Naval History Forums

Byron Angel wrote: ↑Sun Apr 23, 2023 2:27 am "British Battleships 1889-1904" by R A Burt (pp 44-51) reproduces a fairly lengthy segment of commentary contained from a 1902 report on the state of RN gunnery written by Lt A V Vyoyan (yes "Vyoyan"). Well worth reading.

This would be Arthur Vyell Vyvyan.

tone

Chiming in quite late here, and not having read much of the above, I see that some have correctly seen that the British used the Dreyer Calculator to calculate the change in range during time of flight due to the range rate (along with other factors). This delta would be added into the Dreyer Table'...

HMS Queen Mary's plans, shown on a recent Jutland TV documentary are marked "Armoured cruiser to be named Queen Mary". The evolution of that type into what would be called the "New Generation" battlecruiser was so fast, ships like Defence and Warrior were rendered somewhat obsol...

The Henderson gear was not the same as gyro stablizing the guns in pitch, but as Tommy outlines, it merely tried to negate the pitch of the director telescope. It did not perfectly negate it, but it reduced the motion to a slow "wander" that was easier to track. The director layer's trigge...

I own three of these, one of which is in fine working order. Have you been successful in guessing your way through? If not, I have a handbook, but unless it requires some unusual adjustment, you have only a few simple things to do. Working from memory... First off... are the optics clear, and does w...

I think the British had the same goals as the Germans, which reduce to Fisher's (paraphrased) "hit early, hit often". But the British seem to have missed a few simple wrinkles, especially in the algorithm for early ranging/line-finding fire -- possibly addressed in the formulated Spotting ...

Why does it seem to be such an article of faith that the RN had better fire control then the IGN in WW1? The record in no way supports such a position. I think it is pretty clear that the British had a greater "frontal lobe" for fire control whereas the Germans, at the pivotal test in 191...

i did some digging and I suspect the photo on this page http://www.battleships-cruisers.co.uk/torpedo_boats.htm (second down on the left) is what I'm looking for. I'm quite surprised by the idea of battleships carrying one of these all that time ago - a bit like modern ships carrying a helicopter f...

Pardon the very late response, but I like fire control threads. Changing to reduced charges (or back) would have required the gunsights to be altered in the heat of battle. How the Germans might do this, I am not sure, but for the Brits, it would be that all the gunlayers (since the Germans used ind...

I find the reports on director firing informative, and worth recording on my wiki for sure (provided I remember to do so).

While Fawcett and Hooper is chatty, the detail provided is fairly convincing. What role did the speaker have on board?

Does Yate's provide a source for his account?

tone

Thanks, Lynn.. I was going to post the same (I only recently edited the page you cite). I wanted to point out that QE was flagship for somewhere between 1-2 months (the Supplements upon which my page is based only really show status quo at the top of the month, which creates a +/- 2 week fuzz in the...

I'll say from practical experience with a Barr and Stroud F.T. 37 that coincidence rangefinding (at least) would be extremely susceptible to motion of own ship and to vibration. The simplest illustration in this is that a target is generally going to be on the beam, and your ship's roll is going to ...

FYI .. I have 4 albums there now.

tone

Sorry to pipe in so late. If I had my druthers... 1. Give me the German BCs for their armor and overall design strengths 2. Give me the RN's directors and fire control system, except... 3. Give me a MIXTURE of RN and German rangefinders 4. Give me the German's vantage point with its superior visibil...

Gary wrote:Hi Iankw.

Sorry to disagree but I'd find HMS Lion much more historically intriguing than Iron Duke.

Queen Mary for me.

tone