THE SHOWBOAT engages THE IRON CHANCELLOR

(See illustrations at end of article. M.)

Nevada turned in the median performance for battleships during 1924-25. The practice was fired at an average range of 18,001 yards. Poor Nevada botched her approach and opened fire with the target bearing 57° instead of nearly 090° as was desirable, a situation which required her to fire the last two salvos during the process of making a 30° turn. Mechanically, the practice was a disaster. The recoil of the first salvo threw open a switch and disabled the training gear of one turret for the rest of the shoot. On the first two salvos the left gun of Turret I misfired due to a fault in the firing circuit. When the primer of one gun was ejected alter salvo 1, it fell into the breech mechanism and jammed the plug. After the fifth salvo, the elevating mechanism of Turret IV failed. On salvo 6 the left gun of turret III misfired due to a faulty primer. The elevating mechanism of Turret II failed after salvo 7, and one gun was fired with a three-bag load.19

Despite these problems, Nevada did remarkably well, actually shooting better than Bismarck did seventeen years later in the Denmark Straits under roughly comparable conditions. The plot of the exercise, showing her performance against an 785-foot twenty-knot target instead of a battle raft, shows good clean straddles on salvos 1 through 4, a hit on salvo 5, two hits on salvo 4, and two hits on salvo 5, this within 5 minutes, 15 seconds.

(If Holland had USS Nevada "poor" quality shooting at Denmark Strait from HMS Hood, KMS Bismark would be DEAD. M.) 

Still, the Navy was far from satisfied. "The large pattern obtained and the difficulty in making hits with the 14-inch, 45 caliber gun even with good fire control are sources of discouragement," noted Lt. D.P. Moon, Nevada's gunnery officer. "While at the navy yard turret roller paths were carefully checked and compensators set. Since leaving the navy yard checks at sea have repeatedly been made with all turrets within two minutes of each other in elevation. . . . All the evidence points to the erratic performance of the guns themselves in producing large patterns." Admiral Robinson, Commander in Chief of the Battle Fleet, concurred, writing "The patterns in both range and deflection were excessive. The causes of the excessive patterns obtained should be thoroughly investigated by the Nevada." "The main battery performance," he wrote, "is not considered good. . . . the causes of getting off alter being on [on] the first salvo, were due to either very poor rate keeping, gun laying errors or poor director pointing or a combination of the three. The range finding up to the fifth salvo appears to have been good. The spotting was exceptionally good."

Force Battle Practice (a variation of Long Range Battle Practice) for the 1930-31 gunnery year was specifically designed to test the battle line in engaging a numerically inferior force at close range, to test the efficiency of dye-loaded projectiles in concentration fire, to study the effect of torpedo fire on an engaged battle line, and to exercise casualty procedures in battle. Although this was a short range reduced charge practice for most ships in the fleet, the mean gun range being 12,833 yards, New York fired full charges at 12,700 yards, so this was a high-velocity practice for her. The plan was to have the eight ships in the line fire in double concentration on four battle targets during the beginning of the practice, shifting targets part way through the shoot to put two targets in triple concentration, and leaving the other two under fire from single ships. The changeover did not go well; although New York correctly switched targets at the appropriate time, both California and Idaho bungled the swap, so that instead of ending up firing at her own target, New York found herself sharing a single hapless target with two of her offending sisters in triple concentration.20 The officer in charge of simulating casualties cut off New York's plane spots alter the second salvo, and disconnected the main-battery telephone circuits alter the fifth. Mechanically, the main battery worked flawlessly, with the gunnery officer noting "All ammunition (70 rounds) was expended and there were no casualties except those constructively imposed."

The firing started out poorly, improved during the middle part of the shoot, and deteriorated during salvos six and seven. Lt. Murphy, the gunnery officer, noted laconically ". . .The first salvo had an excellent range pattern of 250 yards [and] a good deflection pattern in the neighborhood of 100 yards. Two plane spotters stated that all the shots in this salvo landed so close together that it was difficult to distinguish the individual splashes. Unfortunately, the mean point of impact was 1,252 yards over . . ." There were two wild shots in deflection on the sixth salvo, and two more in both range and deflection on the seventh. These doubtlessly originated from Turret III, which "... upon the casualty to the fire-control telephones went to pointer fire for some unaccountable reason." New York's time for the practice, 6 minutes and 43 seconds, was considered undesirably slow, the lag being accounted for by the need to hold up the second and third salvos to receive plane spots (which were being shared by USS Texas), by the requirement to shift fire alter salvo four, by the difficulties imposed by the loss of telephone circuits alter salvo five, and by the use of an inexperienced director pointer. The average loading interval was 31 seconds; the director interval 10; the salvo interval, 66. New York's merit for the practice was 21.255, ranking her fourth out of eight, achieving 0.1931 hits per gun per minute. The best ship, Texas, achieved 0.4067 hits per gun per minute, and the worst, Tennessee, got only 0.1337.21

(If that is considered "unacceptable" by the USN in 1931, then by what "metric" can we call both German and British shooting in 1941? M.) 

As before, the normal battle target has been replaced by the outline of a 785 foot, 20 knot target. The signal to shift targets came at 1 minute 55 seconds into the firing, but fire was not shifted until after the fourth salvo. Clearly, the change imposed little difficulty, as hits were obtained on the first salvo fired on target number 3. The loss of communications imposed alter salvo five obviously had a much greater effect, opening the pattern significantly, although hits were still obtained. The recovery from the large error associated with salvo 1 is remarkable, and in fact New York would probably have actually hit on salvo 2, fired 1 minute and 50 seconds into the practice. After that, she would have obtained two hits on each of salvos 3, 4, and 5, and one hit on salvo 6, this within 7 minutes and 13 seconds.

Vice Admiral Leigh characterized New York's performance as ". . . generally good, though the lack of fire discipline in the case of turret II probably lost the vessel some hits. The imposed casualties were handled correctly and promptly, though difficulty was experienced with voice-tube communication alter the fire control telephone system was placed out of commission." Leigh characterized the performance of the battle line during the main battery portion of the practice as "disappointing." "The volume of fire was comparatively low," he wrote, "the patterns (especially in deflection) were generally larger than was expected, the number of shots in the control zone were low (being only approximately 20 per cent of the shots fired as against the standard of 50 per cent set by reference (d)), and the fire discipline in some cases was poor."22

(Reiterated. M.)

The Long Range Battle Practice for 1939-40 had the usual objectives of training main battery personnel and spotters. To provide maximum training for control parties and spotters, the Director of Fleet Training made partial salvos mandatory, to be fired by forward and alter groups (each of which had their own spotting and control parties) in succession.23 This was a low velocity, i.e., 2,000 foot per second, practice, fired at an average gun range of 19,121 yards. By now, the use of delay coils was standard operating procedure. The weather conditions were, in the words of Commander Battleship Division Two, ". . . a fine example of one of the more unfavorable combinations of wind, sea, light, and visibility." Wind and sea were moderate, but ships were firing into a bad sun glare [and a] surface haze about 200 feet deep which caused a mirage effect on the horizon."24 Under these conditions both Tennessee and Maryland found that the usually more dependable stereo range finders were less accurate than coincidence types.25 A change of 30° from approach to the deployment course was made by simultaneous ship turns at "Commence Firing," and another turn of 30° away was made during the shift from the forward to alter groups between salvos 7 and 8. Casualties were few; although Tennessee's written report listed no material casualties, her Sheet 4 for the practice noted that the left gun of Turret I misfired on both salvo 1 and salvo 2.

(I long suspected that the USN used "Italian type optical fire control combo-optics" to attune for weather effects, but this was the first instance I found confirmation of coincidence and stereo superimposition were used in combination to adjust spots. M.) 

The target is assumed as a 785 foot ship traveling at 20 knots. Neither of the turns, totaling 60°, seems to have had any significant effect on Tennessee's accuracy. Deflection performance was excellent throughout, with all salvos crossing the target. Note how neatly her spotters found the range during salvos 1 through 4, and how the plotting team for the alter group was able to keep the salvos "just over" during salvos 9 through 14. In response to a series of "down" spots from salvo 10, plot brought the pattern "down 100" between salvos 11 and 12 to get a restraddle and ensure that the patterns were not excessively over. The resultant hitting on salvos 13 and 14 was exceptionally good. Tennessee's patterns were extremely tight, especially when compared to those shown in earlier practices; nine gun salvos would have been about 1.18 times as big. Against a real ship target, she would probably have achieved her first hits on salvo four, 3 minutes, 42 seconds into the practice, hitting consistently thereafter and getting sixteen hits in the first fourteen salvos, a very creditable performance. Again, note that this was the average performance for the fleet, and that other ships did considerably better.

(Again, the KMS Bismark would have been killed by this kind of shooting before landing her first hits. M.)

The previous examples are typical of individual ships but do not compare relative performances directly. Examination of other Long Range Battle Practices enables us to analyze the differences in performance between nominally identical ships as well. The table below, for example, taken from LRBP for 1932-33, can be used to compare the relative performance of Colorado, Maryland, and West Virginia, all equipped with eight 16-inch guns in four twin turrets.

*(See illustration at end of article. M.)

Note the large variation in the average error of MPI, a measure of the fire control accuracy. Unfortunately the sample size remains too small to determine whether this is a real variation or merely a statistical artifact.

(See illustrations at end of article.)

Click for larger image.

A graphical comparison of performance of the same three ships can be obtained by examining their performance at Force Battle Practice in 1930-31. This was a seven salvo practice, so each ship had the opportunity to fire 56 shots. The target was about 12,800 yards away. The fall of shot diagram, shown below, combines all shots fired during the practice so as to make the pattern variation clearer, and once again substitutes a 785-foot battleship outline for the real target, in to aid the reader's perspective. The ship-to-ship variation in pattern size and distribution is evident; Colorado's pattern is long and stringy with a noticeable "hole" near the Mean Point of Impact dividing the pattern into a collection of overs and shorts; she deserved better luck. In contrast, Maryland's pattern is short and rather wide, indicative of poorly aligned turrets. Spotting was relatively poor as well; almost all of her overs come from a single misplaced salvo. West Virginia exhibits a pattern nearly identical to Maryland's, with the pattern bunched slightly long. In all cases the Mean Point of Impact, i.e., the center of the pattern distribution, is right on the money. The diagram also indicates how much pure luck sometimes seems to enter gunnery equation. Even though the overall patterns are reasonably similar, West Virginia would have gotten five hits, Maryland, six, and Colorado only one.

