or even into the history books. Much of that history is probably lost now as those of us who were out there pass away.
There one good book that came out from that time period. Beware, there are things that actually happened, but were officially denied by the US and others, mostly for political reasons. The US was already more into it then they wanted to be in the Reagan era.Tanker War by Lee Zatarain
Personally, I reacted very well to heavy shell fire. If I am not on the receiving end, that is. For a similar reason, I have also no problem to see blood ;-)
After viewing this video detailing how complicated naval gunnery really is, all I can think of is how the HMS Warspite and the Scharnhorst both somehow landed world-record shots on moving enemy ships at ranges of 15 miles/24 kilometers away while moving at high speed. Imagine the calculations on those shots... Great work, as usual, Drach.
I read a story about one of the Iowa class lurking outside Truk to discourage escape during operation Hailstone, February 1944, where the carriers plastered the lagoon for 2 or 3 days. Several Japanese ships zoomed out and away, I think a cruiser and some destroyers, all capable of 36 knots, compared to Iowa class max of 33 knots. Supposedly the Iowa class's first salvo (6 shots?) straddled the cruiser at 38,000 yards -- 19 nautical miles, 22 statute miles. Never did get a hit, and the Japanese got away. Shell flight time at that distance is something like 90 seconds. I figure the only difference between a straddle and a hit is pure dumb luck. But I don't remember the exact range and probably have messed up some other details too.
@@grizwoldphantasia5005 It’s actually a lot more farcial than that. What happened was that the carriers had sunk most of the Japanese ships present, but there was the old training cruiser Katori (yes, a training vessel, pressed into service out of desperation) and two destroyers (Maikaze and Nowaki) afloat, with varying levels of bombing damage. Adm. Spruance apparently had the bright (/s) idea that he would detach Iowa and New Jersey to sink the Japanese ships, never mind that a) using battleships against two damaged destroyers and a damaged training vessel is extremely wasteful and pointless overkill, and b) there were already aircraft going in that would have sunk, or at least rendered useless, all three Japanese ships before the Iowas could get there. Spruance decided to use the Iowas anyways and called off the air attack....allowing the Japanese vessels breathing room in the process. Iowa and New Jersey do manage to get Katori and Maikaze, respectively, but it would have been much faster to just have allowed the carriers to end them. For that matter, the cruisers that were sent in alongside the Iowas could have ended both Japanese ships at much lower expense. Nowaki, meanwhile, actually manages to get going and runs, and it’s at this point New Jersey pursued Nowaki, and in the process got that extreme long-range straddle-but no hits (a damaging near miss did happen). Nowaki escapes. Now, remember that Nowaki would probably have been sunk alongside the other two Japanese ships if that last air attack went in. *In other words, the Iowas actually REDUCED enemy losses by participating in this engagement.* It’s arguably the American equivalent of the Battle off Samar, except MORE one-sided. At Samar, the “underdogs" of Taffy 3 at least enjoyed air supremacy (and they did actually have heavier bombs and air-dropped torpedoes-they just didn’t have them on the aircraft when the battle began, but later strikes were often actual air attack rather than bluff attack runs), had further air support from Taffy 1 and 2, were not already damaged by bombs prior to being fired upon, and were all actual warships (not very powerful ones, but still) rather than having training vessels in their ranks. The Japanese at Truk had absolutely none of those basic advantages.
@@grizwoldphantasia5005 Re: straddle vs. hit at long range, this is why the whole idea of “Iowas blow every other battleship out of the water because they can use their speed, radar fire control, 16”/50 guns and superheavy shells to rain down plunging fire on enemy battleships from 30,000+ yards away, beyond the effective range of enemy battleships” is a meme rather than actual fact. Testing in the 40s with Iowa revealed that despite being designed and equipped for such long-range engagements, the Iowas actually DIDN’T have a better effective range than pretty much any other contemporary battleship class (their actual effective range was 20,000-25,000 yards like everyone else, albeit radar allowed them to have this same effective range even at night), even with radar. At 30,000 yards, hit percentages on an Iowa-sized stationary target were dismal-under 3% for a target showing its broadside, under 2% for a target facing you head-on. They’d straddle the targets, but rarely actually score a hit. Such low percentages meant you were going to run out of shells before actually doing significant damage. To make matters worse, the 16”/50 gun was only capable of getting steep enough trajectories for plunging fire at ranges above 30,000 yards....meaning that the superheavy shell, when used on the Iowas, literally couldn’t carry out its main design purpose. This isn’t to say the Iowas were bad battleships, far from it (do note that while they only had an effective range of up to 25,000 yards, so did everyone else). Even with its intended main benefit effectively useless, the 16” superheavy shell could (at least on paper) still punch through any belt armour ever put on a ship at closer ranges/shallow trajectories via sheer brute force (the extra weight giving it more momentum), similar to the Japanese 18” gun (again, on paper), making the Iowas very formidable at mid-range gunnery. It’s just that this narrative that Iowas would utterly dominate other nations' battleships because they would land hits at very long range without fear of being hit is false; unless it was night, an Iowa would actually have to get close enough to be effectively fired upon by a contemporary foreign battleship in order to be able to hit said foreign battleship.
