Practice?

This is coolbert:

Practice makes perfect?

Here from the book "Dreadnought" by Massie, a description of how the gunnery training exercises of the period pre-Dreadnought and Dreadnought were conducted.

"In peacetime, the system worked. Firing practice usually involved stationary targets, positioned at ranges no greater than two thousand yards. Under these conditions, the gunlayers, peering down their barrels, could see where their shells were falling, make corrections and - - to the delight of senior officers and astounded spectators - - pulverize the target. Sir Percy Scott [a senior British admiral of the period and an authority on naval gunnery] considered this a dangerous exercise in fantasy. In wartime, he argued, individual gunlayers in the turrets would face not only the concussive blast of the guns, billowing heavy smoke, and spray resulting from high speed, but the fact that the target would be shooting back. At ranges four and five times greater than in peacetime, the individual gunlayer at turret level could not even see where his shells were landing."

There was a solution to this problem of gunners [gunlayers] NOT being able to even see the target, much less determine the accuracy of their fire. Called Director Firing:

"A single master gunlayer, posted high in the conning tower or on the foremast would aim and fire simultaneously all the heavy guns on the ship . . . with an excellent line of vision to the target, he and his assistant could observe the geysers [splashes] as their own shells struck the sea near the enemy. They could calculate what adjustments were required, electrically trasmsit their orders to the guns, and then, when all was ready, press a key to fire all the guns at once"

OF THE THIRTY-SIX DREADNOUGHTS [BATTLESHIPS] AVAILABLE TO JELLICOE AT JUTLAND [1916], ONLY TWO HAD SUCH A CENTRALIZED FIRE CONTROL!!

The problem had a solution and the solution had a problem!!

coolbert.