Talk:Gun laying

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Section "Modern artillery"[edit]

The section Modern Artillery is nonsense. It does not describe the 'mechanics' of indirect fire artillery laying in the 20th Century. All it covers is direct fire by AFVs, a totally different subject.

For artillery laying in the 20th century I suggest paying attention to this page http://members.tripod.com/~nigelef/fc_laying.htm

Nfe 11:37, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Feel free to extend the article, it is after all a stub. IIRC FACE accepted compensation for barometric pressure, temperature and windspeed. I presume that BATES is the same, so as a comparison with earlier techniques, and as far as it goes the text is reasonably accurate. I doubt that the detail in the Tripod article is justified here, it's a very brief summary. An article on the detail of 20th century artillery technology would probably be a more appropriate vehicle for that level of detail.--Shoka 01:03, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Additional input[edit]

In order to lay a piece for indirect fire you start with an orienting station and a know direction. There are many options for this but the most basic is an aiming circle (a device that looks like surveying equipment on a tripod) using surveyed in data. Once you have the aiming circle aligned on a known direction (know as the azimuth of fire) you measure the angle from the azimuth of fire to the howitzer. Likewise, in the howitzer, you measure the angle from the rearward extention of the azimuth of fire to the aiming circle. If you remember from geometry - two parallel lines (the imaginary azimuths of fire going through the aiming circle and the howitzer) cut by a transversal (the line directly from the aiming circle to the howitzer) opposite interior angles are congruent. Therefore, once the angles measured from both the aiming circle and the howitzer are equal, the howitzer is now on the same azimuth of fire as the aiming circle. The howitzer then places aiming references (aiming poles or other reference) so it can aim itself relative to the original azimuth of fire. This process is repeated for all howitzers in the same area (generally a battery of 6-8 howitzers). Once all howitzers are aligned on the azimuth of fire, firing data can be computed from the center of the group of howitzers. This data is computed and transmitted to the howitzers relative to the original azimuth of fire.

Elevation is much easier. There is a mechanism that is aligned with the gun tube that works exactly like a carpenter's level. You set off the angle that you want the tube to go to, then elevate the tube until the bubble is level.Burrellt 14:14, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Clarification sought[edit]

"There are two possible paths that a shot can take to a target at a defined range" ... this is only true for a fixed energy or exit velocity. With variable exit velocity there are infinitely many possible trajectories. Could someone who knows the correct terminology please update, thanks. 82.69.54.182 (talk) 16:00, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Scope of the article (eg, firing tables)[edit]

Digital computers were not used in naval gun laying at an early date, see Ship gun fire-control systems which states they were not adopted by the USN intil the 1970s. Before this analogue devices were used. There's some research to be done on how far back this goes, naval systems seem to date from circa WW1 but coast aertillery were doing something decades earlier, albeit without the complication of a moving paltform. An early use of a computer was to compute data for paper firing tables. This is peripheral to an article of gun laying. As is the next step computing the required trajectory, first done digitally in FADAC circa 1960. Of course this raises the issue of the scope of 'gun laying' and the extent to which it includes the computation of firing data as opposed to the activities involved in putting data on the sights and physically moving the barel either manually or by 'machine'. Wider matters are covered in Indirect fire. Nfe (talk) 02:04, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That's a valid point. The calculations were for tables that provided information to humans who would do the gun laying accordingly. In my opinion it is closely enough related that it could stay here, because the gun laying activity relied on the tabular data. I don't object to moving the info to a related article, but first I would need to figure out exactly where to move it to (rather than just delete it here). This may be the most logical place at present, unless anyone can suggest a candidate. — ¾-10 02:52, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

History of Computing would seem the right place. On servos, much too vague to justify saying navy, needs an indication of date and who's to say that coastal artillery somewhere was not already using them? Nfe (talk) 09:12, 29 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I decided to remove the paragraph here and will plan on covering it (when I have better refs) in the numerical control article, which talks more about the topic, eg, Alexanderson at General Electric (1931). — ¾-10 23:05, 29 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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