Abstract :
In naval gunnery, especially in anti-aircraft systems, it is necessary 1br the gun to be kept continuously laid upon the target, regardless of the ships movements, with a high degree of accuracy. The paper discusses the implications of this requirement in terms of the angular movements to be imparted to a normal 2-axis gun, and shows the necessity for complete automatic power operation of the gun from the calculating position. It also shows that automatic operation is likewise necessary in every link of the complex system that constitutes a modern fire-control arrangement. From this introduction the paper describes the history of early efforts at automatic control, leading up to methods used in H.M. Ships during the war. The relative merits of electricity and hydraulics for these large position-control servos are discussed, and the difficulties of adapting the earlier designs of mountings for automatic control are presented. The paper ends with a summary of the somewhat stringent requirements which naval servos must satisfy.