@@bkjeong4302 And today the BROACH warhead on a JASSM, LRASM or JSOW would cut through any shipboard armor to ever go to sea launched from ranges beyond those of anything ever carried on a battleship.
Stepfather worked in a dismantling yard in the late 1970's where the cruiser Bunker Hill and carrier Ticonderoga among others. He brought home several complex prisms. They fun to play with in the sun, creating light spectrums otherwise known as rainbows around the room and made interesting paper weights.
Thank you, I enjoyed this immensely !! I was educated an artillery officer in the Norwegian Coastal Defense, in the beginning of the 80'ies. You do this very accurately - are you yourself of Naval origin ? In my time, our fortresses had at least 2 main systems, and very often radio and cable communication to nearby batteries for the option of being controlled by their systems. As a last resource, the gun commander could as you conclude in your video - independently control the firing himself (yes - we were only guys at that time) That off-course was immensely fun, and is still of my most found memories of all I have experienced in my life. With a crew of 18, directing the fire independently - very often sitting on side correcter position, following the target, and see the impact , feel the power when the gun is fired - make split second correction orders, and firing again - o'boy, I was alive !!
I did my university dissertation on WW1 Dreadnought Fire Control Systems - specifically the 'controversial' argument concerning the merits of Arthur Pollen's 'Argo Clock' system verses Lt. Frederic Dreyer's own in-house system, and the later arguments between academics on the issue (centred on Prof. Jon Sumida's pro-Pollen 1989 account 'In Defence of Naval Supremacy' and later John Brooks' 2006 rebuttal 'Dreadnought Gunnery and the Battle of Jutland - The Question of Fire Control'). Overall, I found it a fiercely argued debate with a strong suggestion that the Argo system was probably superior - when the system's gyroscopes worked as intended - but that Dreyer used his position as Assistant to the Director of Naval Ordnance (a certain John Jellicoe) to get his own system approved over Pollen's. Sumida has pointed to the fact that at Jutland, HMS Queen Mary had an Argo Clock, and had consistent and effective firing results right up to the moment she got citadel'd. Pollen, however, wasn't blameless; his system relied on gyroscopes to work effectively, and they proved finicky. Plus he was asking for a lot of money for his system, with the Admiralty ultimately opting for Dreyer's cheaper system. POllen himself would later go after Jellicoe after Jutland in a series of accounts and articles which have an element of 'sore loser' about it; as Jellicoe himself said, "It fell to me to turn down his inventions on more than one occasion". Sumida argued this was what led to the Royal Navy's prized and expensive battlecruisers having such poor gunnery during the Battle of the Falklands and later at Jutland - the high speeds of the ships causing heavy vibrations, leading to ineffective plotting of firing solutions, and that the Argo system would have eliminated these problems. I would be very interested on your take Drach. It's a highly technical topic as this video has showed, but for me it has a personal connection given my previous work.
I read about this years ago in the book "The Great Gunnery Scandal: The Mystery of Jutland" by Anthony Pollen (Arthur Pollen's son) - from memory, I think he argued that Dreyer's system was unable to handle rapid changes of range such as occurred when the High seas Fleet was heading directly towards the Grand Fleet.
Very interesting comment. The Pollen v Dreyer was certainly argued hotly at the time. In hindsight Pollens' system should have been given a better chance, as I don't believe it was used with the Dumaresque.
I had read that the terrible gunnery at the start of the Battle of the Falklands was the result of the latitude drive not having its reversing gear applied, once it crossed the Equator. A mechanism to supply motive power to the latitude drive that could handle crossing the Equator, even during the battle, was a tad pricey, even though they could be built. Their expense was only justified (on paper, but for relative target speed, not latitude) in the fire control systems of ships intended to provide anti-aircraft defense for other ships, so the possibility of engaging aircraft moving towards a high value target, but moving (sequentially and continuously) towards, past, and then away from the firing ship. Combat experience justified the expense of the mechanism when circumstances caused aircraft to be approaching the ship at a relative speed too close to zero for the cheaper mechanisms to provide accurate firing solutions (cost cutting measures were what allowed those Swordfish torpedo bombers to press their attack on the Bismark).