A plot of salvo numbers vs. time allows us to compare their relative rates of fire. Rates of fire between ships varied about twenty percent, although the straight lines indicate that the rate for each individual ship remained relatively constant.

(See Illustration at end of Article. M)

The introduction of the new 16"/45 and the 16"/50 batteries installed in the treaty battleships in the late 1930s and early 1940s was somewhat less than agreeable. New 16-inch range tables used incorrect powder temperature velocity differentials and inaccurate instructions to compensate for the rotation of the earth. Charge assessment problems gave the new 16"/50s an initial velocity about 30 ft/sec higher than expected, so they initially overshot their range tables, especially when the range was long. At the same time, proving ground experiments showed the 'jump" for the new guns to be negative, rather than positive, meaning they undershot their range tables when the range was short. The unfortunate combination caused a vexing problem which took at least two years to solve. Further, although the new 14-inch guns were lighter and more reliable than their predecessors, when equipped with similar fire control systems they proved to be no more accurate than the guns they replaced.26

The reliability of the guns always appears to have varied markedly from ship to ship. In 1942, USS Idaho undertook an exercise deliberately designed to determine ". . . the ability of battleships to maintain an adequate rate of fire under conditions simulating a protracted engagement," expending 597 rounds in 156 salvos. The average salvo interval was 1 minute, 24 seconds, but only 20 of these were full six-gun salvos; the average was 3.82. She suffered no fewer than 205 separate casualties during the firing, mostly requiring adjustment of the gas check pads or rammers. Powder handling, however, was flawless, 2,400 one-hundred pound bags of powder being handled without mishap.27

In contrast, Indiana's main battery performed almost flawlessly. Off Iwo Jima in 1945, she fired 203 16-inch rounds, with only eight guns missing a salvo. Seven failures were caused by problems with the powder or projectile hoists; only one gun misfired.28 Off El-Hank in 1942, Massachusetts suffered only fourteen casualties in 786 expended rounds. Only one of these was really serious; Turret I was placed out of commission for thirty-five minutes after her handling crew dropped a shell which jammed the rotating structure. The Mark 8 and Mark 13 fire control radar installed during World War II completely revolutionized spotting. Radar, which was much more accurate than visual spotting (at least in range) quickly superseded aircraft spotting entirely, and battleships were soon recommending that their aircraft be removed.29 Even in perfect weather, optical spotting deteriorated rapidly beyond 18,000 yards; in comparison with the Mark 8 mod 0 fire control radar could spot 16-inch splashes out to about 20,000 yards and the improved Mark 8 mod 3 could reliably spot 14-inch and 16-inch fire out to at least 35,000.30 The Mark 13 radar was even better yet. Officers testing the equipment aboard USS Iowa in 1945 would write:

"Spotting both 5-inch and 16-inch splashes, HC or AP, with the Mark 13 radar is comparable to deliberately drawing a picture of the splashes on paper and looking at it. At all ranges fired during this period, the most inexperienced officer, given a brief explanation of what to expect, can spot splashes accurately to within 100 yards, and to within 50 yards with some experience."31

The introduction of improved stable verticals greatly improved the ability to control the accuracy of gunfire during turns. In 1945, North Carolina tested her systems by aiming at the sun (and at night, the moon) while maneuvering through two 450° turns and two 100° turns maintaining propeller r.p.m. throughout while observers noted that such maneuvers could indeed move the MPI several hundreds of yards at battle ranges, such shifts were ". . . no more than would be desirable when using a rocking ladder of comparatively small increments," announcing that henceforth commanders might maneuver freely in battle. This represented an order-of-magnitude improvement over the fire control systems of the late twenties and early thirties, when even thirty or forty degree turns were often sufficient to throw off the system entirely. In 1927-28, for example, the battleships changed course by 20°, then by an additional 30° during a fifteen-salvo practice fired at about 25,000 yards. The average error in placement of the MPI was about 400 yards in range and deflection, and not a single salvo hit the target.32

The new ability to fire accurately during turns, coupled with radar spotting, gave US World War II battleships a truly enormous tactical advantage over the majority of their potential enemies. Most enemy ships which maneuvered to avoid incoming fire would have been unable to maintain effective return fire, while those which chose to keep to a steady course would have rapidly been smothered by highly accurate radar-controlled incoming salvos. In contrast, the American battlewagons would have been able to maneuver, and fire, at will. And the Iowas, at least, had enough speed to dictate the range.

(I do not know about the North Carolinas before 1942 mods, but the banjo effect of screw vibration harmonics did not affect the SoDaks, ever. They would have had parity in speed with KGVs, Richelieus and Bismarcks in North Atlantic typical weather. They were faster than their Japanese counterparts in Pacific heavy weather. M.)   

Some exercises tested the reliability of the systems rather than the accuracy of the guns. The anachronistic Short Range Battle Practice for example, in which the battleships blasted away at targets only a couple of thousand yards away typically getting eighty or ninety percent hits, was fired every year until the outbreak of the Second World War. It was retained because it tested loading and firing crews to the limit, even though the range was almost ridiculously low.33 The objects of SRBP were to test and train gun pointer groups at pointer fire, to test and train loading crews at maximum safe rates of fire to test material, and to stimulate interest in gunnery. It certainly succeeded in increasing speed. In 1919 battleship main batteries averaged about 1.9 Shots Per Gun Per Minute [SPGPM]. By 1930 the average rate had risen to about 2.5 SPGPM, though for a variety of reasons it never got much higher than this. In fact, the obsession with speed in Short Range Battle Practice finally became so great that in 1938, CNO, fearing that some ships were not checking for bore clear with sufficient care, promulgated regulations specifying a minimum twenty-four second loading interval, and imposing a penalty if it was not upheld.34 Navy "E"s in gunnery, predominantly displayed on the sides of turrets between the wars, were primarily awarded for performance in Short Range Battle Practice. Aside from being a fertile source for the study of loading accidents, the results of SRBP are of relatively little historical value, and will not be studied here.

*(    After the fighting in Iron Bottom Sound, where the Americans and Japanese blazed away at each other at PISTOL SHOT RANGE during First Guadalcanal, that "anachronistic SRBP" was not "anachronistic" anymore. M.)  

Considering the amount of firing that was done, serious injuries, even at Short Range Battle Practice, were surprisingly rare. The secondary battery guns broke down a lot, but hardly ever injured anyone in the process, and deaths in casemates, at least aboard the battleships, were unknown. Because of the powerful machinery and heavy weights involved, main battery turrets were (and are) inherently much more dangerous places. Even there, barring a couple of truly spectacular accidents, few deaths took place during actual firings, however.35

The first major accident between the wars occurred in 1924 aboard USS Mississippi. Seven salvos had been fired satisfactorily from the right gun of Turret II. The shell and powder for the eighth salvo had been rammed, but just after the rammer was withdrawn, a small grey mass of smoke and flame came out of the breech followed immediately by a blinding flash of flame. Fire and gas filled the gun compartment and passed through the safety doors into the other gun compartments, the upper handling room, and the turret officer's booth. 47 men were killed, most of them from suffocation, and nine others were injured. An investigation later concluded that the bore had not been inspected properly after firing and that the safety doors had not been properly closed. Four hours later, as the dead were being removed from the turret, the body of one of the men struck and closed a firing switch in the turret officer's booth. This fired the left gun, which had not yet been unloaded, injuring ten more men standing in the vicinity of the muzzle. The Court of Inquiry, demonstrating common sense and considerable compassion, recommended taking no disciplinary action for this later accident, concluding that, ". . . the magnitude of the casualty caused the minds of all concerned to be centered upon the dead rather than upon examination of the guns." Coincidentally, this same turret burned out again under almost identical circumstances in 1944, this time via the center gun, killing 43. The second casualty took place during the loading of the 13th salvo. The breech was open, the projectile had been rammed home, and the rammer head was found stopped against the base of the projectile. The air ejection system had been turned off, implying that the chamber had been checked and cleared, and the center powder car doors were open. There had been no material failure; once again an investigative team ascribed the accident to careless checking of the bore. Again, the tragedy was compounded by successive human errors; the fireball probably reached the turret officer's booth and other interior spaces after someone opened the door to the center gun chamber while the unburned gases trapped inside were still hot enough to flash.36

(This goes directly to "ship's culture". If the crew of a ship gets sloppy, it stays "sloppy". The USS Mississippi from her records, bears an eerie similarity to the current USS Connecticut, a Seawolf class submarine, which boloed herself in the South China Sea a year ago. The board of inquiry report is a chain of evidence that shows despite repeated reviews and calls for corrective action in procedures and practices, the "ship culture" of letting things slide and taking short cuts in navigation and soundings in the case of the USS Connecticut, lead to a loss of mission and near loss of ship. I reviewed that report and in my opinion, only a complete ruffle-shuffle of crew and officers and a ZERO reset of training practices and a series of "check rides" by senior USN command, would have solved the USS Connecticut's ship culture problem. The entire cuirrent USN (USS Bonhomme Richard) is now in this fix. M. )

Obviously, accidental ignition of the bag loaded propellant was the cause of most serious accidents. Doctrine in the case of broken powder bags, which were common, was to call "Silence," i.e., have everyone in the turret freeze, and to submerge the loose powder grains in specially provided water tanks. Slightly torn bags were re-stitched on the spot. Spare bag provided to gather up the loose grains produce larger tears. Rarely, undershirts or pillow slip used instead.37 There are no instances where the breaking of a powder bag appears to have posed any danger of igniting the propellant. In that regard, both Mississippi accidents, it should be noted, took place after loading was essentially complete.38

(I read that section with astonishment . Dumpout (over the side with it) of the defective powder bag in series and "housecleaning and dousing" was not practiced? M.) 

Secondary Guns

The secondary battery of most battleships operating between the wars typically comprised two batteries, about a dozen high velocity, low trajectory 5"/51 guns, used to defend against surface targets, coupled with about eight 5"/25 caliber guns, designed to be used against aircraft. By the middle of World War II, most of these old guns had been removed and replaced by a single battery of 5"/38 caliber dual purpose twin mounts which Treaty and Post-Treaty battleships got right from the start.

