Fire Control in WWI

[Harry64]

Hello,

I´m new here on this forum and still have a question to the specialists for naval weapons and systems.

From the WW2, we know that the big warships had fire control centers in the protected interior of the ship, in which the evaluations and the fire commands were generated and send to the various stations (guns).

Was there such fire-control centers also on the big WW1 warships from Germany, England, USA and so on, or were all commands and evaluations done in the conning-tower/commando-bridge?
If there were such a fire central , how was the evaluation of incoming data done and how were they forwarded to the stations (guns)?

How worked fire control on small ships (destroyers, torpedo boats, small cruisers), or was there no central fire control and each gun fired autonomously after the fire command from the bridge. I think range estimation was done from central rangefinders, but how get the guns these information?

thanks in advance for help

Harry

[dunmunro]

There's lots of info here:

http://www.dreadnoughtproject.org/tfs/i ... re_Control

[Serg]

I recommend Kiel and Jutland by Hase. It is easy to read and a first hand description of german WW1 fire control. You can download it here http://www.archive.org/details/kieljutland00haseuoft

[Siegfried]

It's worth looking at Carl Joesph August Michalke of Chorlotenbrug Germany 1897 patent for the selsysn.
These were used to transmit bearings within German ships. US Paten 684 579 was received.

http://www.google.com/patents/about/684 ... 5lAAAAEBAJ