Aiming the Big Guns

Aiming the Big Guns. Battleship New Jersey. , When the USS New Jersey (BB-62) was designed in the late 1930's, aiming a warship's guns was still being carried out the same way it had been for centuries: by visual spotting., An observer would "spot the fall of shot," or observe where the initial broadside of shells landed, and correct the aim of the guns to bring the next shells fired on target., By the time the USS New Jersey (BB-62) was commissioned in 1943, the U.S. Navy had developed gunnery radar, which allowed for more accurate shooting. the USS New Jersey's (BB-62) gunfire control system therefore always used both visual and radar data to aim the guns., Targeting data such as the target's speed, course, distance, and position to the USS New Jersey (BB-62), as well as the "fall of shot" from previous broadsides was fed into the Mark 1 Able Main Battery Computer. This analog computer automatically combined this information with ballistics data such as curvature and rotationa spin of the Earth, wind speed, gunpowder temperature, and the USS New Jersey's (BB-62) own course and speed to arrive at a firing solution., The Mark 1 Able Computer was a technological masterpiece of its time, and one of the main reasons why U.S. Naval gunfire was the most accurate in the world by the middle of World War II. In fact, it proved so effective that its use was continued throughout the USS New Jersey's (BB-62) 48 years of service!