Standard inter-war defense against destroyers was provided by the 5"/51 cal Mark 7, which fired projectile at an initial velocity of about 3,100 ft/sec. The nominal range of this gun was c. 20,100 yards at 45° elevation, but casemates typically limited the a elevation to about 20°, so the effective maximum was only about 16,500 yards instead.39 Long Range Battle Practice for the secondary or "broadside" battery typically divided the guns into a three or four-gun forward group and a two-gun after group. A typical practice would see the forward group open fire against a simulated torpedo attack by destroyers, after which the battleships would turn 60° away, presumably to avoid incoming torpedoes, and the after group would complete the practice. Ranges were usually about 10,000 yards for the forward group and 8,000 yards for the after group. Targets - often series 40 target sleds - were towed at about 20-24 knots, closing from about 70° off the bow.40

(That presumed enemy destroyer launch ranges of about 6,000-7,000 yards. This would have been disastrous if the Japanese got their Kantai Kessen (decisive battle) desired engagement conditions. The only acceptable solution to this learned mistake of what not to do was the late war USN tactic of 'destroyers charge and engage their Japanese torpedo equipped opposites (cruisers and destroyers) in melee gun brawls' while the gun-line provided long range recross fires. This explains those 'pistol shot engagement ranges' one sees in mid war and late war surface battles. M.) 

Although some battleships experimented with rapid continuous fire, with each crew firing as fast as it could load, this made spotting difficult and the general procedure was attempt(s) to fire full salvos, synchronizing the various gun crews by means of buzzers. "Missing a buzzer" was considered a capital offense, as the crew would then have to wait for the next buzzer in order to shoot. Although the number of Hits Per Gun Per Minute continued to increase year by year, few officers were satisfied with secondary battery performance.41 In 1922, Lt. Cdr. F.J. Cromerford aboard Nevada would characterize the battery as ". . . decidedly inefficient." "In most cases the salvos are very well bunched," he wrote, ". . . but the patterns are not placed right, so hits are few. The service of the gun is [usually] excellent, the director and operators and pointers are on, and the rate of fire is good, so the trouble must be in the control."42 Although the battery could be very effective against a single ship, stopping a group of destroyers approaching in formation would be much more difficult. A single 30 knot destroyer, for example, could close from c. 16,000 yards to 10,000 yards (reasonable torpedo range) in about 7 minutes. Assuming six guns could engage, 0.35 hits per gun per minute - the fleet average - would yield fourteen hits, more than enough to disable it. Distributing the same fire among a half dozen destroyers in formation, which would require firing a barrage, would be much less effective. Assuming a barrage to be 30% as efficient as aimed fire, and dividing the total number of hits equally amongst six incoming ships would yield less than one hit per ship. True, the concentrated fire of four or five battleships might improve the situation somewhat, but not as much as one might think. Coordinating and spotting small caliber concentration fire was difficult at best, and would be, in most cases, well-nigh impossible.

(This would be useful to an American commander, as he goes the other way. The Bismarck's secondary battery would face a similar problem. US destroyers should attack by division, early and often and make the German eat a few in the belly and open her up, while the Showboat sets her on fire. Combined arms at sea. Something which Admiral Holland forgot and or did not consider in the real history. M.)     

C.T. Joy, in a 1929 lecture "Some Notes on 5-Inch, 51 Caliber Gunnery" gave some reasons why secondary battery fire control was so poor. These included a lesser number of men assigned to the task (13 as opposed to 60 for main battery), lack of experience, outdated equipment, the small size of 5-inch splashes (which made spotting difficult), and the relatively high rate of fire (7-10 seconds between salvos as opposed to 30-50 seconds for main battery shoots).43 Fortunately, between 4,000 and 11,000 yards, the new 5"/38 caliber gun, which was mounted on the pre-treaty battleships only after Pearl Harbor, was significantly better than the 5"/51 caliber gun it replaced. But it was primarily used against aircraft.

(And it had RADAR support. M.)

The change from a mixed battery of 5"/51 and 5"/25 guns to a single group of 5"/38s greatly simplified the fire control problem. For the first time, the battleships could fire their secondary batteries in true director control. Previous control of the 5"/51s had been, by comparison, relatively rudimentary. Fully enclosed gunhouses meant that internal lighting could be enhanced, which greatly improved efficiency, especially at night. The newer gun was much more effective under 12,000 yards and at least equally effective outside that range. The high-velocity low-trajectory 5"/51 was ballistically the superior weapon against surface targets and the increase in effectiveness was obviously due to better fire control.

(Basically against European navies, the 5/38 was a game-changer. The average global effective operating characteristic and probability of hit of a hypothetical torpedo (British baseline) was about 7,000-10,000 yard effective engagement with a probability to hit and explode of about 20% in a division salvo ( 4 destroyers = 20 fish @ 4 hits.) The 5/38 in a radar directed shoot of 300 RPM broadside, guarantees 3 dead destroyers at 10,000 yards, so only one probable torpedo hit.

Against the Japanese, they launched at somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 yards by doctrine and would get a 10% hit rate, no matter what range they launched due to excessive nose wander in the Type 93 and due to each Japanese captain free-launching as he saw fit. The only effective counter to this 'long lance' advantage was to charge the Japanese bows on, comb the wakes and turn fo bring on the gunfight before they could reload after they missed. Once in belt punch range, pour it on and watch them blow up either to torpedoes (usual) or to gunfire (burndown and scuttle was more usual). M.)      

Further, the 5"/38, having been introduced into the fleet some years earlier in destroyers, had been more or less completely de-bugged before it reached the battleships.44 And it was remarkably accurate. Unlike the main batteries, which employed delay coils to delay the center gun about 0.060 seconds, the 5"/38 twin mount fired both guns simultaneously. BuOrd found that installing delay coils decreased the 2-gun range pattern from 100 yards to 92 yards at 11,700 yards but, because firing one gun after the other rotated the mount, this was accompanied by an equivalent increase in the deflection pattern. 10 round patterns, representing a battleship broadside, tended to average about 175 yards at 10,000 yards and 335 yards at 12,000. By way of comparison, the six-gun secondary battery pattern size for West Virginia was 643 yards at 14,212 in 1925; 329 yards at 10,258 in 1929.

Writers fairly commonly ascribe the Navy's early defeats in the Solomons to neglected night training, but in fact, Night Battle Practices for main batteries, secondary batteries, or both, were fired almost every year. Several variants were available. Night Battle Practice "A" - fired against series 60 or pyramid sleds - was designed to test the ability of the secondary battery to repel surprise destroyer attacks at night. Night Battle Practice "B" was similar, but was conducted in conjunction with actual destroyers, who were simultaneously testing their ability to deliver night torpedo attacks. To make the practice even more difficult, the Officer Scheduling the Practice (OSP) was provided a sealed envelope which would authorize him to impose one of the following casualties part way through the exercise:
Night Battle Practice "C" was designed to exercise both main and secondary batteries simultaneously. The plan for NBP "C," taken from the Orders For Gunnery exercises, 1940, foreshadowing the type of actions the Navy would soon be fighting off Guadalcanal, reads:
Target courses and speeds were determined by successive rolls of a die. Night Battle Practices imposed their own artificialities, of course. Illumination of the towing ship, for example, was often necessary to prevent collisions or confusion with the target. If unlighted, tugs would shine a search light vertically, and wave it wildly in order to call off any dangerous incoming fire.

Some ships employed searchlights to spot fire, while others used starshells instead. Searchlights were usually preferred to begin with, starshells could not be employed at ranges under three or four thousand yards whereas searchlights could commonly reach six or seven thousand.45 Because searchlights illuminated the area in front of the target, as opposed to starshell which left this area in relative darkness, spotting with searchlights tended to be easier and returned many more hits - usually about twice as many - as starshells did. Searchlights also allowed a much higher rate of fire, and some gunnery officers believed that a well placed searchlight beam might serve to blind enemy gunners as well.46 Lights did of course reveal the position of the firing ship, but the Navy hoped it could avoid the problem by placing them on smaller "screening" vessels which could illuminate the enemy from positions outside the battle line.47

Still, the effective application of searchlights was anything but fool-proof. (Pre-war, one officer facetiously remarked that they would be best employed for searching for survivors.) In haze, spray, smoke, or fog, back-scatter could cause sufficient flare to completely obscure the target, so a salvo of "shorts" landing near the firing ship might actually render the searchlights worse than useless. In concentration fire it was often impossible to tell exactly who was illuminating what. In the absence of reliable director control - i.e., anytime prior to World War II, when radar supplanted searchlights in any case - the lights were difficult to aim in either range or deflection.48 Own-ship gunfire often blinded or stunned the searchlight crews, and flue gases damaged the reflectors. Their previously mentioned tendency to emphasize shorts rather than overs sometimes caused spotters to put subsequent salvos over the target. And they were hard to maintain.49

In 1930-31, a typical year, the battleships fired Night Battle Practice B, for broadside guns. The practice - clearly anticipating Savo - was deliberately designed to determine what ammunition, if any, should be preloaded in the secondary battery in order to meet an unexpected night attack. The atmosphere was very clear, and the visibility was excellent. The mean range to target was about 5,000 yards, slightly lower than average.50 It was expected that ships might get their first effective shots off within 30 seconds, but no ship attained this standard. Because of this failure - 44 seconds being the average time to first effective salvo - further practices were scheduled to determine whether or not it might be better to turn on searchlights while the first salvos of starshells were still in flight. The average salvo interval was about 10 seconds, but performance among the various ships in the battle line varied markedly; Colorado's six-gun average interval of 5.9 seconds was lowest, while tardy Tennessee took almost twice that long. Everybody got some shots on target, although the hit percentage was rather unpredictable, ranging from Texas' 6.6% to California's 40.5%.

(Poor USS Colorado. See my previous comments about "ship culture" and the "needed cure". M.)

Some problems recurred in both daylight and darkness. In the 1930-31 practice, for example, Tennessee placed the starshell gun under control of director No.3, and the rest of the battery under control of director No.1. In the confusion of the exercise, the two directors locked onto different targets, which pretty much ruined her performance and undoubtedly generated a good deal of colorful language from her crew. Such confusion was hardly uncommon, and even in daylight practices it seems that at least one ship in every exercise made the mistake of placing her directors on one target while her rangefinders futilely tracked another. Similar problems are still encountered today.

