times amounting to a distance of 8 or 10 miles between opposed fleets,[1] the time of flight of the projectiles is very great. It may amount to some 20 or 30 seconds, and thus if two vessels are concentrating their fire on one of the enemy and firing by salvos, it will frequently be the case that two salvos of projectiles are in flight at the same time, and the uninitiated would not be certain which salvo belongs to which vessel: for the professional gunner however, the matter is different. Although the correct range may not be known or may be wrongly determined in the first instance, the gunner, or the officer responsible for the control, knows precisely the range for which he has set his elevation, and consequently he knows to a fraction of a second the interval which will elapse between the discharge of the salvo and the time the projectiles strike the water; thus unless two salvos are actually fired to strike the water within say a second of one another there will be no reasonable doubt which is which.
It may fairly be urged that the troubles of observation and of gun fire direction in naval actions tend to increase, and at the best the conditions are already sufficiently exacting. It is, for instance, not uncommon when combatant vessels are separated by some 8 or 10 miles, for destroyers and torpedo boats to be told off to create clouds of smoke, by which the difficulties of observation may be indefinitely increased. It is probable, in fact it is almost certain, that in the future the aeroplane will come to the rescue of naval gunnery, just as it is already employed in co-operation with long range artillery on land. The author believes that in future naval warfare much of the observation work and fire control will be corrected by aircraft, either dirigible or aeroplane being used; under these conditions it will be necessary
- ↑ Perhaps even 12 miles as a maximum estimate; so far battle experience is lacking. The 4 or 5 miles given in § 36 is (from the context) an ordinary minimum.
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