Could you give a reference to your dissertation? I’d like to read it. While an undergrad at Maryland in the 1980s I had the good fortune to take post-1870 military history from Jon Sumida. Great class. As a physics major, I found the fire control problem fascinating.
This video mentioned the coriolis effect regarding calculating the rotation of the Earth. My Dad was in U. S. Army Americal Division artillery on Guadalcanal. He told me about calculating for the Earth's rotation on the 6.1 inch guns when given long range fire missions.
similar to the sniper hitting his target 2-3klm away the rotation of the earth he took into affect was he calculate as about 8 mts to the left as it took the bullet so long to travel accounting for the target to be at the same spot on contact. yes there is a formula but he did it in his head
@@raypitts4880 Obvious this sniper was in this area a long time. The formula will change with latitude. Must also account for the azimuth. On land it is relitively simple. On a moving gun platform such as a warship, precise navigation is essential. At 1,000 yards, you can demonstrate this with a rifle. Get a zero at 1,000 yards West, get your zero, fire a group for record. Go to 1,000 yards East, same zero, same hold, fire a group for record. The center of group fired East will be lower on the target than the group fired West due to rotation of the Earth. You can do the same drill firing first true North and then true South, the displacement will be horizontal.
dear old Coriolis what? if my maths teachers had illustrated how all that boring stuff might be useful, I might have paid more attention; in all my near threequarters of a century on this planet I have never had any need for it, nor any desire to injure beings similar to myself from far away, but it was all jolly interesting stuff. I guess the chaps throwing things at one another figured that if you threw as much as possible as quickly as possible you were bound to hit something sooner or later.
A suggestion for a related future post: the plotting screens used in WW II. Side-lit plastic or glass boards where dark clad crew drew with grease markers enemy and friendly vessels. These crewmen were taught to write in reverse for the command to be able to see from the other side. Like some kind of live action sci-fi computer screens. Maybe a video on command room operations if that is a proper tern. Loved this post btw, the lavish amount of technical detail and dry wit on top of that was excellent,
That always looks quite difficult when you see it (The backwards writing thing) though I guess it probably isn't as hard as it looks once you train your brain to get used to it. The human brain is surprisingly adaptable to new situations after all and the underlying shift in perspective mirrors a function our brain does all the time without us even being aware of it. The lens of the eye focuses an inverted image on the retina after all and we are unaware of our brains flipping that around for us wonder whether it becomes just as instinctive to write backwards once you train your brain to the task could see it being the kind of situation where with some practice it clicks somewhere and the brain learns "Oh I recognise all this stuff it's just the same thing I've been reading and writing for years but mirrored".
They were still doing that in Vietnam, at least on the older WW2 era ships (FRAM) that were still around. That was my uncle's battle station on the old destroyer he was stationed on, and spent lots of time on the 'Nam gun-line.
Funny you should mention them looking like Sci fi computer screens, because the very concept of a warship CIC was directly lifted from science fiction!
In the early 1970s while in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, I once experienced a range-finding fire control exercise aboard the U.S.S. Jason which was then equipped with four 5"/38 caliber guns in individual turrets. Quite a large crowd assembled on the fantail as first the target (a 55-gallon drum) was unceremoniously dumped overboard, and after a polite interval the superfiring "X" turret let rip with an ear-splitting blast. Within moments a bosun shouted out from the boat deck "CEASE FIRE ... CEASE FIRE". Turns out that the blast had shattered the windows on every vehicle we were carrying on the boat deck, including the captain's car, the ship bus, etc. End of firing exercise!
Help me understand a few points here...a crowd on the fantail whilst firing 5 inch guns? I can not fathom that Happening...A bus and a car on board ? I don’t believe it...
@@denniscorcoran6391 USS Jason was a repair ship, the guns a remnant from WW2. Early 1970:s makes it possible that this is both the ship returning from service against Vietnam (so bringing home stuff they didn't want to leave behind) and a farewell salute for the guns (since they were apparently about to be removed to be able to reclassify the ship as a non-combatant ship to allow women to serve on it). So my combined guess would be "they're not used to firing the guns because they've only done it occasionally and then following full safety protocol", but this time they wanted to make it a festive occasion to cheer up the crew (and say farewell to the guns). Only then they got a reminder that they were also loaded to the gills with a lot of crap that they usually wouldn't be carrying. (Like several officer's cars that had probably been used during shore leaves in Vietnam or where they had been based for a couple years, but now they were rebasing so had loaded them all up to bring them along.)(And the bus might have been for lower ranks shore leaves, driving them from the base to the bar.)