(USS Tennessee will do better. Surigao Strait. Somebody gave her a "check ride". M.)

(The problem from the presentation above, was not USN night gunnery practice, it was TACTICS. The pre-war USN tactical drill held USN destroyers rigidly captive to the tightly controlled gunline. It was only when USN tin-canners were allowed to independently charge their enemy opposites that desired outcomes happened. The enemy cannot launch set torpedo attacks from long range, or engage in disciplined gunnery, when he is being gang-gunned and torpedoed in a knife-fight brawl and his fleet command-control has failed in the confusion the USN destroyermen brought on. M.)

Anti-Aircraft

Some of the most important gunnery exercises were fired against aircraft. Inter-war US battleships used both 5"/25 caliber and 3"/50 caliber guns for anti-aircraft defense. Only the first of these will be discussed here, and (due to the limitations of space) exercises with smaller caliber guns will be neglected entirely. Analyzing the results of Anti-Aircraft Battle Practices is extremely difficult. Unlike main battery weapons, which remained relatively unchanged, the make-up of a given ship's secondary battery and the type of aircraft conducting the exercise often varied markedly over time, making any clear determination of progress difficult. About the best that can be done is to describe typical results from various periods, and leave any interpretation to the reader.

Early anti-aircraft exercises were fired against kites towed by destroyers or tugs. The speed of the target was thus relatively low, even in comparison with the relatively stodgy aircraft performance of the day. Even then maximum ship speed was rarely used; towing ships were actually cautioned against towing too quickly, as this might bring the kite line nearly vertical and place the target directly above. Sometimes tethered or free-floating helium (meteorological) balloons were used although the board appointed to review the use of these targets in 1921 cogently noted that they ". . . make good targets, but do not simulate a bombing plane."51 Gliders were considered but rejected, as the Navy had no effective means of getting them up in the air, controlling them in the air, and recovering them afterwards.

The Army Air Corps provided sleeve targets for antiaircraft practices beginning in 1921. A seaplane towed the first sleeves, 16 feet long and 42 inches in diameter, at the end of a 4,000 foot towline. The results were gratifying, with the review board concluding that a red sleeve four feet in diameter and 10 feet 6 inches long, at the end of a 7,000 foot line ". . . in the absence of an actual plane to fire at (provides] the best type of target possible. . ."52 Much later, drones were used, especially to train against dive-bombing attacks, which could be safely simulated in no other way.

In a representative exercise, Mississippi, Nevada, and Pennsylvania fired at sleeve targets in 1922, expending 875 rounds in total. Pennsylvania fired 401 rounds in four runs at a sleeve target (apparently towed by an F5L seaplane flying at about 80 knots) at about 5,000 foot altitude. The course of the sleeve was essentially over the firing ship, as the intent was to simulate a horizontal bombing attack. On run number two, which was typical, 122 rounds were fired in 2 minutes and 5 seconds from 5 guns. Two guns suffered casualties to the recoil cylinders, firing 26 and 28 rounds respectively. One gun, firing 23 rounds, noted several misfires, complaining that "ammunition is very poor," and another fired only 12 rounds, as the pointer could not locate the target. The remaining gun fired steadily with no interruptions, expending 33 rounds. Nobody hit the sleeve.

(Surplus WWI ammunition propellant, overaged, unsafe and deflagration uncertain. M.)  

By 1932-33, at least five methods of antiaircraft control had been developed, direct fire, 1 minute barrage, fixed zone, creeping zone, and creeping barrage. All methods assumed that the target was on a collision course with the firing ship, which implied that concentration fire, which would be virtually impossible to spot in any case, was out of the question.53 The battleline fired three practices that year. Each ship fired Battle Antiaircraft Practice B (for Bombing) twice and Battle Antiaircraft Practice T (for Torpedo) once. Sleeve targets were used for the B practices, towed at about 80 knots, at an average altitude of about 6,300 feet. Once again, as horizontal bombing was being simulated, the course of the sleeve took it nearly over the firing ship. Firing was discontinued once the attacking aircraft - or more precisely, the attacking sleeve - had passed the bomb release point. Runs on the T practice were similar, although the sleeve was towed at low altitude, and the target track was across the bow rather than more-or-less directly across the beam. The results, the observers noted, did not compare favorably with the previous year's performance. Although the overall hit percentage remained constant at 20.3%, the percentage of sleeves hit had dropped from 92% in 1931-32 to only 79% the following year. Curiously, the problem turned out to be due to a sandstorm, with observers noting that the atmosphere during Practice B, which took place off San Pedro, ". . . contained sufficient particles of sand to introduce serious errors in the rangefinding." The best overall performance was turned in by Maryland, which achieved 38+ hits out of 80 rounds fired. The worst performances were turned in by Tennessee and Arizona, which expended 105 rounds and 152 rounds respectively without hitting a thing. The ships averaged 13.35 Shots Per Gun Per Minute.

E.B. Nixon, Commander Battle Force, was unhappy with the results. "The discrepancies between the true speed and altitude of the towing plane and the speed and altitude set on the various rangefinders," he noted, ". . . indicate better than any other single factor that our antiaircraft defense is still in an unsatisfactory state."54

(This was USN "unacceptable"?   Compared to anybody else at the time, or even during WWII, (especially the RN, whose AAA was "unacceptable" by even German 'awful' standards.) aforesaid foreign navy's leaders would be doing handsprings of joy and thinking that they had solved the "airplane problem". M.) 

Twenty-four radio controlled drones, converted from N2C-2 and 03U type aircraft were available in 1940. Although many were expended in non-battleship practices, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Mexico and Mississippi each got a crack at one, and New Mexico shot hers down.55 It was obvious that aircraft capabilities had changed dramatically; target altitudes had been increased from roughly 7,000 to 18,000 feet and further extensions above 20,000 feet were expected. The old 80 knot sleeve targets were gone; directors capable of handling "target presentment" speeds in excess of 200 knots were recognized as both necessary and desirable.

Pre-war estimates of the effectiveness of anti-aircraft gunnery varied dramatically, depending upon who was doing the assessment. One report expected ships equipped with 5-inch batteries to be able, at ranges under 20,000 yards and at altitudes less than 20,000 feet, to break up formation bombing and drive off a high percentage of attacking aircraft. Another commented that "In about 25 percent of the antiaircraft target practices fired against targets simulating attacking horizontal bombers, at an average range of 5,500 yards, the firing vessel has been able to open fire with sufficient accuracy to place the opening bursts in such a relative position that the target was within the normal pattern in fuze range, elevation and deflection."

In contrast, in 1940, the Director of Fleet Training noted dismally that ". . . the probability of shooting down a single modern horizontal bomber at a range of 5,500 yards as it advances to the attack on a ship mounting a four-gun, 5-inch battery is 2 in 100 chances." The radius of destruction of a single burst, he noted, was not much in excess of five yards, so given four bursts in a 350 yard fuze pattern it was not hard to understand why so few drones were shot down even when the fire control appeared to be perfect.56 Theoretically, even flawless fire control should achieve only about 1% hits. American officers watching European developments noted that contemporary British practice of covering all avenues of approach with a 36-gun density seemed to work well against the Germans, but concluded that success of a similar fire density against the Japanese would have to await the outbreak of actual hostilities.57 American equipment was consistent but unreliable; a study of two identical directors tracking the same target noting that ". . . present antiaircraft fire control equipment is precise, but not necessarily accurate. On a single target presentation, it has been found that solutions obtained by independent control parties will agree closely as to course, speed, and altitude of target, but the solution obtained may not necessarily be a hitting solution."

*(*Crete showed that Royal Ingersoll was WRONG about British fleet AAA. The Germans stukaed the RN with joy as they found British HA fire 'ineffective'. M.)

The results of Pennsylvania's 1940 drone firings seemed to confirm the Director of Fleet Training's pessimism. She fired on two drones without hitting either.58 And if hitting a single drone was difficult, European experience had confirmed that engaging actual aircraft, which would probably approach in formation, would probably be even harder. Air groups which chose to split up, for example, would cause great confusion, as the directors and rangefinders often couldn't agree on which target was which. Granted, enemy bombers would have to straighten out on their final approach, but unlike drones real planes had a nasty habit of changing their speed during the final run to throw off any previously defined solution. One bright spot was the British finding that near misses could often scare enemy bombers away, or at least spoil their aim. Drones, by comparison, were essentially fearless.

(Two comments... Kamikazes would intensify USN drone shooting practice late war, and the observations about Germans sheering off, were about level bombers. Stuka pilots and Spaviero drivers (Italians in SM torpedo bombers) were "fearless". M.)    

The colossal revolution in anti-aircraft gunnery which took place during World War II defies any attempt at succinct description. Changes were massive, in retrospect rather uncoordinated, and the air was (quite literally) so full of authorized and unauthorized innovation that only the most general outline is possible. New gunfire control systems, including a number of significant improvements to the dual purpose Mark 37 gun director, first fitted with Mk 4, then Mk 12, Mk 22 and Mk 28 radars, greatly improved the ability to keep the guns on high-speed aerial targets, and the introduction of the proximity, or VT (Variable Time), fuze eliminated the need to estimate the time of flight and improved the effectiveness of guns by several hundred percent.59

(One entire order of magnitude. M.) 

The first full scale tests of proximity fuzed projectiles fired from a ship at a "live" target took place on 12 August, 1942, when USS Cleveland fired an exercise against four radio controlled drones in Chesapeake Bay. The results were impressive. The first drone crashed due to mechanical failure. The second and third drones, each making a simulated torpedo run were both shot down almost immediately, one after an expenditure of less than ten rounds of ammunition. The fourth drone, on a simulated high-altitude bombing run, was shot down the next day.60 USS Helena got the first combat kill using proximity fuzes off Munda on 4 January, 1943, bringing down a Japanese bomber with only two 5-inch salvos. The proximity fuze was introduced gradually, and never completely replaced the older time fuzes. Granted, proximity fuzes were much more effective against aircraft, but time fuzes were much cheaper and useful for many other purposes.61 For a long while, doctrine prohibited firing VT projectiles where they might land ashore, lest a sample fall into enemy hands. A special report commissioned in 1943, when only 25% of 5-inch AA projectiles were fitted with proximity fuzes, credited them with 50% of the kills on enemy aircraft, and concluded they were three times as effective as time fuzed projectiles. By 1945, improvements in fuzes and fire control increased this ratio to 6:1.62

(VT was not 100% until after the Korean War. M.)

