Captain Woodhouse as a gunnery specialist

Charles Woodhouse was one of the skilled officers drawn to independent overseas commands. Gunnery still depended heavily on officers who could work out target, trajectory, and fire-control problems with limited aids, so the specialty demanded technical skill and quick judgment. Woodhouse's expertise took him to an Admiralty post, but he pressed to return to sea. In 1942 he received a gunnery officer's coveted appointment, command of the King George V-class battleship HMS Howe. He later became commander-in-chief of the East Indies Station. No appointment is listed for the two years before his 1952 retirement; the suggestion that he may have served as an ad hoc adviser is explicitly an inference.