Talk:Gun laying

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see lists of open tasks and regional and topical task forces. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.
Start	This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale.
Additional information and associated task forces: This article has been checked against the following criteria for B-Class status: Referencing and citation: criterion not met Coverage and accuracy: criterion not met Structure: criterion met Grammar: criterion met Supporting materials: criterion met Associated task forces (general topics): Military technology and engineering task force Weaponry task force

The section Modern Artillery is nonsense. It does not describe the 'mechanics' of indirect fire artillery laying in the 20th Century. All it covers is direct fire by AFVs, a totally different subject.

For artillery laying in the 20th century I suggest paying attention to this page http://members.tripod.com/~nigelef/fc_laying.htm

Nfe 11:37, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Feel free to extend the article, it is after all a stub. IIRC FACE accepted compensation for barometric pressure, temperature and windspeed. I presume that BATES is the same, so as a comparison with earlier techniques, and as far as it goes the text is reasonably accurate. I doubt that the detail in the Tripod article is justified here, it's a very brief summary. An article on the detail of 20th century artillery technology would probably be a more appropriate vehicle for that level of detail.--Shoka 01:03, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

In order to lay a piece for indirect fire you start with an orienting station and a know direction. There are many options for this but the most basic is an aiming circle (a device that looks like surveying equipment on a tripod) using surveyed in data. Once you have the aiming circle aligned on a known direction (know as the azimuth of fire) you measure the angle from the azimuth of fire to the howitzer. Likewise, in the howitzer, you measure the angle from the rearward extention of the azimuth of fire to the aiming circle. If you remember from geometry - two parallel lines (the imaginary azimuths of fire going through the aiming circle and the howitzer) cut by a transversal (the line directly from the aiming circle to the howitzer) opposite interior angles are congruent. Therefore, once the angles measured from both the aiming circle and the howitzer are equal, the howitzer is now on the same azimuth of fire as the aiming circle. The howitzer then places aiming references (aiming poles or other reference) so it can aim itself relative to the original azimuth of fire. This process is repeated for all howitzers in the same area (generally a battery of 6-8 howitzers). Once all howitzers are aligned on the azimuth of fire, firing data can be computed from the center of the group of howitzers. This data is computed and transmitted to the howitzers relative to the original azimuth of fire.

Elevation is much easier. There is a mechanism that is aligned with the gun tube that works exactly like a carpenter's level. You set off the angle that you want the tube to go to, then elevate the tube until the bubble is level.Burrellt 14:14, 20 April 2007 (UTC)