@@nikolai877 The absolute absurdity of thinking that removing the defensive weaponry from a ship makes it suitable for women to serve on baffles the mind. It's almost like saying we can send women to Iwo Jima as long as they don't carry a rifle.
@@glasstuna its about the Law of Armed Conflict at the time. You arnt supposed to shot at non combatants and for the 70s activly puting women there is a PR win for the enemy.
The MK 68 GFCS also accounted for: Barrel wear- each round fired removed a tiny amount of material from the barrel which would affect the seal. How many rounds have gone through the gun was inputed. Local gravity- Gravity is not constant on this planet so what the local gravity is has to be accounted for. Magazine Temperature- Magazines are deep in the ship and will just about always be a different temperature that the situation above deck. The powder charge will be at magazine temp and this must be accounted for since it affects the volatility of the charge.
Bill Cunningham ex ftg2 here. That was my system. We could hit a school bus at 15 miles. And did. Our radar started tracking the cable after we shot a drougue outta the sky. All with an analog computer.
@@purpleldv966 Actually, yes, it did. As Drach spoke of, it's not that these things can't be calculated- it's that human beings armed with an abacus at best simply can't make those kind of calculations fast enough in battle. But once you get electrical/mechanical computers involved, such things can be done in real time. In that era of the Fire control computer, what you could calculate was limited simply by how big you wanted the machine to be.
Back in the '80's, the US Navy's Fire Control Tech 'A' school was at Great Lakes training base (probably still is). There were a few antique range finders in the plaza of the school that us students could fiddle with. Yeah, 1 minute with an optical range finder WILL give you one helluva headache.
Did they have working fire control computers available to fiddle with too? It would be fantastic to see that working, and even more so, to try with a team, to operate this. Including the range finders in this exercise
@@marcm. There were a few chunks of MK I servo/synchro system in various places. Not really working (you'd have to have all active inputs to do that) but you could play with them and watch the dials do their thing.
Did some field artiller fire control rangefinding with mobile sterescopic rangefinders for the artillery back in the early 90´s and personally never had any issues. Rangefinding up to 300 metres was far superior on the stereo compared to the then available laser rangefinders. Past a klick laser was king, except at grenade impacts on water, the spray cloud dissipated too fast for reliable laser ranging, especially if ranging for light grenade lobbers.
The enemy ship is bearing down on us! They've opened fire! Do you have a firing solution yet? Umm... Well, Sir... WHAT IS IT??? Sir, the fire control computer just started downloading an update... There's only one bar of signal...
The first time I went to the Yamato Museum, they had a special exhibit which included some replicas of components of the ship, like a main mirror and parts of the main range-finder. The scale of those things is quite difficult to convey, but I was completely blown away by it.
This may be the best video on battleship technology I've ever seen. Questions I never even knew I had were being answered one right after another. Absolutely terrific job.
Extremely interesting and fascinating. I have been reading James Hornfischer's book "Neptune Rising", a superb account of the US and Japanese Navy battles at Guadalcanal in 1942. The average person can't comprehend how naval gunnery works, and your video is excellent in explaining range-finding and fire control. There is one thing missing from your video, however, which is obviously impossible to include: what is happening during an actual naval battle. While a captain and his crew are making all the incredibly complicated calculations to fire at the enemy, the enemy is doing the same. Whoever strikes first gets the upper hand. Suddenly dozens of shells and torpedoes are slamming into a ship, causing horrendous explosions, massive damage, raging fires and shocking human carnage and death. The Guadalcanal battles were so unbelievably violent and enormous in scale that it totally defies belief that human beings can go through such experiences. Naval warfare is absolutely terrible in every way.
funny how timid little weaklings that would not say boo to a goose are fascinated by what they would never dream of doing, because of their chronic back problem.
Significant emotional event.....I see what you did there sir....bravo. I'm so glad some of my favorite RU-vid channels have met and talked. Fantastic video as always Drach. Edit....can you imagine being Agincourt's gunnery officer. It would be so tempting to fire ALLLL the guns at once. You may not hit anything but boy it would look impressive.
