Postby George Elder » Sat Jan 22, 2005 10:05 pm
Ah, the angles as in a discussion we had long ago. There is a time-line & range diagram in Morison on pp 94-97. The firing commenced at 24,000 yards, closed a bit, and then went out to as far as 29,000 yards. If one plots the hits according to the time-table in D&G, the first hit was at about 24,500 yards. At 7:37 there was another hit at about 28,000 yards. At 7:47 she began closing the range a bit, but it wasn't untill 8:06-8:10 that the last three hits were recorded -- all of which appear to have been scored at under 28,000 yards. One might also want to consider some of the Japanese long range shooting during various battles, which was not very good. Indeed, I don't believe any BB or BC scored at hit on another moving BB, BC, CA, etc., at anything over 27,000 yards. Of course, one has to add up all the shots fired over 27K at another enemy ship to get a real feel for what this zero hit stat means. I am far to lazy for that project, but I would guess the numbers will be in the few hundred range -- and perhaps as high as 300 or so. This would make a great project for those war game designers who have tables wherein 5-10% hits are being made at 30K. Heck, we don't even see that against fixed targets. Gene Slover has some good ideas on this subject.
George