Admiralty Fire Control Table in the transmitting station of .The Admiralty Fire Control Table (A.F.C.T.) was an electromechanical

analogue computer An analog computer or analogue computer is a type of computer that uses the continuous variation aspect of physical phenomena such as electrical, mechanical, or hydraulic quantities ('' analog signals'') to model the problem being solved. In ...

fire-control system A fire-control system (FCS) is a number of components working together, usually a gun data computer, a director, and radar, which is designed to assist a ranged weapon system to target, track, and hit a target. It performs the same task as a ...

that calculated the correct elevation and deflection of the main armament of a

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...

cruiser A cruiser is a type of warship. Modern cruisers are generally the largest ships in a fleet after aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships, and can usually perform several roles. The term "cruiser", which has been in use for several hu ...

battleship A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of large caliber guns. It dominated naval warfare in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The term ''battleship'' came into use in the late 1880s to describe a type of ...

, so that the shells fired would strike a surface target. The AFCT MK 1 was fitted to and in the early 1920s, while the battleships , , and , and the

battlecruiser The battlecruiser (also written as battle cruiser or battle-cruiser) was a type of capital ship of the first half of the 20th century. These were similar in displacement, armament and cost to battleships, but differed in form and balance of attr ...

, received Mk VII tables in the late 1930s. Battleships of the ''King George V'' class received a Mk IX table, while received the final variant, the Mk X. The AFCT was the successor to the Dreyer tables, developed by Captain (later Admiral)

Frederic Charles Dreyer Admiral Sir Frederic Charles Dreyer, (8 January 1878 – 11 December 1956) was an officer of the Royal Navy. A gunnery expert, he developed a fire control system for British warships, and served as flag captain to Admiral Sir John Jellicoe at th ...

, and the Argo Clock, developed by

Arthur Pollen Arthur Joseph Hungerford Pollen (13 September 1866 – 28 January 1937) was an English journalist, businessman, and commentator on naval affairs who devised a new computerised fire-control system for use on battleships prior to the First World War ...

, and received developmental input from both men. The Admiralty Fire Control Clock (AFCC) was a simplified version of the AFCT and was used for the local control of main armament and primary control of secondary armament of battleships and cruisers, and the main armament of destroyers and other small vessels. Some smaller cruisers also used the AFCC for main armament control. The chief difference between the AFCT and the AFCC was the provision of a paper plotter in the former, which could plot both own ship and target ship movement and record the mean point of impact of the salvoes fired. The AFCT and AFCC were used for gunnery control against surface targets. The

High Angle Control System High Angle Control System (HACS) was a British anti-aircraft fire-control system employed by the Royal Navy from 1931 and used widely during World War II. HACS calculated the necessary deflection required to place an explosive shell in the loc ...

and

Fuze Keeping Clock The Fuze Keeping Clock (FKC) was a simplified version of the Royal Navy's High Angle Control System analogue fire control computer. It first appeared as the FKC MkII in destroyers of the 1938 ,''Tribal Class Destroyers'', Hodges, p. 27 while late ...

were used for gunnery control against aircraft.

Notes

External links

The RN Pocket Gunnery Book

Illustration of the AFCT

* ttp://maritime.org/doc/br224/img/dia17.jpg Illustration of the AFCC
HMS Prince of Wales's Gunnery Aspects Report with discussion of, and plotter output from, her AFCT Mk IX

Artillery operation Military computers Fire-control computers of World War II Military equipment introduced in the 1920s

See also

Notes

Further reading

External links