The roll angle of the ship at 42:00 might slightly exceed the design specification of the turrets and the fire control system. In a situation like this, you probably wish you had watched the "Survival at Sea" episode instead ;-)
@joanne chon What? Don't think so. The heating of the boundary layer air won't be allowing any condensing moisture at the speeds shells travel. Accretion has nothing to do with the spinning of the shell unless you store them really cold relative to the ambient temp. If you think I'm wrong, please put up a cite supporting what you say.
really makes you appreciate how far technology has come in such a short amount of time. what back then took tons of precise, vulnerable, expensive, and complex equipment operated by large numbers of sailors to do, you could today do better with a 500$ laser rangefinder and a 200$ Laptop, and if you get a 10$ antenna you could even get largely accurate weather data transmitted to you.
Admiral Cunningham noted before the Battle of Cape Matapan, at point blank range even a gunnery officer can hit the target. So he closed to point blank range and blasted away.
Amusing anecdote: the HMS Formidable---an aircraft carrier!---was still with Cunningham's force during the battle. After the shooting started her radar picked up what was believed to be an Italian destroyer. The contact closed the range, and the Formidable FIRED on the contact with its battery of 4.5-inch guns! She got off a single salvo before being very sternly ordered out of the battle line, but it's perhaps the only time an AIRCRAFT CARRIER engaged an enemy ship with GUNFIRE!!!
Mathematics is an abstract, man made field of study and can alone only prove consistencies within its own framework. So until you've fired an artillery piece far enough and observed plus recorded yourself that the impact point of the projectiles deviate from their intended target (with the assumption that the earth is flat) by a factor that can consistently be accounted for mathematically by assuming a curved earth, you have no better argument than the flat earthers :o). And even if you did that, your test only accounts for a fraction of the total surface of the earth, so your conclusion is still based on assumptions.
Sadly this can't be used to convince flat earthers of anything. These people can't even agree on a map that shows how their magic space pizza is supposed to look like, let alone one they could try to use for navigation. Explaining the concept of gun fire-control to people who can't even successfully navigate out of their own trailer park is like teaching rocket science to a coked up fruit fly.
@37:25 That brings back memories of my time in the USN. As a fire control technicians we spent several weeks stepping through the various calculations, corrections, and error corrections for gun fire. We used the Ford Mk 1A computer as the base for this as we studied the maths. The basic elements of the problem don't change and are the same for surface and air targets. Thanks for a great overview of the history and technology.
My father was a fire control officer on a tin can in WWII. He had some “interesting” stories to tell. “Almost” only counts in horse shoes, hand grenades and special weapons.
I'm gobsmacked! Never realised there was so much complexity in range finding, gun laying and fire control. Even more impressive is that you can talk about for an hour and it is understandable and fascinating. Well, I admit I will benefit from watching it again and that I'll happily do. It's wonderful in this day and age that spoken word still has such power. Thank you and keep the information coming.
Loved the picture of “Lucky Jack” Aubrey. Some of the RN ships had a reputation for accuracy, mostly due to competence and practice. The radar fire control made a huge difference in the Battle off Samar.
at first radar fire control allowed radar to cross check range the rangefinder was giving out and vice versa because the human eye was still better at judging shot groups than radar was capable of resolving. By the last stages of WW2 radar became good enough to resolve shots against targets smaller than battleships, completely eliminating the need for a traditional rangefinder.
@@michaelho4014 I remember reading that the Seetakt radar on Graf Spee was more already more accurate than the guns it ranged for. I think it had an accuracy of 50 meters at 20 000m.
This really makes me appreciate how good the gunnery must have been on HMS Duke Of York to hit Scharnhorst with it's first salvo in the middle of a storm.
@@rictusmetallicus Luck wasn't part of it. Under conditions like that luck might get you close, but if you want to hit you need to know what you're doing and do it exactly right.
@Chris_Wooden_Eye Well, ethically perhaps we should ask yourselves wether we have the right to do that to an other species. Who knows how offensive it is to a hammer head shark to have it's own outlook changed against it's own will? 🤔🤔🤔😉
It should be frowned upon. How the hell could anyone be so monstrous as to tamper with beautiful creatures like Hammerhead sharks? You can’t just mess with them. They look too cool, and I don’t think they’d much fancy the idea of being hybridized with other creatures that don’t even live in the water.
The way they did is really mind-boggling. Very cool video, always fascinated by the technical aspects. 60 minutes that felt like 10, but could have been 120
I figured naval gun targeting consisted of a crewman of one battle force calling out an alphanumeric grid coordinate, like "D-9", and someone from the opposite force replying with "hit" or "miss"! 😆 Great video!
