The Ship Model Forum

[quote="El Santo"]Can anybody point me toward some good sources (whether print or online) for the fire control equipment carried by major US Navy warships (say, cruisers and up) during the period between the adoption of director control following the American entry into World War I and the eve of the Second World War? To give you all some idea of the kind of information I'm trying to pin down, have a look at this page detailing what USS [i]Texas[/i] was carrying in October of '44: [url]http://battleshiptexas.info/images/Weapons/FireControl/FireControl.html[/url]. Obviously that's after the era I'm interested in, but you see what I mean, right? The books I have (Friedman's design histories on carriers, battleships, and cruisers, Terzibaschitsch's cruiser book, various old Squadron-Signal publications, etc.) are fine for the 30's and on, when fire-control devices for the most part became readily identifiable pieces of external hardware, but they're no help at all when it comes to whatever gear might have been hidden away inside turrets, conning towers, and those housed-in crow's nests that started showing up on warships' mastheads circa 1918.[/quote]

That is not my area of expertise but I would suggest you get hold of a copy of Friedman's "Naval Firepower. Battleship guns and gunnery in the dreadnought era". Very good coverage of not only war time fire control equipment but also earlier WW1 and also in between war material. It's basically what the book is all about.

Can anybody point me toward some good sources (whether print or online) for the fire control equipment carried by major US Navy warships (say, cruisers and up) during the period between the adoption of director control following the American entry into World War I and the eve of the Second World War? To give you all some idea of the kind of information I'm trying to pin down, have a look at this page detailing what USS [i]Texas[/i] was carrying in October of '44: [url]http://battleshiptexas.info/images/Weapons/FireControl/FireControl.html[/url]. Obviously that's after the era I'm interested in, but you see what I mean, right? The books I have (Friedman's design histories on carriers, battleships, and cruisers, Terzibaschitsch's cruiser book, various old Squadron-Signal publications, etc.) are fine for the 30's and on, when fire-control devices for the most part became readily identifiable pieces of external hardware, but they're no help at all when it comes to whatever gear might have been hidden away inside turrets, conning towers, and those housed-in crow's nests that started showing up on warships' mastheads circa 1918.