Torpedoes

It is rarely remembered that the original arrangement of most ships in the battle-line included a number of underwater torpedo tubes. Until the tubes were removed in the twenties and thirties the battleships routinely fired battle torpedo practices along with the destroyers and the submarines. The results were never very encouraging.

Considering the gunnery power of the battle line, the range of most of the torpedoes was almost ridiculously low, and aiming, except in a very general sense, was obviously out of the question.63 The mechanical difficulties in launching a torpedo crosswise underwater at 21 knots - at least prior to World War II - proved to be overwhelming. The percentage of hits was computed on a statistical basis, based on the assumption that the enemy ships, steaming in line, covered a fixed portion of the horizon. In 1922-23, a typical year, the fourteen ships of the battle line fired a total of 116 torpedoes, of which no less than 32 failed to run properly. Two torpedoes ran circular - suggesting that in action the whole exercise might actually have been more dangerous to friend than to foe - while fourteen others either ran "cold" or failed to reach the specified range. One from North Dakota ended up striking the towing ship.


*(My sarcastic comment, here, is that Bu-Ord's top leadership and Stark and Leahy should have been on that towing ship. M.)

The last battleship torpedo practices were fired in 1930-31. Maryland, Tennessee, Colorado, West Virginia, California and Idaho each fired six Mk VIII-3 or Mk VIII-3B torpedoes, three to port and three to starboard, at ranges approaching 11,000 yards. Only West Virginia was able to get all her "fish" across the target line, achieving two full and three "partial" hits.64 Unlucky Idaho had five erratic runs, and lost one torpedo entirely, placing last. Maryland, with four full hits, one partial hit, and one "cold shot," placed first. Each man in her torpedo crew received a $10.00 bonus.

(First comment, "cash bonuses' for shooting worked. Second comment; USS West Virginia had a "good" ship culture. Third comment, Maybe if some of those USS Maryland torpedo men had done a tour at Goat Island and blown the whistle on Bu-Ord as a result, Torpedo 8 would not have been wasted and Stark would have got his much deserved comeuppance before he wrecked the fleet. M.)    

Trend Analysis

Exactly how much had fleet gunnery improved between the wars? The state of fleet gunnery during World War I can be inferred from an analysis submitted to BuOrd in 1937, describing performance of 12-inch and 14-inch batteries in the 1912-1918 period. The BuOrd study, conducted as part of an analysis of the battle of Jutland, estimated the percentage of hits against a battleship constructive target, i.e., one 600 feet long, 90 feet wide, and 30 feet high, as equal to

H = 100 / [1 + k(R-2000)]

Where:

H = percentage of hits
k = 0.00070
R = Range (yards)

This equation would seem to yield a performance of about 0.165 Hits Per Gun Per Minute (HPGPM) at the average range of the practices.65 A graph of this equation compared with actual firings from the twenties and later is reproduced below in Graph 1.


(See illustrations at end of article. M.)
Click for larger image.

Graph 1.

We may compare this initial value of about 0.165 Hits Per Gun Per Minute with the expected performance of 14-inch batteries in 1935, yielding approximately 0.32 Hits Per Gun Per Minute, and the standard performance of 14-inch and 16-inch main batteries in 1940, 0.75 Hits Per Gun Per Minute on the same size target at roughly equivalent range. The total expected Hits Per Gun Per Minute performance of 14-inch and 16-inch batteries in 1940 over range is given in Graph 2 below.66

(See illustrations at end of article. M.)
Click for larger image.

Top: Graph 2 - HPGPM for 14-inch and 16-inch guns.

Bottom: Graph 3 - True Mean Dispersion.

While the HPGPM illustration gives a clear snapshot of performance at given dates it is not capable of illustrating any evolutionary trends.67 For any particular year, the heavy dot represents the average performance of ships in the fleet, while the thinner vertical lines extending above and below represent the range between the best and worst performances fired.68 Graph 3 above plots True Mean Dispersion, a measure of the inherent accuracy of the guns. The rather regular "sawtooth" pattern of the average performance line is a function of the type of firing that was done. Low velocity practices, usually fired every alternate year at reduced ranges, had inherently lower dispersion than high velocity practices, where ships fired full charges much farther away.69 The decrease in dispersion taking place about 1934 is evidently due to the introduction of delay coils, which cut the mean dispersion almost in half. The trend is quite well expressed from about 1927 on, and exhibits what might be described as a "classic" evolutionary pattern, comprising a more-or-less steady improvement in average performance coupled with a decrease in the spread of the extreme performances. Gunnery was getting better and more consistent at a relatively constant rate.

Graph 4 below shows the error in the Mean Point of Impact (MPI) over time, i.e., how far center of the average salvo pattern was from the center of the target, is also expressed as a percentage of range. This is a measure of how well the guns were aimed, i.e., of the quality of fleet fire control. As before, average errors, expressed as percent of range, are shown with solid dots, with the thinner lines representing spread between the best and worst ships in the fleet. The trend line (not shown) is indicative of a slow but steady improvement over time. Taken in combination, the graphs seem to show that improving the quality of the guns was easier than improving their aim; the mean dispersion in 1945 dropped 66% from 1920-1945, while during the same time the error in the mean point of impact decreased only 23%. All measurements taken prior to 1945 represent optical spotting. The solid square in the first graph below shows typical results obtained by radar spotting during the war. The relatively poor showing of optical spotting in 1945 show how much radar had taken over by then.

We can combine the two previous figures to come up with an overall assessment of how battleship gunnery changed over the years. Graph 5 below superimposes the mean dispersions evenly over the errors in the mean point of impact. In this graph, the length of the vertical line represents the dispersion, while the distance of the solid dot from the 0% line represents the absolute error in the mean point of impact. Perfection thus would be represented by a thin line falling right along the bottom of the graph. The farther from the bottom line the plot is, and the longer the bar, the worse the gunnery was.

(See illustrations at end of article. M.)
Click for larger image.

Top: Graph 4 - Error in MPI.

Bottom: Graph 5 - MPI and Dispersion Errors.

In contrast to our previous measures, the trend line shows little real improvement over the years. The performance in the 1926-27 gunnery year was as ghastly as the performance in the 1934-35 gunnery year was good, but the overall trend is nearly horizontal. The bars are shorter in later years, indicating that patterns were tightening - delay coils helped a lot here - but the overall error in the Mean Point of Impact is nearly constant over time. The best shooting was done in gunnery year 1934-35.

A similar plot of HPGPM for secondary batteries over time shows a slow, steady improvement but it should be noted that there was an extremely high annual variation. . As ranges for secondary battery LRBP tended to be constant at about 10,000 yards, a graph gives a reasonable picture of performance variation over time.

Personal Comments

Still, the overall picture of battleship gunnery during the twenties through the forties is one of slow steady improvement. By some measures, progress was very real; as Figure 8 illustrates, World War II gunners might have expected 3.5 times as many hits on a battleship constructive target at 15,000 yards as their World War I counterparts. Why, then, was battleship gunnery so thoroughly and rapidly eclipsed during the Second World War? At the heart of it, my personal feeling is that gunnery slipped from predominance largely because it had developed into a system where changes were evolutionary, not revolutionary, and true innovation was rare. One might conclude that this comparative sterility was due to the technical maturity of gunnery itself, i.e., that a mechanism nearly perfected left relatively little room for improvement, but later developments - such as the outstanding improvements in gunnery achieved during the last decade - prove this to be untrue. The fact is that after thirty years of shooting the gunnery experts, in the U.S. Navy and elsewhere, were able - or perhaps content - to introduce only a single significant improvement, the delay coil, into their systems. Even that represented an idea so simple that in retrospect one wonders why it was not introduced twenty or thirty years before. Innovations such as dual-charge propellants, improved propellant formulations, efficient ignition systems, subcaliber projectiles, ejectable submunitions, and shaped-charged warheads - all well within the technology of the time - were never tested, and rarely, if ever, considered. Instead, BuOrd restricted its innovations to trivial adjustments in projectile weight, tube length, and charge weight. It was an environment - in fairness somewhat politically governed by treaty - where a modification allowing gun tubes to elevate to thirty, and later forty-five degrees, was considered a major advance.

Throughout the period of interest, significant improvements in gunnery represented the adaptation of technology that essentially came from elsewhere. This was not entirely beneficial. The advent and development of aircraft spotting, which revolutionized gunnery in the twenties, was primarily due to innovations in BuAir, not in BuOrd. Similarly, the improvements in weapons effectiveness due to the introduction of radar and the proximity fuze stemmed more from developments in electronics than from stunning advances in ordnance. The development of fire control equipment, while requiring a good deal of input to define the problem, primarily reapplied off-the-shelf optical, electronic and mechanical items in unusual combinations. Within BuOrd itself, research and development was essentially neglected - systematic tests to determine the laws controlling the penetration of armor which might have led to the introduction of more effective projectiles, for example, were rare. Fortunately for the U.S. Navy, this creative sterility seems not to have been confined to America. Although a detailed analysis remains to be written, with the possible exception of the German navy, progress elsewhere, as in the U.S. itself, appears to have been glacially slow.

Clearly, to remain viable, military technology can - and perhaps must - take advantage of technological progress in associated fields. But this can only supplement, not replace, equivalent innovation from within. Established military technology, i.e., technology which has apparently already reached maturity, must continue to allow and even encourage a healthy degree of internal innovation if it is to maintain its vitality in the face of competition from other weapons systems. The tremendous advances in naval gunnery that took place aboard USS Iowa and her sisters in the 1980s were due as much to an environment which allowed, and even encouraged innovation, as they were to the application of new technology. Gunnery in general, and naval gunnery in particular, can continue to prosper only if this creativity is maintained and encouraged. The Navy's "big guns" might have done significantly better in the Persian Gulf, for instance, had they been equipped with Copperhead type guided projectiles, which the Army has had for years.70

Surely, the decline of gunnery that was associated with the transition to aircraft and missiles was to a large extent inevitable. Guided flying machines have inherent strengths (and weaknesses) that are unique unto themselves. But so do guns. In reality, gunnery failed to maintain its supremacy because it neglected to seek out and apply the aggressive creativity that would have helped it to maintain its edge in spite of advances in alternative weapons. In short, gunnery lost the vision to succeed. Instead of leading, it went on the technological defensive. Paradoxically, this sad transition took place during the height of its supremacy, and those minds containing the fertile seeds of innovation that were crucial to its continued success either died of neglect in the Bureau of Ordnance, or moved into the cockpit, leaving the turrets behind. There is a danger that the same thing may happen again.