Great stuff. Those mechanical fire-controll systems are incredible. The complexity off those things... depending on how much of a nerd you are for machine engineering, it's either a dream or a nightmare. The things you can do with simple cogs and cams if you put your mind to it...
Thank you for this one! This was one of those subjects which turned out to be significantly more interesting than I was expecting, much like the video on boilers. And this ties in with something I’ve been meaning to say for a while now: I don’t know if you’ve ever been involved in teaching, but I think it might be an area you’ve got something of a knack for. You have a manner of speaking that’s at once both calming and engaging; it puts the listener at ease while still keeping their attention. All of my favorite teachers in school had the same ability; the fact that you’re able to do the same over the internet is very impressive. 👏
One of the less well known David vs Goliath scenes of the Action Off Samar were fighters from the TAFFY carriers trying to take out the rangefinders on the Japanese battleships with machine gun fire. I read this years ago in Combined Fleet Decoded which was mostly about cryptanalysis in the Pacific War. Effectiveness was not reported.
Two nitpicks. Humid air is less dense than dry air. In gaseous phase, all molecules take up the same amount of space. And because water is one heavy oxygen atom combined with two extremely light hydrogen atoms, but regular oxygen and nitrogen is two very heavy atoms, water vapor is less dense than the rest of the air. A hot barrel squeezes a shell less than a cold barrel. Take a loop of wire or something; now imagine the metal expanding. The loop of wire will push against itself along its length, making the entire loop bigger. A gun barrel is the same thing, it's just a thicker, elongated loop. This is one of several reasons it's harder to start a cold engine than a hot one: everything is squeezed together more in a cold engine and there's more friction.
24 range finders....jesus so they deployed essentially the same philosophy of put something here motto as the americans.....just with range finders and not guns.
"Stop bein' daft, oiz neva seen dakka dat didn' 'it sumfin'. Nah stop bein' such a zoggin' 'umie an' finish paintin' da floaty dakka yellow cuz da boss sez dat da yellow wunz giv biggah booms"
Redundant systems are hard to destroy (although yes Americans do have "more guns are better [so long as you can supply them]" as a policy for military engagement.
This was one of the best videos on naval gunnery I've ever seen. It's a little more complicated than taking a shot at that buck standing on the other side of the field grazing away while you watch him through your scope.....😜
This came out about 600 times longer than I expected!!! Please have a great Memorial Day weekend but PLEASE! NEVER FORGET! I was a Target Acsuision specialist (USA Artillery- 17B) during the late VN war and while I never went into combat, and we used radars, albeit tube-based rather than transistor-based, and also utilizing analog computers (electro-mechanical, gears, etc.), we did have to utilize optics for some of our fire missions. As I said just prior, it's true we never used large stereo optics as described here ( we combined both visual scopes along with the radar to do the job correctly on many fire missions) but one of my Warrant Officers was one of the designers of our radar set! Chief Perkins, an old 30+ year soldier (A black man BTW) with... not many teeth left in his awesome head, but was a superb trainer of men! He took a shine to me as a high school flunkie and took me aside to learn Trig, in a real man's use of the science and was nothing short of stunning in how he made sense of how HIS radar worked, but about so much more! He made Algebra seem simple and I learned enough to go on to college after I got out! I broke the man's heart when I did get out because he had plans for me! He even had me banned from Ft. Ord! I miss you Chief and I'm sorry for wasting your time! ... except, in the end, I don't think I did, since I went on and got my degree as a EE and did a lot of cool stuff in my civilian career! You were truly an inspiration to me and showed me that wasn't some dumbass wandering about the boondocks of one's life as so many people I've known have done! Chief Warrant Officer ◆◆◆◆(4) Perkins! I salute you, sir, and can say without hesitation, you were easily one of the top five people I've ever met in my occasionally GREAT (but not always) life!!! You cared for everyone under you, BUT (...and this is a big but!) you truly helped me along to extract my head from my ass! I think of you often and I'm sorry I let you down and left the service which you made me grow to love! Though I've never had a shot fired at me in anger (there were a couple of incidents involving drunkeness (stupid Grammarly keeps trying to tell me that it's spelled 'drunkenness'!), but we won't talk about that here...), you taught me how to be a good combat soldier and I'll never forget you! For some reason, I still miss my pot, P-38, and OD cotton fatigues... starch and all! A man of character and integrity does not come around often, so if anyone reading this encounters one, I'd just ask that they realize it quickly and appreciate the awesome opportunity to learn and feed off of him/her... Thank you, and all of the VN Combat Veterans who paid that ultimate sacrifice... yesterday, recently, and those times to come!!! P.S. I got my GED while in the Army... P.P.S. To