Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: Voss on July 22, 2002, 01:46:26 PM
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I watched a documentary on the search for HMS Hood last night on The History Channel. It was great and one very good aspect came to light. HMS Hood, and presumably every ship of the kind, had a twin telesope system for determining range to target. The sight worked as a split optics system, where two images (one above, the other below) were overlayed to give one image of the target. When the images lined up the system gave the range to target.
We don't HAVE to have it, but it would sure make things more interesting.
Comments?
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Most definitely! I've been saying for some time that the naval gunnery component could use more work. I saw that special too, on PBS. It was pretty good. The gun directing model should be a it more complex, but also more accurate, requiring the kind of actions and practice the new bomb sites use.
The gun directors, one fore and one aft, would control their respective batteries. They should be placed at the proper place up on the superstructure of gun directing towers, as they historically were. The gunnery officer would input the target's estimated course with the keyboard. He would then use the joystic to hold the gun director pointed at the target, and another two keystrokes to move the split images of the target together. The range and bearing would be fed to the "plotting computer", along with your ship's course and speed. The longer the gunner holds the crosshairs on target, the more accurate the plotting computer's estimate of relative speed between your ship and the target (kind of like the calibration of the bombsite). This would result in the guns training out to the correct bearing to lead the target, and elevating the guns to the proper angle. A light would come on telling you the guns were trained out and ready to fire.
Pulling the trigger once would start the guns firing, which they would continue to do until you pulled the trigger again to tell them to cease fire. If you see the shells falling short, you "twist the rangefinder dial" one way to increase the range estimate. Shells falling long? "Twist the handle" the other way.
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This would sure help the shore guns to!
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Yes, it would. However, I find using the shore guns easier than gunning ship-to-ship, as only the target is moving, as opposed to the target and the gun platform. Now we just need some fast battleships and convoys to go after :D. Oh, and starshells and a choice of colors for the marker dye. The marker dye allows one ship's gunners to distinguish their shell splashes from another's.