Well, my experience with play mode 'normal' and shell drift is:
a) RADAR is much more reliable than you think. At most, at strong wind adjustments by +- 0.1 or 0.2 (not more) are required. My hit ratio with RADAR is > 95%. Thus it would be helpful if the coarse tuning could be skipped and only fine tuning is needed - if at all.
b) The shot history markers are most useful for shore bombardment with both static targets and stopped ships. With moving targets and gun platforms ... well ...
![Hmmm](images/smilies/39.gif)
But meanwhile, my hit ratio without RADAR is not too bad after all.