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Here's a naval gunnery oddity...
I've noticed in pictures of old British and American battleships, there is what appears to be a large clock in the superstructure of the ship...only recently I noticed that it's not a conventional clock face...not enough numbers...
What I learned is that this is a "Range Clock" that was invented before the use of radio communications..there are two range clocks on each ship...one facing forward and the other facing aft and they were used to communicate the range to the target a ship was engaging to other ships in the battle line...
The ship in the picture is the U.S.S. Arizona at sea...her Range Clock is visible in the superstructure...
What I learned is that this is a "Range Clock" that was invented before the use of radio communications..there are two range clocks on each ship...one facing forward and the other facing aft and they were used to communicate the range to the target a ship was engaging to other ships in the battle line...
The ship in the picture is the U.S.S. Arizona at sea...her Range Clock is visible in the superstructure...
Sharps Model 1874 - "The rifle that made the west safe for Winchester"
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It’s a °IIIII° thing 😎
Thanks for sharing
https://hoover.blogs.archives.gov/2019/12/04/viva-hoover-exhibit-but-whats-that-thing-that-looks-like-a-clock/
Winston Churchill
3600 yards would have one hand on the 3 and one on the 6.....
Serious gunnery can get to be some mind-bending stuff. I found an aerial gunnery training manual in with some of my grandfather's WWII material. Waist gunners in bombers especially had to deal with forward speed of their own aircraft in addition to whatever the other guy was doing, PLUS the natural trajectory of their own rounds. I tried to comprehend a couple pages of it before diving under a blanket to start sucking my thumb.
Shows you what a game changer radar was - that we were still daylight and optical only even creeping up to WWII.
"Nothing is safe from stupid." - Zee
The Japanese Navy's gunnery was all optical...just one reason for the towering pagoda masts on their capital ships...
While quite a few American ships had radar, many ships captains didn't trust it or know how to use it...Those who did were very successful against the Japanese ...quite a few of those that didn't ended up with their ships laying on the bottom of Iron Bottom Sound...
One of the more interesting engagements was between the U.S.S. Washington and the IJN Kirishima which ended up in a close range gunfight between the two...The Washington was firing "super heavy" 16" rounds (2700+ lbs) at such a flat trajectory that the short rounds were acting like torpedoes and punching holes in Kirishimas hull below the waterline...