what's up with the clock?

[Paul Pless]

[BrianY]

Re: what's up with the clock?

Metric time.

[Paul Pless]

Re: what's up with the clock?

but why is it there?

[BrianY]

Re: what's up with the clock?

As with most things, Google is your friend:

from reddit

In the days before WWII, the most accepted formation for battleships was the line of battle, where ships would line up nose to tail and fire broadsides at the enemy. The British found that due to the poor visibility in the North Sea, further hampered by funnel and gunfire smoke, it was fairly rare for all the ships in the line of battle to actually see the enemy. So large dials resembling clock faces were added to the front of the fore mast, and to the rear of the main mast, trainable to 30 degrees off center.
Once a ship found the range to the target, it would display the range on the dials, with one hand indicating thousands of yards + 10,000, and the other hundreds of yards. So if both hands were on the 1, the range to target was 11,100 yards. Hash marks, called bearing indicators, were painted on the main gun turrets, giving observers the angle to target. With the range and bearing data from the ship in front or behind them to feed into their range keeping tables (fire control computers to us Yanks), and the proper adjustments made for the distance between the ships, their location in formation, etc, the gunnery officers on a battleship could target their guns on an enemy they could not see with a fair degree of accuracy. They could then pass the information on to the next ship in line, allowing the entire battle line to concentrate fire on an unseen enemy.

[isla]

Re: what's up with the clock?

Also..
"In the pre-computer age warships needed to have a way of controlling gunnery. Warships would have a clock face with only ten numerals to assist in firing the main armament as in the example shown here fitted to USS California. Prior to the Second World War, the practice was for battleships to line up, bow to stern, and fire their guns broadside at a common target.

"These "clocks" were actually indicators of range. When a battleship found the range to the target, it would set its range clocks - one on the front of the superstructure and one on the aft. One hand indicated ten thousands of yards and the other hand indicated thousands of yards, so if both hands were set at 1, the clock was showing that the range to the target was 11,000 yards.

Each ship would use binoculars to read its neighbour’s clock and set its clocks to match the clock of the ship which had found the range.

"In that manner, prior to the use of radio, the range information was silently passed down the line of ships and all ships could set their guns to fire the same distance."

http://www.recollect.co.nz/blog/the-mystery-of-the-decimal-clock/

[Garret]

Re: what's up with the clock?

12 o'clock high...

[wizbang 13]

Re: what's up with the clock?

I was going to guess a countdown to when the guns went boom , to protect ones hearing.

[JimD]

Re: what's up with the clock?

I want the launch crossing the bow.