Turret Crawl Battleship Iowa BB61

[To-Whose-Benefit?]

! No longer available

[skeeter]

This battleship nerd thanks you for posting this. Haven’t seen this detailed an illustration of the naval big gun system, ever.

[To-Whose-Benefit?]

@skeeter

Most of it was new to me.

I got to take an unguided tour of this big bad girl.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Massachusetts_(BB-59)



Got into 1 of the main turrets but only got to see maybe 4 or 5% of it.

To me the really astounding tech in 'em was the computers to figure trajectory.

All mechanical, gears and cams and such to set those guns to hit a moving target miles away from your own moving platform. 

[skeeter]

@skeeter

Most of it was new to me.

I got to take an unguided tour of this big bad girl.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Massachusetts_(BB-59)



Got into 1 of the main turrets but only got to see maybe 4 or 5% of it.

To me the really astounding tech in 'em was the computers to figure trajectory.

All mechanical, gears and cams and such to set those guns to hit a moving target miles away from your own moving platform. 

It astounds me as well. Those computers took into account not only the target's relative heading and speed, but pitch & roll of the ship, wind speed and direction, and rotation of the earth.

The record longest hit ever recorded with these weapons was made by a British BB of WWI vintage!

[Suppressed]

The accuracy of naval gunnery right on back to the age of sail astounds me.

[Joe Wooten]

@skeeter

To me the really astounding tech in 'em was the computers to figure trajectory.

All mechanical, gears and cams and such to set those guns to hit a moving target miles away from your own moving platform. 

Those old analog computers were pretty amazing. I've seen the ones on the Alabama, North Carolina, and Texas. Robert Heinlein was a gunnery officer when he was in the Navy and many of his stories from the 40's and early 50's had analog computers aboard spaceships.