everyone who was bored enough to read this, enjoy your weekend, but please(!) never forget the reason you get Monday off this time of year! Let's turn 2021 into a great year! (yeah yeah... I'm just as skeptical as you... one can hope though, can't they?) P.P.S. So how 'bout those stereo optics, ay? P.P.P.S. ... and no! I was not 'name'... nor 'color'-dropping about Chief Perkins, but it does seem to raise eyebrows when I mention his race. He was indeed one of the developers of our radar set., an AM/MPQ-4A (Q4 to those using it) Target Acquisition Radar. A fantastic officer and, as I said, VERY caring of the men who utilized equipment he had a very large hand in bringing about to the point it went in combat. P.P.P.P.S. ... We were also the only unit in the field with electricity which allowed us to have a very active coffeepot, such that the Battalion Commander rarely missed a stop at our field position to have a cup of some of the worst coffee ever brewed! P.P.P.P.P.S. Damn!!! It IS really spelled DRUNKENNESS! Maybe it's a good week to quit... (See Lloyd Bridges)
There's an amazing set of videos on the Ford Fire Control system used by the US Navy. Some functions I had no idea you could solve mechanically...and simultaneously. The initial work on American electronic computers [ENIAC] was not code-breaking like the British "code bomb", but to calculate ballistic trajectories and firing tables for heavy artillery for the US Army and heavy naval cannon the Navy Dept...page after page of ballistic data.
Thank you so much for creating and uploading this video. Ever since I started watching your channel I was wondering how this entire topic worked because the terms range finder and fire control came up frequently. I tried looking into it and you do a much better job of explaining it. Much appreciated!
This is one of the best technical presentations I've ever experienced. Hopefully never find myself in such a situation but now have a great appreciation for the skills involved.
To Drach: thank you for your amazing videos. To Drach's followers: thank you for at least appearing to be reasonable people in the comments section, the lack of totally random/dumb/ridiculous/offensive comments honestly makes my day. :)
I have to say kudos this os one of my favorite historical channels very accurate information presented in a professionally amusing manner. Thanks for the work you do because if you do not know your history you are doomed to repeat it...
An extremely comprehensive summary. Thank you very much. I'm assuming from your seemingly extensive knowledge that your acquainted with such systems in a professional capacity? Great stuff 👍
almost more like putting racing tyres on a decent chassis, but then filling the tank with tomato sauce - i.e. the stuff that's supposed to make the whole thing go ain't quite right...
0:35 This is an interesting picture of USS Iowa BB-61. This was taken when she was first commissioned in 1943 during her shakedown cruise (before her bridge was enclosed). If you look closely at her turrets towards the backs you make out a range finder "ear". These were installed as redundancy incase the main range finders on the fire control tower took a direct hit. Turrets 2 and 3 had a stereoscopic Mark 52 range finder and was accurate up to 45,000 yards by themselves. Turret 1 had a coincidence Mark 53 range finder and had had a special astigmatic lens which allowed it to zero in on a target such as a searchlight. Since turret 1 was lowest on the ships its range was slightly less than 1 and 2. During the early 1950's when radar was taking the place of optical range finders, the special range finder on turret 1 was removed from all 4 Iowa's as weight saving and due to the fact that radar made the Mark 53 redundant. Turrets 2 and 3 retaind theirs "just in case." If one were to look closely at any of the Iowa's today you can still see where they welded new armor patches on the backs of turret 1 where the "ears" once were. Source: www.navweaps.com USA 16"/50 (40.6 cm) Mark 7
Great fun! Thank you for the lesson on fire control. I worked for one of the inventors of the aircraft carrier landing system (ACLS) that automatically landed aircraft on carriers. The first system was successfully tested in 1957. It was an analog computer based system but was somewhat simpler than fire control. Side note: humid air is less dense than dry. H2O has a molecular mass of 18, dry air is closer to 29 g/mol. It is a common mistake due to how heavy it feels in high humidity!
Flat Earthers: "Pilots are trained to assume a flat stationary plain." Artillery: "We train our personnel to account for the curve and spin of the earth and we know it works because we hit the target." Flat Earthers: *covering ears* "La la la la la! I can't hear you!"
let's hope that your "plain" (plane) was intentional. Because damn, that is fitting in a flat Earther sentence. it is like kat inglish in all the cat jokes, and it made me :- )
My favorite flat earthers are the ones who say naval vessels don't take into account the curvature or spin of the earth! They must not watch this channel or pull info from where the sun don't shine
@Smith-Mundt Modernization NDAA 2013(Look into it) A lot of assumptions are in there. Idk what you know you don't know what I know. I admit I defer to this channel on naval vessels as I don't know much about them. The coriolis effect (not so much curvature of the earth) is used in long range rifles something i have experience in. If it affects long range rifles why not naval vessels?
