Quote:
Originally Posted by Maggoty
It seems to me someone was trying to make a mini game by mixing the army's system of height in scope with stadimeters. Infantrymen have to calculate range by estimating their targets height, their targets height in the scope and doing some math with those two values. It looks like the waterline at the top of your target thing does nothing more in the game than to note the height of your target in the periscope. I wouldn't be surprised if they actually copied the army's math and the book/waterline are the two values.
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The method in the game, matching the WL with the top of the mast, was how it was done. There are a couple of WW2 periscopes in the Washington Navy Yard Navy Museum. There is a sliding plate at the eyepiece that moves up and down when you turn the range knob. One image moves. The double image (put base of one at top of the other) is not as easy to use as a camera range finder (although that could be due to degradation of old optics), but it was designed to work at much longer distances and without a long enough range finder baseline.
This is a link to the 1946 periscope manual. One thing I found interesting is that the stadimeter (at least in 1946) could be rotated 90 degrees to be able to use ship length as well as mast or funnel height.
http://www.hnsa.org/doc/fleetsub/pscope/chap4c.htm#4J
In "Run Silent Run Deep" there are a few descriptions of attack approaches where the range is estimated using the stadimeter. In a couple of long range early estimates the captain estimates the height of the mast above the deck (not WL) and uses that as his reference height. As the range shortens he improves the range estimates.
Tom