Notes

^1 A notable exception is Allan Zimm's "Battle Stations" simulations, based upon official US Navy Maneuver and Fire Rules, themselves derived from actual tests.

^2 The utmost outspoken commentary, incidentally, seems to have been delivered by aviators and those in submarines; by comparison the battleship personnel were positively conservative. A rather typical example of a battleship complaint was submitted by Lt. (j.g.) D.D. Scott of USS Mississippi in 1935-36, who wrote, "The errors in the [Battle Antiaircraft Practice] run may be partially attributable to rangefinder errors due to interference from flue gases. This caused erratic rangekeeping performance from a rate control standpoint since the range-finder operator frequently changed his readings, leading the rangekeeper operator to the erroneous conclusion that his Set up was greatly in error." "During drills on board the Mississippi," he continued, "it has been necessary for the entire director personnel to abandon either director at various times because of flue gases suffocating personnel." The problem was apparently never fixed.

^3 FTP 36 (Reports on Gunnery Exercises 1922-1923) pp 170 et seq.

^4 The commanding officers of the five top scoring destroyers in gunnery year 1922-23, for example, when future admirals would have been "cutting their teeth" as Lt. Commanders or Commanders, were, S.F. Helm, in Pruitt, R.M. Hinkley in Mervine, W.H. Lee (not W.A. Lee) in J.D. Edwards, J.0. Hoffman, in Mullany, and H.J. Abbot/W.L. Ainsworth in Marcus. Of these, only Hinckley and Ainsworth rate an index entry in Morison; Rear Admiral Ainsworth commanded cruiser and destroyer forces off Guadalcanal; Commander Hinckley is listed as commanding destroyer-minelayer Butler off Okinawa. The five low men on the 40 ship totem pole were H.B. Mecleary/N.R. Van der Veer in Stewart, M.F. Draemel/C.W. Crosse in Selfridge, G.J. Rowcliff/J.C. Byrnes, Jr. in Childs, J.S. Abbott in Peary, and J.B. Glennon in Sands. Draemel, by then a Rear Admiral, was type commander of destroyers during the Pearl Harbor attack, so flag rank appears to have been accessible from both ends of the spectrum. There were, of course, notable exceptions such as Arleigh Burke, whose crew aboard USS Mugford obtained 36 hits out of 36 shots at Short-Range Battle Practice in 1939-40, but Burke would probably have made it anyway. The whole issue is a fruitful area for further research.

^5 In 1934-35, for example, each member of the first place cruiser turret crew received a prize of $15.00. By comparison, the average American family lived on about $1,350.00 per year and a New York hotel room cost about $4.50 a night.

^6 The use of a towed target train sometimes posed laughable difficulties. In one case a large caliber projectile cut the towline early in the exercise and the target train slowed rapidly to a stop. The result was complete confusion in the battle line. Some ships took no account of the problem at all, their salvos continuing a majestic march into completely empty ocean (some suspected that this was because they were actually tracking the towing ship instead). Other ships adjusted their fire to remain on the slowing target train, but got hopelessly confused as the targets closed up on each other and began to overlap. The net result was utter chaos, followed by a lengthy argument about exactly how the practice should be scored. Clearly, disrupting an enemy battle line could cause as many problems as it solved.

^7 Later, the offset system was changed so that prisms were not required. Instead, the guns themselves were offset about 70 mils from the director line of fire, equating to a 2,000 yard offset at normal battle ranges. One advantage of the older optical system was that it permitted ship to ship "duels," which must have been much more interesting (and realistic) than shooting at target sleds.

^8 For a battleship, the width of the constructive target was 690 feet at 8,000 yards, shrinking to 210 feet at 34,000. Technically, the width of the constructive target was taken as being equal to the danger space (itself dependent upon the mean target height) plus the virtual beam, plus a small allowance for damage that could be expected from near misses, ricochets and shorts.

^9 This term, one of a variety of nearly synonymous terms such as "selected level" and "selected cross-level," had been replaced by other terminology by World War II. The names changed often, but the methods remained the same.

^10 F.T.P.134, Gunnery instruction, 1933 describes the systems then in use in great detail. World War II systems are best described in Navpers 16116, Naval Ordnance and Gunnery, 1944, and/or subsequent editions.

^11 The first reference I can find of a ship firing in what seems to have been a reasonable approximation to the continuous-aim methods employed during World War II was USS Nevada, which employed the system - apparently experimentally - in 1935. Earlier references to "continuous aim" do exist, but apparently refer to entirely different techniques. Although exact dates are difficult to establish, virtually all main batteries seemed to have been equipped with the necessary Mk XXXII stable verticals by 1935. Although the new system seems to have taken a while to catch on, by 1940, continuous aim was the method of choice.

^12 The error, though annoying, was not large; guns were typically aligned within 0.5° when new, and guns parallel at 10° elevation might be 0.25° out of line when the elevation reached 30°. This equates to a deflection error of about 12 feet (0.1 mils) at 40,000 yards, which is entirely inconsequential when compared with the normal deflection pattern, which was about 4 mils for a 9 or 10 gun salvo. Viz OPIS "Instructions for the Installation and Tests of Turret Guns and Sights, 1921."

^13 The advent of delay coils, which staggered the firing times a fraction of a second, somewhat mooted this point, however.

^14 The problem was by no means trivial; in 1927-28, about 10% of rounds fired fell into the wild-short category, and thus would be useless against an enemy. "Wildovers" were very much rarer, and were generally caused by a gun firing very late on the up-roll, a short duration hang-fire, a faulty firing key, or a shell which had fallen back upon its powder bags, which tended to boost the chamber pressure and increase the initial velocity. Muzzle blast interference, could, of course, be reduced by increasing the inter-barrel separation, but only at the cost of greatly increased turret weight. Delay coils, in contrast, weighed essentially nothing.

^15 FFP 36 (Reports on Gunnery Exercises 1922-23) pp 167.

^16 The spotters on the ship were usually right. In 1922 then Lt.Cdr. R.K. Turner of California would write ". . . the technique of using airplanes in the fire control must be further improved. Communication is still unreliable, and it is not certain that the use of aircraft actually improved the shooting, although it would have seemed that this point would be particularly noticeable in hazy weather, such as existed [during the practice]." Obviously, opinions varied widely; that same year, the officers aboard Delaware would note ". . . The use of airplane spotting is undeniably superior in all phases to spotting from the firing ships." FFP 36 (Reports on Gunnery Exercises 1922-23) pp 176. Things work much better when the gunner can actually see the pattern himself, as it is now possible using televised pictures transmitted from a remotely piloted vehicle, or RPV.

^17 Blue Fire Effect Tables, 16"/45, Department of Operations, U.S. Naval War College, June, 1935.

^18 The layout has been slightly modified for publication. Although the actual "Sheets 4" for this particular practice appear not to have survived, the statistical analysis indicates that the thirteen ships in the battle line achieved 60 hits for 1,179 shots, or slightly over 5% hits on the main battle raft at a mean range of 27,450 yards. Each ship fired 10 salvos in a mean time of 12 minutes 5 seconds. As the battle raft had an area of about 520 square meters, and planimetric measurements of a variety of World War I and II battleship designs yield a mean area of about 4,500 square meters, this would imply that in triple concentration fire on an actual battleship target, each three-ship group would have scored about 120 hits in 12 minutes, or about 3.33 hits per minute per ship. U.S. Navy doctrine at this time assumed that about 20 penetrating 14-inch hits would sink a battleship, so an actual target would have only survived about two minutes under this concentration of fire. Or so the theory goes.

^19 The description of Nevada's mechanical failures during this practice is fragmentary and difficult to interpret. Exactly which turret (or turrets) failed during the first salvo is not specified, although the failure was evidently minor, as all turrets continued to fire thereafter. Salvo six was evidently missing the three guns of Turret IV and the left gun of Turret III, whereas salvo 7 evidently fired all guns except those in turret II. The three bag-load attributed to salvo seven should have resulted in a wild short, and the pattern for salvo seven is unremarkable, suggesting that the three bag load took place in turret II, which did not fire. For salvos 1 and 2 the Sheet 4 shows ten guns being fired, but the fall of shot diagram plots only nine splashes. The missing shells may have been wild shorts.

^20 The reason for Idaho's error is not recorded; in California, the error was due to the gunnery officer, who misinterpreted a signal. Significantly, several suggestions to streamline and improve battleline signalling techniques resulted from this incident.

^21 In 1940 the standard performance for 14-inch main batteries at 12,700 yards using full charges was about 0.84 HPGPM. In comparison, the 1935 Naval War College Maneuver and Fire rules for the same range expected 0.1333 HPGPM.

^22 The control zone was an arbitrary defined rectangular area which would catch 50 per cent of shots fired if control were perfect and the dispersion and variation of MPI were equal to standards based on past performance. The exact size of the control zone thus varied from exercise to exercise.

^23 California and Tennessee then had different firecontrol installations from other ships in the Battle Force, and they were authorized to employ a modified form of selected cross-level fire for both forward and after groups. In the overall summary of battleship exercises, an unknown author, presumably Admiral Stark or Admiral Leary, noted "In view obsolescent fire-control installations of the batteries concerned, performance of Tennessee's main battery [is considered] especially noteworthy. Results attained by these batteries are not to be considered as justifying the retention of older fire-control installations in service, but they do serve to demonstrate that alert, well-trained personnel can exercise effective control of their batteries if installations are properly maintained, and used as they are intended to be used." A self-synchronous (i.e., improved) fire control system was scheduled for installation in Tennessee during fiscal year 1942.