@@MrWeezy312 Because Flat Earth doctrine insists that the Coriolis effect doesn't exist (because the real world effects of it... can't be properly modeled in any flat earth models).
I would like to commend you on the delivery of your explanations. I have had to explain many complex engineering things to many people over the years and to my mind you have done an incredible job of taking us through the many factors involved. Much harder than it sounds. Well done.
While you are correct about the fact that moist air will react differently than dry air, you are backward as to density. One molecule of water will displace one molecule of nitrogen or one molecule of oxygen. Water has an atomic weight of 18, 2 for the two hydrogen atoms, and 16 for the oxygen. One nitrogen molecule, N2 has an atomic weight of 28. One oxygen molecule has an atomic weight of 32. That moist air is less dense than dry air is well known to all pilots. However, this comment should not detract from the very large amount of valuable information you are providing. Keep up the good work.
Temperature, atmospheric pressure and humidity All come into the equation. However, some have been taught differently, probably due to instructor s assumptions that given the objective, that one of these will have a negligible impact on the solution. For example, military helicopter pilots were instructed that humidity had no impact on lift for many years. But that is not true, but it does have a small impact which becomes a big factor if your operating at small margins in very high humidity.
An increase in humidity will increase the density altitude, therefor less lift, or for helicopters more power is needed. For fixed wing, more runway run out is needed. Interestingly, the Dew Point produces a non-linear density increase. Now that gets picky and requires a higher level if understanding!
"Isn't right angle trigonometry fun!" no, no drach it is not *slams head into nearest bulkhead* I'm starting to agree with Cunningham more and more, point blank is the only range at which even a gunnery officer can not miss
Much respect for the guys that ran these systems but also huge props to you for the headache inducing chore of explaining them. Man I want to commend you for a job well done. There were points where I could see your face contorting just by listening to your voice. You earned a new subscriber.
@@markusz4447 I think it's British. It hit a mine. World War 1. Correction: it's not the ship I was thinking of. It's the Yamato... according to Google image search. That turret behind the two main gun turrets helped narrow the search.
If by "modern computerized" you are including the electromechanical beasts used in WW II, you are probably pretty much spot on. If you are only referring to modern electronic computers (as we know them today), then you are a little off. The mechanical computers used in WW II, when operating correctly and used correctly, were pretty darn good.If course they were big enough, heavy enough, and complicated enough that it was easy to *not* use them correctly, making them a little moot.
@@lwilton Even before that though the maths done by the original computers that is to say when that was still a job title not a device is no less valid than machine assisted calculations. I would even go so far as to say the trade offs back then were remarkably similar to those we still deal with time, cost and accuracy being a big one given enough time and/or resources you can calculate anything you want as accurate as you like with nothing more than people using pen and paper. Just that in practice money is limited and time is a luxury so you have to set your sights a bit lower when computing is significantly slower and the compute capacity costs way more per unit work done but this has not changed we still are forced to settle for good enough given our budget and timeline as an acceptable answer all the time.
Excellent video. I knew it was difficult for one warship to hit another with a shell. But you really brought into realty just how VERY hard it is to do that. Sooooo many variables. Thanks.
Note that humid air is less dense than dry air. People often assume that humid air is just water vapor added to air but the water vapor actually displaces the air. Water has a much lower molecular weight than 'air (nitrogen and oxygen)', causing it to reduce density when it is combined with air.
I appreciate such well prepared dissertations such as this one as well as the nicely detailed explanation about the evolution of naval armor. More details rather than less often makes these kinds of subjects more interesting. Regarding requests; a description of French Cruisers, especially the Algerie and comparisons to County Class English, Hipper Class German and U.S. class Baltimore's would be fascinating. Faster though lighter armored Italian as well as some novel IJN cruisers would be an interesting addition to round out the field for comparison. After seeing many videos here I would like to compliment the producer especially for the recent multi-episode Jutland production. The metallurgical discussion about armor along with fire control were delightful adjuncts to the Norman Friedman's editions on the topics to name just one specialist who produces both books and videos over time. Eric Grove and Andrew Lambert are delightful as well.
After watching this, I'm surprised someone could hit a continent... let alone hit another moving ship. But, it makes the "Crossing the T" move a much more obvious choice.
