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Originally Posted by Pablo
Hi!
I suspect the SH3 developers used the metric system for measurement since that is the standard measure used by landlubbers worldwide - and let's face it, there are many more people who use the metric system for distance measurement than there are using nautical miles. Unfortunately, this leads to pretty complex conversions best helped by the use of a nomograph.
The basic problem is that a "nautical mile' (by definition) is an angular measure: the length of a line spanning one minute of one degree of arc on the earth's surface. This would be great if the earth were a perfect sphere, but it's not: it is an "oblate spheroid" so the "real" length is shorter at the North and South Pole than it is at the equator.
To avoid mass confusion, the length of a nautical mile was standardized at 1852 km, which is the length of a nautical mile about half-way between the Poles and the Equator.
This yields the following conversions:
1 nautical mile = 1.852 km = approx. 1.15 statute miles
Pablo
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I think you'll find it was actually the Kriegsmarine that use the metric measurement as standard for it's maps so that they could plan combined ops with the Luftwaffe and the army who both used km and km/h as standards. The Kreigsmarine kpet to knots as this was the worldwide standard for measuring ship speed, but all their maps were in km.