NEW SYSTEM OF GUNNERY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10228, 3 May 1911, Page 6

NEW SYSTEM OF GUNNERY.

SHOOTING AT UNSEEN TARGETS

The new Dreadnought battfoship Neptune has been carrying out a series; of gunnery trials which are likely to have an important effect on the designs of our future battleships and armoured 'cruisers'. An entirely new system of electric gunfire control has been fitted to the Neptune, in the designing of which Admiral Sir Percy Scott and Messrs Vickers, Son and Maxim were concerned. Sir Percy Scott was on board all through the trials, which lasted nearly two months. An exhaustive series, of tests was carried out under the varying conr ditions, but with unvarying success. The big guns registered two hits to ©very three shots, which were so accurate that no ship afloat could have withstood their fire. On one occasion five of. the Neptune's 12in. guns dropped shells within 150 ft. of a flagstaff 9000 yards —about five miles—distant, arid consequently invisible from the Neptune's deck. In the new system of fire control the range-finding and gun laying are automatically controlled from the fire-control station either on the vessel's tripod mast or in the armoured conning tower. The work of the gun crews' is therefore limited practically to loading, unloading, and cleaning the guns.