Naval Firepower: Battleship Guns and Gunnery in the Dreadnought Era

by Norman Friedman

For more than a half a century the big gun was the arbiter of naval power, but it was useless if it could not hit the target fast and hard enough to prevent the enemy doing the same. Because the naval gun platform was itself in motion, finding a 'firing solution' was a significant problem made all the more difficult when gun sizes increased and fighting ranges lengthened and seemingly minor issues like wind velocity had to be factored in. This heavily illustrated book outlines for the first time in layman's terms the complex subject of fire-control equipment and electro-mechanical computing.

Genres: Naval History, Maritime, History, World War II, World War I, Military Fiction, Military History

319 pages, Hardcover

First published January 15, 2007

About the author

Norman Friedman is a prominent naval analyst and the author of more than thirty books covering a range of naval subjects, from warship histories to contemporary defense issues.

Reviews

[Casey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book, providing a technical history of Battleship guns and, more importantly, the Fire Control methods used by the various navies in the dreadnought era. The author, Norman Friedman, spends a considerable amount of time explaining the detailed history of Surface Firepower in the Royal Navy through both World Wars, then uses this foundation as a baseline in explaining the Firepower methods of the German, US, Japanese, French, Italian, and Austro-Hungarian Navies. The one confusion with this was the wide divergence from the British model taken by the Japanese and US Navies during WWI, but the author provides sufficient detail to explain and analyze these differences. The relation between Firepower Tactics and Naval Strategy is well explained, both in the Anglo-German dreadnought face-off before & during WWI and the US-Japan Pacific War plans leading up to WWII. [As a side-note, this is another book which explains how the conflict between the Japanese and US Navies in 1941 (before radar and ship numbers changed the equation) was much more evenly matched than we can really appreciate.] Like his other books, Friedman makes great use of picture captions to explain points and introduce material. If you are ready for this it doesn’t normally interrupt the flow of his books. However, in this work, he introduces the basic concepts of surface ship gunnery via a series of well-made animations; this is a great way to explain a complicated math problem, but it’s placement after the start of the technical history meant the reader is knee deep in the Pollen-vs-Dreyer debate before you are fully introduced to synthetic and analytic methods of Fire Control. But, this small quibble on format aside, the book does a great job of explaining the foundation of Dreadnought Warfare through to the rise of Strike Warfare in the decade prior to WWII. I definitely learned a lot more on the ‘why’ of many famous battles, including some that never involved battleships. Highly recommended for anyone looking for a detailed understanding of naval gunnery.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of interesting information about the evolution of naval fire control during the big gun era including practical results from WWI and WWII Would have liked to have seen more information about the design of the guns as well rather than the short chapter at the end. This book could have been a lot better. Writing is more like a stream of consciousness. Good writing and proper editing would make this a better book. Illustrations are incomplete and hard to follow in many cases. Critical features of warship fire control system in photos should have been identified with leaders and captions rather than a long fine print caption. Similarly the description for fire control analog computers is difficult to follow. A flow chart showing how information came into these mechanical analog computers, was processed and then output would greatly clarify the text as well as the illustrations. Worth reading if you are interested in electro mechanical analog computer and or naval history. Rather expensive for what it is though

[Dr. George H. Elder · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was probably the poorest Norman has written, albeit that the subject is difficult. He could have spent more time in addressing a number of essoteric concerns, such as faulty range tables, fuze performance, shell charges, shell shape/performance factors, range control lens filters, and things of this ilk. One reviewer noted a rather free flow of ideas, but I think the research was not quite finished and the work showed it. I am sure Norman will address more specifics in later texts.

[Ari · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is not well titled. The topic is not "guns and gunnery", but "gunnery" -- how to get naval gunfire to hit moving surface targets. However, the topic is broader than battleships and broader than "the dreadnought era"; the story picks up around the 1890s and very much includes cruiser and even destroyer systems -- though the focus is primarily on battleships, which had the most complex fire control systems. There is considerable material about the relationship between fire control and tactical thinking, and close analysis about how well the technologies worked in practice.

This book is intensely technical, but more readable than many.

I started the book with a mental notion that fire control meant "you see if the shots went too far or not far enough, and adjust accordingly." The big thing I learned from the book is just how much more complicated the story really is.

- Warships move pretty fast; shell flight-time might be a minute and adjusting takes noticeable time. There might be 60-120 seconds between spotting the fall of shot and the next salvo landing. In that time, the relative distance between two rapidly-moving warships might change by more than a mile. Bearing will also change. You can't just adjust distance based on shorts vs overs; you must 'lead' the target. Most navies adjusted _not_ against the raw range and bearing, but against a linear extrapolation of target motion.

- In a fleet action, targeting is hard. Suppose the captain or gunnery officer says "shoot at that target"; how do you make sure that the commander, the spotter and the guns are all pointing at the same target? It's an easy mistake to make to be ranging based on the salvos of some other ship; likewise an easy mistake if the guns and spotter happen not to be on the correct target. There's a lot of mechanism to keep these components synchronized.

- There were a few basic elements in every fire control system: a targetter, a spotter, a control room, and of course the guns. But these could be connected in several ways. For instance, some navies sent range to the guns, others sent elevation angles. There's a tradeoff here: it saves work to convert range to elevation just once, but it makes it harder to do per-gun adjustments -- which might be especially important with a mixed armament. When the targetter adjusts range and bearing, does that go through the control room or direct to the guns? Who presses the 'fire' button and how does that person know whether the guns are aimed and loaded?

- There is a long discussion about cumulative damage vs critical hits. DK Brown in one of his books says "the battlecruisers were fine except for their occasionally blowing up." I giggled when I saw that point but now I’m mostly convinced. Friedman points out that at Jutland the crews believed in the "cumulative" theory and had the habit of stacking ready to use ammunition in the magazine hoists — and without that bad practice, the ships wouldn’t have sunk. He notes that nobody else’s battlecruisers had this failure mode and that post-WW1, with more attention to ammunition handling, British ships generally avoided this failure mode.



- Radar made a big difference because suddenly there were accurate range measurements, and therefore accurate range rate measurements.

[John J Stover · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got this book due to a lifelong interest in ships and naval gunnery. This is a very specialized topic and only attempt this book if you are fascinated by the topic. The book far exceeded my expectations and really covered the field well. The illustrations of ships and equipment are wonderful as is the discussion of the science of naval gunnery.

Much appreciate the author’s thoroughness and selection of material. I especially liked how he covered the timeline of developments in the British, German, American, Japanese, Italian, French and Russian navies.

[Bobble Hat · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wide ranging review of big guns and fire control. Hard to follow in places and for me it would benefit from taking the technical issues of fire control at a slower pace and including some practical exercises for the reader. I suppose I’m more interested in how things work than the historical narrative and this was not Friedman’s intention.

[Thomas Warger · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating look at the frontier of the science of calculating for gunnery at sea a century ago. "Firing solutions" remained such a challenge that they went on to motivate the rise of what we now call information technology.

[R Locke · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not what you might think it is

If you're a fan of arcane and obsolete fire control systems this volume is for you. If you're expecting to find info on large caliber guns and turrets, you'll want to pass

[Robert Hausladen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing Detail

The author has compiled exceptional detail regarding fire control and it's impact on naval warfare. Many technical drawings and photos.

[Craig Henry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a deeply-researched book. Especially useful for wargamers as well as students of military (naval) history.