Admiralty Fire Control Table in the transmitting station of .The Admiralty Fire Control Table (A.F.C.T.) was an electromechanical
analogue computer fire-control system
A fire-control system (FCS) is a number of components working together, usually a gun data computer, a Director (military), director, and radar, which is designed to assist a ranged weapon system to target, track, and hit a target. It performs ...
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 Kingdom of England, English and Kingdom of Scotland, Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were foug ...
cruiser or
battleship, 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 at ...
, 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 ...
, 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 Wa ...
, 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 and
Fuze Keeping Clock were used for gunnery control against aircraft.
See also
*
Director (military)
A director, also called an auxiliary predictor, is a mechanical or electronic computer that continuously calculates trigonometric firing solutions for use against a moving target, and transmits targeting data to direct the weapon firing crew.
...
Notes
*
Further reading
*
*{{cite journal , last1=Brooks , first1=John, title=Re: Questions on the Effectiveness of U.S. Navy Battleship Gunnery, Part III , journal=Warship International , date=2005 , volume=XLII , issue=3 , pages=264–266, issn=0043-0374, jstor=44893296
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