^24 FTP 203-1 (Reports on Gunnery Exercises 1939-40), pp 63.

^25 Tennessee used two coincidence type 33 foot Mark XXII range finders and one 15 foot Mark XXXVIII stereo rangefinder during the shoot, noting that "Normally the latter is the ship's best range finder."

^26 In fairness, the overshooting-undershooting problem would have only been a problem in true blind fire, where no observation of the fall of shot was possible; in most practical cases, of course, the initial salvos could be brought closer to the target by imposing ACTH (Arbitrary Correction To Hit) and successive patterns could be spotted on to a target visually or by radar. Inherent dispersions, of course, couldn't be corrected that way. The Bureau of Ordnance expected the nine-gun patterns given by the 16-inch batteries mounted aboard the Washingtons, South Dakotas and Iowas to be slightly larger than the eight-gun pattern sizes for the old 16-inch guns mounted aboard Colorado, Maryland and West Virginia. Specifically, eight old guns were expected to yield an average range pattern of 1.8% of range while nine new guns would give a 1.9% pattern. These were ideal figures; in practice the old 16-inch guns gave a seven-gun pattern size of about 2.2% of range during their last firings in 1941. The dispersion of the 16"/45 and 16"/50 guns, incidentally, was essentially identical; ranging sheets at Dahlgren often listed dispersions for the two types interchangeably. Today, the 16"/50 yields a 9-gun pattern size of about 1.5% of range at short ranges, slightly less if the range is long. Viz. Bulletin of Ordnance Information, No.3, 1945, FTP 2101, Reports on Gunnery Exercises 1940-41 and Naval Weapons Laboratory Tech. Report No. K-26167.

According to the Bulletins of Ordnance Information, in 1944 main and secondary battery patterns were expected to be about as follows:

The current performance of the Iowa class is substantially better than this.

[Editor's Note: A persistent anecdote is that the Iowa class suffered from alignment problems until after the Battle of Leyte Gulf. William Jurens, the author of this article, together with Iowa crewmembers and the staff at NSWC Dalhgren, performed a search for detailed data on this "problem" in the 1980s and could find nothing in the files suggesting that the Iowas' alignments were in any way out of the ordinary. The author's suspicion is that there may have been an oblique reference to an alignment problem in some document and it was taken out of context; perhaps they were waiting for parts. - TD]

^27 BuShips Memo "USS Idaho (BB-42) Main Battery Exhaustion Firing," 21 October 1942.

^28 USS Indiana, "Casualties to Ordnance Equipment," 28 January, 1945.

^29 See, for example, USS Alabama "Report of Target Practices fired 9 May to 13 June, 1945," pp 7.

^30 In poor weather, of course, the effectiveness of both optical and radar spotting could decrease markedly. Older radars could see through rain, but not very well.

^31 Illustrations from Mk 8 radar scopes reproduced in the Bulletin of Ordnance Information No.3, 1945, show that although individual splashes tended to blend together, the general position and size of the pattern was perfectly clear. If the target was small, however, it was sometimes easy to confuse shell splashes and targets. Comparing the radar screen to a "picture" is, frankly, stretching things a bit.

^32 F.T.P. 89 (Reports on Gunnery Exercises 1927-1928) pp 60 et. seq. Although the control of fire during turns had improved markedly by the late 1930s, the situation remained far from satisfactory. In 1941, for example, USS California, firing during a 150° countermarch at 23,000 yards - characterized by the Commander of Fleet Training as ". . . a most severe test" - had an average deflection error of 212 yards, but this excluded one wild salvo which landed 4,100 yards left of the target and some 2,100 yards ahead of the towing ship. In the same practice, one of Maryland's salvos landed 1,664 yards left of the target when the trainer in Turret III turned on his ready light when the turret was still 5° out of train, which corresponded to one full turn of the zero reading dial. Salvos fired during turns tended to be "on" in deflection and "off," in range, or vice-versa. Navy observers at the Battle of Samar, who were intently watching incoming heavy caliber fire, noted the same error pattern in Japanese salvos. Viz. F.T.P. 210-2 (Reports on Gunnery Exercises 1940-1941) pp 40 et. seq.

^33 F.T.P. 191 (Orders for Gunnery Exercises (1940)) specified that: "Except for gunnery school firings, Short Range Practice "A" shall be completed by each battleship prior to firing any other practice prescribed for the gunnery year." FTP 165-2 (Reports on Gunnery Exercises 1936-1937) specified the range for Short Range Battle Practice to be 2,100 yards for 16-inch guns, 1,700 yards for 14-inch, 3 gun turrets, 1,900 yards for 14-inch, 2 gun turrets and 1,600 yards for 12-inch guns. For the secondary - i.e., 5-inch battery, Short Range Battle Practice was 1,900 yards.

^34 The change, CNO would later write, ". . . resulted in a reduction of about 8 percent in SPGPM of battleship main batteries, but is considered to have promoted smoother loading and to exerted a steadying influence which was in part responsible for a slight increase in percentage of hits" (FTP 185-1 (Reports on Gunnery Exercises, 1938-39) p.1). To show how closely the intervals were being shaved, the Director of Fleet Training suggested that the minimum interval be increased a further two seconds for turrets having all guns in open gun chamber.

^35 On 28 July, 1936, during a scheduled gunnery school firing using full charges, a 6"/53 gun (Ser.No. 605) exploded aboard the cruiser USS Marblehead. The gun fired perfectly on the first three salvos. As the fourth salvo was being fired, an explosion in the breech killed one man instantly, and seriously injured ten others, two of whom later died. The fault was eventually traced to a faulty reinforcing ring used to repair the gun, which spread and failed under load. BuOrd must have been horribly embarrassed. Turret accidents were usually confined to severed fingers and smashed hands, caused by getting something caught in the gears, and the occasional broken arm or leg, usually caused a fall or by being struck by a recoiling gun.

^36 Navord OP 10143R Ordnance Safety Precautions pp 77 et. seq.

^37 Use of these undoubtedly unauthorized containers was admittedly infrequent, at least in the larger ships (the smaller ships, especially the submarines, were apparently much less formal). One of Tennessee's 14-inch turret crews used an undershirt to gather up loose grains in 1925-26; New York's report for 1924-25 mentioned the use of a pillow slip, removed before the loose grains were loaded into the breech. RGE 1924-25 p.277, RGE 1925-1926 p.869.

^38 A more detailed description of U.S. Navy main battery loading accidents may be found in Warship International No.2 1990. This article describes recent developments surrounding the 1988 turret explosion aboard USS Iowa.

^39 Abridged Range Tables For U.S. Naval Guns, OP 1188, gives the range of the 5"/51 as 17,000 yards at 19°46' elevation. OP 1184 gives only 16,000 yards at 20°32'.

^40 Sheets 4 for most secondary battery practices are now lost; this typical firing plan has been reconstructed from descriptions in FTP 191, Orders For Gunnery Exercises, 1940 pp. 2F1 et. seq., and checked against the sheets for the 1939-40 gunnery year, which have survived.

^41 The values shown are grand unweighted averages for both forward and after groups in both director and pointer fire (local control). The number of Hits Per Gun Per Minute was computed on the basis of shots in the constructive target, not hits in the much smaller target screen. At 13,000 yards the destroyer constructive target was assumed to be +/- 16 yards in range, and +/-43 yards in deflection. The average range for 1934-35 was about 1.5 times normal, which helps to explain the unusually poor performance that year.

^42 FTP-36 (Reports on Gunnery Exercises 1922-23) pp 170.

^43 FTP 108 (Reports on Gunnery Exercises, 1929-1930) pp. 113 et. seq.

^44 The teething problems with the 5"/38, which has since achieved an almost mythical reputation for accuracy and reliability, seem to have become lost in the fogbanks of history. Commentary in the Reports on Gunnery Exercises series reveals that the "trusty old 5"/38," which jammed constantly at first, was far from a reliable performer when introduced. That, however, is a story for another time.

^45 If fired at ranges under about 4,000 yards, the remaining velocity of the projectile was high enough to tear the parachute and extinguish the star.

^46 The comparatively low rate of fire with starshells was at least in part due to the requirement to devote at least part of the battery to keeping lit starshells over the target. FTP 140 (Reports on Gunnery Exercises 1932-33) p. 131 gives details. In 1932 special tests were fired to determine if firing starshells deliberately short had the potential to blind an enemy, too. It didn't work.

^47 The big problems in using remote searchlights would be in keeping the lights on target when the smaller screening vessel rolled and pitched, and in coordinating the efforts of the firing and illuminating ships. Also, if the illuminating ship were too far away from the firing ship, the relatively narrow searchlight beam would tend to cross the line of fire obliquely, leaving many shorts and overs in darkness.

^48 One writer would note in the mid-thirties that "The control . . . is thoroughly unsatisfactory, except in smooth water. The mechanical elevating and training gears are stiff and full of lost motion, and the elevating gear is too slow to follow the rolling of a battleship. It is only under exceptionally favorable conditions that the lights can be controlled from a near-by position, and there is no distant control other than that afforded by the connection to the broadside director training system." The searchlight teams used "match-the-pointer" systems to keep the searchlights nearly "on" in train, but as they usually could not see the target, they had great difficulty in aiming the searchlights vertically. Even a 0.5° pointing error would place the beam 250 feet high (or low) at 5,000 yards. A survey of automatically controlled searchlights aboard California in 1922 showed that although elevation errors were usually very small, azimuth errors were commonly in the vicinity of 3°-4°. Keeping the errors below 2° with the Evershed system then employed required constantly checking the system. In 1929 West Virginia complained that the smallest graduation on the searchlight course dials was 2°, equating to a 200 yard error at 6,000 yards. Still, in 1932 the Director of Fleet Training would note that the greatest difficulty in pointing searchlights was in keeping them on the horizon in spite of the roll of the ship.

^49 In 1928 Lt. O. Nimitz summarized the condition of New York's searchlights as follows:

^50 The range was limited by the maximum time which could be set on the 21 second time fuze of the blunt-point 5-inch/51 caliber illuminating projectile used in the practice. Associated problems with short range firing of starshell, described earlier, meant that this type of projectile was truly effective in only a relatively narrow range band. A long-point illuminating projectile was then under development, which would extend the effective range of illumination out to 7,000 or 8,000 yards.

