Q&A · 1:18:10-1:20:39

Time-on-target fire from capital ships

Two salvos could arrive together if gun elevation and range allowed it, but the technique complicates spotting unless radar improves the picture.

Question

Could an autoloading 14-inch battleship fire two salvos to arrive at the same time?

Short answer

Possibly, if range and elevation permit different trajectories, though it makes spotting corrections harder without good radar fire control.

Notes

A high-arc and low-arc salvo might be timed to land together under the right range and elevation conditions. The cost is that simultaneous splashes make it harder to tell which correction belongs to which salvo. Radar-guided fire control reduces that difficulty by giving the gunnery system better information. The fire-control table can only be as accurate as the observations fed into it, so poor inputs still produce poor solutions.