[TorpX]

Originally Posted by CapnScurvy

...."one of the most important stations in the submarine fire control party"?

The training manuals speak for themselves. If a Captain/Author wanted to slight specific aspects for expedience in writing, or just take sole credit for his accomplishments over giving details of who/what may have helped in it......well, you be the judge.

None of the excerpts contradict my assertion. I didn't say the plot was unimportant - quite the contrary. What I'm saying is that the Aob was used to develop the plot. If the method of connecting two points and deducing the Aob, the skill of estimating the Aob by observation, would not have been taught or practiced. There would be little need for it.

This diagram (from the training manuals) illustrates what I mean:

There's a considerable amount of information here.

First, in the little table at near the top, there is the information from each of the six observations, arranged in 4 columns. TIME, BEARING, RANGE, AOB (they use the abbreviation Ab). Notice that the time and bearing value are precise, but the ranges and Aob's are in round numbers.

Second see that every point plotted has a small arrow drawn that shows the observed Aob. Nowhere is the Aob surmised from a line drawn through two nearby points. If you try to deduce the Aob or course by simply drawing a line between any two plotted points, you will not obtain an accurate value in most cases. The error in the range estimates precludes this method.

Note also the target ship course lines are not actually drawn through the plotted points. The plot had to be 'faired' and this required further observations and judgment by the people involved.

Plotting the targets course was not just a matter of making 2 or 3 observations, drawing a line, and having the matter over and done.