^51 Similar targets - affectionately known as "killer tomatoes" - are used by the battleships today, but only as surface targets.

^52 Early experiments are detailed in FTP 36 (Reports on Gunnery Exercises 1922-1923) p. 202 et. seq.

^53 In the Direct Method, which became standard during World War II, guns continuously tracked the target. The 1-minute barrage was designed to place a high concentration of fire in a predefined "box" through which the enemy bombers would pass during the last minute prior to releasing their bombs. The Fixed Zone method of predefined a large number of small numbered "zones" around the firing ship, for which correct train, elevation, and fuze settings had been computed prior to firing. The fire control officers then transmitted the number of the zone where the bombers were at any particular time, and the guns fired to the predefined coordinates. The Creeping Zone method was a variation on this theme whereby successive fuze settings were decreased as the target(s) passed through a given zone, thus (to some extent) accounting for the decrease in range. The Creeping Barrage method was simply a 1-Minute barrage which was applied more or less continuously. Similar methods were used in surface fire control as well. For detailed descriptions, see FTP 134, Gunnery Instruction, 1933.

^54 FTP 140 (Reports on Gunnery Exercises 1932-33) p 245. The average error was about 200 feet in altitude, and only one or two knots in speed, but this masks the fact that due to coincidence the overestimates and underestimates nearly cancel. The average absolute error was almost twice as great. Better spotting should have corrected these initial errors, at least in altitude, almost immediately.

^55 Expending 54 5-inch rounds in the process. Maryland expended 56 rounds and hit the drone twice. Mississippi expended 96 rounds in two runs. Her drone eventually crashed, but the cause was probably unrelated to firing. Pennsylvania fired 94 rounds in two runs and never hit a thing.

^56 The quality of ammunition certainly was no help here; observers typically noted somewhere between 20% and 35% "low order" detonations, and between 4% and 20% duds, this with 45 second Mk VIII-3 time fuzes. The average four-gun fuze pattern was about 400 yards in range.

^57 See FTP 203-1 (Reports on Gunnery Exercises 1939-40) pp 95 et. seq. for more detail.

^58 Pennsylvania's actual director settings as compared to information provided from the drone are reproduced below:


Noting these results, her gunnery officer correctly noted that their "best forte" was some previous knowledge of the probable speed characteristics of the target. The error in course estimation seems large, but poor control of the drone meant that it quite typically (and unpredictably) would wander 10°-15° off the average course.

^59 The Mark 37 director system, which weighed almost 20 tons (and which could, in any case, engage only a single target at a time), was originally designed to control the fire of groups of guns in surface salvo fire and was not easily adapted to World War II anti-aircraft work where it might have to handle multiple rapidly-maneuvering targets approaching from several directions at once. The limitations of the Mk 37 were acceptable when barrage fire was common, but VT fuzed projectiles were so effective that AA batteries could henceforth be "split" in order to engage several targets simultaneously. This new potential to assign individual guns to individual targets led to the development of new anti-aircraft directors such as the Mark 57, and the (much smaller) Mark 51. For a fine summary of directors introduced during World War II, see Friedman, Naval Weapons of World War Two, USNI Press, c. 1984 [Transcriber's Note: John Campbell is the correct author of Naval Weapons of World War Two. Mr. Jurens may have meant to refer to Friedman's Naval Radar or US Naval Weapons].

^60 See Baldwin, Ralph, The Deadly Fuze - Secret Weapon of World War II, Presidio Press, 1980.

^61 USS South Dakota, for example, was still expending "old" Mk 18 mechanical time fuzes in anti-aircraft target practices in May and June 1945. The bursts of time fuzed projectiles were useful in pointing out the target to other ships, were likely to frighten or distract enemy pilots and enabled the relatively rapid detection of grossly inaccurate fire control solutions. Even after the war, doctrine suggested that the ratio of time fuzed to proximity fuzed projectiles should normally be about 1:1.

^62 Baldwin, Ralph, The Deadly Fuze, pp 245. According to Baldwin, an analysis of 278 aircraft shot down by VT fuzed projectiles between October, 1944 and August, 1945 indicated that only 46 of these would have been destroyed if time fuzed projectiles had been employed. Baldwin's 6:1 ratio apparently assumes that 70% of the VT fuzes worked. A 50% failure rate - the Navy's lower limit of acceptability - meant the effectiveness ratio was closer to 4:1. In comparison, mechanical time fuzes such as the Mk 18 typically worked about 90%-95% of the time. Operational considerations re the application of VT fuzes are well summarized in OP1480, VT Fuzes For Projectiles and Spin Stabilized Rockets, 15 May, 1946.

^63 A mixture of Mark VIII, Mark IX and Mark X torpedoes were fired in 1922. The Mark VIII, the best of the bunch, could only reach 16,000 yards at 36 knots, taking over 13 minutes to arrive. For a five minute run, this meant that the opposing battle-line would have to have been only 5,500 yards abeam, so torpedoes were evidently intended only to finish off cripples that could not shoot back. In 1922, Admiral Jackson, Commander Battleship Squadron Four, confirmed this, noting, "The range of the Mark IX-I torpedo [7,000 yards at 27 knots] is too short to be of great value as an offensive weapon excepting under extraordinary circumstances." The 36 knot, 3,500 yard, Mark X was even worse.

^64 Exactly what constituted a "partial hit" is unclear; presumably this was a hit which reached the target line, but passed between the target rafts. At 11,000 yards the number of torpedoes which passed under a target raft as opposed to those passing between two rafts must have been entirely a matter of luck, i.e., a function of the size of the rafts and distances between them. For the record, West Virginia's errors were 655 yards left, 475 yards right, 1,062 yards left, 77.5 yards right, and 632 yards left. The error of the sixth torpedo is unrecorded; presumably it missed the target train entirely.

^65 The equation yields about 11% hits at 13,783 yards, which was the average range at which the exercises were fired. The time to complete the firings is not recorded, but assuming a rate of fire of 1.5 Shots Per Gun Per Minute, this equates to 1.5 x 0.11 = 0.165 Hits Per Gun Per Minute. The 1935 figures for HPGPM are adapted from tables in the 1935 Maneuver and Fire Rules, the 1940 figure for HPGPM from the 1940 Orders For Gunnery Exercises. The graphed line for 16-inch percentage hits for 1940 was also adapted from the 1940 OGE booklet, obtained by dividing standard Shots Per Gun Per Minute (SPGPM) by twice the Hits Per Gun Per Minute in the Control Zone (HPGPMCZ) which should have caught half the shells. The improvement in accuracy, especially at moderate ranges, is dramatic.

^66 The U.S. Navy never reverted to a smaller caliber after adopting the 16-inch gun. The 14-inchers never shot as accurately as their 16-inch successors, a problem which defied more than twenty years of concentrated effort to cure. Probably, the interior ballistics were wrong. According to Bulletin of Ordnance Information No.2, 1945, pp 29-30, the then-standard nine-gun range pattern for the 14-inch was 2.03% of range as opposed to 1.9% for 16-inch weapons.

^67 Plotting mean dispersion vs. range instead of pattern size vs. range yields figures more susceptible to advanced analysis. Fortunately, converting the true mean dispersion, D, to other (possibly more familiar) measures of accuracy is relatively easy:

The equations required to convert the True Mean Dispersion to pattern size are complex, and are not given here. For normal numbers of guns, the conversion values are approximately as follows:

Number of Guns (n) Ratio of Pattern Size to True Mean Dispersion


To convert True Mean Dispersion values to hitting percentages at various ranges, change the True Mean Dispersion as a percentage of range to an absolute value, convert this actual value to a probable error and then use the dispersion rectangle shown below to convert the probable error into a hit percentage given a target of known size.

*(See illustration at end of article. M.)
Click for larger image.

The dispersion rectangle expresses the percentage of shots falling in any given sector of a pattern. The percentages along the edges of the rectangle represent the totals of the respective rows and columns. The mean point of impact is at the center of the diagram and each row and column is one probable error wide. All shots are assumed to fall within +/- four probable errors of the mean point of impact. The diagram shows, for example, that a rectangle adjacent to the mean point of impact one 50% zone long and one 50% zone wide will catch 25% of the shots (6.25 + 6.25 + 6.25 + 6.25 = 25.00). A target one probable error wide and one probable error deep located four probable errors away from the mean point of impact in both range and deflection is at the corner of the diagram, and will catch 0.04% of the shots, a one probable error by one probable error sized target three probable errors behind the point of impact will catch 1.75% of the shots.

Suppose, for example, that the True Mean Dispersion was 1% of range and it was desired to compute the hit percentage against a battleship sized target at 25,000 yards. Assume that the Mean Point of Impact to be centered on the target, that a pattern is 2 mils wide in deflection, and that the target is 600 feet long and 180 feet wide, including the danger space.

The True Mean Dispersion is 1% of 25,000 yards, i.e., 250 yards. The probable error is 0.846 times the danger space, or 212 yards. The 180 foot (60 yard) wide target is 60/212 = 0.283 probable errors deep in range. The deflection pattern is 2 mils wide, i.e., only 25,000 x 0.002 = 50 yards across, so we may assume that all projectiles hit in deflection. Near the mean point of impact (and assuming no misses in deflection), the dispersion rectangle shows that one probable error catches 25% of the shots, so a space 0.283 probable errors wide may be assumed to catch approximately 0.283 x 25 = 7.075 percent of the shots fired.

^68 Data on best and worst performances prior to c. 1925 are lacking, so the curves in this area are based on very "thin" data.

^69 Low velocity or reduced charge practices were fired at velocities of about 2,000 f/s; high velocity, full charge practices were fired at velocities of about 2,600 f/s. The trend line of ranges for the high velocity practices is interesting, climbing from c. 21,000 yards in 1921 to about 27,000 yards by the mid-thirties. The decrease in Long Range Battle Practice ranges after that date is interesting too, but all of these were low velocity practices.

^70 Development of a 13-inch subcaliber round for the Iowa class battleships, which could have been developed into a Copperhead variant, has apparently been discontinued.

Credits

The article was originally published in Warship International No. 3, 1991, and was transcribed for the internet by Tony DiGiulian.

The article is copyrighted 1999 - 2022 by International Naval Research Organization and NavWeaps.com. (