Skip to content

Comment on The electromechanical angle computer inside the B-52 bomber's star trackerparent

Comments

There are some old training videos that show how this worked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwf5mAlI7Ug

Also the Battleship New Jersey YouTube channel has some nice content on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szxNJydEqOs

See [1] for the basic mechanical components. It's a better scan of the same film the Periscope Film archive sells, which is the first one linked above. No sprocket clatter.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1i-dnAH9Y4

I forget where I saw it (probably YouTube someplace) but the fire control systems (including radar) on the Iowa-class battleships apparently way outperformed their Japanese counterparts. The Japanese has a couple (?) ships with bigger guns/longer range but they couldn't actually take advantage of that longer range to hit big US ships.

AboutSource Built by g1lg1l

Hackerly is an independent reader for Hacker News, built on the public HN API. Not affiliated with Y Combinator.